The Dead Boy's Guide To Second Chances

bonus chapter: part four

Four Times Oliver Sallow Got Caught Staring at Finn O'Connell

(+1 Time He Didn't Look Away)

4. From Lovers To Strangers

Eighteen years old. Still Oakriver, though he sometimes wishes it wasn't.

It's been two weeks since he and Finn broke up. It doesn't feel entirely real. Even before they were together, their afternoons in the library were a fixture in his daily routine—every time he remembers that Finn won't come, he feels something akin to the disoriented feeling that comes with missing a step on the stairs. There's a feeling of wrongness to it. To being alone.

It's precisely why Oliver never wanted anything like this in the first place. He's gone the last decade more or less on his own, and it was boring and maybe a little bit lonely but it was fine. This is... not that. It's so not fine he feels a little bit like crying every time he passes Finn in the hallways.

It's like they're back to being strangers. It's worse than being strangers, really. At least when they didn't know each other, Oliver could count on Finn smiling back at him reflexively, or lifting a hand in a wave like he did that first day on the football field.

Oliver wishes he could go back to that time. Then he wouldn't know what Finn O'Connell's laughter—his real laughter—sounds like or how he kisses or how infuriatingly kind he really is. He wouldn't know all the little quirks that he was going to miss.

He does, though. Miss him, that is. And, somehow, that makes him irrationally angry. He wanted this, didn't he? Their break-up was something he'd been bracing for since day one, a natural conclusion to a relationship that was already more long-lived than it had any right to be. Why, then, does he feel so fucking miserable?

"Hey, you." He jumps when his foster mom pokes her head through the open door. "Have you eaten anything today?"

It takes Oliver a concerningly long moment to remember. "A bit this morning," he tells her without looking up from the essay he's been trying to write for the last two hours. He's on his belly on the bed, his hair falling around his face in an oil-black curtain.

"Nothing at school?"

"Yes. I had one of those pudding thingies. You know, the ones that come in a plastic cup and taste like nothing."

"Not good enough," Gabby determines. "You're coming with me to the chippy."

Oliver pulls the most pathetic face he knows to do. (It's not very hard to pull off, in his state.) "But," he says, gesturing limply at the laptop in front of him, "essay."

"You're not writing an essay on a Friday night. That's illegal, or something." Gabby claps her hands. "Up."

With a sigh that's only slightly over-exaggerated, Oliver gets up from the bed. He briefly entertains the idea of pointing out that she is grading papers almost every Friday night, but thinks better of it. It isn't like he was making any progress on his essay anyway. His discussion of the themes in As You Like It turned very quickly into dissociating while thinking of Finn and that self-satisfied smile he wore every time he made his stupid little joke.

Oliver wishes he could get an exorcism to forget all these things. Hell, at this point he would even settle for a lobotomy.

As if compensating for his sullen silence, Gabby is annoyingly chipper as she shoos him into the car. "So," she says, as she puts it into drive. "How was our week?"

"It was great," Oliver mutters.

"So was mine! Thank you so much for asking," Gabby says.

"You're welcome," Oliver returns in the same sarcastic, overly sweet tone. It's clear from his voice that his heart's not in it, though.