My breath gets lost in his words while I get lost in his eyes, eyes that completely expose me. So I do the only thing I can think to do…

I ruin us.

Then I rush up the stairs, my shame like heavy weights around my ankles. Through silent sobs and hurtful regrets, I reach for the doorknob, but it’s not my room I go into, it’s the room next door.

I stand at the edge of the bed and grab the phone on the nightstand, my hands shaking as I type out a text. I lower the sheets, and without a thought to my current soaking state, I welcome the warmth of the body next to me.

“Becca?” Grams says, sitting up. She switches on the lamp on her nightstand before facing me. “Oh, sweetheart. What happened?” She combs her fingers through my hair then looks down at the phone in my trembling hands.

I kissed Josh.

Journal

He peels away the layers

Of fear and of pain

Leaving me exposed

From my heart to my veins

While I tiptoe the land mines

Of scene after scene

Waiting for the destruction

That left us unclean

But I worship the moments

That kept us bare

And I hold them there

With safe touches

And gentle words

And silent tears

And silent cries

Beneath silent stars

And when I close my eyes

I push down the hurt

Of a three-year-old smiling

His face covered in dirt

~ ~

9

—Joshua—

Five months ago I skated a comp that, if won, would rank me fourth in the world. I had one final trick up my sleeve and 11.3 seconds on the clock.

When I poured my heart out to Becca, begging her to forgive me, asking her to give me a sign that she still felt everything I felt, I had the same feeling. One last trick. One last chance.

I started my run up, board in my hand and my mind already three seconds ahead. Then I dropped the board, and I kicked and I pushed, focused on the grind rail in front of me. Focused on the prize.

World Ranking.

Becca.

There are two parts to completing a trick. The landing and the balance to continue. I found myself in the air, the clock ticking down, and my board flipping somewhere beneath me. The second my toes touched the grip tape, I knew I had the landing down.

When Becca’s lips met mine, cold and wet and perfect, I knew I’d landed my last trick. Landed her.

A second later, the board tipped forward, throwing me completely off balance. My foot came down an inch too close to the front of the deck, and I fell nose first on the ground. Blood poured everywhere, taking my pride with it.

Just like Becca when she walked away from me.

But there’s a reason why skaters skate. Why we bust a trick fifty times just to nail it once. Why we suffer broken bones and bruises and scrapes over and over. It’s all in our heads. We deceive our minds into believing that there is no pain. That’s when the adrenaline kicks in. And the adrenaline is what we live for. We fall. We get back up. We kick. We push. Again and again. Because the joy of success is greater than the depression of failure.

It took me three weeks to get over the loss at that comp.

It took me three seconds to trick my mind into believing that the pain of Becca walking away didn’t exist.

So I get into bed, my mind clear and my dad’s final words replaying in my head.

“Time to coast, son.”

10

—Becca—

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. The moment we pulled out of Grams’s driveway to head to the airport, I knew something was wrong. Aaron barely spoke to me on the flight and he stayed that way on the drive home. As soon as we were out of Dad’s car, Aaron asked if we could talk. That was the first time he actually looked at me. He was upset. It was obvious. And I was upset for him. We broke down, sitting in his car, outside my house and we released the truths to the lies we’d been living. But there was no yelling, no arguing. Just… understanding. And sadness. So much sadness. He confessed that he used the trip as a way to determine our true feelings for each other. The fact that I basically ignored him the entire time was proof that I didn’t feel the way he’d hoped. I tried to argue with him in my own silent way, but he kept shaking his head and telling me that it was okay. It was okay because he realized that it didn’t hurt him the way it should have. It was painful—to have him sit there and tell me that he thought we’d been using each other in the hopes that it would somehow help us forget our losses. There was a reason he was drawn to a girl who couldn’t speak, a girl who he’d hoped would rely on him the way Brandi had, a girl who found comfort in his need to understand her. But like he said, I wasn’t Brandi, and he didn’t love me. Just like he wasn’t Josh, and I didn’t love him. Again, I tried to argue with him. Or maybe it wasn’t him so much as it was myself. I didn’t love Josh. I couldn’t love Josh. But even through my silent cries and untrue declarations, he felt the weight of the truth as much as I did. He held me while I cried, and I did the same for him, and we promised each other that we’d remain friends. That we wouldn’t let it change our relationship. As much as I wish that was going to happen, I knew it wouldn’t. And as much as I didn’t realize it while it was happening, he was wrong. Maybe I didn’t rely on him the way he wanted, but I still did. In my own way. A way I’d feared.

I became sad, and then angry, and then desperate. I lay in bed, tears soaking my pillow, and I wished my mind to be as empty as the rest of me. I’m not exactly sure why I became so upset, why I took it so badly. It’s not as if I’d planned to spend the rest of eternity with him. Maybe it wasn’t so much the fact that he broke up with me as it was the reasons why. I tried to justify my actions over the course of our “relationship.” Tried to convince myself that I wasn’t a horrible person. I wasn’t using him. Not really. But he’d said it himself. We were using each other. And that would make him just as horrible as me… only he wasn’t. Not at all. And that made me feel worse.

So I became sadder.

Angrier.

More desperate.

I spent days in bed wallowing in my self-pity, ignoring Dad’s constant concern. I didn’t open up to him. I couldn’t. I skipped classes, didn’t show up to therapy, and on the fourth day of crying silent tears, I left my room, sat on the couch with Dad, and told him I was fine. Only I wasn’t. Not at all. I was so UNfine that all I could think about were the horrible things I’d done. Not just to Aaron, but to everyone around me. My dad relocated, took a lower paying job in a city he’d never been to just so he could take care of his daughter—a virtual stranger. My mother died. DIED. Because of me. I thought about everything I’d done, all the people I’d lost, and I became so lost in the depths of my loss that I could no longer think straight. I guess that’s why I found myself walking to a mailbox at three in the morning in a night gown and mailing a letter that, up until that point, I had no intention of sending. I regretted it as soon as the envelope slipped through the crack, and I cursed myself the moment I heard it land amongst all the other ones. For a while, I just stood there, staring at the mailbox and wondering how many of those letters held pain and regret and hopes. Unjustified hopes. Then I started kicking it. Over and over. Until I felt my toes become numb and a wetness seeping through my socks. I knew it’d be blood, but at the time, it was better than my tears. The walk home felt like an eternity, and once behind the closed door of my bedroom, I continued my spiral into depression. Dad came in a few hours later, saw my emotional state, witnessed what I’d been failing to hide from him, and after holding me and assuring me that everything was going to be okay, found The List on my desk, hidden beneath a pile of used and discarded tissues. His eyes scanned the items, one after the other, and then he looked up, a smile pulling on his lips, and said, “How hard would it be to sell things online?”