Shallow Imitations

chapter thirty-five

We drove back in silence, my mind a whirlwind from trying to process all this new information. It's no longer a doubt. It's not a question of whether Atlas was involved. I know he was. The scenes play in my head. All I can picture is the pain he went through. Still, I have some questions that went unanswered, like why did Brett send the letter when he would only leave us more confused? and why did Atlas owe them money? I can't seem to imagine what he could've possibly done to get in trouble with these people. This should've been the first thing I asked, but I don't Brett knows why. He was just trying to get out attention.

I turn to Kal. His gaze is fixated on the road, his lips glued together. I can see that he's tense, the muscles on his shoulder flexed uncomfortably. "I'm sorry," I say. "I know you had more questions."

He shakes his head, not looking at me. "I'm only here for you, Luna"

A sane person would try to get back in there and ask Brett more questions, or at least schedule a second meeting, though I suspect we'd have to wait a while longer before visiting again. The thought didn't drown me until now: "I don't want to go back in there."

I expected Kal would disagree or try to persuade me to see this in his point of view. Instead, he nods slowly. "I don't think we should go back in there either," he says. "We know everything we need for now."

Somehow this journey had ended, or at least that's what Kal seems to think. My mind is buzzing. When the car stops, Kal watches the road. He looks pensive as his fingers draw circles on the steering wheel. A part of me wonders what this means and if I'll see him again, if not tomorrow a week from now. Will I be lingering in the cafe waiting to see blond hair and pale, blue eyes strutting in, watching people?

In these past weeks, I've changed from someone who watched him from afar to someone who knew him more than a lot of people. I don't need to ask him to know that there's no one waiting for him to get back home, calling home to make sure he's doing well. Not one he can trust, or not many that he's told about his family situation. Maybe none.

Before I leave, I kiss his cheek as if to say 'thank you', because I'm having a hard time getting myself the words out of my mouth. Something about this trip stirred something in Kal, I already know.

"Please stop acting like this is your fault."

Kal sighs, throwing his head back, his eyes shut. "This whole time I've been convincing you that maybe Atlas isn't who you thought he was. I expected you to find closure once we find out the truth. Instead, we have this: he was forced to do something bad and—as you always say—he's gone." He turns to me, his lips pursed. "I don't know why this seemed like a good idea. It only made things worse."

I sit still, taking in a deep breath. Even though Kal has been convincing me to move forward with this, he wasn't the only one who wanted me to move on.

"I keep having this dream. Atlas and I are sitting in a car, just like we are now, and he seems so frustrated but he doesn't hear a word I say. He's always apologizing. Yet, we can't seem to communicate," I say. A part of me doesn't want to admit this to him, but I realize that it's the only way we'll solve this. "Atlas and I talked about everything, but we were never good at communicating. We pushed away all the bad parts, like my parents and his mom. He refused to even mention her when he didn't have to."

"He was in a bad place, Luna. You both were," he says, reaching out to hold my hand. "You can't blame yourself for this."

"I need to go," I say, and I push my way out of the car and back in my safe haven, because it's too much. When the doors close behind me, I picture Kal and I kissing in Atlas's house like he's not there. I picture us kissing in this apartment. And then I picture Atlas instead. Waiting, hoping that things will be okay. That one day this mess will end and he'll be able to be whole again, just like I've been hoping for years that I'll forget him. The only difference is he was hoping for me to be safe and not to get him out of me mind so I can kiss someone else.