Page 86 of Collins
I’m not looking at her, but I swear I see the expression on her face anyway. I can feel it in the air around us, heavy and unrelenting.
“I was so confused.” Her voice is almost unrecognizable now, worn down to something raw, crumpled. “So lost. Defeated. Disgusted. Scared.”
Each word lands harder than the last.
Her hands come up to cover her face, and when I finally turn to look at her, it hits me all at once. Her shoulders are shaking, breath catching in uneven gasps like she can’t pull in enough air to survive the moment. It kills me. It actually kills me to see her like this.
And still…I can’t bring myself to console her. Not yet.
“I’m so—Collins, I’m…I am so sorry.”
My heart lurches, sharp and sudden, like it’s been yanked right out of place.
“I don’t know if I would have actually gone through with it. Sometimes I tell myself I wouldn’t have been able to, but then I think maybe that’s just a cop-out to make myself feel better.”
I scoot closer to her without thinking. It’s automatic, instinct pulling me in even when everything else feels stuck.
“I know now that even thinking about it, considering it…it’s unforgivable.” Her voice cracks, splintering on the word. “It’s why I miscarried a second time, years later. I just feel it with everything in me. That I was punished for what I almost did, of the thoughts I had.”
She shakes her head faintly, hands still pressed to her face, like she can’t bear to be seen.
“It might have even been punishment in itself that I lost the baby when I did. Like I wasn’t going to get the choice, it was made for me.” A broken breath leaves her. “I wasn’t deserving.”
That doesn’t sound right.
I want to tell her as much. I want to tell her she’s interpreting everything wrong, that none of this is what she thinks it is. The words sit there, somewhere inside me, but they won’t come out.
Instead, I just sit here, staring at her.
Something is flooding over me, something I can’t make sense of. Pain and sadness churn together with confusion, the sharper edges of rage cutting through it all. It’s too much, all of it crashing in at once, too loud, too heavy to sort through.
This is too much.
I push up from the bed, the movement sudden. Crossing the room, I head for the bathroom, but I stop just before the door, forcing myself to glance back at her. I have to make sure she knows I’ll be back.
“Get in bed. I’m going to take a shower, then I’ll join you.”
What the fuck is wrong with me? She’s over here dying, unraveling right in front of me, and I can’t even show her an ounce of sympathy.
The door shuts behind me, cutting her off. I turn the shower on and remove my clothes, going through the motions but feeling quite numb.
The bathroom fills with steam, thick and curling into every corner. I stand there for a second before stepping under the spray.
Hot water hits every inch of my skin—sharp, relentless needles against my flesh. It’s a manifestation of the turbulence shaking my soul.
This day, everything after the most perfect morning, has turned into something else completely. Something dark. Something I wasn’t prepared for.
And the only thing anchoring me even remotely, is the woman on the other side of this bathroom wall.
I didn’t expect any of this. Everything she’s unloaded on me today, it’s more than I could have ever imagined.
So much darker.
So much more depressing.
And somehow…it explains so much.
All the scattered pieces that never fit together over the years, all the moments that never made sense are starting to shift, to connect, stitching themselves into understanding.
