Page 192 of Tell Me I'm Enough

I slap his arm lightly, and he pretends it hurts more than I know it does. “I knew you’d be milking this.”

“Hell yeah, I am. And tell your friend Lani I’d prefer her to check on me in person and not just in text.”

I roll my eyes. “Leave my friend alone.”

“A hottie like her? No way.”

I scoff. “Am I not a hottie? You don’t chase me around like all these other girls. Should I be offended?”

He laughs. “Trust me, I’d be chasing you around like a lost puppy, but…bro code.”

“Bro code?” I ask.

He tilts his head up towards me from the couch and gives me a knowing look.

I put my hands on my hips. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He shoots me a smirk, but drops it.

“So, where is Mason, by the way?” I try to ask casually.

Tank’s shoulders drop a little. “Haven’t seen him in a couple of days,” he says. “He’s locked himself in his room. Chase has been sleeping in mine because he won’t let anyone in.”

My stomach sinks, and I inhale slowly. “Oh.”

Tank watches me for a second. “If anyone’s gonna get him to talk, it’s gonna be you.”

“I don’t know about that,” I tell him. “He’s been ignoring me, too.”

He reaches around behind him and grabs my wrist, making me look at him. “He needs you. He needs someone not to give up trying. He’s been beating himself up a lot ever since the accident and feels like shit about everything that happened. But…I also know it’s more than just that bothering him.”

I just nod, unable to say anything back, suddenly hit with emotions I don’t want to feel.

I walk away quickly and head up the stairs, where no one can see me. When I make it to Mason’s room, I just stop and stand there, feeling every vivid flashback of all the nights I begged Lydia to talk to me, all the times I laid with her in her darkest moments, all the times I gave her everything I had just to make sure she would keep going.

Then I get hit with even worse flashbacks—ones of me as a little girl, curled up with my dad in the bed when he wouldn’t leave his room for days. I can see little Simone crying, asking her dad why he won’t play with her, why he won’t get up, why he won’t eat anything Mom brings him.

It wasn’t until recently that I realized my dad also dealt with depression. It actually wasn’t until I watched Lydia go through it that I even connected the dots.

I started to feel bad for my dad after that. I stopped being as mad at him for never paying me much attention, for not talking to me, for not really even knowing me. I just…felt sorry that he didn’t know how to be what I needed, because he didn’t even know how to be what he needed for himself.

The more time that passes by, the more I understand what he must have been dealing with. But the pain never fully goes away. The hurt from not having that relationship I longed for with him still sits heavy in my chest most days when I think about it.

It makes me wonder if I’ll ever know a healthy version of a man’s love—the unconditional kind. I wonder if I had it growing up, would I be mindlessly searching for it now? If I had that example as a little girl, would I already know what to look for in a man?

I wonder if it hurts him the same way it hurts me.

The pain of watching all these people I care about drown in their own minds while I stand by, desperately trying to fix it for them, drains me too.

I don’t want that for Mason. I know how much love he has to give. I see it with his brothers, with me, with his friends. I don’t want him to lose his spark. I don’t want him to go under and never come back up. He’s too bright of a light in this world, and I’ll be damned if anyone around him, including his own mind, takes that away from him.

I reach out and try to twist the doorknob, but of course, it’s locked.

I knock once.

Nothing.

I knock again, harder this time.