There was someone sitting on my bed. I could feel their weight on the mattress, blankets pulled tight under their legs. I blinked, their hands padding toward me, shadow bleeding across the blankets. I blinked again and I saw Dani.
“Bryn?” she whispered.
I sat up. Roman.
“How long?” I said.
“A week. Short one this time.”
Another week? Seven days used to feel like nothing, a few homework assignments; a trip to the dentist. Now it felt like an eternity and every second that I kept sitting there felt even longer. I crawled off the bed, stopped, holding the wall.
“Too fast?” Dani grabbed my arm. “Bryn, are you okay?”
I shook my head. I was not okay. Roman was not okay. Nothing was okay. “I have to get dressed.”
“What about a bath first? Maybe something to eat?” She followed me into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
“I need to—”
“Bryn.” She stepped between me and the tub, voice broken by the warble of the faucet. “I know about Roman.”
“I have to find him.”
“And then what?”
I didn’t have an answer so I just shook her off and started tossing my clothes into the hamper under the sink. “Dani, I have to find him.”
“No, you need to slow down. You need to think. God, since when are you the irrational one?”
“Irrational? My boyfriend’s in a fucking coma and—”
“Wait. Boyfriend? Bryn…” Her voice trailed off and she just stood there, eyes wide and sad. Examining me like I was crazy. Because she was finally starting to think I was.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I said. “It’s complicated.”
“I’ll say.”
“Dani, please, don’t say anything to my mom.”
“You can’t ask—”
“Please.” I was so close to her then. I knew she could see the tears coming. I bit my lip, looked away.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
She shrugged. “I owe you, I guess. Just don’t do anything stupid, Bryn.”
“Have I ever?”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
I slipped into the tub, pulling the curtain until she could just see my face.
“Do you remember what happened?” she asked.
I remembered the gravel biting into my knees, seeing the picture of Roman’s car and then I was looking at the real thing, at him strewn across that dark road. “I…I was on the roof. I blacked out.”
“What were you doing up there with him?”
“Who?” I asked.
“Drew.”
“What? I didn’t go up there with him.”
“He’s the one who carried you downstairs,” she said. “When I saw him I thought you’d gotten into another fight. I thought something had happened.”
Something had happened. Only it wasn’t Drew. It was Roman.
“It wasn’t that,” I said.
“I saw the pictures on your phone,” she said. “Do you think…?”
“What?”
“Do you think that’s him?”
“It is. I’m positive. He remembers now.”
“He remembers what?”
“Everything. That’s why I have to find him.”
“And when you do?” She sighed and I could hear that her face was buried in her hands. “Bryn, what if he doesn’t wake up?”
I shook my head. “What if he does?”
She lowered her voice. “Okay, what if he does? And what if he’s not himself?”
I thought about my own fears for the past few months—that Roman wouldn’t like me in the real world, that me being sick would be too much to handle. Just like it was for my dad. Just like it was for Drew. But what if I was the one who couldn’t handle our relationship in the real world? What if he was too far gone? Not the Roman I knew but a stranger in a thin hospital gown who couldn’t even say his own name. Who’d never be able to say mine.
“Bryn?” When she said my name, the silence broke in two.
I heard myself sobbing and I tried to catch my breath. “I have to try.”
Dani exhaled, her own voice catching. “Then I’ll drive you.”