I DIDN'T THINK THERE COULD ever be a dinner more awkward than the one I shared with the Yamatos the day before Thanksgiving.

I was wrong. So, so wrong.

Today's dinner is the first time I've seen Suki's parents since the winter break. And it's skull-crushingly awkward because they now have no illusions of me sleeping with their teenage daughter.

It's also awkward because her parents have defaulted to speaking rapid Japanese, catching Suki in the crossfire. She refuses to exclude me from the conversation, so she answers in English, but that simply means I witness an odd unilateral dialogue.

Now that her parents know about the pregnancy, Suki has shed a lot of the impractical layers she wore to hide her bump. She wears a simple green sweater and baggy pants with a stretchy waistband. Her chopsticks dart elegantly between the dishes, while I clutch my knife and fork—her mother, Niko, again gave me a pair without asking—like a vanilla moron.

Niko notices that I've stopped pushing the fish around my plate, and flicks her shrewd eyes from it to Suki. She says something snappy, and then Suki sighs and turns to me.

"Have you finished eating?"

I nod. Niko spits out another authoritative sentence.

Suki translates, "Mom's going to clear away the dishes now."

I rise from my seat. "I'll help—"

Niko interrupts with a bark of Japanese, and Suki takes my hand.

She also rises from her chair, leading me out of the dining room. "Let's go upstairs."

"Okay."

Suki and I walk up to the second-floor landing.

As soon as we turn the corner, I toss a smirk over my shoulder. Her lips stay in that familiar tense line, but I still attempt anything that will lift them at the corners. "I don't know why you were worried. They clearly love me."

Suki shakes her head, forcing a chuckle. "They do, actually. They like you plenty. It's me they're annoyed at."

"Why?"

Her eyes flash with guilt, and she reaches for my sleeve. "Because. . . uh." She raises my hand to her forehead and facepalms with it. "I haven't broken up with you yet," she mumbles into my wrist.

That makes me pause on my way to her bedroom. I wrangle my hand free and trail it down her cheek, cupping satiny skin. "Don't worry. My Dad wanted me to dump you as well. But he's coming around."

"My parents aren't going to come around."

"I know it seems like that now, but just give them time. They're just scared and concerned for you. But I'm going to prove to them that they don't need to be," I reassure her. "I'll keep working, and if you like, I can even come over more often so they can get used to—"

"I'm leaving."

"Ha," I snort. "What?"

Suki steps away from me and flings open her bedroom door. I wander in and my blood turns to ice. Taped cardboard boxes in one corner, two wheeled suitcases in another, and blank walls.

"I'm leaving," she repeats.

"For how long?"

Silence.

I release a light-hearted laugh, but it sounds strangled. I sit down on her bed, gingerly, as if there's glass shards waiting to bite my ass, stunned. My windpipe is collapsing in on itself. Suki joins me, lowering herself just as carefully, pulling my hand over into her lap.

"In two weeks, we're flying to Washington."

"Please say D.C."

She shakes her head softly. "I'm sorry, baby. I don't have a choice."

Washington is across the fucking country. A bolt of fear hits my spine, running from my neck to my stomach. It pools and bubbles in the form of desperation. I can't lose her.

"Of course you have a choice. You can choose to stay." I grab the sides of Suki's face and look her dead in the eyes. "Dad said you could move in if it was ever necessary, so you can bring all your stuff over if your parents kick you out—"

"They're taking me to Washington," Suki interjects. Her small, gentle hands come up to cover mine. "There's nothing I can do."

I swallow the protests that clamour in my throat. Swallowing feels like eating sand. "W-why?"

"Carsonville is... not right for our family anymore. I don't feel safe going to school after I give birth. And we live so far away from work or school right now, it'd take a while to get back or to a hospital if anything happened to Cassie. Plus, there'll be my cousins and aunts available to help us out. Babysitting, if I ever need it, and Cassie can grow up around her extended family."

I shake my head, incredulous. It sounds so rehearsed. "Is this you speaking or your parents?"

A pained little sob escapes Suki, and she balls her hands into fists and presses the knuckles hard into her brow. "Me. It's me, Terrence. People are so invasive, speculating and ambushing us at church service, questioning Mum's parenting, like it's somehow her fault. None of us like the eyes that are on us. In Ranscher, there's more support. More opportunities."

My voice is tremulous, like a heavy sigh would whisk it away. "But no me."

Somehow I feel like a kid again. Small. Helpless. Please don't leave.

"I don't want to leave you. But I can't stay. I'm sixteen, for God's sake. I have to go with my parents."

"But..."

And then it crashes into me full-force. She's leaving.

"Suki."

No more picnics at Haywood Park under the magnolia trees. No more sneaky knee touches on the bus while Suki reads a book. No more library study sessions, sneaking a kiss when no-one is around. No more dancing around in a bedroom, making Suki laugh at how bad of a dancer I am.

"But I love you. I love you, so what the fuck." Suki's brows furrow deeper as I get more and more hysterical, the words rushing fast and unfiltered. Straight from my heart, straight out my mouth. "I love you as in, there's not going to be anyone else. As in, you're going to rip my heart out of my chest and fly it all the way to fucking Washington not D.C. when you leave. Fuck."

I've never felt this pain before. Even when Mom left... it didn't cut this deep, severing all my heartstrings and smashing my internal organs. Maybe it's because I couldn't muster up this depth of feeling when I was a kid, or maybe it's because this is Suki. She's it for me.

"I know," she whimpers. "I know you love me."

She doesn't say it back.

"Holy shit. You're dumping me," I chuckle, half hysterically, my chest rising and falling with a pained gasp. "That's why your Mom was on your ass to break up with me."

Suki shakes her head, still silent.

"Goddamn it, say something. Can you say something and make this better? Please tell me I'm being stupid like I always am. Tell me I'm wrong."

"I— I was hoping you'd have broken up with me earlier. On New Year's. I knew then that we were moving but every time I was supposed to tell you the truth, I couldn't. I just couldn't. Hurting you hurts me, baby. I couldn't."

I wonder if the hole in my gut is sucking up the contents of my stomach, devouring myself from the inside out. Can a person feel so broken that they actually break themselves? That something about their emotional regulation or thought processes or defense mechanisms malfunctions and never functions properly again?

"And I thought, if I could be a crap girlfriend to you, or push you away enough, you would leave me. I wanted you to hate me. I wanted you to be angry rather than sad when I left."

I didn't realise that the tears had started falling until my vision fully blurs. Like, Suki's face becomes a blob of peach, and her eyes two vibrating dots. Suki shifts so that she's sitting sideways in my lap, our foreheads pressed together. When I blink, the tears hit her sweater and sink in, a kernel of dark fabric.

"I can't," I whisper. I can't hate you. Then Suki sniffs, with her full chest, and it turns out she started crying first. "Please don't leave."

Suki wipes her nose on the sleeve of her sweater. Her voice is thick and resolute. "I have to."

"Please don't," I beg, my voice warping around a sob.

"I have to, baby."

"Is this because of Brittany? The rumours she's spreading?"

Suki laughs through her tears, shaking her head like I said something absurd. What's absurd about Brittany ruining my fucking life?

"God, school's been the last thing on my mind."

Suki tilts my head up to meet hers.

Her eyes are endlessly sad, but as alert and clever as always. Another thing I won't get to see anymore. Those eyes. More tears spill over silently. Fuck. This hurts. This hurts so bad.

I can't keep looking at Suki. She lets me bury my head into her chest, her fingers curling random locks of my hair. She starts a story.

"You know, Brittany's the whole reason Cassie exists."

"What?"

"You remember the second ultrasound, when I was due to find out the gender?" I nod against her sternum, focusing on her heartbeat. No more listening to her heartbeat. "I walked out convinced I was going to get an abortion. At the time you were so terrified you couldn't even say the word baby, much less accept responsibility for one. So I thought, I could never do it alone. I had to abort."

I never knew she was considering abortion. It seemed like one day she just came to the conclusion that she would keep the baby. No deliberation, no doubt, no fear. But she must have felt all that and more, and deeper. And I wasn't there for her. Fuck. If I had been stronger from the beginning...

Would things be different?

"Then Brittany found me. She made me realise I was strong enough to do it. And she would help in whatever way I needed. She told me things would be okay. When you started coming around, I thought she was right. Things would be okay. We could get jobs, find a place to live, start a little family. Then I saw what fatherhood did to you. You hate it."

My head shakes fervently. "No, I don't."

How could she say that? My dream is to be with her, to look after her and Cassie, and grow together.

"You do." Suki sighs, "You don't want to hate it, but you do." Her fingers trace the edge of my jaw, catching the stray tears that refuse to cease. "I can tell, baby. I've seen you excited, and this is not it. I've seen you at your happiest, and this is not it."

"Happiness is more than being happy every day."

"Well, happiness sure isn't working yourself to death, sacrificing your sleep, spare time and school work."

What is she talking about? My happiness is with her. My excitement is thinking of our future, and that shadowy side of me that tries to unsteady my hands and unbolster my heart is just natural fear, right? Everyone feels a little trapped in their life, sometimes. Right?

"I love you more than anything, Suki. Anything. I mean it."

"I know," she says through tears, her voice wracked with tenderness. "I know you do."

She wipes her nose again, sniffing loudly. We're both ugly criers, yet she still looks beautiful.

"But one day, you're going to become a father and it's going to hit you that what you feel now, it's tiny. It's tiny and flimsy and this sounds cruel now, but when you feel that feeling... Gosh, it's like the world shifts. You'll never regret a thing. But you don't feel that for Cassie now."

"How can I? I've never met Cassie... she's not here yet."

"She's here," Suki disagrees. Her palm leaves my face to press against her heart. "In here."

"Suki."

What should I say? I can't make myself love a person I've never met, even if it is my daughter. Maybe it's a mother's love that Suki feels—or maybe it's just Suki's love.

"I know I'm not good enough for you. I'm not rich or mature or smart. But if you stay, I will spend the rest of my life trying to be. Good enough. Just—" A sob breaks through the barricade at the back of my throat. "Fuck—" Another sob. "Please don't leave me."

"Terrence..."

"I'll drop out of school," I bargain desperately. "My Dad is a site supervisor at a construction company. I can get a full-time job there, one that pays more. Then you can—"

"Baby. You're sixteen going on retired capitalist grunt. No more."

"Parents make sacrifices," I exclaim. "You did it. You gave up ballroom and school and started writing essays and got a job. You traded it all to be a mother. Why can't I do the same?"

Suki shakes her head, eyes swimming with unshed tears. "Don't drop out."

"I will. We'll figure something out. You're so clever, we should make a new plan. Ditch the old one. Let's get married," I blurt.

"We can't get married," she chastises, a watery smile on her lips.

"Why not? Don't you want to?"

"What I want—" At the last word, Suki's composure slips and her voice breaks. I've never heard her voice like this, not even on the day she came to my house to tell me she was pregnant. She lowers her head so that I can't see her features, but I can clearly see the tears that drop onto the curve of her belly.

Suki gets off of me to get the tissue box on her desk. I'm loath to let her go, but when she returns we spend a minute blowing our noses and wiping our eyes.

"Fuck," she swears uncharacteristically. "Come here."

I pull her mouth to mine, urging her back into my lap. My hand threads through Suki's hair and slants her head against mine, working for a better angle and more depth and higher heat. This time, I don't hesitate to coax her open, savouring the feverish sigh that falls from her, right onto my tongue. Fuck. How many more times do I get to kiss her?

In the corners of her mouth, I taste her pain and do my best to kiss it better. Our tongues tangle together like being closer, closer, closer, might make it impossible for the world to ever pull us apart. I hope that's true. I hope it's Suki I end up with, even if she leaves me in two weeks' time.

We're breathless when we inch backwards. Suki keeps her nose brushing against mine, her heavy pants warming the space between us. "What I want—"

She wavers. "What I want, and what I need aren't the same things."

"It is for me." I tuck a strand of her behind her ear and kiss her again, harder than the last. "You're what I want. You're what I need."

"No," she whispers, shaking her head as if to convince herself. She's bullshitting. I know she is. "I'm not. You'll see it one day. Even if it means learning to hate me."

My teeth grind together. "I'll never hate you."

"You're saying you'll always love me?"

Her eyes pierce to the core of me, strong but weak, needy but so reserved. She's a fucking contradiction. I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life trying to figure her out.

"False converse," I murmur against her lips.

Suki chuckles, brief and sweet and it breaks me. "I've truly taught you well."

She did. She taught me the best way to pull her up from the trenches of her overthinking and she taught me that flowers are overrated but the way the sun looks when it breaks through a canopy of trees is sorely, sorely underrated and she taught me the fallacies in the principles of logic, when she was considering trying out for the Debate team.

But their season happens in the second semester of school and—

Well, she will never try out and the team will never know their loss.

Unable to help myself, I suck her bottom lip between my teeth until she seals her mouth fully on mine again.

"But in this case, the converse is true," I say, pulling away just enough to speak. "I'll always love you."

"Me, too," her reply slips out before she has time to consider it. To consider how fucking badly we're going to hurt if we have to be apart. "Fucking hell, I still can't break up with you. What the hell. How do other people do this? This is too damn hard."

"Then don't do it. Take my heart to Washington, if you want. If you have a big enough suitcase, take me, too," I suggest, utterly serious, stroking her thigh with my thumb.

"I wish I could." She leans in.

I've always kept my eyes open a nanosecond longer just to catch the way her eyelids droop when she's about to lose herself in me. Another thing I'm going to have to learn to live without. A fresh wave of agony hits my chest, so intense that I touch my ribcage to make sure nothing fractured them just now.

The only thing that makes it better is Suki's kisses, again and again, and I keep opening my eyes just to sear the way she looks into my brain.

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A / N :

Don't hate me, lol. Had to happen for the aNgSt. :(

Aimee x