Page 43 of This Might Hurt

Once I’ve dimmed the lights, we settle on either side of the mattress with our backs up against the couch.

I prop my chin on my knees and watch these people my age running in and out of each other’s ugly apartments with no sense of privacy.

They fight constantly about everything, but they seem happy.

If I ever dared to yell about my feelings like that, I can’t even imagine what Archie would do.

Jude watches with bright eyes and a crooked grin, his lower lip caught in his teeth, like he’s waiting for his favorite jokes. It’s all too alien to me, so I angle my head and watch him instead. When he notices me, his eyebrows furrow sleepily. “You don’t like it?”

I shrug, feeling flayed open, like he can look straight through me and out the other side. “I want to. I don’t think I get it.”

Whatever he sees in my face makes him sad, I think.

“It’s okay.” He sits up and tugs me down by my neck until I’m propped against his shoulder.

It’s such a relief. I thought we needed distance to make this plan work, but I’m starting to realize we won’t survive it at all without each other.

He lets the next episode start as I angle my nose into his t-shirt and just breathe.

When the blonde woman starts to sing a song about a smelly cat, the boy pressed up against me melts into uncontrollable giggles.

He rolls over, burying his face in my side, and I put my hand on his back so I can feel him wheezing.

“Ramona sings this to Buckley when she thinks no one’s listening,” he manages to explain finally, wiping tears out of his eyes.

“And he always looks so mad about it. It’s the cutest fucking thing.

” That’s something I can grasp—Ramona and the cat, their little world that let me in for a moment.

He looks happy when I smile back at him.

By the fourth episode, I’m so close to sleep that I almost miss the trickle of icy air as Jude pulls away.

I lift my head and squint in the dark to see him sneaking out of the room with his pillow hugged to his chest. Outlined against the glow from the TV, he looks fragile and worn away, like he might dissolve into nothing.

I ran him ragged today and gave nothing back, and I’m going to do it all over again tomorrow.

“Where are you going?” I croak.

“Um…” He clears his throat, his voice gravelly with sleep, and gestures to the dark cave of the hallway. “Finding another bed.”

Shit. I close my eyes and try to remember exactly what I said to him this morning. But of course I can’t remember because I’m that fucking selfish. “Jude, come on. I didn’t mean—”

I break off when he takes a step backward toward the hall. “I’m really trying, Andrew. It’s fine. I’ll set an alarm so you don’t have to wake me up this time.”

“Fuck,” I groan, pushing myself up and reaching out a hand. “I don’t want you to go.”

He sucks in a breath, squeezing the pillow tighter, and something tells me this matters a lot, in some way I don’t completely understand.

“You don’t have to do this to make me help you,” he insists quietly.

“I know I said that, but I was kidding. I’ll do it for free.

” His voice catches almost imperceptibly.

“I’ll do anything. I just don’t want to get jerked around, please. ”

“For god’s sake,” I breathe, struggling out of the sleep haze we worked so hard to get into. “I don’t know how to do this, okay? I’m fucking it up. But that doesn’t change the fact that I mean every word I’ve ever said to you.”

His fidgeting goes still, his bare toes sunk deep into the thick carpet. “Everything?”

Take whatever you want. Anything. Just don’t let me go.

You’re the only reason I stayed.

“Yes.” I scoot across to the far side of the mattress and pull the blankets back. “Please come here. It’s cold.”

He stares at me for a long time, then pads back and slips underneath the covers where he lies on his back without touching me.

“You’re not just telling me that?” he asks after a while, scooting a little closer.

For a moment, I can clearly grasp the nightmare that lives in his head, where every kindness is nothing but bait to make him try harder, where insisting that it’s real is another lie so that he’ll do more, be more, sacrifice more of himself.

There’s no bottom to it, and I don’t think he has the capacity to understand the world any other way.

“I could give you ten million dollars if I wanted you to do jobs for me,” I grumble.

“You think I’d embarrass myself saying shit like this for no reason?

” Pushing his shoulder, I roll him forcefully onto his side facing away from me and claim the spot he was lying, shoved up against his back with my arm around his belly, stealing half of his pillow.

It’s so warm. He goes still for a moment, then pushes back tighter against me and rubs his face down into the pillow.

I lie there with his hair all up my nose, the smell of him like prairie grass, and tell him sorry in my head for all the ways I used him today, my needy, ungrateful, jealous heart.

I tell him that it’s only been nineteen days that I’ve practiced loving someone, and I need a little more time to get it right.