chapter twenty-two-5

My eyes fluttered closed. He thought I was grieving for him, grieving for what I could never have with him. I started to shake my head away from him when I heard what came after his apol- ogies, and it was so silent, it might not have even been there. I know I'm not him. But I love you, though. I love you. Something in me collapsed as I pressed against him, his lips against my hair, and I felt a single teardrop sliding down my face before I shook my head. "I don't want you to be," I whispered, feeling him still against me. "Please don't ever be him." I felt his chest tensing against my shoulder, hesitating before he leaned back, a crease between his eyebrows as he looked at me, bewilderment flooding his gaze. "What do you . . ." His lips barely parted to form the words, and I forced myself to hold his gaze until something changed in his eyes. Then he took in a breath, his shoulders rising beneath his suit. After a minute, he asked me in a quiet voice, "What are you saying?" I wasn't sure what else there was to say, or if there was anything else I could say. If there were any more words I could form about Griffin Tomlin and what he had done, who he had been to me, without completely shattering in front him, breaking at the seams of the scars Griffin had left me, because I knew I was about to lose him. Once he knew, he would be gone. But there was no going back now. "Griffin, he . . ." A trembling breath slipped past my lips as I finally whispered the words that had been between us since the moment he'd kissed me in his driveway. "He raped me." And then it all slowed again. I listened to the trickling of the rain from the edge of the bus stop roof as I waited for him to say something. He was still crouched in front of me, his lips just barely parted, and looking back at me, thunderstruck. Then he closed his eyes and released a slow, steady exhale that started to shake at the end before swiftly standing up and turning away from me. I caught his reflection in the gold-speckled plexiglass as he brought his hands to his face, over his nose and mouth, staring at a defaced ad against smoking. He stood there silently for what seemed like minutes before he turned back to me. His eyes were blazing and glistening, the gold flecks in the brown now ignited sparks. "Griffin," he said, his voice low and thick. It sounded almost as if he were forcing the words out, expelling them like a bad taste. He cleared his throat before he continued, the muscles in his neck tensing. "Griffin raped you." He shook his head, almost in disbelief, maybe in actual disbelief, and fear sparked around my chest. I realized with a painful jolt that I needed him to believe in me, over Griffin, over the boy who'd never deserved someone like Kolby Rutledge to believe in him. "That's—I would've . . . I would've known . . . I don't . . ." He let out a humorless laugh and looked up, blinking. "I don't get it." "It was after the Super Bowl party," I told him as his gaze lingered on the roof for a moment, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed. Then something in him shifted. His shoulders went rigid and his breathing suddenly became quiet before he looked up, something gleaming in his eyes I couldn't recognize. "Last year I was in love with him, or at least I thought I was. And it seemed like he was finally noticing me. He asked me to go to that party. You were there. I remember you, sitting in the back seat. Playing Ten Second Trivia." I attempted a smile with my trembling lips, but his eyes were glassy and unfocused. "He took me upstairs and I thought . . . I don't know what I thought. But that's where it happened." He held both of his hands, pressed together, in front of his nose and kept his gaze hidden from me. Distantly, I heard a siren blaring, and a tear slipped from my eyes as I closed them. We both stayed that way for a few moments, our eyes closed, our clothes dotted with rain, with a distance between us. Then he spoke, his voice quiet and catching on his words. "The Super Bowl. It happened at the Super Bowl party." I opened my eyes, my gaze blurred and brimmed with tears. His hands were dangling at his sides, and there was an emptiness in his eyes. The ignited flecks were dull, drowned in something I couldn't identify, the whites of his eyes now red. I wanted to reach out, grasp one of the hands at his side and hold it in my own, but I stayed on the bench. "Please believe me," I whispered, my voice cracking, and he flinched in response, closing his eyes again. His chest fell under his suit as he breathed heavily. "I know he was your friend," I con- tinued as my choked voice shook past my lips, too quickly, too fast, "but I'm not lying, Kolby. Please." I reached my hand out for his, desperate, but he stepped away from me. I felt it in my chest as the heart that had been thrashing a second ago dropped from my body, leaving me as empty as his eyes. "Kolby," I whispered tearfully. "I was there," he told me. I looked away from him, another tear escaping my eyes as I painfully realized he didn't believe me. Bile crept into the bottom of my throat as I thought of Kolby Rutledge believing in him, being on his side instead of mine. "You don't believe me." His jaw clenched, his tearful gaze finally turned to me. "That's not what I said." His voice was so quiet, so fragile, so broken that I bit down, hard, on my lower lip until it felt like my teeth pierced through the skin.