“I thought maybe you’d stay up here,” my mom calls after me. “I made up the couch. You won’t have to worry about going up and down the—”
“I want to be in my own space,” I say firmly. I pull open the door to the basement, the floor that’s been my own since sophomore year, and noisily fight my way down the staircase, determined.
I hear her coming after me, and her hand wraps firmly around my arm just as my foot reaches the bottom step.
“Wait, honey…，” she starts to say, but it’s too late.
I flick the light on and instantly see all the tiny holes where she used to be. Books missing off the shelf, her favorite blanket missing from the couch, even pictures missing from the wall.
“Where…，” I start to say as I push through the door to my bedroom and stumble inside. My hand reaches up to touch an empty nail where Kimberly’s senior picture used to hang.
“Her parents came for the things she left here. I didn’t expect them to—”
“They took everything,” I say, feeling like I’m going to throw up. I missed her funeral. And now this?
I swing my head around, looking for anything they might have missed. But even the pink charger she always used to keep here is gone. Ripped out of the wall like a life-support plug.
Anger builds inside me, growing and growing, until all at once I deflate. They weren’t the ones to take everything.
I was. From Kim.
I’m the one who drove us out there. I’m the one who made her feel like she had to hide what she actually wanted and now will never get.
“I’m sorry, honey,” my mom says, reaching for me.
“Can I be alone, Mom?” I manage to croak out as I move away from her.
She opens her mouth to say something, but then hesitates and finally leaves. Her footsteps fade as she climbs the stairs, and the door above closes with a click.
I struggle across my room to a shelf in the corner, gold trophies and sparkling medals sitting next to a framed photograph, one of the only ones they didn’t take. The two of us at the homecoming game, her pom-poms in the air, my number painted on her cheek, my arms wrapped around her waist.
Twenty minutes later my football career would be over. Two weeks later I was officially just Kyle Lafferty, the guy doing game write-ups for the school newspaper on the player who replaced him.
All I wanted for months was to go back to that moment. Back to before. Now, though, I’d live through that injury a hundred times over if I could just have Kim back.
BEEP, BEEP, BEEP.
I jump, and one of my crutches clatters to the floor. Frowning, I turn toward the source of the sound and find my alarm clock beeping loudly on my bedside table.
Limping across the room, I see the red numbers begin to flash over and over again, glaring and in time with the noise.
My hand freezes on the button, a memory washing over me. Mom out of town, Kim waking up beside me, her face scrunched up and sleepy.
“Who even uses an actual alarm clock anymore?” she grumbled, pulling the sheets up over her blond hair and wiggling closer to me while I shut it off, the morning run I was supposed to go on with Sam instantly forgotten as she curled into my arms.
I accidentally hit the wrong button, though, and fifteen minutes later the alarm was blaring again, loud and obnoxious. Kimberly bolted awake, completely upright, and launched the thing across the room. I remember how hard we laughed, the morning sun slowly rising outside my window, casting a warm glow onto her face.
I’d never seen anything so beautiful. I can almost see her—
BEEP, BEEP, BEEEEP.
I bend down and rip the plug from the outlet. The beeping stops abruptly, and Kimberly’s face fades like a dream after waking. My chest tightens and I struggle to pull off my sweatshirt, my arms getting twisted as I fight it. I tug and tug, until the fabric finally gives way, a gasp escaping from my lips as I pull it off at last and toss it onto the back of my desk chair.
I look around the room at all of the corners that Kim used to fill, and realize that I didn’t prepare for this part. I’ve been so focused on getting home. On the fact I was missing her funeral. On being strong enough to leave the hospital my girlfriend died in.
I never thought about after.
* * *
A week later I pull open the front door, the morning light shining too brightly on the wooden porch stairs. Nothing has really changed since I got home. The front path is still lined with the sweet-smelling flowers my mom planted, the driveway still filled with cracks, the white picket fence still desperate for a paint job.