Chapter 138

I don’t know what brought me in here or even remember walking in or climbing the stairs. But as Dane’s old room stretches out emptily in front of me, I spot the discarded hoody on the bare mattress where I threw it and idle slowly to retrieve it. It seems symbolic, lying here.

An unloved, unwanted heap of fabric, left in here to exist alone in the nothingness of what he left behind.

The hoody is me.

Pulling it into my lap as I slide my butt onto the edge of the mattress with more effort than warranted, given I feel dead on my feet. Scanning the walls and furniture and the sheer emptiness of this room without anything of his. A naked shell, a box without personality. Everything is gone just like he is, and it fills me with a deeper, darker ache all the way down to my toes. Every day, a new wave of confusing feelings comes at me, always different from the one before, and each time, I am no more prepared to navigate it.

I guess it’s like going through the steps