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“Did you see the group chat?” he asked quickly. His eyes were red, glossy, and pained. I immediately dropped the attitude as my heart began smacking around in my chest cavity. What could he possibly mean by that? There were only three people in that group chat and two of us were there in my doorway.
“What happened?” I asked, ruffling around in my clothes, looking for my phone. “Oliver, what happened?” I asked again, realizing I’d left it upstairs.
“She’s moving.”
My eyebrows shot to my forehead. Well…that was all right. So she’d have a different home. I was happy if that meant her family found a more comfortable place to live. “Closer to downtown?”
He shook his head and gave me a look I didn’t care to see. A look like he wanted me to smarten up.
I pressed my lips together. “To Los Angeles, then? That’s fine. It’s not so far—”
“She’s leaving, Jonah. Kai is leaving California.”
“No.”
“Jonah.” He could hardly hold his tears. There was a canyon between his twisted brows, and his tall body was hunched over as if he’d been punched in the gut. My body froze as my cheeks began melting to the floor. This wasn’t some kind of vile joke. He was...serious.
Forget the phone. Forget fucking everything. Forget how to breathe, how to walk. Anything. Take anything from me. But not Kai. For the love of god, please don’t take her away from me.
“I need you to elaborate,” I said in a dark tone that I would become far too familiar with in the following months.
“She’s moving to Spain.” He said that like he couldn’t believe it himself, like he was seeking some sort of shared disbelief in me.
“No.” I shook my head. It was an impossibility. “No, she’s not. She’s going to stay here and work for a year to save up for college. Then she’ll come meet us at school next year.” He knew that perfectly well. I really shouldn’t have had to repeat it to him.
“I don’t think she is anymore.”
I shook my head once more, my eyes burning and blurring the person before me. I was going to be sick.
Oli and I drove to her house immediately, my throat choking up the entire way. I ground my teeth, thinking of how I could shut this whole thing down as if it were my decision. Maybe I could make some sort of speech to her mother, maybe I could give Kai my own college enrollment so she’d have to stay, or, if necessary, I could just go with her. Perhaps her family would take me in.
When we arrived, her father directed us upstairs. We burst through the bathroom door to find her crying in the tub in an oversized T-shirt with the shower running over her. She did that when she was upset. The “clingy, huggy clothes” helped calm her down, she always said.
Oli sat on the closed toilet with his face in his hands. I kneeled next to the tub and leaned the top half of my body under the water to give her an awkward hug. She took the opportunity to hang on me like a monkey on a branch as the stream seeped into my clothes and skin, falling over me like rain from my own personal storm cloud.
“We’re leaving,” she cried, confirming my worst fears. I squished my forehead into her shoulder, adding wetness to her T-shirt with my own pathetic feelings. “My parents are moving, and I have to go with them.” And it was all true. She really wasn’t just moving downtown, or to Los Angeles, or even back to the East Coast for that matter. She was moving to fucking Madrid. Spain. Europe.
I decided at that moment that all the times her parents had told me they loved me and so kindly tended to me as their own were just lies and manipulation. If they cared for me as much as they said, they wouldn’t have ripped away the very person who kept my heart beating.
“You can go to college here.” My obnoxious, nerdy voice cracked into her collarbone. “You can stay with us.” It would be perfect. She could move in with me and my parents for the summer. My sister’s room was empty, after all. Then when I went away to school, she could—
“College is too expensive here, Jo. They can pay for me if I study in Spain.” She was absolutely trembling, and I was positive my soul was crossing over to the other side. “Half the family is going, now that tío Carlos…” Her wails returned at the name of her recently deceased uncle.
I squeezed her weakly and tried once more. “You were going to save up.”
“I have to go with them, Jojo. Please.”
So this was truly the end. No more warm evenings spent downtown drinking energy drinks, no more watching her dance recitals, no more feeling her sweet presence around me when I needed it most. I couldn’t see through the blinding tears or the hot shower water in my face, but I felt Kai’s arm stretch behind me to hold Oli’s hand. I wished I could’ve stayed tied up like that forever. I was in pain, of course, but anything would have been better than what happened after that.
She moved. A few weeks later, she actually fucking moved.
I watched her car pull away with her inside of it, hands pressed to the window as she cried. When she disappeared from my view, I turned and fell into Oli’s chest and I… I just exploded. It all fell out of me. I cried and cried and cried until I genuinely thought I was going to shrivel up and fall to the ground.
The physical pull of being ripped away from her had me thinking my chest might’ve actually had a rope attached to it, and by the feel of it, I’d accidentally gotten it tangled in the rear bumper of Kai’s car.
My life was over.
When I finally lifted my twisted face from Oli’s chest and tried to speak, I found myself stuck. It was as if the largest spoonful of peanut butter had been placed right inside my throat. Except, it wasn’t fucking peanut butter. It was a sadness that would hang inside of me for years to come.
