Abigail Johnson - If I Fix You

I’d pulled my hand back, breaking the contact with his skin. “I’m not talking to you about this.” I’d lowered my voice. “My dad is a mess and he doesn’t even know—” bile rose in my throat “—what I saw. That is the only reason I’m out here and not inside.”

The muscle had tensed along Sean’s jaw. “That’s the only reason?”

I hadn’t answered him; I didn’t have to. My cheeks were wet and my chin kept twitching.

“I am sorry. It shouldn’t have happened. I should never have let it happen. But you have to believe that I—”

“No!” I pushed his chest, but he’d caught my hand and kept it there, eyes unblinkingly focused on mine. His heartbeat had been wild beneath my palm. Guilt would do that. I’d pushed again and yanked free. “I don’t have to do anything.”

I hadn’t push him hard, I hadn’t had the energy, but he’d staggered back a step. His eyes wet and welling up by the second.

“How long have you known me? How long have we been—” he’d swallowed “—us? You won’t let me explain?”

I’m sorry.

He’d already said it. Nausea rose fast and high, forcing me to press a fist into my stomach. “My mom is gone and my family...isn’t anymore.” That bald admission had scraped at my throat and fresh tears needled my eyes. I’d dashed them away and blinked hard to keep any more from falling. “She was practically on your lap the moment it happened and there is not a single thing you can say to change that.”

He’d bit both lips, nodding first at the ground and then at me. “Nothing I can say now or ever?”

I couldn’t imagine a time when his words would change what had happened or the way I felt, but the anger and the sadness had burned through me and in their wake I was numb and done. “If I say I don’t know, will you leave?”

He hadn’t, not right away. I’d watched the internal conflict flit back and forth across his features and expected him to rally for round two. But for once, Sean had done exactly what I asked, and like a masochist, I’d watched him leave.

I wish I could say I hadn’t cried over Sean after that day, but I had. Like, Alice in Wonderland–level tears. I’d flooded my entire house and street and every place I’d ever stepped. I knew all the so-called stages of grief, so between pathetic bouts of sobbing, I’d waited for anger. I’d begged for its cleansing rage to overtake me and break me free from the fetal ball I reverted to whenever I was alone. I’d wanted to get to the stage where I burned things and cut his face out of photos.

Where I dropped his things from my rooftop.

But it never happened. My stage of grief over Sean was singular. I’d cried a lot until I didn’t.

And it was all his fault.

If Sean had been like Mom, he’d have switched his schedule at school so that we wouldn’t have any classes together. He’d have moved lockers so his wouldn’t be next to mine anymore. He’d have found a new lunch period, let alone a new table.

He’d have completely blotted himself from my life, left those shattered, splintered shards of my heart to fester whenever I thought of him.

Unlike Mom, Sean didn’t do any of that.

He kept up his attempts to talk to me, to explain something that was unexplainable. I shot him down again and again and again. How could I do anything else when at home Dad still started every time the phone rang or someone came to the door, thinking it might be Mom?

Claire didn’t help either, not the way I wanted. She’d always been Team Sean where I was concerned. She knew something had happened between me and Sean the night my mother left, but she had restrained herself—barely—from prying too much. It wasn’t a story I was eager to remember, much less tell, and even though it killed her not to know, Claire could see I wasn’t ready to talk about it. For about three weeks she left well enough alone, which was about two weeks and six days longer than I’d expected.

“I need to tell you something,” she’d said, linking her arm through mine after school one day. “You’re probably not going to like it, so I’m holding on.” She drew in a deep breath, the kind that almost always precipitated a speech of some sort, and I braced for impact.

“I don’t know all the facts, and that’s okay,” she’d added when I tensed. “I understand that you don’t want to talk about it. What I do know is that three weeks ago your mom walked out and you’ve barely been able to look at Sean since.” She let out a gust of breath and dropped her bomb. “I know there’s a connection.”

The blood drained from my face. I actually felt the sensation, and it left me light-headed, unable to protest when Claire led us to the field before tugging me down to the grass beside her. I’d been fending off Claire’s increasingly probing questions, dreading and yet somehow feeling like this moment—the moment when Claire would connect the dots—was inevitable. It was almost a relief to get it over with. Until Claire started talking again.

“I’m not going to speculate wildly here, I know who’s involved and that’s enough. On one hand, there’s your mom. I don’t want to say anything bad about her, but I’m struggling to find anything good to say. She’s made you cry a lot, I’ll leave it at that.”

My eyes were dry at that moment, but only because I’d already cried that morning.

“Then there’s Sean. He’s been the guy to pick you up when you’re hurting over her—sometimes literally—and get you past it. So if something bad happened with both of them on the same night, I’m not going to look at Sean afterward, I’m going to look at your mom. And if you can’t tell me why I should do otherwise—” she held up her hands when my head jerked to face her “—and I understand that you can’t right now—then I have to believe it was her and not him.”

Her and not him. As if it were that simple. As if I hadn’t replayed that night over and over again, looking for ways to exonerate him. Because I missed Sean, I did. Seeing him had always been one of the best parts of my day, and now that was gone.

Claire shifted onto her knees. “Think about it. Your mom has been gone all this time without a word. Whatever she did and whatever damage she caused, she doesn’t care enough to wade back in and try and fix things. Whereas Sean has done nothing but try to fix things, and I don’t see him stopping anytime soon. You of all people should see that for what it is. Something is broken between you two, I’m not denying that, but if there’s a chance that it can be fixed—and he really seems to want to—how can you of all people not try?”

To fix me and Sean.

She didn’t have all the facts, but I couldn’t argue with the ones she did. Everything she’d said about Sean and my mom was true. Historically, Mom was the one who hurt me and Sean was the one who helped me heal. But that one night had changed everything. Sean was there. He’d stayed. He’d said he was sorry.

Maybe Sean and I could be fixed. Maybe the damage could be buffed out, repainted, polished until it hid something only the two of us would ever know about. But that wasn’t the question. The question was...did I want to? Did I want to forgive him for the role he’d played in Mom’s leaving? Could I look at him and not see the ghost of her wrapped around him?

There was no going back. Despite the often-conflicting signals I got from my heart and my head, I couldn’t love Sean anymore, but I didn’t want to hate him either. I didn’t know where that left me, and I wouldn’t know until I tried.

So I did.

Sssslllloooowwwlllyyyy. And trying was predicated on one very clear but unspoken rule: Sean and I would never talk about that night.

At first he was just there, a presence floating around in my peripheral vision, a nod when we passed in the hall. When I stopped flinching every time I saw him, he moved to short conversations and even an awkward high five when I aced a test. After that, I didn’t freeze when he smiled at me—though there was a tension around his mouth that had never been there before. I didn’t move away when he sat next to me or hesitantly bumped my shoulder with his. Slowly but steadily, I was acclimating to something I never thought I’d be able to accept again, much less enjoy: him.