minute, I wondered if maybe I’d just swallowed too much seawater earlier when I’d almost drowned. But that wasn’t it. You get pretty good at knowing.
Perfect timing.
But not all that surprising. It’s not usually in the middle of the stress that the seizures come. It’s usually right after. Just when you start to relax.
I pushed back from Duncan.
“You okay?”
I nodded, but then I shook my head. “I think I might be about to have a seizure.”
He frowned. “Oh.”
“And I’d rather not do that with you here. Like, I’d really, really rather not.”
“You need me to go?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I’d actually kind of like to stay.”
I shook my head. “Can’t happen.”
“I’d really like to be here for you,” Duncan said.
“That’s a nope.”
“Why not?”
I didn’t know what to say. “It’s … private.”
“Having a seizure is private?”
“Yeah.”
“If you don’t control when they happen, how can it be private?”
“It’s private if at all possible.”
Duncan frowned.
“I’m just going to lie down after you go,” I said. “Stay in bed. No big deal.”
It was clear that he thought it was a big deal. “I feel like you shouldn’t be alone.”
“I’m always alone,” I said, before I realized how sad that sounded.
I didn’t know how to explain why I was kicking him out. “The thing is,” I said, taking a breath, “it’s not pretty when these seizures happen. It’s me at my absolute worst. And I just can’t bear the idea of you seeing that.”
Duncan nodded.
Then he did something I was not expecting. He lifted up his shirt to show me the scars on his side—pink and purple and mottled as ever, and so much more heartbreaking now that I knew how they’d happened. “You saw these before, right?” he asked.
I nodded.
“This is me at my absolute worst. And I wish you’d never seen it. But you did. On a night when you looked after me. And Chuck Norris. And apparently rescued my dying succulents.”
I gave a little smile.
“You were there for me, is what I’m saying. I want to be there for you.”
“That’s sweet, but no.”
I needed to get him out of there.
“You think I can’t handle it?” he asked.
Well, yeah. Kinda. “You shouldn’t have to.”
“What if I want to?”
“Nobody wants to.”
“I would have told you nobody could see my scars without fleeing the country, but here you are.”
“It’s not the same.”
“Why not?”
I tried to think. “You got shot by someone else. It wasn’t your fault. But my seizures—they’re me. I’m not doing them on purpose, but I am doing them. My own malfunctioning neurology. I’m the problem. That’s different. Plus, they’re never over. They don’t fade away.”
“What do you think that means?”
What did it mean? It meant that I couldn’t promise him that it wouldn’t get worse—or start happening all the time. It meant my life wasn’t in my control. It meant that we didn’t have a future together. It meant that if he ever saw me like that, he’d be disgusted.
And maybe that was the first time I’d put that into words.
He was waiting for an answer. So I sat up and edged to the side of the bed. The I turned to him and said, “You know all those after-school specials where kids mistakenly think their parents split up because of them—but then they learn the healing lesson that it had nothing to do with them after all?”
“Okay,” Duncan said, not sure where I was heading.
“I was the reason my parents broke up when I was eight. My dad left because of me. I overheard him actually saying it that night. Then, when I was ten, my mom died. And he wouldn’t take me. I went to live with my aunt instead. When I graduated high school, she gave me a trunk of my mom’s old things, including some diaries, and they confirmed everything I already knew—in intricate detail. He hated my seizures. He was humiliated by them. I drove him away. I was the reason my mom’s life fell apart. Why she had to work two jobs. Why she died alone. And that’s not a false conclusion. That’s the straight truth.”
Duncan nodded, but just barely. Then he said, “You think your dad left because you were too much. But what if your dad was too little?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean … a better man would never have left you. A better man would have stayed.”
I tilted my head. “Maybe you’ve just never seen one of my seizures.”
Duncan sighed.
Sitting up had helped a little. I felt slightly better. Encouraging. “And it wasn’t just him,