Deboned Fish for Her, Left No Room for Me Chapter 02

Deboned Fish for Her, Left No Room for Me Chapter 02

Even by car, the trip from Keaton’s campus to mine took an hour and a half.

Over four years, I had made that trip more than a hundred times.

Keaton had never once come to my school.

He always had reasons.

His classes were packed.

His lab schedule was brutal.

He could not get away from experiments.

But he had time to help Cecily shoot a campus promo video.

He had time to stay up all night getting concert tickets with her.

Back then, I had not been able to hide how much it bothered me.

Keaton smiled and pinched my cheek.

“Cecily is your best friend. I take care of her because of you.”

“You’re not really petty enough to be jealous of your own best friend, are you?”

Because of that one word, petty, I pretended to be generous for four years.

But now I could not pretend anymore.

Cramps knotted low in my stomach as I pushed open my dorm-room door, pale and sweating.

My roommate pointed at the ginger tea and heating pad on my desk and grinned.

“Your boyfriend ordered these for you. That’s so sweet.”

The words had barely left her mouth when Keaton called.

“Your cramps started today, didn’t they? Drink the tea. Use the heating pad.”

The warmth against my palm made the resolve I had barely managed to build start to shake again.

Keaton took up too much space in my life.

Maybe I should give him a chance to explain.

But before I could say anything, he spoke again.

“After you drink it, go apologize to Cissy.”

“She cried because she felt guilty. It took me forever to calm her down.”

His words did not cut cleanly.

They tore through the last bit of hope I had left.

The cup slipped from my hand.

Scalding tea spilled all over my legs.

My roommate screamed.

Sharp pain crashed into the chaos around me, and all I wanted was to close my eyes.

My phone fell to the floor.

“Hello? Marlow? Marlowe?”

Keaton’s panicked voice came from the other end.

When I was little, I was slow.

By middle school, even my guidance counselor was steering me toward vocational programs.

Even my parents were disappointed in me.

But with Keaton tutoring me, I raised my grades enough to earn a place at the county’s top magnet.

Keaton had rubbed my head proudly and told everyone,

“See? I told you Marlow wasn’t stupid.”

In high school, Keaton met his strongest rival.

Cecily Prentis.

They were always fighting over who would be valedictorian.

They even argued over who got to spend more time with me.

But slowly, Keaton and Cecily learned how to get along.

And somehow, Cecily became part of every conversation.

Until one night, while tutoring me, Keaton looked at my test paper covered in red marks and blurted,

“Marlow, why can’t you understand things the way Cecily does? You’re so slow.”

Right.

I really was slow.

So slow I had not even noticed that Keaton had fallen for someone else a long time ago.

When I slowly opened my eyes, everything was white.

Cecily sat beside my hospital bed, her eyes red.

She hugged my arm and started crying.

“Marlow, let’s not fight anymore, okay?”

“I don’t want to see you end up in the hospital again.”

Keaton walked in from outside.

The moment he saw I was awake, the tension in his brow finally loosened a little.

“Marlowe Quenby, is this how you blow off steam? By hurting yourself?”

“You’re an adult now. Think before you do something.”

At some point, he had stopped comforting me.

All he had left for me were lectures.

Maybe he realized he had gone too far.

He coughed lightly.

Then, seeing the hair mussed across my forehead, he instinctively reached out to fix it.

I turned my head and dodged his hand.

His long fingers froze in midair.

A second later, he pinched the bridge of his nose, exhausted.

“You’re already in the hospital, and you still have to make things difficult. Can’t you be more like Cissy—”

I did not want to be compared again.

So I cut him off.

“Keaton Stroud, let’s break up.”