Endgame: Chapter 19 (Patreon)

Endgame: Chapter 19

Two weeks. That’s how long I had to try and be okay with it all, and I tried the best way I knew how – by doing everything I could not to get trapped in my own head. Not to think about all the things that could go wrong when Morgan left. I tried not to think about how she might realize that she missed Oregon and decide to stay forever. Or how long a year was, and how I’d never done a long-distance relationship before and how I didn’t think I could keep her from getting bored without her actually being here. How I didn’t always have much to say, and how if every time she called or video chatted with me and I didn’t have anything to talk about, it eventually wouldn’t be enough anymore.

Okay, so I didn’t do as good of a job of not thinking about it as I wanted to. Even with all the studying for finals, and with Morgan constantly trying to do as much as she could with me because she was leaving right after, it still wasn’t enough. But this was the last day of finals we had, and her flight was leaving tomorrow morning and if I just didn’t say anything, then she’d be gone, and I’d have no choice but to be okay with it all.

Then Steph happened.

She dropped down at our lab table because she’d begged me to be her partner for the final, and she heaved a heavy sigh while she did.

“Nervous?” I asked.

“Nope.” She cracked her knuckles. “I had a shitty night, but it’s a new day and I’m ready to ace this thing.”

And seeing as I’d been desperate for distractions lately, I made the mistake of asking, “Why’d you have a shitty night?”

“Oh, Alyssa finally broke up with me for good.” She shrugged. “Apparently she started talking to an old fling when she went home for Thanksgiving, and they’ve been hitting it off the last few weeks. I’m kind of relieved though? Things have been weird between us ever since we got back together and-”

But I stopped listening. That was something I hadn’t considered, and it dropped my heart right into my stomach. Morgan knew people at her old school. What if she couldn’t help it, and her spark for an old flame got rekindled and she broke up with me? A year was such a long time. Enough time that she’d be hanging out with friends while the distance between us grew, and she could get feelings for someone she used to like without even realizing it was happening.

That terrified me so much that I wasn’t sure how I got through the lab final, but before I knew it, it was over. The semester was over. Morgan had taken her physics final earlier in the week, so I drove to her house with the fresh, cutting doubt in my mind, and the state of her room only hammered it home. There were full boxes that hadn’t been there yesterday. Her closet and walls were bare. Her suitcase was packed and zipped, and even though she hobbled over to kiss me in greeting, my stomach turned because it already felt like she was gone.

“Packing is exhausting with one leg out of commission,” she said, leading me to the bed. “Can we just cuddle and nap?” She stretched out, pulling me down until I was laid beside her with my head on her shoulder. “How was your lab final? Does it feel good to be done?”

My mind was racing a mile a minute. I was spiraling and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

“Audrey?”

I’d been suppressing and burying for two weeks, and I couldn’t dig any deeper and it all came bubbling up into one confession: “I broke a promise.”

She shifted beneath me, and I felt her looking down at me as she whispered, “What?”

I swallowed hard. “I promised I’d be honest about how I feel.”

“How you feel,” she repeated. She scooted out from under me to sit up, and watched me do the same while she processed what I meant. “About me leaving?”

I nodded, and I got one look at the fear in her eyes before I had to stare down at my lap. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

The silence that followed seemed to last forever. It was heavy, and suffocating, and she must’ve felt it too, because I didn’t hear her breathe until she inhaled shakily. “I d-… I don’t understand.”

I finally glanced up, but I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t thought this far ahead. All I’d thought was that I couldn’t pretend or try and force myself anymore, and that was it. But she didn’t say anything either. We stared at each other, for another heavy span of silence while her bottom lip trembled.

“You ha-” Her voice cracked, and she swallowed. “You had two weeks to talk to me about this, Audrey… my flight leaves tomorrow. You said it was okay. I thought we were okay.”

“I tried,” I breathed. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to slow the racing of my heart because it was making me feel sick. Because I knew what was happening, but I didn’t know how to stop it. “I tried to be okay with it. I thought I could force myself to be okay. I thought that I could handle it until you were gone, because then if you were already gone it’d be easier than…” I lost track of what I was going to say. I met Morgan’s eyes and they were full of tears, and I forgot everything because all I wanted to do was go back to forcing myself to be fine.

“Easier than what?” she said. “Easier than breaking up with me in person?”

“What? No.”

“That’s not what you’re doing right now?”

I had no idea what I was doing. “I don’t want to.” I stood and steepled my hands over my mouth as the feeling in my stomach finally reached my eyes. “That’s not what I want.”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to stay,” I said, my voice breaking with plea. “I want you to stay here, where I can make sure that I’m everything you need to me be. Where I can make sure you don’t get tired of me and find somebody else.”

“Are you serious?” she asked, and I knew that I’d said that the wrong way, because her brow furrowed and her lips pursed. “After everything, you trust me that little?” The offense faded to a severe hurt as the first tear finally fell. “You think I’d do that to you? After seeing what my mom’s been through?”

“No. No, Morgan, please, that’s not what I meant. Not like that.” I sniffled, unable to keep the first of my tears back. None of this was going the way I wanted it to, but I didn’t know how to fix it. I didn’t know any other way to make it go. “I trust you, but I don’t trust myself because I don’t know how to do this.”

She wiped her palm over her cheek. “So, you’re just not going to try?”

“I’ve been trying,” I said. “I’ve been trying so hard to convince myself that it’d be fine, but I can’t.” I dropped down onto the bed again, and half-turned to face her. “I don’t know what else to do. Please. Please don’t go.”

“I don’t want to go,” she said, pleading as much as I was. “I don’t have a choice.”

“Can’t you just…” I glanced around in desperation, holding out hope that there was something we could do. “Take a student loan or something?”

“I thought about it,” she said. “But then I’d start my life with debt when I wouldn’t have to. Do you know how much harder it’ll be to pay for a loan for a studio when I already have student debt?”

“What about Pip?”

“Pip’s a waitress, Audrey. I can’t ask her to do that.”

“What if you got a job?” I asked.

“At the diner with Pip?” she asked rhetorically. “So I can pay for one or two classes a semester and still add an extra year or more to school? I’m paying out of state tuition, it’s almost twenty-thousand, did you know that?” She shook her head as the corner of her mouth pulled into a frown. “I don’t have any other options. None that come without a cost to my future.”

The first thing I wanted to say after that was, ‘what about our future?’ But I was glad I didn’t. It wouldn’t have been fair, and any spark of hope I might’ve felt about us coming up with a solution was gone. I just sat there, staring at her, teary-eyed and with a growing lump of despair in my throat. When neither of us said anything else, her head fell, and she stared down at her hands as a tear dropped into her palm.

We sat there for what had to have been minutes. I was too afraid to open my mouth and make this worse. Too afraid of what I’d started to be the one to see it through.

Maybe she knew that, because eventually she sniffled and said, “I was happy to chase you in the beginning, but I can’t chase you forever. And I spent my entire life watching my parents try to convince themselves, and each other, that they should be together.” She looked up at me while she wiped again at her cheek, and the corners of her mouth twitched like she was trying so hard to keep from crying harder. Trying so hard to keep from breaking down. “I won’t let that be me. I don’t want to be in a relationship that I have to convince you is worth it. Especially not if it’s you.”

“What does that mean?”

She pressed her lips tight together and blinked rapidly, clearing the fresh brimming tears. “You’re the most determined person I’ve ever met,” she said quietly. As hard as she tried not to, she whimpered, and rushed to brush away the stream that broke from her eyes. “If you’re not willing to fight for this,” she cried, “then it can’t be what you really want.”

That hurt. God, it hurt so fucking bad, and it wasn’t true. I did want this. I wanted her. But I was paralyzed by fear, and what good was saying it if I couldn’t prove it? Because at the end of the day, my fear wasn’t just about her breaking my heart. It wasn’t just about losing her. It was about every day leading up to her breaking my heart. Every day that I’d feel her losing interest. Every day that I’d feel more and more inadequate, until the time came that she ended it and reinforced my dread that I’d never be enough. No matter how hard I worked. No matter how hard I tried to be what she needed.

If she was going to break my heart no matter what, then what terrified me the most was being left behind just to wait for it.

It took me far too long to finally meet Morgan’s gaze, only to find that her eyes were pleading with me to tell her she was wrong.

My mouth fell open as I took in a trembling breath, searching for something that would ease the pain on her face, which mirrored the ache in my chest. But I didn’t think there was anything I could’ve done to make this better. Nothing I could do to take it back. “I don’t know what to say.”

She nodded slowly as her gaze and head fell. “You don’t have to.” She hiccupped with a held-back sob, and barely managed to whisper, “You should go.”

She didn’t look up at me once while I just sat there for half a minute, wanting anything but to leave her like this. She didn’t look up at me when I finally decided leaving was the only thing I could do, or when I headed for the door. And she didn’t look up at me when I gave one glance back before closing her bedroom door behind me.

I got into my car to head back to the dorms, but I didn’t make it far down the street before it all really sank in. Before I realized exactly what I’d just done. My eyes blurred so badly I could barely see the road, so I pulled over onto the shoulder just in time for a sob to rack through my chest. I don’t why I thought it’d hurt any less for things to end sooner rather than later. I’d been lying to myself. But even though it hurt just as much, I wasn’t sure if it’d been the wrong choice. I didn’t know if I’d just done us a favor, or if I’d destroyed any chance at success we might’ve had if I’d just kept my mouth shut. The only thing I did know was that I was far too paralyzed by my confusion, and pain, and fear, to do anything but sit there and cry.