“This whole time, we’ve had a safety net,” I say. “We don’t know what we’re like without that.”
Russell brushes his arm against mine, and I want it to feel warmer than it does. “Then we’ll figure it out. I meant what I said that night we were at your mom’s—I’m ready to do this with you. That hasn’t changed.”
But.
There’s that tiniest but at the back of my brain, the one I can keep quiet some of the time but now refuses to listen, the one hell-bent on self-preservation. The one that asks, But what if he’s wrong? What if that changes?
What if he can’t handle you on your dark days?
“But—you haven’t seen me at my worst yet.” It’s only when I say it out loud that I realize it’s a genuine fear of mine. “Because it’s not pretty, Russell. It’s sitting-in-a-Taco-Bell-parking-lot-and-trying-not-to-cry levels of not pretty. It’s can’t-even-do-basic-tasks levels of not pretty, and I rarely know when one of them is coming. Is that something you’re ready for?”
He pauses, leaning against the side of a coffee shop with a sign that declares, CLOSED FOR SNOW! with a doodle of a heart-eyed snowman. “I—I think so,” he says, stumbling over his words. That uncertainty—it’ll turn into frustration. Anger. Dismissal. In my mother’s relationships, it always did.
“That’s when we’d need that safety net, but it won’t be there. It’s just going to be you and me and my fucking brain conspiring against me.” That troublesome organ I’ve never been able to fully trust. The thing that distorts reality and cloaks it in the grayest fog.
If there isn’t someone there to catch us, what happens if we fall?
When we fall?
“I think we should take a few steps back,” he says again. “We’ll have clearer heads if we come back to this in a few hours, or maybe even tomorrow.”
No. Taking a few steps back would mean becoming the girl I know how to be: reassuring, quiet, pliable. The one I’ve always been, who puts other people’s hurt above her own. He doesn’t get it. He can’t simply take a few steps back from my mental illness.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” I say, digging my hands deeper into my coat pockets now that we’ve stopped walking. “I may not have a clearer head tomorrow. I can’t control it. Not completely. It doesn’t matter how many steps back we take—I’m still going to be this way. I’m still going to have depression, and sometimes it manifests in ugly ways. No matter how content I am at any given time, it always comes back. And I’ve learned to accept that.”
The way he’s seeing me now is the realest I’ve ever been with him. Uncensored, all the fear and negativity out in the open. I’ve been standing in the sun for so goddamn long that when I blink, I see painful, too-bright bursts of light.
We’re too much, my mother says. It wasn’t a singsong in real life, but that’s how it sounds in my memory.
Russell’s features are pinched, and I can’t tell if it’s because of the cold or because he doesn’t like what I’m saying. There’s no I like all of you, every version here.
“What?” I challenge, fully aware I’m pushing too hard but unable to stop myself. It’s for the best—I’ll know before we get any deeper that this won’t work. We might be too deep already. I throw my arms wide, ignoring the snap of pain when my elbow bends too far. “You don’t like me like this?”
“That wasn’t what I was going to say.” This puts him on the defensive, too, his arms tightly folded across his chest. Armor. “I really don’t want to say the wrong thing here, okay? I want to tell you we’ll get through it together because we care about each other, and because we want to make this work. But I’ve never done this before, either. I’ve been more open with you than I have with anyone in a long time. But this is—you’re—” He breaks off, as though trying to hold himself back from saying it, but then goes for it anyway. “You’re not acting like yourself right now. You can’t blame me for being a little taken aback.”
Not acting like myself.
If he only knew.
“And you know me so well after spending a couple months together?” I fire back. “This is me, Russell. And this is exactly why I don’t show that person to anyone.”
“That wasn’t what I meant,” he says, and there it is—a thread of irritation in his voice.
There’s a limit to how far I can push him, because there always is. I’m already spiraling, my mind taking me down a familiar path.
He can’t handle this.
Handle me.
“I don’t think I can do this.” The words claw up my throat, but it has to be done. I have to put them out there, save myself while there’s still time.
“This conversation?”
“All of it.”
The sentence lands across his face with all the sharp edges I’ve been so good at hiding. Russell’s back slackens against wall, the tension leaving his face in one great exhale. And then all at once, it returns—his mouth turned down, a crease reappearing between his eyebrows. A hard swallow.
“Ari—” he starts, but I cut him off.
“We should get back to work.”
He stares at me for a long moment, unblinking. His eyes, that brilliant blue I love, have none of the light they usually do. “If that’s what you want,” he finally says.
Even when I’m breaking his heart, he’s good to me.
I force myself to want it, the way I’ve forced all those smiles and compliments and bullshit positivity. With any shards of optimism I have left, I try to straighten my posture and project sunshine, but my body isn’t listening. It won’t budge.
“Yes,” I say, still fighting with my shoulders, with my mouth, with all the noise in my head. “Please.”
I hate that I say it.
Worse, I hate the way I believe it.
He trudges back to the station first, leaving me alone and shivering in the snow.
30
FORECAST:
Near-apocalyptic darkness. Avoid leaving home at all costs
IT SHOULDN’T BE a shock that the next day is a Dark Day.
That’s the thing about depression. You can know it’s there, know it’s part of you, but you can go ages without seeing it. It lives with you, an invisible roommate, up until the time you start sinking, and then it sprawls itself across your couch and kicks its feet up on your coffee table and uses up all the hot water. Never pays its half of the rent, either.
You can be okay for months, for years, before it creeps back in, telling you lies like you will always feel this way and no one will love you because of it and why bother. Once, you could tell they were lies, but now they weigh down your shoulders and take up space in your lungs. Sometimes they come out of nowhere. Other times, some grim event helps yank you back to that dark place.
And god, you are so fucking exhausted, so you let it happen.
I beg weekend meteorologist AJ Benavidez to cover for me and spend the rest of the day under my weighted blanket. Depression has made all my breakups rough, but there is no comparison to this one. I could wrap every ounce of heartache a man has made me feel into one devastating package, and it still wouldn’t come close to the aftermath of Russell Barringer.