Page 59 of My Best Friend Is Broken

“Same time next week?” She asks Liam, who nods.

“Thank you,” he says quietly, and she smiles.

“You’re doing the work, Liam. That’s the hard part.”

We walk to the car in silence, but it’s a different quality of silence than we’ve been carrying around for the past few days. Less suffocating, maybe. Less loaded with all the things we can’t figure out how to say to each other.

I start the engine and adjust the mirrors, buying time while I try to figure out how to ask about the session without sounding like I’m interrogating him.

“How was it?” I finally manage.

“More helpful than I expected,” Liam says, and there’s something surprised in his voice. Like he genuinely didn’t think talking to a stranger about his trauma would accomplish anything.

“That’s good.”

More silence. I can feel him looking at me, probably trying to gauge whether I actually want to know more or if I’m just making polite conversation. The truth is, I’m desperate to know more. What did they talk about? What breakthrough happened? What can I do to help? But I also don’t want to push.

We’ve been walking on eggshells around each other since the night with the pills, both of us terrified of saying or doing the wrong thing and triggering another crisis. It’s exhausting, this constant careful monitoring of every word and gesture.

I need to do something practical. Something concrete that actually helps instead of just sitting here drowning in good intentions and emotional complexity.

Actions are good. Effective. Simple. Easy.

“Maybe,” I start, then stop. Clear my throat. Try again. “Maybe we should get you to a clinic. For, um, health tests.”

Liam’s head drops, and he shakes it slowly. “I’m negative. Clear.”

I’m confused. Negative? Clear of what? How can he know without being tested?

“They tested me regularly in prison,” he says, his voice so quiet I have to strain to hear it over the traffic. “I did catch...” He trails off, can’t finish the sentence, but the implication hits me like ice water.

He caught something. From Wayne, probably, or one of the other bastards who hurt him. Had to be treated for it while still trapped in that place with the people who gave it to him.

“But the medication worked,” he continues. “My last test was all clear, and nobody...” Again, he can’t finish, but I understand.

Nobody hurt him after that. Whether because the treatment scared them off or because someone intervened or because he found a way to protect himself, I don’t know. But the abuse stopped, at least.

Small mercies in a world of horrors.

“They tested you and treated you but did nothing about what was happening?” The question comes out sharper than I intended, anger bleeding through despite my best efforts to stay calm.

“Yeah,” Liam says in a voice that’s barely audible.

The system failed him. Knew he was being hurt, knew he was at risk, treated the consequences but did nothing to stop the cause. Just patched him up and sent him back to the same cell, the same predators, the same daily hell.

I want to burn down every prison in the country. Want to find everyone who could have helped him and didn’t, everyone who looked the other way and pretended they couldn’t see what was happening.

But that kind of rage doesn’t help anyone, least of all Liam. So I swallow it down and clear my throat, trying to move past this unbearably uncomfortable conversation.

“Shall we go to lunch?” I suggest, grasping for normalcy.

Liam shakes his head. “I want to go home. Please.”

Home. At least he still calls it home, even after everything that’s happened between us.

The drive back is quiet, but not the tense silence from earlier. More like we’re both lost in our own thoughts, processing things we don’t have words for yet.

Back at the apartment, I unlock the door and then find myself standing in the hallway, fidgeting with my keys like an idiot. The thought of going inside, of sitting in that living room with the glaringly new bathroom door visible down the hallway and all our careful politeness filling up the space where easy affection used to be… it feels suffocating.