But instead of doing the right thing and following my heart by going back and hoping Elias would take me back, I did the opposite and pushed myself further away from him. Maybe it was my way of punishing myself for being the biggest idiot on the face of the Earth, I don’t know, but whatever it was, it landed me in a year-long relationship with a guy I didn’t love and never would.

I tried to go on with my life, but as time wore on I realized more every day that I really had no life without Elias. He was my life. He had been since that day we met by the pond.

I just wished I would’ve allowed myself to give in to that truth fully long before I finally did.

Because by then, it was too late.

Elias had a girlfriend, and according to our childhood friend Mitchell, Elias was serious about her and very much in love.

That was the time in my life when I didn’t care about anything anymore. I pretty much gave up on life without actually committing suicide. That’s the best way to describe it. I was completely dead inside. But no one else knew. Only Elias would ever have known that something was wrong with me deep down, that what I projected to the world was just a mask covering up the ugliness slowly eating away at my soul. But I never contacted him. I never tried to tell him how I felt, how much I was hurting, how much I missed and needed him. Because I wanted him to be happy. Even if it meant I wasn’t part of that happiness. I ruined my happiness for myself. I wasn’t about to waltz back into his life and ruin his, too.

Inevitably, I broke it off with my boyfriend and I told myself that I’d go back to being relationshipless, the way I had always been. Because relationships just weren’t my thing. But—and here’s some of where that “no Band-Aid” policy I was talking about comes into play—I went from a long-term relationship with one person to having sex with several different people. Call me a slut; say whatever you want. I never slept with anyone for the sheer pleasure of it—not in the beginning, anyway. I did it because I was trying to fill a void and I knew no other way. I was confused and I longed to feel loved the way I felt loved every moment I spent with Elias. I looked for that feeling in everything and everyone.

But I never found it.

And that’s when I… no, I’m not ready to talk about that yet.

For now, let’s just say when the dark secret I carried around behind that mask was out for the world to see, I had no other choice but to go back home.

Home to Elias. If he would have me. If he could have me…

I just never imagined that my homecoming would be met with more than I had ever hoped for… and, well, a lot more that I never could have possibly anticipated.

Elias

Two months ago…

I hadn’t seen nor heard from Bray in four years. As anyone would do, I went on with my life. I met a girl, Aline, at community college. She was beautiful. Dark hair. Bright blue eyes. Peach-colored skin. I loved her. But I wasn’t in love with her, even though I tried really hard to be. I tried so hard that for a while I actually believed it. But after two years of dating, I realized it wasn’t the kind of love I felt for Bray. And it never would be.

I heard from my friend Mitchell that Bray was engaged and in love with some guy in South Carolina. I felt like punching Mitchell for telling me this. I would have much rather gone on wondering about her, left clueless as to how she was carrying on with her life, instead of knowing the painful details.

I saw Bray in everything and everyone. Even in Aline—it wasn’t until much later that I realized how they favored each other. Pathetic, I know, but love isn’t always roses and rainbows and butterflies in your stomach. It’s equally cruel and painful and the world’s worst villain.

Aline dumped me. She knew I was in love with Bray. Not because I told her, but because women are smart like that. They have this weird fucking superpower that allows them to read a man’s emotions and see straight through his lies. I had told Aline about Bray, my “best friend” since childhood, and apparently that was all the backstory Aline needed to know more about me than I knew about myself. It wasn’t that I had tried to hide from Aline the fact that I was still in love with Bray, but that I had been trying to hide it from myself.

Aline was a great girl. She just wasn’t my girl….

It was one day in April nearly two months ago when the landscape of my life changed forever. The colors on that black-and-white painting were finally starting to fill in.

I woke up Saturday morning to Mitchell rummaging through the cabinets in my kitchen. He had been my roommate since last year. A lot about both of us had changed since we were kids. Thankfully, his mullet was one thing. Somewhere along the years he traded that hairstyle for a short, stylish cut with longer bangs that framed his face.

“What the hell are you doing, man?” I asked as I entered the kitchen wearing only my boxers. My current one-night stand, Jana, was still asleep in my bed, tangled in the sheets.

I opened the fridge and drank down half a bottle of water.

Mitchell was standing on a chair pushed against the front of the oven and reaching into the cabinet high above the stove light. “Looking for my weed.”

“Mitchell, man, seriously, you need to come down off that shit. Why would your weed be in the cabinet?”

“Come down off what shit? Weed?” His voice was muffled by the cabinet door.

“The meth.”

“Fucking A, bro, I’m not on meth. What the hell is your problem?”

I sat down at the kitchen table, stretched my arms above me and yawned. “You haven’t slept in three days,” I said. “Last night I heard you going through boxes in your room. For three hours.” I looked around the kitchen. “I haven’t seen this place this clean since I moved in, and I sure as hell didn’t clean it.”

Mitchell’s head finally came out of the cabinet, his bangs partially covering his dark brown eyes. He stepped down from the chair. His eyes were wide and feral and bloodshot, his pupils dilated. The corner of the left side of his mouth constantly twitched.

“Don’t tell anyone,” he said. He started to sit down but began pacing instead.

“I’m not going to tell anyone, but you’re starting to worry me. That’s some bad shit, bro. A month more and you’ll be sucking guys off for a fix. It’s no better than crack.”

Mitchell’s face went slack. “Dude, that’s goin’ too far.”

I sipped my water. “Is it?” I asked and shook my head. “You know I’m far from Mr. Sober and Perfect, but I wouldn’t touch that stuff if you paid me. You remember what it did to Paul Matthews.”

Mitchell pushed air through his lips and rolled his eyes. “Paul got addicted. He was cooking the shit in his bathroom. You don’t see me doing that.”

“Not yet,” I said.

I heard footsteps behind me, and Mitchell looked up.

“Do I get to fuck her next?” he asked.

I shut my eyes briefly and sighed. “Don’t say stuff like that, Mitch.”

“Fuck you,” Jana said to him from behind me.

Her shoulder-length blonde hair was pulled into a sloppy ponytail that hung disheveled against her back. She had sun-kissed brown skin and she was skinny, with delicate wrists I could easily lock my fingers around. But her wrists and her frame were the only delicate things about her, really.

She leaned around the back of my chair and kissed me on the mouth. I noticed right away she was dressed only in a T-shirt and her panties. Mitchell may have been out of line with that comment, but she wasn’t helping her case any, dressed like that in front of another guy.

Jana went to the fridge and opened it. I glimpsed her naked, tanned legs for only a moment. She was hot, but I was already regretting having slept with her.