Page 283 of What We Bury

Milo:

That sounded less weird and threatening in my head.

And then:

Milo:

More nurturing. Earth mother shit.

I bite my lip so I don’t laugh like a lunatic in the middle of the dining room.

Me:

Please never say that to me again.

Three dots appear.

Milo:

Rude. I’d lactate beautifully.

Ethically sourced. Artisanal.

Free range.

Seriously, though. Eat a muffin.

Or a man. I don’t care. Just consume calories.

I tuck my phone away with a helpless smile, appreciating the care.

But I’m just not hungry. It’s like my ability to feel much of anything disappeared the moment Eli called meeasy.And that’s not even the worst part.

The worst part isn’t the things Eli said. I can survive cruelty. I’ve been surviving it my whole life.

The worst part is that I believed him.

That his cold detachment has gotten into my head and made a home there.

Frankly, I’m crushed. Gutted.

I’m not going to say Eli is my soulmate. I don’t believe in soulmates. I believe in gravity, and entropy, and the reality that your DNA is a dice roll and nothing that happens afterward is truly preordained. But I also know there are people who change the axis of your world, and Eli did that for me whether I wanted him to or not.

In his case, just a look—a look that could slice open your insides and rearrange your self-understanding with a single pass. Now that axis is empty. I keep waiting for the ache to fade, for the day when I wake up and my heart doesn’t hydraulic ram itself into my ribcage every time I think of him. But it doesn’t.

It’s been four days. Four lifetimes. However you want to count it, it doesn’t fade.

I miss him. God help me, I miss him. I miss the way he called me little savage. I miss his hands on my knees and his forehead against mine and the way he smelled. I miss the version of Eli who crouched in front of me and saidyou’re not alone in thisand meant it with every cell in his body.

I hate that I miss him, because missing him feels like losing an argument I should have won.

I should be madder.

That’s the really humiliating part.

A self-respecting woman gets verbally flayed by a man in front of his terrifying rich murder-boss and then, when shethinks of him, she should feel rage. Acid. A clean righteous hatred.

Instead I feel grief with teeth.