If I Could - B. Celeste Page 0,39

if that’s true, he’s missing the point, and I’m fed up with the day and his constant butting into my business. “That doesn’t matter. If you want to go out and have fun with whoever, that’s your life. I won’t judge your choices in company or who you flirt with, but it’d be nice if you could extend the curtsey to me.”

His head jerks back. “You think I’m judging you or some shit?”

I don’t answer.

Lawrence doesn’t let it go. “I’ve been helping you get out there because you have this notion that shutting yourself off from the world is the answer.”

“Did you ever stop to think that maybe I like my life the way it is?” I bark at him. The infuriating, determined man sitting in the too-small desk in front of me doesn’t let it drop, doesn’t accept what everybody else has.

I’m a lost cause.

And I’m content with that.

Accepted it.

I deserve that. At least for now.

“Maybe I pushed because I’m trying to figure you out, Nichols.” He studies me when I eye him, unsure of what to say. “I’m usually good at reading people, but you’re a puzzle with one too many missing pieces.” I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but it can’t be good. He swipes his jaw, letting out a long exhale. “Listen, I don’t want to piss you off, honest. But I like knowing what I’m getting into, and I have no clue what that is with you.”

I’ve been revealing myself to him in pieces, as microscopic as they are, but I know there hasn’t been any big picture. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” he says instantly, shaking his head. “Agreeing to go on the date was wrong knowing you weren’t into it, but that’s the point. I’m trying to figure out what you are into for my own selfish reasons.”

Understanding breaks past my wall of anger, dissolving it like a flood breaking the dam wide open. “Oh.”

He blinks a few times, shifting in his seat, before dropping his hands to the desk. “Yeah. Oh. I don’t expect you to say anything. It’s probably a fruitless cause anyway, but that’s why I did it. I didn’t mean to upset you, but for all I knew you wouldn’t have minded going out.”

All I can do is shake my head and stare at the clutter on my desk.

“Your reluctance is because of her, right?” His voice is soft, tone quiet in case anybody might be around to hear. Not that anybody other than him and Michelle come down this hallway during lunch.

Swallowing past the lump of emotion crammed in the back of my throat, all I’m capable of is grinding my teeth.

“She broke you,” he says.

He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

“You have to talk about it eventually,” he keeps going, even though I want him to just shut up. Doesn’t he think I have? I’ve hired therapists. They’ve helped all they can. According to the one I stopped seeing about a year ago, it was about me “finding ways to move on” as if I could.

I lost my daughter. The beautiful, sweet little girl who was half of me. Nobody who loves a human being as much as I loved her in the short fourteen months she lived would ever move on. Not really.

But I did accept her death. It took time, a lot of professionals, but I realized she was better off not suffering. I couldn’t help her, and even though I still believe that Sophia could have done more if she weren’t so pissed at me, I let go of that residual anger because it wasn’t going to change anything.

I would never move on from losing Brea, from never being her father, but I have moved forward. I got a job. I moved to a new town. I did exactly what I always said I would. I teach. And maybe if I hadn’t clung onto the thought of what my daughter would be like when she grew up, I wouldn’t have set myself back my first year here. I wouldn’t have gone into a downward spiral by seeing her in my students—in one student specifically who loved literature as much as me and enjoyed talking about the stories in a depth I would have taught Brea to do as well. A girl who was blonde like me and determined like Sophia, and a mixture of everything I hoped my little girl could have been had she gotten the chance to grow and