I step out of the shower, water running from my body desperately exactly like I remember it doing on the day I left home, it almost feels identical, the scenery, everything but it isn't and when I really, really open my eyes, nothing is the same.
I slip back into my clothes and hold Miels's long t-shirt close to my body as it's wrapped tightly around my body and the wetness lingering on me.
I hear my phone vibrating once and then twice and it takes me a long second to realize that it's a message and that I have my phone with me. I'm surprised that it's from my mother.
Mom: "I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow, my legs are in pain and I'm scared to go."
I gulp down the message and place the phone back onto the bathroom sink. I need to see my mom, I need to help her. I'm still surprised Jace wasn't the one to message me, but why would he? We're not friends anymore.
I haven't talked to him since everything and I've barely kept him on my mind and I'm sure that I wasn't on his mind either, Rosie was, just like Miles was for me.
We have separate lives now, and we're not the same anymore.
He's not the boy who will always be in Ohio waiting for fo me, and hoping that I'm his only chance, he's the boy that is living his dream in Texas, going to TXU and dating a girl named Rosie who I know nothing about and will never know anything about, she's a stranger, and now, so is Jace.
We're living completely different worlds and that's okay, that's how it's meant to be now.
Jace is meant to move on and find his own place I didn't expect it to be this soon but it is and that's okay. I slowly open the door to see Miles and I part my lips, noticing that he does too. I know what he's going to say, he's going to be happy to see me but as soon as I say, "I need to go to Ohio." He parts his lips to say the opposite of my words and of what I thought, "David is in the hospital." Miles looks numb. I rush to his side but he doesn't know how to feel and I can't pick up on anything. How do I react when he doesn't know how he's feeling?
"Miles—"
"I don't know If I should go, the cancer is terminal and everything but I don't know if I want to." He says, his words coming out as a whisper and I can tell he's hurt.
"I don't know how to feel," Miles says.
Miles's POV
I don't know how to fucking feel.
"Baby, you have to try," Madison says, her fragile fingers lifting up to hold my face. I grab them in mine and hold her hands, her cold and perfect hands.
They're so soft and so comforting and yet I can feel how I'm the cause of them having anxiety run through them.
"How, uh . . . how are you feeling?" I ask her, remembering just how seriously I want to take her 'diagnosis.'
"Miles—"
"Please." I press. The subject of David can wait, terminally ill or not.
"I'm fine, Miles, I've just . . . I've been thinking about us and how we'll make this word and how I need you, I—"
"I'm here. Baby I'm here." I tell her, seeing the way her eyes go from riled up and anxious to calm and collected but then they spring up wide again.
"I . . . I think you should go. I know you don't want to forgive him and you don't have to but, you said it yourself . . . you'll regret it if this does end badly and—"
"You're right," I admit to her, I might not feel it right now, but it's true and she's right, she always is.
"Yeah, I'll go," I add again for some reason. I don't feel like myself, I feel calm but yet I want to fucking shout out my lungs but I've got to, I've got to fucking do it for her.
"Ohio, you said?" I can barely speak, the anger is boiling inside me and I need something, but I don't know what.
I need to fucking rip this thing out of me, the one that tells me to feel like shit all the time, that forces my anger to boil so harshly in front of the only person I have any fucking feelings for; the girl I'd give up anything for.
"Yea, it's my mom, she's afraid to see the doctor alone and Jace . . . we don't talk anymore." She says and then searches my face as if trying to find a small pleasure-filled smile but she doesn't find one and instead my eyes are concerned for her.
"Are you okay, baby?" I ask her, her lips part as her eyes stare into mine like two bright sarts in the night of hazel.
"Yeah, I'm fine, it's fine. I just need to go see my mom, Jace doesn't have to be a part of that. Not anymore." She smiles and I can tell that it's genuine
"Do you want me to come?" I look into her eyes and she looks down at my shirt.
"I'm okay." She says and then flashes me a small smile.
"I know how she feels about me, she'd probably be worse off with me there--I begin, trying to see that smile for longer.
"And your dad could use some time with just you." She tells me and I nod.