Page 68 of Every November

As if he knows just how hard this will be, he kisses me again. He peppers kisses across my mouth, my jaw, my temple, the tip of my nose. Then he’s pulling away, reaching for the door handle.

“Evan—”

“If I don’t go now, I won’t be able to.”

I nod and let him go without another word, watching him jog up to his front porch with his bag. He opens the front door and his mom comes to greet him, pulling him into a hug before shutting it behind him.

Fuck. I can’t go to my parents’ house yet. Not like this. Not with my chest cracking open and my hands shaking on the wheel.

I pull out of his neighborhood and drive on autopilot, taking the back roads toward the edge of town. There’s a spot I used to come to in high school—a gravel turnoff where the trees are thick and no one ever goes. It’s quiet there. Private. As soon as I got my license, I started spending time there. Smoking weed in my car and just disappearing in my own thoughts. It’s a perfect place to fall apart without anyone watching, and that’s what I need right now.

When I get there, I kill the engine; the silence is immediate and stifling. I lean my head back against the seat and close my eyes, but all I can see is Evan walking away. All I can feel is the weight of the months stretching ahead like an impossible distance.

My hands are still trembling but I press the heels of my palms against my eyes and try to breathe. It comes out ragged and uneven. I can already feel myself slipping, the darkness creeping in the way it always does when things get hard because it feels too easy to surrender.

Eleven months. Eleven months of a life that doesn’t have Evan in it. Eleven months of texts that aren’t the same as his hands on me, of falling asleep without his body pressed to mine. Eleven months until we get one more night together. I try to picture myself in January, March, some random day in June where I’m just supposed to keep functioning like the last twenty-four hours didn’t happen… and I can’t. My brain just stalls out on it, the way it always does right before everything goes gray.

I know this feeling.

I hate that I know this feeling.

I’ve been here before. I know exactly how far down it can go if I let it, but I can’t let it.

I can’t let myself break.

Everything is okay, and it’s all going to be okay, and I’m not the first person who’s ever missed someone. We’ll make plans. I’ll go visit in Seattle because he asked me to. We said those words, and now we can make a plan. That’s what I can hang on to.

Eventually, my breathing evens out, my jaw unclenches, and my tears dry up. I sit there until I can convince myself to put the key back in the ignition because as much as I’d like to stay here all night, my parents’ house is waiting. And if I thought saying goodbye to Evan was painful, walking into that house is going to be a whole different kind of hell.

I swallow down the emotions I’m feeling and start the drive. When I get there, their house looks similar to Evan’s parents’ in some ways, but the feeling is completely different. There won’t be a warm welcome for me where my mom wraps her arms around me and tells me she missed me. I grab my bag from the back and head up the walkway, bracing the way I always do before I even open the door.

“Marcus! There you are,” my mom greets. “I thought you said you’d be here hours ago.”

“You know how terrible Chicago traffic is.” I play into her narrative because it’s easier than defending myself.

“It is.” My stomach tightens, even though I knew it was coming. I’m just not in the mood today. How is it possible to have the best and the worst day of my life, all in the same twenty-four hours? “Well, you’re here now. Lily and Sean will be here soon. We’re so close to little Isaac getting here. I can’t wait.”

“Great.”

“You could at least pretend to be excited about your nephew.”

I work on composing myself, and try to be a version of myself that’s genuinely thrilled to watch Lily become a mom. She’s always wanted this, so I am excited for her. It’s just the environment here that makes me on edge, and the fact I just watched Evan walk away. Again. My emotions are a wreck, and it’s not like I can say anything to Mom. She won’t understand. If she did, we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.

It’s also ridiculous to be jealous of a baby, but watching my mom’s face light up at the mention of him is hard to witness because it’s never once been that way for me. It’s hard not to wonder if that kind of love only stays easy as long as you live exactly according to her vision for you.

“I just got here. Give me a second before you paint me as the family disappointment for the day.”

“Nobody said you were a disappointment, Marcus,” she huffs. “You just miss so much being in Chicago.”

She says that like she wants me closer. Yet, it’s clear she doesn’t want me around at all. I can only imagine what she’d say if I told her how I’d spent the last two nights.

I ignore her and head upstairs to put my bag in the guest room, eyeing the water stain on the ceiling that’s still untouched. That one imperfection has always made me feel less alone, and I’m aware how dumb that is as I sit on the edge of the bed for a few minutes, trying to wrap my head around the stark contrast between where I was an hour ago with Evan’s mouth on mine to where I am now, sitting in a room that was never really mine, in a house where I have to be a different version of myself just to get through dinner.

“Marcus!” Mom shouts, and I groan, heading back downstairs.

My dad is in the living room and he gives me a nod without really looking away from the screen. “Marcus.”

“Dad.”