“It’ll always be you and me,” she said, and I nodded.

We believed our wounds made us special. We believed what didn’t kill us made us stronger. We believed our tragedies were romantic.

At least that was what we told ourselves. But that night, it was beginning to sound less like an inspirational motto to live by and more like something we had to tell ourselves to survive.

I told Elise I knew how things would turn out, that I knew she’d triumph, but the truth was that I had no idea. It’d shaken me to the core, hearing her talk about her father. I had wanted so desperately to know what was going on with her, but now that I did, I only felt more helpless. I wanted to be strong enough for both of us, but I didn’t know if I could.

29.

“He hasn’t always been awful,” Elise told me later that same night. I was lying next to her in bed, halfway asleep.

“Hmm?” I said, my eyes still closed.

“I’ve always wanted a dog but my dad’s allergic,” she continued, voice barely above a whisper. “For my birthday one year, he took me to an animal shelter and spent the day with me playing with the dogs there. He was so puffy and red when we left.” I could hear a smile in her voice.

“We were never allowed to have a pet,” I said. “Too messy, too much work.”

“It’s the first thing I’m going to do when I turn eighteen,” she said. “I’m heading to the nearest shelter for a dog.”

“That sounds awesome.”

“It can be ours,” she said, shifting toward me.

“Yeah?” I said, blinking sleepily in the dark.

“Yeah,” she promised, and I fell asleep dreaming of the life we could have one day.

• • •

In the middle of the night, I woke from the cold, turning to find Elise missing. Wrapping the blanket around me, I slipped out of bed to look for her.

“Elise?” I called out in a whisper that seemed to echo through that big house. In the dark, everything looked haunted as I wandered the hall. She was in the master bedroom, both doors to the smaller balcony wide open. “What are you doing out here?”

She turned around, cigarette in hand, hair fluttering in the wind.

“I left something out earlier,” she said. “About my dad.”

“What?” I asked, confused.

“My dad.” She took a big breath before continuing. “He always says he’s sorry, every time. And the weird thing is most of the time, I believe him.”

“You do?” I joined her, leaning over the ledge on my elbows.

“He cries and begs for forgiveness. It’s hard to explain. He promises me he’ll never do it again, and even though he’s broken it a million times, I still believe him when he swears it’ll be different. Is that fucked up?”

I lit a cigarette and released a stream of smoke, trying to clear my mind.