"I'm proud of you," I echoed Alex's sentiments later that afternoon as Micki and I finished packing up her half of our dorm room when Alex went out on a coffee run. Her parents were on campus, making arrangements for her exams. Apparently the dean of Letters and Sciences was willing to accommodate Micki so she wouldn't have to take incompletes in all six of her classes this spring.
Micki just smiled softly, folding more clothes into her giant suitcase. "Thanks, I'm just sorry I have to leave you."
I looked up at her after taping up one last box. "No, I'm sorry. I've been so self-absorbed that I didn't even notice you were—"
"Sawyer," she stopped me before I could finish lambasting myself. "Let yourself off the hook. This is nobody's fault but mine. And I'm gonna be OK. I promise."
I sat down on my bed and pressed my lips together.
"Hey," she stopped folding and came around to sit, facing me on the edge of her now-stripped bed. "You're gonna be OK, too, you know."
I gritted my teeth together. I'm glad she was confident on that part. Not wanting to talk about me, though, I ignored her. "Alex is proud of you, too, you know."
Micki dropped her eyes for a moment. When she looked back up, the shame in her eyes was serious. "Well, his sister never got this far...I guess..."
"Never got this far?" I asked, not understanding.
Micki let out a shaky breath. "Alex's sister died...As a result of anorexia."
I was stunned. "But I thought she—"
"He had two sisters. Katie is in Santa Barbara at school, yeah, but they had another sister between them," she explained.
Or rather, that explained...a lot.
"I guess we're all broken for one reason or another, aren't we, SF?"
YOU ARE READING
The Beautiful Truth
Storie d'amoreSawyer Fitzgerald thought she knew the story of her now-divorced parents. It's colored her whole life thus far. Now in college, her English professor assigns her class to read the book that made her dad famous -- the one that he wrote for her mom ne...
