Page 7 of My Best Friend Is Broken

He recoils. His entire body jerks backwards as if my touch burns more caustic than acid. His head snaps up, and the sheets fall back. His eyes are gray in the dark and impossibly wide. Strands of pale hair streak over his face.

The whimpers come again. Ragged, broken. Like someone being dragged over glass.

“Liam.”

A choked sound tears from his throat, and in the next second he’s thrashing, kicking free of the sheets, eyes wide and unseeing.

“Liam,” I rasp. “It’s me.”

But he’s lost. Fighting shadows. His fists pound weakly against my chest. I catch his wrists, not to pin him but to keep him from hurting himself. I keep my voice low and steady.

“Liam. You’re safe. It’s Nicky.”

His gray eyes snap to mine, glassy and frantic. He thrashes against me, chest heaving like he can’t pull air in. For a terrifying moment, he doesn’t know me. Doesn’t see me. Just some shadow closing in.

Then, like a crack of light through a storm, his gaze locks on mine.

“Nicky,” he rasps.

Then, I am falling. Crashing onto the bed next to him. His hands move from my tee shirt to my back, and he yanks me even closer to him.

I put my arms around him, and he clings on to me. He is trembling like a live wire, but he is quiet now. His lungs are calming down.

“You smell like home,” he whispers against my neck.

The words nearly gut me.

I laugh awkwardly, not quite sure what to make of this.

“Remember all the sleepovers we had?” asks Liam.

“Yeah,” I huff. Relieved that he is making some sense now. “When we were thirteen, you practically lived at my house, squishing into my tiny bed with me.”

“Yeah,” he agrees quietly. “We were like brothers.”

Silence falls. Thick and heavy. Weighted with the past and all the burned futures. All the might-have-beens and should-have-beens that have turned to dust, leaving an empty nothingness. Liam’s future is now unmapped and unknown. Our friendship has been shaken to its very core.

I hold him even tighter, as if I can squeeze all the lost years away and recapture the bond that we had. Like I can hold us both together.

“Don’t ever let me go, Nicky,” he whispers into the dark.

“I won’t,” I promise him.

And I mean it.

He settles slowly. His lungs take up a calm, steady rhythm. Tension drains away from his muscles. I feel him drift back to sleep.

I stay and I hold him. Just like I promised.

The strip of moonlight slowly moves across the room until it fades, surrendering to the soft light of dawn.

Liam is uneasy in my arms. Skittish even in sleep. Still clinging to me like I’m the only thing tethering him here.

My heart grows heavier and heavier as truth claws all my denial away until the weight of reality is suffocating me.All the lies I told myself earlier have faded away like the moonlight, and now stark reality is blazing brighter than the morning sun.

Everything is not going to be fine. Liam is not okay.

And I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to put him back together.