*NOTE: Check out the Audiobook version of this chapter voiced by kaelking12Â (Kristen Maglonzo)! Featuring music by The Pretty Reckless and Liza Anne!
Alex
Dear Nobody,
Elias has a girlfriend.
Elias...
...has a girlfriend.
And I know it shouldn't matter.
That I shouldn't care.
That after a year of living out our lives in totally different ways, in totally different places that I should've expected him to find someone else.
But the second he broke the news, I caved.
Just silently collapsed in on myself underneath a kind of weight he'll never understand.
The kind he'll never feel.
The word "girlfriend" slipped out of his mouth and sunk into my skin deep enough to rattle my old scars.
And right when I thought he'd stop mentioning her.
Right when I expected him to end the conversation, he kept pushing.
Kept saying things like "we ended last summer", when we didn't.
Kept implying that him and I were nothing but a three-day fling, when we weren't.
At least, I thought we weren't.
But maybe I'm alone in that.
Maybe I'm holding on to a moment because I'm not ready to call it a mistake.
Or maybe I just didn't mean anything to him at all.
'Cause if I had, he wouldn't talk to me this way.
He wouldn't act this way.
Things wouldn't be this way.
A boy who actually cared about me would be so much more careful with his words.
He wouldn't let pins and needles fly out of his mouth and push themselves straight into my insecurities.
He wouldn't fight with me.
He wouldn't follow me around just to force me to read a book filled with letters made of lies.
Letters I can't bring myself to believe in.
Because the truth is, I don't know which version of him to trust.
The Elias I fell for.
Or the Elias who didn't catch me when I did.
I don't know who he was when wrote this book.
But I wish he hadn't.
But wishing won't change what he's already done.
His words are everywhere.
Scribbled inside my skull.
Bleeding into my veins.
But no one knows.
No one's aware "Jersey's" sitting silently in Elias's classroom holding a nightmare in her hands.
They think she's still out there waiting for her happy ending.
They assume that there will be a happy ending.
But that's why fiction's, fiction.
Because some realities are too ugly to print.
Our reality never made it on those pages.
So whatever it is he wrote is bullshit.
No one sees through Elias the way I do.
They love him and all of his fakeness.
He makes cellophane promises to a girl who doesn't exist and everybody buys them because they're mass printed.
He throws out some Bible verse like he intends to follow it, but he won't.
He can't.
His vow to "never leave me" died when he chose Daniella.
Or maybe it died that day on the beach.
I don't know anymore.
It doesn't matter anymore.
Because even if every single person who made him a "bestseller" knew what he actually did to "Jersey", they'd still love him.
They'd defend him blindly.
But they don't know the kinds of things she dealt with.
That I dealt with.
They don't know anything.
They think things between Elias and I can be fixed with a book.
But they're too star struck to read the truth between the lines.
And the truth is what I'm stuck with.
I'm stuck living next to a liar who sold his "side" of our three-day story for profit, when he doesn't even know mine.
My version of what happened to us isn't romantic.
It's something I wish I could forget.
He's someone I wish I could forget.
Our story isn't an illustration of a modern fairytale.
It's an illusion.
Because none of his "Letters to Jersey" actually belong to me.
They can't as long as someone else has the title, and I don't anymore.
Elias might have made me his girlfriend for seventy-two hours at some point, but he ultimately chose someone else.
I guess she's worth sticking around for.
If he's even making things work long distance, then maybe his problem wasn't with commitment.
Maybe his problem was with me.
I just don't know how stomach that, Nobody.
I don't know how to not let this bother me.
I wish I was strong enough to swallow the fact that some stranger is his entire focus now, because Kai's mine.
But me being with someone else doesn't even phase him.
But him being with Daniella phases me, as bad as it sounds, I wish he wasn't.
And that's wrong.
And ugly.
And stupid.
But I can't help it.
I wanted him to be lonely in the ways I was last year. In the ways that I still am.
But he just moved on. Just found another girl to fill my space.
Another girl to take my place.
Another girl to whisper sweet lies to. Another person to pretend to fall in love with.
And I wish I could be as carefree and romantically careless as he is, but I'm not.
I'm angry, and disgusted, and embarrassed to the point where I can't take it.
I wanna call my mom and dad and talk to them about everything that's wrong, everything that's been wrong, but I've been lying for so long they wouldn't believe me.
I've painted such a beautiful picture of a perfect life that I can't wash away the lies.
They're permanent.
So I'll do what I always do, and deal with this on my own.
I'll force myself to pretend that this situation doesn't bother me. That Elias doesn't bother me.
Even though he does.
I'm sitting here in the corner of the doctor's office in silence, watching the nurses try to wake him up, but I don't even have it in me anymore to worry about what's happening with him right now.
Because I'm wilting under the weight of what's happening to me.
The only outlet I have is this office pen and a doctor's notepad.
This is my therapy. This is what's keeping me sane, like it always has.
I can bleed out all my insecurities and scribble my self-doubt in a place where nobody will find it.
Where nobody will see what he's doing to me.
But maybe one day I'll be strong enough to stop feeling this small. To not need these "Dear Nobody's" anymore.
Maybe I'll be able to find a balance in myself that makes sense or be grounded to the point where Elias King doesn't tip my scales.
But right now, he's pulling me under.
And I'm trying not to think about the details.
The little things about him and Daniella that'll drive me crazy.
Like who she is.
Where he met her.
How he met her.
And when.
The "when" bothers me more than anything else. Because I waited six months before starting things with Kai.
I waited for him. To call. To text. To write me. To say something.
I kept believing in us beyond the point of reason only for him to jump into something else with a stranger less than six months after we happened.
And now that they're together, he isn't even treating her right.
He's following me around, staring at me with a kind of desperation I don't understand.
He should have everything he needs because he has her.
But he looks half empty.
And that isn't fair because she should be his other half.
She should be enough.
Happy boyfriends in happy relationships don't write books about other girls.
And happy girlfriends in happy relationships don't get jealous over their exes.
But at least I'm trying to move on. I'm trying to make things work.
Elias is straddling the line.
What kind of guy decides to strip his clothes off in front of his ex when he's dating someone else?
An asshole. That's who.
Which is what he's always been.
And the worst part is.
She doesn't even know he's here. Following me. Acting like he still wants things from me when he shouldn't.
Daniella doesn't know anything.
She's probably stuck sitting back in San Francisco wondering why he hasn't texted her yet.
I've been there.
I waited by the phone longer than I want to admit.
But she doesn't have to.
Somebody can text her.
Even if that somebody is not Elias.
Even if that somebody is me.
Whether it's my place to do so or not, I'm going to give Daniella the explanation she deserves.
The explanation I never got.
Because nobody should be left wondering the way I was.
I know the kinds of scenarios that play out in a girl's head because of someone else's silence.
But today, I'm breaking it.
His cell phone's only a couple steps away.
And as long as he's unconscious.
He won't suspect a thing.
Sorry, Elias.
Daniella deserves better than you.
-Alex
(Next update will be on Tuesday/Wednesday! How'd you like the audiobook? :))