Out of This World

Chapter Fourteen

"Did you miss me?"

"No."

"Are you lying?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because you make me not want to be broken anymore."

I didn't mean to say it, didn't mean to repeat what Toby said that one morning with Duncan, but it was too late. I hoped he wouldn't notice.

He did.

"Someone's been eavesdropping."

I didn't know where Toby got off, showing up in my doorway after a week. A week that I had spent buried in my sheets, refusing meds, getting worse by the day. It was his fault. All of it.

Still, I couldn't say anything about it. I just couldn't.

"I didn't mean to eavesdrop, I just -"

"Don't worry about it," he insisted, "I should've said it to you in the first place. There's a lot I should have said."

"Like what?" I asked, without stopping to question whether or not I even wanted to know the answer.

"Remember when I said I loved you? I really meant it. But after loving someone for so long, so much - things change. You and I, we both did. I hit the point of being exhausted from loving you so much. Everything I know has come undone and I'm tired of wearing my heart on my sleeve. I'm losing my fucking mind over you, Mars."

"You can't lose your mind if you didn't have one to begin with."

I had never been good with jokes, not even the depressing ones I cracked far too often. I had hoped it would lighten the mood, maybe even change the subject, but Toby gave me a look that I had never seen from him before.

It wasn't a look of sadness, or even desperation. It was a look of resignation.

"Besides, I'm used to it," Toby said, taking a page from my book and looking at his feet, "this always happens."

"Used to what?"

I always care more. Every person I've ever wanted to be with, I'm always the one that care a little bit more. My dad, you, everyone. And it hurts, Mars. I'm used to it, and it's okay, but it still hurts.

"Recovery's started to look like work again. It looks like torture disguised as growth. It looks like a battle I don't want to fight anymore, because fixing my heart and mind is something I never learned how to do. You can't blame me, it's not like you're interested in it either. Maybe getting better is some facade, some artificial thing doctors tell us to make ourselves feel better about the fact that we're going to spend our entire lives cycling in and out of hospitals. Or maybe they're throwing me a life vest, but I kind of like the feeling of drowning."

"Recovery doesn't mean having to recover back into your old self. You can recover into someone new, a whole new Toby."

"You wouldn't still love me if I did."

"Stop, don't say that." I hated when he was like this. "You don't get to say that."

"Why not? You can't say you don't get it. You're crazy, remember?"

"That's different, I'm depressed, but it's not like I'm actively trying to kill myself. You're still alive and the sun is still shining and you've ripped me away from wanting to go to hell...how dare you."

"Oh please, depression is just a slower way of being dead."