Free Damaged by Amy Reed Page B

nothing, and for a second, I feel like I’m looking at him as Camille must have, like she’s inside me looking at him through my eyes, and I’m filled with so much warmth all of a sudden, like gratitude that he’s looking at me with those eyes, that somehow him seeing me makes me a better person, like how Camille made me better. “I’m a mess,” I say again, and my voice breaks, and for a second I think I’m going to finally lose it, I’m going to break down right here in front of all these people, in this coffee shop, with this sound track of cheesy pop ballads, and I just can’t do it, I can’t. So I tighten myself up again. I zip up my armor. The air thickens back around us and makes me impenetrable.
    â€œMe too,” he finally says. My mouth can’t open in response, so we sit in silence for a while. But it’s not an uncomfortable silence like so many others. It’s like we’re floating. Like we’re meant to be here.
    â€œI started drinking like crazy after she died,” he continues. “It was too easy, you know? It always has been. I’m a waiter part-time at one of my dad’s restaurants, and I just steal bottles of booze from the bar and of course no one does anything because I’m the son of the guy who pays their wages. And I just drink and drink so I don’t have to feel anything.” He takes a sip of his hot chocolate. “But it never really goes away. No matter how hard I try to run from it.”
    The silence returns. I’m afraid to look up. I’m afraid of seeing my reflection in his glassy eyes.
    â€œDo you think it’s possible to die from sadness?” he finally says.
    I feel something growing inside me, something warm and solid. Maybe it’s gratitude, but that’s not strong enough a word. The feeling is fiercer than that. It’s like I want to grab myself by the shoulders and shake me. I want to scream at myself, Why did you wait so long for this?
    â€œI don’t know,” I say so softly I can barely hear my own voice. “Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning. I try to move but that just makes it worse. Like it gets thicker and tighter and heavier the more I try to fight it.”
    â€œIt,” Hunter says.
    â€œHer,” I say.
    â€œYes.”
    I look into his eyes. They are deep blue pools I could drown in. “I can’t say her name out loud.”
    â€œYou don’t have to.”
    I look down and suck out the last of my coffee. The sound is shockingly loud. It breaks the spell, returns us back to the café. I feel some magic slip away. I want to hold on to that place where we were floating, removed and above all of this, in the silence that was just ours. But it’s gone.
    â€œSo now what?” I say.
    â€œI don’t know,” Hunter says. “Just life, I guess.”
    â€œI don’t have one,” I say, shocked by the words as soon as they come out of my mouth. What is it about Hunter that is making me talk like this?
    Hunter gives a sad smile. “We can be friends, you know?”
    I nod weakly, so wanting that to be true. Maybe we can. Maybe this is a beginning. All the disdain I felt for him, all the judgment, has morphed into something new. I’ve always thought he was such a loser, not good enough for Camille, somehow beneath us for being so obviously broken. But now, it is those same things that make me want to trust him, that make me think that maybe I don’t have to be alone in all this. Because now I am broken too.
    â€œWant to go do something?” he says.
    â€œNo,” I say, and I only half mean it. “I need to go home. I need to sleep. I haven’t been sleeping.” Something aches in me, wanting to tell him the whole story. But it is not time for that. It may never be time for that.
    â€œYeah,” he says. “You look like you could use some sleep. No offense.”
    â€œNone