A. Jackson - When We Met

The tears came harder, and for long minutes Indy didn’t continue the story. After taking a few large breaths in and out, she looked up at me and gave me a depressed smile.

“I was woken up the next morning by a phone call around six. I was alone in my dorm room, my roommate had left for the break, and I remember it smelled like her perfume. I don’t know why I remember that. It’s just something that has always stood out, because I hated that fucking perfume, and it’s all I could smell as I listened to my mom sobbing on the other end of the line. Ian and his friend had decided to try to drive since there were no flights, and it was only about four hours. We’re from Chicago, so Ian called his friends all night until one of them agreed to come get them at the airport and drive them. They didn’t make it forty-five minutes before they, and another car, hit a huge patch of black ice and spun out of control. They both went off the road and into a ditch. The driver was paralyzed from the waist down, Ian’s friend broke his collarbone, and Ian’s side of the car was pinned underneath the other car. They said he lived for about ten minutes after the crash. They didn’t say the exact words, but it wasn’t hard to figure out how much he’d been suffering for those ten minutes. And he’d been coming to see me.”

“But, Indy . . . that doesn’t make it your fault.”

“I know that,” she cried. “But I’m not sure my parents do.”

“You don’t—”

“My dad said, ‘It should have been you’ when I was finally able to make it home.”

I flinched back. “What the fuck?” I breathed. “Indy, I—I don’t. God, I’m so sorry about Ian. But your parents, they’re wrong.”

She nodded absentmindedly, her jaw shaking as she did. “Through everything, all I could think about was that Ian suffered. That he was in pain for those ten minutes, and I wasn’t there for him when he’d been there for me my whole life. I—I just lost myself after that. I clung to my relationship with Dean because my parents hated me even more, but nothing took the pain away. Over and over I relived that phone call, the smell of that horrible perfume, and the fact that he suffered—and I started cutting.”

My chest felt hollow and my stomach dropped. “Indy, no. . . .”

“Somehow it made sense to me. Like if I felt pain for him, I was taking away what he had gone through. I never did it to kill myself. It was always on my legs, and I knew where not to cut, but I couldn’t stop. It became addictive. Every time I thought about him, I’d have to do it. Dean tried to get me to stop, and I tried—God, I tried so fucking hard, but I felt like I’d failed Ian,” she cried. “I know none of this makes sense, but at the time it did. My parents never even found out—I was able to stop before sophomore year ended—but when I had to go home over summer . . . it was horrible. It was like even though they didn’t know , they knew that I was refusing to cope, and they just got tired of having to deal with their disappointment. I found my bags on the driveway when I came home from the gym one morning, the locks to the house changed. So I came back to school early and found Dean and Vanessa having sex.” She took a deep breath and I could tell she was trying to steady herself.

“I hadn’t been there for Ian, I was never a good enough daughter for my parents, so much so that I can’t go home anymore, and I found out my boyfriend—the only person who knew what was happening and was trying to help me through it—had wanted to dump me and hadn’t done it yet because he was just afraid to upset me.” I started to say something, but she cut me off. “ That is why I’m trying to tell you it can’t work. That is why I’m telling you you’ll leave. Everyone does. And you think you want to save me, but it’s not your job to save me, Kier. I need to save myself, and I’m trying. The drinking—it’s bad, I know. But it’s done. It has to be, just like I stopped cutting for Ian. I can’t keep drinking to forget a guy who never cared about me. But while I’m trying to save me, you shouldn’t have to get caught up in the mess that is my life. Do you understand now?” she asked, her voice breaking on the last word.

I thought for a minute before responding, and when I did, I took her face in my hands and pressed my forehead to hers. “I know what you’re saying, but you’re not scaring me away. I hurt for you, Indy. I hate what you’ve been through, and yes, I wish I could take it all away. But I know I can’t do that, and I’m sorry. That will always be hard. You’ll always miss him. Your parents—they can go to hell if they can’t see how amazing you are. I still stand firm on my opinion of Dean, even more so now. But what you’ve been through? What you did to yourself? You’re not scaring me, Indy. Everyone struggles with something. Everyone has different ways of dealing with the shit that happens in their life. Yours was destructive, yeah. But you? You realized that and stopped it and have been fighting it alone. Do I wish you hadn’t ever done it? Of course. But do I admire you? Hell yeah. You’re the strongest person I know for stopping.”

“You’re making it seem like I’m someone better than I am.”

“No, I’m not. I told you,” I whispered against her lips before placing a kiss there. “I see people, and I see you. Now I know what you’ve been hiding, and I still see the same girl I want to take care of and spend my time with. Nothing’s changed over here. I’m just waiting to see if you’re going to give me more reasons why you think I should run.”

She huffed and rolled her eyes. “I’ve given you plenty.”

“Well, not running.”

“Kier . . .”

“Tell me something. Yesterday when I was here, you’d been crying, and you didn’t want to see me. Did that have to do with me, or did that have to do with this week and Ian?”

Her eyes roamed my face in the shadows. “Ian. I was—I was struggling.”

“Understandable.” Placing a soft kiss on her throat, I moved away from her and spent a few minutes burying her under her blankets before grabbing the ones I’d been using and wrapping them around me. When I was done, I moved so I was lying next to her and she laughed at the amount of time it was taking me to do this. “Now that we’re not going to freeze, why don’t you tell me about Ian?”

Her smile fell. “What? What do you mean about him?”

“This is a hard time of year for you, and you were struggling alone yesterday. You told me tonight you didn’t want to be alone, and you’re not. So instead of struggling, why don’t you tell me all the good things you remember about him?”

Her eyes shone in the dark as she stared at me in silence for what seemed like countless seconds before whispering, “Okay.”

Indy

Kier and I had spent the rest of the night doing just that. I’d told him stories about Ian as we lay bundled up in blankets, and eventually we fell asleep that way. The power kicked back on sometime early in the morning before we woke up, and at some point we’d shed our multiple blankets. We had woken up with two blankets covering us together and Kier’s body curled around mine.

I hadn’t woken up next to anyone since last school year with Dean, but even then it had never seemed as perfect as waking up with Kier. On the rare occasions Dean and I had spent the night with each other, it was always awkward, and when I woke I was uncomfortable—and that was if I’d been able to fall asleep at all. But my body seemed to fit perfectly against Kier’s, his head resting just above my own, one of his legs fitted between mine, the arm he wasn’t using as an additional pillow wrapped securely around my waist, his hand splayed across my upper stomach.