Maggie had tried on numerous occasions to bring up college but I shut it down each and every time. I felt like everyone was sprinting past me and I was falling further and further behind. I wasn’t sure I was ready for college and everything that entailed and Maggie wouldn’t contemplate a future that held anything else.

We loved each other so much but I felt like we were starting to head in two very different directions. Every day I felt the crushing weight of my fear and anxiety pressing in. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think. I only wanted the sweet oblivion of physical pain or a syringe full of mind erasing drugs. The need was all I could think about.

Shaemus insisted I start going to NA meetings. He could see how close I was coming to a relapse. I knew it too, but some sadistic part of me relished in it. Craved the total meltdown. Because right now I couldn’t handle the effort of working through a normal life. It was completely beyond me.

And pretending was proving next to impossible.

Maggie could see something was wrong. She confronted me and I couldn’t deny it. I wanted to tell her she had nothing to worry about, but I was way past lying to her. If I couldn’t give her the future she wanted, I could at least be honest.

Even if I downplayed it a bit.

“Maybe we could go visit Piedmont Community College. I’ve heard they have an excellent art program. You know, just to have a look. You don’t have to make a decision,” Maggie suggested as we sat in her backyard on a Sunday afternoon. It was hot, the start of summer a little over a month away. We were already in the middle of May and I just wished I could share in her enthusiasm for graduation. But it seemed to loom in front of me like a warning sign, Caution, rough road ahead.

“Yeah, maybe,” I said dismissively, already knowing I wouldn’t do any such thing. The wedge had been firmly inserted between us and I wasn’t sure what to do to get past it. Or whether I wanted to. Maggie continued to come to therapy every other week. And I was trying the whole healthy communication thing, but I could admit that I was starting to feel like it was all a freaking waste of time.

Why would I continue to ask her to devote energy into something that hadn’t a hope of going anywhere? She would go to university and I would what? Work at Bubbles for seven dollars an hour until I felt like ending it all just to escape the mind numbing misery my life would become?

Why couldn’t I just indulge Maggie? Who knows, maybe I could see myself in one of these colleges and the road would be laid out for me? But my self-defeating thoughts were too loud in my head. It wasn’t the highs and lows of mania anymore, just the constant drone of pessimism and paranoia that were making it hard to focus on anything else.

Shaemus had again brought up the fact that I could return to Grayson’s. That an extended stay in the facility could be extremely beneficial for me. I rebelled against the thought; feeling like returning at this point would be a huge failure. Not that I was doing a bang up job anywhere else in my life.

Plus, financially I couldn’t afford it. Grayson’s was a secluded and very expensive facility. My parents had completely cut me off. I hadn’t received any money from them from the moment I discharged myself from the center. I wasn’t sure whether my mother had been in contact with Ruby and if she had, I didn’t know about it. It was like I no longer existed for them. Their emotional negligence was both freeing and crushing.

“Come on, Clay. It won’t kill you to go on the tour. Who knows, you may actually like it,” Maggie said lightly, leaning back on her elbows in the middle of her yard. I looked up from my sketch book. I had been drawing the birdbath in the corner of the garden. Not the most amazing subject to draw but it kept my hands busy. And I needed them to be occupied with the direction my thoughts were going lately.

The sun was hot and I could see sweat pebble along Maggie’s collar bone. She really was perfect in every way. I was such a f**king fool for not seizing the future she was handing me. Isn’t this what I had wanted? The possibility of a life with her? Why did the thought scare me to death?

I had been doing everything right. Taking my meds, going to therapy, playing the responsible guy and getting a job to contribute financially at home. I had ticked every god damned box and yet here I was, still stuck in the same bullshit mind f**k that had always sucked me in.

“I don’t know, Maggie. I just don’t want to think about it right now,” I said tersely, sick of talking about it. Maggie was like a dog with a bone though and she wasn’t going to give up that easily.

“Clay, you have to start thinking about it. Graduation is less than a month. The deadline for applications to Piedmont are next week for the fall semester,” she said and I shot her a look. She shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve been doing my research, okay? But seriously, why can’t we ever talk about it? I feel like you’re not even trying to figure stuff out,” she said in frustration which in turn triggered my own.

I closed my notebook and got to my feet, wiping the grass from my shorts. “I told you I don’t want to talk about it, Maggie. I know you want me to jump on the college bandwagon, get my sweatshirt and all that shit, but I just can’t. I don’t know what’s going to happen with Ruby. Hell, I don’t know what’s going to happen with me. Just please, back off.” I was practically yelling by the time I finished and Maggie just stared at me.

Damn it, I was being a dick again. Maggie stared down at her hands. “You’re doing it again. You’re shutting me out. Even when you promised you wouldn’t,” she said quietly and it just made me feel even guiltier. I sat back down beside her and took her hand.