Broken Read online

  * * *

  She called. Every hour since I saw her was painful, and there had been too many pass by. The moment I heard her voice, I wanted to yell and scream and cry all at the same time. “Amery, where are you?”

  “In town. I need to talk to you.” She sounded worried, concerned. I was right there with her.

  “Yeah, we really need to talk.” I laughed the words because relief did that to a guy. “Where are you? I’ll come straight away.”

  She gave me the address, a place I hadn’t heard of before. I was at home, moping about with nothing else I could think to do.

  I got straight in my car and drove there. Once I got my hands on her, I vowed to myself I would never let her out of my sight again. I was going to glue myself to her if that’s what it took.

  I couldn’t go through that pain again. After days of thinking I would never see her again, my nerves were racked and ruined. I was ashamed of what a mess I had become without her.

  I knocked on the door and some guy answered, a man I didn’t know. He seemed surprised to see me, the feeling was kind of mutual. Amery appeared behind him. She looked tired, just as worried as she had sounded on the phone.

  “Hey, Lochie,” she said. I wanted to run to her, throw my arms around her and never let go. Never. But I just stood there because I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to take her rejection.

  The guy wasn’t letting me in. Amery looked between us. “He’s my friend, it’s okay.”

  Friend? I was her friend now? Not her boyfriend, or the love of her life, but her friend? My knees suddenly went weak as the dread rolled over me. She hadn’t called so we could reunite. She had called so she could finish it with me and be done with us.

  I wanted to run so I didn’t have to hear it come from her mouth, her beautiful mouth. But I was frozen in place, destined to see how it would all play out in front of me.

  And then I saw him. The dick. He was there too. I shouldn’t have been surprised, they had been shacked up together for a few weeks. It was only natural they’d still be together. If she had chosen to be with him, he could have done the right thing and let her do this without me having to see him, the guy she dumped me for.

  Amery introduced the door guy as Kyle. He looked somewhat familiar when I really looked at him. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

  He said he didn’t and we left it at that. I didn’t really care why he looked familiar, there were much bigger issues at hand.

  Amery pulled me inside and ended the conversation for us. “Thanks for coming, we need to talk.”

  I tried to read her face, desperate to know what was about to happen and what she would say. I couldn’t do it. Too much had occurred to really understand what was happening, even now.

  I decided it was good enough to just hope for the best. “I’ve been so worried about you, Ame. When you weren’t there, I thought the worst. Where have you been?”

  “I had a meeting that went for longer than expected. I’m so sorry for disappearing. I didn’t want to but I had to go. I didn’t want to wake you.” Those words started putting some of the pieces of my broken heart back together. Started, but there were plenty more pieces to go yet.

  “I wouldn’t have mind,” I assured her. If she had just awoken me, I could have stopped her from leaving. Or at least gone with her. She should have given me that opportunity.

  “I know. You just looked so-” She was cut off as the dick interrupted, talking about something on the television set in the living room.

  Amery led me in to see what they were doing. There was a breaking news announcement on the screen. Amery’s face flashed up, along with her full name. The dick’s was next to appear. Others followed. What the hell was going on?

  The newsreader tried to explain. “These are the faces of aliens, sent to Earth to infiltrate unsuspecting communities with the sole intent of destroying the human race. We can exclusively reveal the secret plan to rid Earth of humans so they can take over our planet.”

  The others all spoke about things I couldn’t even process. Aliens. Project Integrate. Conspiracy. Government cover up.

  What. The. Hell.

  The newsreader continued. “What seems like a science fiction movie,” the stern face continued. “Is real, verified independently by our producers. The aliens aren’t just coming, they’re already here and have been for the past seventeen years.”

  It felt like I had fallen into some dream where nothing made sense. No, make that a nightmare. Why was Amery’s photograph on the news with the word alien spread across the screen? What was going on? Aliens didn’t exist. Amery wasn’t an alien. It was crazy just thinking about it.

  “Amery-” I started but she interrupted. The more the newsreader spoke, the more the real picture was forming of what was going on.

  “Lochie, let me explain,” she said. Explain what? How she had been lying to me for our entire lives? That she hadn’t even trusted me enough to keep this secret for her? I would have. God, I would have done everything I could to protect her.

  I couldn’t stand there a moment longer. I needed to be moving. She had been lying to me all that time. I started heading toward the door. Even if it was just to get some air, I had to move.

  She tried to stop me. Which was ironic considering I had been the one to want to hold onto her. Now it was her turn to know what that kind of loss felt like.

  There was just one thing I needed to know before I left. “Is it true? Are you an alien?” She couldn’t even look me in the eyes.

  “It’s true. But I was going to tell you, that’s why I asked you to come here. I swear, Lochie, I was going-”

  “You lied to me.”

  “I didn’t want to, I had to. I was trying to protect you.”

  “You were trying to protect yourself,” I said, harsher than I had intended. I hated hurting her. The pain in her eyes was unbearable to see. But I was hurting too. The ache in my chest was getting worse. Even the tiniest pieces of my heart were shattering into even more pieces now.

  I left the house and hurried to get into my car. She continued to follow me, begging and pleading for me to listen to her the entire way. I had to stay strong. If I didn’t leave right then and there, I was going to break down and I couldn’t do that in front of her. I couldn’t have her seeing me so broken.

  “Lochie, you have to listen to me.”

  “I don’t have to listen to anything you say. You are nothing but a liar and I don’t want to hear any more of your lies.” God, it hurt. I was a splintered and broken pile of skin and bones. I couldn’t look at her and see the same woman.

  I drove off, watching her the entire time in the rearview mirror. She stood there until I turned a corner and she disappeared right out of my life.

  There was no way I could drive in that condition. I took a few more turns and pulled over. Resting my head on the steering wheel, I allowed the pain to take over. I would let out the hurt before going any further away from her.

  How could it all have been nothing but a lie? The crazy thing was I didn’t even care that she was an alien. She was Amery, that was it. I had fallen in love with her in the fourth grade and had known she was the woman I wanted to be with for the rest of my life ever since. Knowing she was an alien didn’t change that.

  But the lying did.

  Amery had ample opportunity to tell me. Maybe not before we started dating, but definitely afterwards. How many quiet moments had we spent together, just the two of us, lounging around and enjoying each other’s company? She could have told me in any of those moments. But she had chosen not to. That was a decision she had made.

  And I wanted to hate her for it. If I could hate her, it would make the hurt easier to take. I could funnel every piece of pain and reshape it into a pure hatred that would burn within me. It would fuel my recovery, erase all memories of her.

  But I couldn’t do it.

  Despite the lying, the stupid I’m sorry note, shacking up with that dick, I loved her. Eight years of pur
e love didn’t just vanish in an instant. It festered like a disease, threatening to linger there forever without a cure.

  I had never felt that kind of pain before. I couldn’t believe it could be caused by the one person who I thought would never hurt me like that. The one person who had said she loved me.

  I turned on the engine again, wondering if I would ever be a whole man again.