Chapter 30: 30. When the party's over

The second single from WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?, “when the party’s over,” sees Billie Eilish putting some distance between her and her lover. [Source: Genius Lyrics]

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Fun fact: this isn’t fun.

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Chapter Thirty: When the party's over

Nathan didn’t wait for long before he drove off. I stood there, confused, wondering what I did wrong.

After everything that had happened today, I was hoping he’d kiss me. That this perfect prom night would end in a magical kiss and my life would really start to look like a fairytale.

Now, standing there in my prom dress, looking at the empty street, it felt like reality had crashed into my daydreams and made them bleed.

Did I read too much into his feelings? Did I pick up the wrong signals? Maybe he never liked me. Perhaps I gave his actions too much importance, thinking all of them meant something.

But he did so much for me. How could he do all that if he didn’t have any feelings for me? Was he just being kind?

Somehow, I made it inside my house. I was thinking too much. I found myself in my room, not even sure how I got there. I was racking my brain for every interaction we had, dissecting all of our conversations, everything I could remember.

“There you are,” Mom said, knocking on my door. I looked up at her. “Your photos.”

Mom dropped an envelope on my table, which contained the Polaroid from earlier, “Don't blame me for some of these. You two were moving too much. Not my fault.”

I tried to smile at her. Then I looked at the envelope for a few moments as she watched me and left. I grabbed it and brought out the photos.

Nathan was smiling in the first few photos, looking at the camera. But as I shuffled them, his expressions changed. Until I found the ones where he was looking at me. His eyes were on my face in every single one of them, with a smile tugging at his lips. His hand was around my waist.

He looked at me like he cared about me. He looked at me like it meant something.

How could I be so wrong?

I slumped back onto my bed. I hated calling people out. I hated confrontations. I would hate to let him know I had feelings for him without knowing he had feelings for me, too. But I couldn’t care anymore.

Nathan would have to tell me the truth. I couldn’t give up. Not now, after all this time.

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Sunday went in a haze. I was in bed all day, thinking, overthinking. I kept looking at my phone, hoping for something to come through– a text, a call.

Our girl group chat was blowing up. I checked the texts, but I didn’t have it in me to reply, to have fun. They sent photos of us. Azra had taken a candid photo of me and Nathan dancing; me looking up at him like my world revolved around him, and him looking down at me like we were the only two people on the dance floor.

There were quite a few photos like that. All of them were proof. All of them felt like a punch to my gut.

I couldn’t text Nathan for fear that he’d avoid me. I wouldn’t be able to handle his indifference. So I spent the day unfocused, confused, and waiting for the worst to happen.

I was bracing myself while secretly hoping that tomorrow, when I went to school, he would look at me the same way, like I amused him. He would smile at me, as if we shared a secret. He would tug at my ponytail, and we would bicker about things that didn’t matter.

But Nathan didn’t do any of that. At lunch, I sat with my friends, who asked Leanna questions about every detail of her dating life, while I spent the whole time glancing at Nathan at his table. He wouldn’t look up from his phone.

By the time chemistry rolled around, my stomach was in so many knots, I felt like throwing up.

It was probably nothing. I reassured myself. Maybe he was busy. A raincheck on the chemistry session meant nothing more than what it was.

I was jumping to conclusions. That was what it was.

Nathan walked into the classroom and sat down in his seat. His hands were shoved into his pockets. His eyes were trained in front of him. He sat there, motionless. He didn’t greet me, look at me, or talk.

It felt like I was invisible. Just like I had been this whole year, until he started talking to me.

It was like he was back to his default settings, moody, mysterious, closed-off and not interested in anything around him, including me.

Tears sprang to my eyes. But I kept calm. We spent the class in silence. The bell rang. Wong left, and so did all of our classmates. Nathan was packing up his things into his backpack. He wouldn’t even look at me.

I tried to catch his eyes and failed.

I attempted to keep my voice steady, but it trembled with my emotions, “So, we’re not friends anymore?”

Nathan paused. His hands were on the zipper of his backpack.

“We weren’t friends to begin with.”

My throat felt heavy. There was this pain slowly building up around it, “Oh. And we won’t study together anymore, I suppose.”

“You don’t need it,” Nathan said.

I looked at him. His hands were shaking ever so slightly. I took in his face, and it was emotionless, like he was tamping down every feeling.

“Nathan,” I said, “what are you doing?”

He dropped the backpack, and covered his face with his hands, and cussed, “I–I hope you’ll leave me alone, Emily. Please.”

“Why, Nathan?” I demanded, “What went wrong? Did I do something?”

Nathan paced away from me, walking down the space between the rows of the stations. He gripped the strands of his hair and pulled, “We need to stop. Whatever we are doing, it needs to stop.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“You know what I mean,” Nathan said, looking into my eyes at last. His eyes were red, the dark circles prominent like he hadn’t slept in years, “You know exactly what I… mean.”

One drop of my tear finally rolled down my cheek, and I quickly wiped it away.

“So you won’t give us a chance,” I whispered, my voice catching.

“There’s nothing to give a chance to,” Nathan said back, “We need to stop doing these stupid chemistry sessions. We should go back to being strangers, like we were before.”

I sat on my stool, my hands clasped in my lap, “Is this how you break my heart? Teach me a lesson?”

“No!” Nathan was in front of me in a few steps, “No, Emily. I’m doing this because I can’t break your heart. Because I can’t let that happen. If we continue, I will probably do that one day.”

I looked up at him, fresh tears welling up in my eyes.

Nathan’s lips trembled, “I’m so sorry. I should have kept my distance. I knew—I fucking knew—I don’t deserve you. But I kept forgetting.”

He turned away, “You kept smiling at me. You kept laughing with me, making me laugh with you. I forget who I am when I’m with you.”

Nathan dragged in a deep breath, “You make me feel like I’m worth something, but it’s not true. Emily, I’ll never deserve you. You can do so much better. And if we don’t stop this now, you’d settle for me, and I can’t let it happen.”

“What if I don’t care about all that?” I said, “Why? Why are you saying this now?”

Nathan rubbed his face, “I should have said that earlier. I…I pushed you away so many times, but like a fool, I kept going back to you, even though I knew you can have someone better than me.”

Something about his speech felt familiar. I wiped my eyes and narrowed them, “Why do you keep saying I deserve better?”

Nathan looked away, “Because it’s true.”

I tried to remember why it felt familiar, this figure of speech. It was like I had heard it before. By ‘before’, I meant not so long ago.

“Nathan,” I said, “did you hear me talking to Simon?”

He didn’t answer. That told me what I needed to know.

“You are doing this because that jerk said I deserve better?” I glared, “Are you serious?”

“Yes, I am!” Nathan said, “Because he’s right. Because you do.”

“You’ll listen to a stranger, someone who’s angry at you,” I said, my breath escalating, “You’ll fall right into his trap-”

“It doesn’t matter what his intentions were,” Nathan interrupted, “I don’t give two shits about that. But it reminded me of what I knew, what I believed. It put me in my place.”

“Everything you did for me means nothing?”

My gaze lingered on his, demanding to know.

“I was trying to be someone I’m not,” Nathan whispered, “But one day, you’ll find someone who will-”

“You seriously believe that-” I clasped my hands into fists.

“Yes,” Nathan said, “I do. Because you are the most precious person I know. You will find someone a thousand times better than me. And I can't keep standing in the way.”

“What if you are the better one? What if I want you?” I said.

Nathan shook his head. “You can’t, you shouldn't.”

“What about my feelings?” I said, my voice quivering.

Nathan looked away.

I watched how his hands shook, how his chin trembled, how he was fighting his own feelings. He was barely holding himself together, just like me.

This was what he had been thinking about ever since he saw me talking to Simon. This was why he didn’t tell me what he had wanted to tell me, before entering school.

“What about your feelings?” I whispered.

He trained his eyes on the ground and whispered back, “They don’t matter.”

“They matter to me,” I replied. My tears freely rolled down my cheeks.

They could change everything.

“I know,” he replied, looking at me, “and when you look at me like that, it fucking hurts. Sometimes it feels like you’re the only person who cares, who…sees me and I–I will never let myself get away with this. You are everything and I amount to nothing.”

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hands and that made me want to crumble into the floor. He was not breaking my heart. He was breaking his own heart, and for some reason that hurt more than anything else ever would.

“I have to do this,” He said, steeling himself, as if this was final, “because everybody knows you are better off without me, including me.”

“They don’t know you,” I said, “and they don’t know me either.”

Nathan smiled at me sadly, “But I know you. And I know you will be happier if I let you go. I don't want to break your heart, Emily, ever. You are the best thing that’s happened to me. And I’d never forgive myself if I made you cry. And I’m already doing that. I don’t need us to dive headfirst into a future where this turns worse. I’m sorry.”

He walked to his seat. He grabbed his backpack while I watched him as my tears fell.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, his voice breaking, before he walked away.

His footsteps echoed through the empty classroom. He left me there, sitting at our station, alone.

I covered my mouth as the sobbing took over me. I wiped the tears away but they kept falling.

I hated everyone that had ever doubted him, doubted us. I wanted him to believe in himself enough.

How could I make him see he was also the best thing that had ever happened to me when he refused to see it?

I grabbed my phone through my tears only to see a text from Leanna saying:

Saw you talking to your boy. So I went to meet mine.

My boy. That made me cry harder as the screen blurred in front of me. I turned it off and stood up on shaky legs. I had to make it home somehow. But I didn’t know how.

I walked out of the classroom and leaned against the wall.

I had done everything in my power for this. I had never stopped, not for one moment, only for him to say that he couldn’t do this because I deserved more.

For me, that meant I couldn’t even have him.

What was the point of all this then? What was the result? How could he do this to me? To himself?

I wiped my cheeks and my nose with my sleeve as I slowly got out of school. I got out through the entrance and noticed the empty parking lot. Everybody had left.

As usual.

I was standing there all alone. I would have to walk home all alone.

I tried so hard to keep everyone around me. I never let anyone get too close, in fear that they’d see all of me, they’d walk away.

I always kept my friends at arm’s length, never let them see too much, know too much, always keeping secrets. And when I felt overwhelmed, I clutched a book as my shield.

I read all those stories so I didn’t have to deal with my emotions, with my feelings, with the truth.

The truth that I was lonely, I was scared. That I always just wanted to be loved. But I was also afraid of being honest, afraid of letting anyone get too close.

But I had tried in my own way, to keep everyone happy, around me. To have him around me.

Maybe I tried too hard.

I must have gone about it all wrong.

What would happen if I just stopped trying? I had done everything for this and he had left me all alone, anyway.

I looked at the empty parking lot, around the quiet school ground.

I slowly made my way out. My heart felt so raw, like a wound, like jagged pieces of glasses pressing against my ribs, grating inside me.

I swallowed back another sob that was building. Stupid, stupid me.

Then I looked up.

At the road, in front of the gate, there was that one familiar pink Kia Soul.

He was parked there, waiting. He hadn’t left.

I let the sob come up as I bit on my fist.

Nathan must have seen the empty lot too. He had waited for me knowing I didn’t have any other means to get home than walking.

He had waited.

This fucking idiot.

I covered my face with my hands, crying. How would I ever love someone else? How would I ever get over my feelings? I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. This was it. He was it.

I rubbed my sleeve over my face, soaking it with my tears, trying to wipe it all off. As I got near, Nathan pushed open the door from inside.

Hope is a terrible, terrible thing. I felt that, standing there, even though just seconds ago, he had left me after telling me we couldn’t be together.

I had no dignity when it came to him. I proved it by getting in and closing the door.

I sat there in his passenger’s seat, stiff and teary, barely holding myself together.

Nathan leaned over me. My eyes widened.

He looked into my eyes like he was trying to collect forever from this moment, like he knew he’d never let himself look at me again. He swallowed thickly and pulled the seatbelt.

Then he locked it into the clasp of my seat and pulled away from me.

I turned away too, as he started the engine. I closed my eyes and leaned against the glass of his window as we drove in silence.

When he parked in front of my house, I cleared my throat. With all my hopes, I asked, “Are you going to change your mind?”

Nathan gripped the steering wheel. He wouldn’t meet my eyes, as if he was afraid of looking at me, like he knew he’d change his mind if he saw me.

“No,” he pushed the word out.

I couldn’t fight against him like this. I couldn’t force him to look at me when he was staring out the window, with his back to me.

It was time to let go.

So I silently got out of his car. This time, I walked away.

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A/N: true fact, lately anything I cook is turning out bad. I tried to bake focaccia a few days ago, and it turned into biscuits 😭