hi

I'm Afraid

It's 7PM and I haven't left my room

I'm afraid

There's nothing for me to find if I leave my bed to be unmade

It's 10PM and I ate for the first time today

I drank green tea

I drank black coffee because green tea wasn't strong enough

It's 1AM and I'm shaking and I feel sick

My eyes won't close

Time goes too fast when my eyes are closed, when I'm asleep

It's 4AM and I feel alone

It's too quiet

I miss it when it was loud in my head because giving in is easier than fighting

It's 7AM and I have a future

I'm afraid

I won't be able to fill it with something more than pills and diet soda

E.M.W

• • •

I pace back and forth in Eve's room— Mikey's room, for now. I can tell he's starting to get annoyed with me, but it's late at night, Lindsey's gone to bed, and I need someone to vent to. He just happens to be a listening ear at my disposal.

"I don't understand why she hasn't answered, it's been three days." I flail my hands when I talk. The movement doesn't relieve my anxiety despite the numerous websites I've clicked off of saying that exercise is some miracle cure for thoughts that roll like sped-up end credits in my head all day, or hands that won't stay still even after a third cigarette.

Mikey, stretched out on Eve's bed that I'm refusing to call his, doesn't seem nearly as worried. "I'm telling you, Gee, there's probably a good reason for it."

"I've gone over every fucking reason it could be a hundred times already and I don't feel any better!"

"Well, yelling at me isn't gonna make her reply any quicker, is it? I told you, she probably broke her phone, or lost it. If something was really wrong, she'd use someone else's."

"She wouldn't though, that's the thing," I say, sitting on the bed. I run my hands through my hair. "She's too stubborn to ask anyone for help, and she for sure wouldn't ask Laura to use her phone."

I know her too well. Like, I know how when she plays with her hands, something is on her mind, and when she doesn't want to tell me something, she avoids looking into my eyes, and how she doesn't really like green tea. The only reason why she still ever drinks it is it became a habit.

"Well, then Laura probably took her phone away," Mikey suggests.

I shake my head. "No, Eve said that she'll only do that if her grades drop, and she's been doing really well in school lately."

"How do you know?" he asks inquisitively, sitting up from where he was previously lying down against the backboard.

"'Cause that's what she told me."

"Gee," he says carefully, "you don't think she might be—"

"She's not lying," I say firmly. "I know we've had issues with that before, but she promised she wasn't gonna lie to me anymore, and I believe her."

Mikey puts his hands up, "Okay, okay. If you believe her, so do I."

He doesn't sound so sure to me, but I give him the benefit of the doubt.

He's been living here for over three weeks now. At first, I really thought it'd just be a few nights. Then he started bringing things over from his apartment, putting them all over Eve's room, calling the space his own even though, in my mind it'll never be anyone else's but her's. If we hadn't turned the guest bedroom into a nursery, he'd be sleeping in there.

The fact that I'm being overprotective of a room bothers me. The fact that she's not in it bothers me. Knowing that she'll probably never live in it again— when she's eighteen she'll go to college, rent a shitty apartment with Emerald that they'll make their own— bothers me. And knowing all these things, I know I should move on.

I still want her to be my daughter, I'll still call her my daughter, of course, and I'll always love her like one. But if I ever thought nothing would change, that living hundreds of miles apart, not even being her legal guardian, wouldn't strain some relationships, or ingrain some thought process that I have to let go and get on with my life... it was foolish. It's all foolish.

I'm confused, hurt, I feel like a piece of me is missing. I'm fighting to get it back but it looks like really, there's nothing I can do about it. I'm having doubts about my doubts and I don't even know what those doubts are in the first place.

Like I said, I'm confused.

Those feelings all melt away like magic, though, when my phone finally starts ringing, Eve's contact popping up. I pick up the call in record time and put it on speaker, expecting she'll want to talk to Mikey too. He sits up straighter when he notices.

"Hi, Dad." She sounds apprehensive.

"Evie? Are you okay?" I ask.

"Yeah, I- um, I'm sorry I couldn't contact you sooner, I didn't have my phone."

"Did Laura take it from you?"

She's silent for a moment, then says, "I deserved it." The temperature in the room seems to drop a few degrees. She sounds more than apprehensive. She sounds scared, regretful, even miserable. Mikey and I cast each other worried glances.

I have no idea what to expect when I ask, "What happened?"

"Dad, I messed up." I hear her sniff, her voice break. "I- I fucked up."

"Please tell me what happened so I can help."

She inhales, but can't get any words out. She's started properly crying now, not just sniffling. At the look on Mikey's face, the recognition and the fear written all over it, I take the call off speaker mode and bring the phone up to my ear, leave him and shut myself in my office, collapsing into my desk chair.

"It's okay, Darling, I'm here," I try and soothe her over her crying. "I'm here."

"I'm... I'm sorry," she chokes out.

"No, Eve, please don't say that, just take some deep breaths for me. I'm not mad at you, whatever happened, I promise."

I listen to her take in some shaky breaths. "I j- I just, I don't know... I don't know what to do. I mean, I- I do know what I should do, I just..."

"You just what, Evie? What happened?" I ask gently. "The only way I can help you is if you tell me what actually happened, you know."

"It's so stupid," she says quietly, more to herself than to me.

"You can tell me anything," I remind her.

I know that she's finally going to tell me by the way she inhales deeply, then exhales all the air in her lungs before taking a pause. She says, "There's this hoodie I stole from you that I always wear 'cause is smells like— smelled like home. So, then the other day she washed it and I got really mad at her 'cause now it's not comforting like it was. Basically we were yelling at each other and eventually... I just told her, 'I fucking hate you.' I know I shouldn't have said that, and I regret it. And it's not like I hate her for washing the hoodie, I hate her for other things. She just doesn't seem to understand that she did things that I can never forgive her for, and I'm not suddenly gonna like her."

I lean back in my chair, run my fingers through my hair like I need to stop doing so often. "I think you should apologize," I tell her slowly, knowing that she won't like it.

"That's what Em said too," she replies, and I'm pretty sure she's on the brink of tears again. "She said it would make me feel better, and I really do want to feel better, but I can barely look at Laura right now."

"Em's right, you know."

"I know. Are you mad at me?"

"I don't want to pull the whole cliche, 'I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed,' thing, but that's so unlike you, Eve," I decide to say. It's just, she usually thinks through her words carefully. She doesn't like hurting people's feelings, but when she finally does yell, something is really wrong. It sparks in me the fear that maybe she's not doing as well as she lead me to believe. Maybe Mikey had a point earlier...

"That's fair. If you want to yell at me, that's fair too. I think I probably deserve it."

"I'm not going to yell at you, I think you know that. I need you to be honest with me now, okay? Are you really doing okay, Evie? I mean like you said you have been since you started going back to therapy?"

Her silence on the other end of the line scares me, until she finally says, "I was, I promise."

"Was?"

She inhales deeply again and what she says next makes my heart shatter. "I did it again, Dad. I couldn't stop myself and I couldn't call you for help."

I really, really just want to give her a hug.

"I'm not mad at you," I say sincerely, getting that out of the way quickly because I know she must be terrified of that.

"Okay," she whispers back, relieved. "But I'm still sorry."

"You don't have to be sorry. You did your best. One slip up doesn't erase all the progress you've made these last few weeks, you know?"

"I guess so."

I sigh, knowing that what I'm going to ask next is a long shot, but also wanting what's best for my daughter and for her never to hurt herself again. "Is there... any way that next time— if you're not able to call me or anyone else— that you could go to Laura? Would she be able to help you?"

"Absolutely not," she says immediately.

"That's what I thought you'd say."

"Especially not now. I- I told you, I really fucked things up."

"But you're going to try and apologize, right? I know you don't want to. You don't even have to mean it, I don't care, I just want you to do it, okay? I really do think it could make things a little better."

She's quiet for a long time, like I could've gotten up and made myself a cup of coffee by the time she finally whispered a feeble, "Okay."

It's good enough for me.

• • •

When I get off the call with Eve later, I go back to Mikey's room and let my body flop onto the bed and I just lie there, face down, basically suffocating with my face in the blankets. Mikey pokes me in the side with his foot.

"Is everything okay?" he asks. I was planning on just lying there silently for a while and getting lost in my thoughts, but I can tell he's really worried.

"Could be better," I say, my speech heavily muffled.

"What?"

I flip over and stare at the ceiling instead. "It could be better," I say again.

"Did something bad happen?" he asks. "Is Eve okay?"

I just want to spill all of it, but I can't. I can't go telling him everything I know Eve doesn't want anyone to know about. That'd be shitty of me. But my chest feels heavy and everything is weighing down on me and I'm keeping it all in for her sake.

"She got in a fight with Laura," I say finally. "Eve's as okay as she can be right now."

"Okay," he says, and then he says something else. Something I wasn't expecting. "How about you?"

My breath catches in my throat. "What about me?"

"You know what I mean, Gee."

I cover my face with my hands. "I'm fine. Tired and stressed out."

"You kinda look like shit."

"Thanks, Dude."