Crash Test

by Amy James

His face split into a grin when he saw me, and I think right there and then he had me for good.

it’s hard for some people to go against their parents, no matter how old they are.”

“There’s nothing you can do to make things better,” he says. “Every week will just get a little less shit, until one day you wake up and you don’t remember quite what the pain felt like.”

I used to think that, before Jacob, my life was colorless. When I was with him, everything was brighter, and better, and it never occurred to me that I could find that brightness anywhere else.

I never had a best friend before. Now, suddenly, I have two of them. It’s a different kind of intimacy than I had with Jacob. I wanted him so badly, and I was so scared of losing him, that I never pushed him when he disappointed me. I hid all my negative feelings from him whenever I could, all my worries and doubts and fears. But Heather and Matty have already seen me at my worst.

My world has color again, and I have friends, but I still miss Jacob so badly sometimes, I feel sick. Every time something good happens, I want to tell him. And I desperately want to know how he is. If he’s okay. If he’s happy.

Is that what therapy is supposed to do? Depress you more?

I think that feeling of control lured me into a false sense of security. I was so confident I had Travis on a string, I didn’t notice the warning signs. Thinking about him all the time. Texting him more and more frequently. Finding any excuse to go to London to spend time with him. I told myself it didn’t mean anything, that it was just a fun, casual thing, but the truth crept up on me, as it so inevitably does.

I had all the power in our relationship, and I was using it to hurt him.

I got addicted to it, that feeling of making him happy.

It wasn’t casual, the way that he looked at me. It wasn’t casual, the way I felt when he looked at me.

I imagine I’ll slowly waste away from grief and consumption, and then someone will write a depressing novel about me, and I’ll die famous.

“And in forty years, when my kids are watching some boring documentary about F1, and they talk about the really hot guy who won a hundred championships, I’m going to say to them, Kids, you know what? I very nearly fucked that guy.”