At home, the silence shouted my situation at me. I hadn’t realized how used to another person’s presence I’d become until it was suddenly gone with little hope of returning. The past week had just been a taste of what it was like now. Every movement made a resounding boom that echoed off the walls and bounded back into my chest. That was the only explanation for why I was shaking so hard, wasn’t it?

I sank onto the couch, burrowing into the corner so that the back and arm embraced me, offering something stable to stop the world from rattling.

I’d lost Logan. But maybe I’d lost him long before this if he wasn’t willing to move in with me. Maybe he’d been drifting farther and farther away, like two boats on the ocean, and it was only now that I’d turned to check that we were sailing in the same direction that I noticed he was lost over the horizon.

Oh fuck.

I clenched my hands in my shirt and smashed my lips against my knuckles. My breath sang like the whir of chopper blades over my fingers—fuh fuh fuh fuh fuh. My heart would have been beating just as fast if it hadn’t given up altogether. I closed my eyes and forced in a deep breath. It rasped into me like shards of glass running down my chest, filling my lungs with their sparkling glitter.

Fuck. Fuck, I needed to get a hold of myself. This was . . .

Ridiculous? I didn’t know. The only things holding me together were the threads of doubt that clung to my fragments, begging me to question if I had overreacted. But they were tenuous strings threatening to snap as my shaking continued. They weren’t even strong enough to voice the concern as an actual thought—only a mere suggestion of the possibility that one day I’d look back and realize I’d done something foolish.

At the moment, everything I’d done felt foolish, so the suggestion that this, too, was foolish got lost in the quaking.

I wasn’t sure how long I’d been sitting there, staring at the wall and the carpet and the backs of my eyelids. Long enough for darkness to settle over my apartment and a chill over my body. The shaking mellowed to quivers. Reality, or a sliver of reason, finally asserted itself:

I needed to talk to someone.

Who? A glance at my phone and my friends’ thread reminded me that Jackson didn’t want me around. So that cut Emmett out too. I swallowed, hard, and tucked myself deeper into the cushion. It was okay. It would be okay.

But I couldn’t talk to Jenna, who would put on her counseling hat and psychoanalyze me—she’d tell me why I was being silly and make it all seem so clear-cut, like she always did. Maybe it was what I needed, but I couldn’t handle that right now. Everything in her world was so . . . exact. And if I couldn’t talk to her, I definitely couldn’t talk to Laura, who’d either tell me to talk to Jenna or would blab everything to Jenna anyway.

Mark was terrible at this sort of thing and would likely run screaming into the metaphorical woods.

Roe. I really should have thought of them first. Roe was a good listener, and they offered input, not solutions.

I closed the group text and opened a text to Roe.

I took a deep breath, considered my words, then typed, Hey, I need to talk. Call when you get a second.

Send.

I stared at the screen. An inordinately long moment later, a check mark appeared by my text, telling me that they’d read it. I waited, my breath lodged in my throat. Waited for the icon to indicate that Roe was writing back or for the phone to switch to an incoming call. I waited until the screen went black, and then I waited a little more. I waited until the hum of activity in my neighbors’ apartments went silent. As silent as my phone, which was as useful as a brick in my hand.

I waited forever. Then I turned off my phone, left it on the coffee table, and went to bed.

Without my phone alarm to wake me, it was purely the luck of insomnia that had me up and out of bed in time to go to work for the goddamned Saturday shift I’d offered to put in. Although, without having slept last night, I wasn’t sure how much work I’d get done. I stood in the shower for fifteen minutes, ate a bagel without butter or cream cheese, remembered to put on clothes, and must have driven to work, because I was there swiping my card to enter the building.

Some of my coworkers were there, but none of us talked—we sat in our cubicles and focused on the tasks needed to complete the project. Our boss got us pizza for lunch. At two, everyone celebrated having finished the job and talked excitedly about what they planned to do with the rest of their weekend as they shut down their computers.

I listened to their chatter and let their joy wash over me, hoping I could ride the wave and find a hint of emotion besides exhausted numbness.

But the chatter about the weekend made me wonder if my friends’ brunch was over and if they’d had fun. Sharp pain lanced my chest. I supposed it was better than the numbness.

On the drive home, I almost headed to Logan’s house out of habit. When I jerked the wheel away from that exit, I nearly swerved into another car. A few tires squealed. Horns blared around me. I kept driving, staring ahead. Other than my stranglehold on the wheel, I was unaffected. My heart thumped along boringly. My head was blank but for the road stretched out in front of it.

Somehow I got home without causing any accidents.

In my cozy, echoing apartment, I changed into sweats and sat in front of the TV. For a moment I stared at the blank screen of my phone. Then I reached over, grabbed the remote, and turned the TV on. The Big Bang Theory covered the screen, and I set the remote down. I didn’t like this show, but I couldn’t think of something I’d rather watch. At least now vibrant colors flashed across my vision. Voices and laughter filled my living room.

I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around my legs so I could rest my chin on my knees, getting comfortable as the commercials informed me this was a marathon running all weekend. Oh good.

Watching meant I didn’t have to think about how my friends didn’t want me. That Logan didn’t want me. That all I had left was Sue. I hated that I’d been right. Sue was my family. The bonds to everyone else had snapped.

I should call Sue. I picked up the phone and waited for it to turn on, then impatiently clicked away from the various notifications, blaring bright on the screen. But once they were pushed aside, I saw the time. Nine o’clock on a Saturday wasn’t a good time to call one’s sister when she had a new boyfriend. I’d already driven everyone else away; I wouldn’t want to piss her off too.

It could wait until tomorrow.

I blinked at the time again. Nine o’clock? Huh. I should probably eat dinner. I still had a packet of ramen in the cupboard.