Page 263 of Tell Me I'm Enough

“I’ll be fine. I’ll figure it out. I’ll fix this. I just…I need time.” I drop my head. “And I need to get out of here.”

She looks up at my car and then back at me. “You drove over here?”

I give her a shameful nod.

“Well, you’re not driving yourself back.”

I don’t argue. I’d be stupid to. I just pull my car keys out from the pocket of my jeans and hand them to her.

“I’m gonna text my mom that I had an emergency at the Gamma house to take care of.”

“You can come back,” I tell her. “I don’t want you to miss all this with them. I can get one of the guys to drive you back over.”

She shakes her head, looking at me with this pleading expression, like she’s afraid to leave me alone right now.

I don’t want to be that guy to her, the one she has to pick up, the one she has to constantly watch out for. I’m supposed to be the strong one here. I’m supposed to behersupport, someoneshecan run to. Not me putting all my baggage on her. She takes on everyone else’s shit, constantly being the one who has to beg people to do better, drag them out of their own darkness. Who’s the one doing that for her?

She deserves better than this.

She deserves the fucking world.

She stands up, reaching a hand out for me to take, and I just stare at it for a moment, not being able to comprehend why this girl is so good to me when I don’t deserve it.

I finally take it and stand, pulling her into a hug.

It takes everything in me not to break and cry when she wraps her arms around me, laying her head on my chest.

I want to be someone she can be proud of. I want to be the person she thinks I am.

When we make it to the Sig house, she parks, and we go to walk in together.

Crossing the lawn, Simone grabs my hand from beside me and laces her fingers with mine. It’s such a small thing, but it undoes me in an entirely new way.

I look around, seeing people loosely around at some of the other houses with their parents, but nobody’s paying us anyattention. I look down at her and give her a cautious and curious look.

“I know we aren’t…a thing,” she says, wincing like she doesn’t know the right way to refer to what we are. “If you would even want that—”

“Iwouldwant that,” I tell her, cutting her off.

She gives me a shy smile, but there’s this sadness under it.

“I don’t think it would be smart…you know, until we…figure all of this out.”

This, being me, me being an alcoholic and a fuck up that she can’t trust with her heart, me being someone who’s too broken to love.

It’s like she can see my thoughts bulldozing their way in and taking over, because when we walk inside, she turns and takes both of my hands, urging me to focus on her. “I was saying all of that to say…I’m here. Iwantto be here, and…I’m not going anywhere.”

I reach for her, pulling her in, and she presses her forehead to mine, shaking a little with emotion. “I don’t want to lose you,” she whispers.

My chest caves in. “I don’t know how to do this,” I admit. “I’m exactly what my motherdidn’twant me to become.”

Her lips brush mine—hesitant, aching, full of everything we’re not saying, full of all the ways she wants to reassure me that’s not true…but also doesn’t want to lie. Everything just hangs in the silence between us, all the things we’re apparently too screwed up to admit to each other.

I kiss her. Desperate, like she can be what saves me, like she can be the replacement for alcohol, for therapy, for my father’s love, for my broken heart.

When it starts to become more—when my hands slide to her waist, when her breath stutters—I pull away, and rest my forehead back against hers.

“Do you hate me?” I ask, quietly.