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Then it hits me that Rory is jealous. My smirk is immediate and insuppressible. Does she really not understand that she was the
hot chick?
Did she think that when I said Danny put his foot in his mouth, that I'd meant to imply that Danny mistook her for the girl I'd obviously talked about? That maybe there was some other girl I'd spoken about since our trip?

The idea is ridiculous, but Rory doesn't agree, and my amusement only annoys her further. But I enjoy it, because I know I'm about to cheer her up—at least if that's really what got her so upset in the first place. Well, that and Danny bringing up the assault, anyway.

"Yes, but it's my fault for not mentioning to Danny that the, uh,
hot chick
was going to be at brunch, Ror. Though I would have thought it would have been made obvious when he saw you." I say the last part slowly, and take immense pleasure in watching the blush steal over her skin, starting at her cheeks, and disappearing beneath the collar of her shirt.

Tension subtly slips from her body, though her arms tighten around herself. I feel an answering twitch in my own muscles. The need to hold her is taunting me. To hug and comfort, and touch.

Just friends.

"Oh," Rory breathes.

"
Oh
," I repeat, my smirk stretching further.

I wait for her to relax, for the relief I'll feel when her sour mood lifts, but it doesn't happen. The weight in my chest intensifies. I should have realized that Danny's bringing up
that
motherfucking bastard
at brunch without warning would fuck with her head. And I don't know how to fix it. I
can't
fix it. And I feel fucking powerless. It's a terrible feeling. Any lingering humor has drained completely and I feel our distance in some existential way.

I feel utterly lost. I just keep stumbling in every which way, unable find my footing in this new kind of friendship. Before Miami, when we were just friends, I knew I had real feelings for her. And it was hard. Navigating the blurry lines of that version of our friendship. But in Rory and Sam—Just Friends 2.0, it's like I'm adrift at sea, with no real guidelines on what my role even is.

"You're going?" I ask her. I already know that she is. It's what she does when things get too hard, and I don't even blame her for it. This was supposed to be a casual fucking brunch.

Rory shrugs. It's an affirmative answer I've come to expect from her when she thinks she'll be judged for answering
yes
. It's her way of saying
And so what if I am?
I take an automatic step forward. It's not a conscious decision. It's as if her presence just draws me in.

"Do you want me to drive you?" I offer. What I really want is to push her to stay. But I've learned to pick my battles with her and this one is a lost cause.

Rory shakes her head. "Carl's just sayin' bye. She's gonna drive me."

I sigh in reluctant acceptance. "I really am sorry, Ror. Don't let Danny's stupid comment upset you. I mean how moronic could he be? What kind of an idiot says a girl got attacked because she's so hot guys can't—" I cut myself off. It hits me like a wrecking ball. Why Danny's words hit Rory so hard.

Her issues with blame and self doubt. Her piece of shit father and all the guilt he laid at her feet for her own abuse. I take another compulsive step forward, the muscles in my arms clenching harshly to keep them from wrapping around her.

"It was a ridiculous thing to say. However you look, whatever you wear, whatever you do, no one has a right to lay a hand on you, Rory. None of it was your fault," I say intently. I hold her gaze fiercely, watching to see whether she accepts my words, or if she's really still thinking that she'd asked for that fucking torture in some way.

Her eyes fill with moisture and it catches in her lashes, making them look impossibly dark and thick, framing such uncertain, beautiful brown eyes that completely undo me. Her arms tighten around herself even more.

Rory is foundering. She is strong, but even the strongest of us need support, and right now she is particularly vulnerable, and she is
foundering
.

I don't make a conscious decision to break my rule. It just happens. My arms envelop her, one around her waist, the other bracing her back, my fingers digging into her loose auburn hair and pulling her face to my chest.

I whisper repeated apologies and reassurances while her small body racks with stifled, silent sobs. She keeps her face buried in my polo shirt until she pulls herself together.

I heed her cues when she pulls away, though there isn't a single part of me that wants to let her go. I can read in her eyes that she's harboring a question, and she's unsure as to whether or not she wants to ask it.

I brush my thumb across her cheeks to rid them of the residual tears, and then tuck her hair behind her ear. Her eyes close, and it takes everything I have not to let my fingers linger. I silently implore her to ask whatever it is she wants to ask, and so I remain silent.

"You touched me," she finally breathes.

"I…" I don't know if she's just making an observation or reprimanding me.

"You haven't touched me in weeks. Not even a high five," she grumbles as her eyes drop to her sneakers.

"I…"
Fuck
. I can't exactly say
I haven't touched you because I'm afraid that if I do, I won't be able to stop.
I sigh again. "I'm just trying to find the right path back to this
just friends
thing, you know?" I say instead.

"Yeah," she whispers, but I know she doesn't mean it.

I feel like a colossal asshole. Here I was trying to be all hands-off because of my own broken heart, and Rory is fucking suffering because of it. She can't even tolerate the touch of most people, even her friends, and she's been to fucking hell and barely back in the past month, and she needs support.

I grab her and pull her back into a hug, and she comes willingly.

"I'm sorry. It was stupid.
I'm
stupid," I murmur. She doesn't argue, she just accepts my comfort.

"Sorry-" We are interrupted by Carl, and Rory steps out of my embrace and blushes again. "I— uh… sorry, I had to, you know, deal with Tucker," she says vaguely, waving her hand dismissively toward the house.

I don't take my eyes off Rory, though I'd like to shoot Carl a glare to tell her just how much she's interrupting.

"Do you still want to go? Or—"

No, she wants to stay, but
you
need to go,
I answer silently just as Rory answers out loud.

"Yeah."

The weight expands tenfold. I knew one hug wouldn't change anything of course, but it still hurts.

Everything still fucking hurts.

I force a weak smile to let her know it's okay. That everything is going to be okay. Even if I don't fully believe it myself.

Carl hands Rory her purse, and murmurs a goodbye. I nod at her, but my eyes are still locked on Rory.

"'Bye, Sam," she murmurs.

"Later, Ror."

Chapter Five

T
he school week is dragging on and it's hard to believe it's only Wednesday. But on the other hand, I've been in a much better mood than I have since returning from Miami. I could pretend it has nothing to do with Sam, but I've come to learn that lying to myself rarely does any good.

I still don't understand why he spent weeks so careful not to touch me. I understand even less why he decided to hug me like I freaking belong to him again after that disaster of a brunch. But I wasn't surprised that he recognized exactly what had upset me.

His stupid cousin bringing up Robin attacking me in Miami came out of nowhere. It stunned me, made my pulse skip. But his next words were what sliced straight through my chest, cracked open my sternum and flayed my heart.

Is she really that hot that guys can't control themselves?

I was already on edge when Daniel referenced some
hot chick
that Sam had mentioned the last time they spoke. I don't know why I assumed they spoke often, maybe because Sam and Thea seem so close, but that's where my brain went. It presumed that Sam had met someone, or taken an interest in someone new.

And so I was already desperately unsettled when Daniel brought up Miami. His words smacked me in the face. I was instantly assaulted with images from that night. Images of myself. My short, white sundress, my done up face and tousled hair from the night before.

All the words of the men who betrayed me rung through my mind, about how I'd asked for Robin's abuse—how the way I'd acted and dressed had led him on.

I breathed and counted and breathed some more. But it wouldn't do.

How's a man supposed to behave himself?

Robin's words were the last ones to crash through my head before I made my hasty escape to the bathroom where I thanked God out loud that I'd had the forethought to keep a pill in the small mini pocket above the front pocket of my jeans. Somehow I knew I was likely to need it, though I couldn't have anticipated Sam's socially inept cousin.

But I'd do it all over again. Go through that awful brunch, socialize with fucking Chelsea Printze, even nearly panic, because it got me my best friend back. Not just this hands-off version of himself that Sam's been ever since Miami, but the old Sam.

I don't know what made him hold me. Maybe it was just because I was so upset. Maybe he would have hugged anyone like that if they were practically breaking down on his doorstep. After all, he does have superhero tendencies. But either way, I don't care.

All I care about is that when we got our calculus quizzes back on Monday, he high-fived my ninety. That he elbowed me when I teased him about something or other at lunch on Tuesday. That he put his hand on the small of my back to lead me out of the diner at lunch today.

I know it doesn't mean anything. That we're still just friends, and that I asked for it to be this way. But it's like I've gotten something back. Something I'd lost. Some level of comfort that I desperately needed for my own sanity.

And now that I have it back—that crucial inherent support—I feel different.

Don't get me wrong, I don't feel
better
. I'm still miserable and lonely. I still miss Cam with every fiber of my being, and miss being with Sam. Miss belonging to him. I still feel perpetually unsettled, as if something is always wrong,
everything
is always wrong, and there's no way to make it right.

I still wake up screaming or crying nightly, never managing more than a few hours of sleep. I'm constantly exhausted. I'm still having trouble focusing in school, except of course for calculus, which is the only subject that is ever granted my full attention.

But having Sam so distant was fucking painful. And the new path my dreams have taken since Miami makes them even more unbearable than before. And now… it's better to be exhausted than to try and go back to sleep. So yeah, I'm freaking miserable.  

But I feel like if I at least have him as a friend—a real friend—then maybe I can learn to live with it.

In some ways, having the old Sam back, even through something as simple as friendly touches, has helped me regain some of the headway I lost in Miami.

I took Sam's advice and created a new Facebook page. It's pretty bare-boned. It doesn't even use my real name, and the photo I chose was a group picture from our first night out in Miami, so no one who didn't know me would be able to tell which of the six girls in the photo is me. But I didn't delete my social media accounts for fear of strangers. No, I'd been hiding from those who knew me. But I'm hoping that setting my profile to private will keep it hidden from anyone from my former life who might be searching for a way to contact me.

I joined the incoming freshman groups, not that I’ve made any effort in actually socializing, but at least I don't have to find a roommate.

I head straight home after school, do my homework and spend some time looking through the NYU course catalog. I don't realize I've dozed off until I startle myself awake.
God, I'm tired.

I drive to Dr. Schall's office half in a daze, blasting the cold air and slapping my own cheeks to try and retain some semblance of wakefulness.

It's a fairly uneventful session, as was this past Saturday's. After the debacle with my mom I think Dr. Schall is hesitant to push me. But I do suspect he's noticed the small change the return of friendly physical contact with Sam has brought with it. It's in my demeanor, my mood. I'm far from confident, but I'm not huddled in a nervous ball practically trembling with anxiety either, so there's that.

Dr. Schall is pleased with me today. My report of attending Andrew's party and Sam's family brunch wins me points for effort, and I soak in the approval.
Daddy issues, indeed.

We talk a bit about Sam's cousin's stupid comment, and I regret even mentioning it, or my reaction, when Dr. Schall repeats his lecture about my "understandable responses" and goes into his speech about PTSD, and how my father and Robin essentially brainwashed me into accepting blame for something I was innocent in. That I could have walked around stark naked and it still wouldn't have given Robin the right to presume that I'd wanted anything, or that he had the right to take it.

And I understand what he's saying—I get the legal argument of consent. But that doesn't mean that I hadn't been sending the wrong signals, and that if I'd just handled things differently, it would have led to a different outcome. Perhaps to one in which Cam was still alive.

Dr. Schall changes the subject to a less loaded topic when he notices I'm more or less tuning him out and we end the hour with me promising again to try and remember anything different about my dreams, and anything out of the ordinary that could have precipitated them.

But my dreams haven't changed. So there's no point.

I smell the Chinese takeout as soon as I walk in my front door and I salivate at it. I haven't eaten a thing since lunch, and I was too tired then to have much of an appetite. I'm not much more awake now, but I'm hungry enough that it doesn't much matter.

I take pause when I hear my mother's voice, obviously her end of a phone call.

Immediately I know it's her. Michelle. Cam's mom.

My mom doesn't see me yet, or she'd be making some excuse to get off the line and pretend it was no one important on the other end.

But it
is
someone important. Michelle is family, and I realize that I miss her terribly. It's a sentiment that, admittedly, has been overshadowed by the many other overwhelming emotions I've been processing over the past year. Or not processing, as it is. And it's unfathomable why it's taken until this moment to realize it.

Because Michelle Foster wasn't just Cam's mom, she was like a second mother to
me
, and I realize that avoiding every reminder of my past has cut out someone who just didn't deserve it. In fact, she deserved a hell of a lot better after losing her only son.

God
, I just cut her out of my life like the rest of the people from back home—people who hurt me or let me down. But she didn't do any of those things. She was already dealing with the worst pain of her life—and that after she'd already lost her husband some years before.

A fresh wave of guilt washes through me.

In my cloud of depression and anxiety, it never occurred to me that someone might need me. That the world was still full of other people, also dealing with life crushing loss, and who I could have helped in some way. And in my emergence from my fog, I was so focused on just making it through school, and then so caught up in Sam, that I told myself that my mom's keeping in touch with Michelle was enough. But I realize now that that was a selfish lie.

Still, the thought of getting on the phone, of hearing her voice, utterly terrifies me. I know my strengths and weaknesses, and up until very recently, any real reminder at all of my past life could have been a precarious trigger to a panic attack. And, even now, I can't be sure how I'll react to hearing Michelle's voice.

But, I decide, with no small amount of uncertainty, I'm about to find out.

My mother's back is to me so she doesn't see me approach. She startles, and I can see the cogs in her head turning—she's about to make up some reason to get off the phone. But I stop her.

"Can I say hi?" I ask, my voice timid and tremulous in a way that would have been unrecognizable a year ago. Now it's one I'm fairly familiar with.

My mother's hesitance tells me she herself isn't so sure about this, and I wonder how confident she was about bringing up Cam a week ago. I consider that perhaps she was nervous about it, and maybe even regretted it. After all, she hasn't brought him up since.

My mom recovers quickly, though. After all, she has the poker face of a practiced litigator. "Sure," she replies, and then says into the receiver "Rory wants to say hello."

Also practiced? Her smile, and she keeps it carefully played on her face while she listens to whatever Michelle's presumably surprised response is.

My mother hands me the receiver and makes to head into the kitchen to give me a false sense of privacy. She can, of course, hear every word I say.

I rally my courage. I tell myself that I really am the strong girl Sam used to believe in. That I am safe and in control. That my fears, rational and imagined, can't touch me now—not here.

"H-hi," I stammer, then hold my breath.

I hear a rush of breath before Michelle replies. "Hi, Rory, honey."

I inhale deeply, trying to settle my nerves. I've known this woman since before conscious memory. "How are you doing?" I ask. I hold my breath again. I don't mean to test her, but that's exactly what my question is. I don't know if she'll bullshit me with platitudes or tell me the truth. Or something in between.

Michelle sighs. "It's been hard, honey, you know."

Strangely enough, a whisper of relief flows through my veins at her honesty. Because yes, I do know. "I do," I tell her.

"It's so good to hear from you though, Rory girl. I won't pretend I don't ask your mom about you all the time," she admits.

Old memories surface. Ones never forgotten, but never at the forefront of my mind either.
Rory girl
was Cam's nickname for me, and I'll associate it mainly with him for the rest of my life. But it didn't originate with him.

I may have been a tomboy, but with Cam and me both being only children, I was the closest thing to a daughter Michelle Foster had. She was the one who started calling me
Rory girl
when I was three. She was the one who braided my overlong waves into pig tails so they wouldn't catch on one of our fishing hooks, who taught me how to pull my ponytail through the back of my baseball cap.

"I'm sorry I haven't called." My voice cracks with guilt, and I squeeze my eyes shut to try and get ahold of my emotions.

"Shh, honey," Michelle coos. "You just take care of yourself, okay? That's what he would want."

My breath catches at the mention of Cam, the emptiness in my stomach rolling and swirling until it encircles my heart, amplifying the perpetual ache there. I know that Cam would want me to take care of myself. There's a lot of things Cam would want, like being here, for one. But I also know he would have wanted me to check in on his mother, to make sure she was doing okay, and I hadn't done that. I can't help but feel as if I've let him down in some profound way.