I'll never forget the way he looked at me when he said it. It was the same concerned look he would give me back when we first met, stirring a unique new cruelness within me. I wanted to slap it off his face.

It all started with that look as soon as he entered the lab and saw me. Disappointment.

Anytime I'm in the lab now, I can sit and imagine him there, looking at me, hands on the black matte counter, shy sunshine blurring through the glass windows and crowning his head.

Sometimes it felt like he was studying me rather than listening to me.

When I think of that summer, all the scenes and dialogue layer on top of each other, the stacking of molding bricks held together by the gunk of my heart, until it all crumbles upon that one strike of a sentence:

"Yeah, I think I need us to be just friends."

I wanted to say, "Fuck you. Fuck you, Craig."

I didn't. I couldn't.

For a while, I would wake up from dreaming about him and say it into my pillow, hoping my curses would slither to him and fill his lungs with poison. I wanted him unhappy. I wanted any bad thing short of death to happen to him. I wanted. Then I would chastise myself for wanting these horrible things. I knew it was just a veil for my hurt.

But if he were to say anything to me, even the smallest word of remorse, all my emotional reserves would come drain and I would start all over again.

...

It was my fault, mostly.

I have a tendency to squander a good thing when it's happening. I'm so afraid of having the good thing ripped away that I sever it before it can rot away on its own. I overthink. Sabotage. Destroy. I do it, so underneath, I can confirm my fears. My biggest obstacle has always been myself. At least, that's what Stan tells me. That's what he tells everyone when they're having a problem. You're always your own biggest enemy. I think he's heard enough stories from spending 12 years carving saturated tigers, pin-up girls, and grim reapers into the limbs of Colorado's finest oversharers.

I told him once when we were sitting in a booth at Coney Island Boardwalk: "You know how we squeeze things because we think they're cute? It's because deep down we want to squash and kill the thing so it stops being cute."

"I don't believe that," he said, crinkling his nose at me while sketching in a notebook. A dab of chili had fallen on the corner from lifting a fry to his mouth, and now he was implementing the stain into his design.

"You don't have to believe it. It's science."

He thought about it for a moment. "I guess it makes sense, actually. Humans are pretty fucked up."

He ended up drawing a very detailed and round butt. You can guess what purpose the chili stain served.

In his own way, Stan is a bit of a therapist. Maybe things are more clear when you see the world for what it is: shapes and lines. His wife, Wendy, is usually the one to cock her head and listen intently, taking in every word of your story as if she were there herself. I guess that's just her nurse nature.

Sometimes I feel like my brain is a pan of Jiffy Popcorn - you know, those foil-covered ones that you hover over a stove-top and eventually: pop, pop, pop. The foil rises and expands into a great dome until it finally splits open. They've always reminded me of the eggs in the Alien movies. Therapy has been like that for me. My therapist is the person agitating the pan over the stove and all the kernels are feelings and memories and she keeps agitating and agitating until pop, pop, pop - the memories burst into revelations (sometimes more problems) and they just keep popping until I'm dizzy and it feels like my head is swelled.

I've been told that it'll get worse before it gets better. Point A will never reach point B without zigzagging around points Q and W first. I'm still waiting for my brain to split open.

It really was mostly my fault.

I pushed first, then he pulled, so I pulled, then he pushed again - stronger, farther than I could have ever dreamed of doing. I didn't push for no reason, though. If someone outside the bubble could have seen what I had seen, they would know that I had a reason.

I hope you don't think I'm an unreliable narrator here. I've had time to round out those popping thoughts, and I know that our memories play tricks on us. They conform to what we want them to be. They synchronize with our pain.

Yes, I wish I could make up something more interesting.

But this is my truth, and it's just as important as anything else. Won't that be enough for you?

I have a garden.

Not a very large one, but it's enough for some cherry tomatoes and some flowers of my choice. It runs along the edge of the back window of our living room. After all the frost is gone and I can taste the heat on my tongue, I work, pulling weeds and planting seeds, thinking about what I've done. Cherry tomatoes grow very fast and dare I say, fruitfully, so Kenny eases the surplus by picking them off and eating while I work. He's allergic and his face always ends up looking like the tomato he ate, but we can't get him to stop. The kid is insane, sometimes twitchy and manic but he's a wildly good illustrator and Stan saw enough potential in him to snap him up for an apprenticeship.

Anyway, it's good work and I think more people should garden. It gives you something to do with your hands while your mind races. It's difficult to be mad with anything or anyone when you're surrounded by lavender. You can plant your feet on the warm soil and know that despite everything else, you are still here, real, and grounded.

A lot of stories begin in gardens. This one does too.

It started in the beginning of May. Another rough semester at the University of Colorado - Boulder had come and gone. All I needed was to get through this summer, then get through the autumn semester and I would have my Bachelor's degree in Environmental Science with a minor in Chemistry.

It had been a long seven years. I could have finished sooner, but I missed a few semesters due to homelessness and I just couldn't concentrate. I would have lived in the dorms at school but there was no way I was leaving my roommate, Cartman, out on his own. We spent a long time sleeping in his Toyota Echo and showering at a 24-hour fitness place. I worked during the day, traveling door to door asking people if they want their houses painted. If they weren't home, I'd leave the company's information on a plastic tab around their door handle. Cartman would go out and try to find a job to supplement his unpaid tattoo apprenticeship. It was difficult to find jobs at first since most places ask about your criminal record on the application. Both of our records state that our time in Zebulon Pike Detention Center won't negatively affect our work ethic, as we have been fully reformed into fresh-faced, dewy-eyed citizens. But it can still intimidate people. Still, we pressed on, and now here I was planting marigold seeds, the back of my neck already burning in the 9 am sun.

Cartman opened the sliding glass door and called out to me: "Kyle, phone!"

He held out my tiny Android (I don't fuck with iPhones), blaring the What's New Scooby-Doo? theme song. I quickly peeled off my gloves and went to him. As I got closer, I saw he must have just woken up - no shirt, brown hair sticking up on all ends, squinting behind Jeffrey Dahmer-esque gold-rimmed glasses

"I'm going to have this stuck in my head all day now, thanks," he said as I reached for it.

I winked at him. He slammed the door shut and retreated back into air conditioning.. I didn't take it personally. I've seen him much worse and it all goes away with a gallon of coffee.

I didn't recognize the number.

"Hello?"

"Hi. Kyle? This is Dr. Vince."

Before she even said her name, I recognized her voice. She had always spoken like Snow White, even when she was painstakingly explaining advanced chemistry to confused students.

"Oh, hi Dr. Vince! How are you?"

"I'm great, how's your summer going?"

I looked over at my just-started garden: clumps of soil everywhere, weeds strewn about, packets of seeds in a pile next to my shovel.

"It's pretty peachy."

"That's good! So listen, you applied for the summer lab assistant job here about four days ago and I wanted to see if you were still interested in the job."

My heart skipped. Finally, a job I wanted to do! I could almost fly. "Yeah! 100%."

"Awesome. There are a few other candidates but I wanted to ask you first. I know you'll do a good job."

"Really? I mean, I took your class, like, two years ago. I didn't think you'd remember me."

"Of course I remember you, Kyle. You were one of my best kids."

She could probably feel me smiling on the other end of the phone when I spoke a quiet, shy, "thank you."

"Can you start on Monday? You know where the lab is right? Room 334 in the Arts and Sciences building."

"Yes. For an interview?"

"We can talk more about the job when you get here, but there's a lot of work to do and I'd rather we all get started."

"We all? Are there other students coming in with me?"

"Yes. It'll be me, you, and my graduate assistant."

"Oh, okay, sounds good."

"Awesome! I'll see you Monday at 8 am then, alright?"

"Yes! Thank you so much, I'm so excited."

We exchanged goodbyes and then hung up. Cartman thumped the glass door with his toe, already holding two mugs of steaming coffee. I opened the door and he handed me a photo mug of me and my girlfriend, Bebe. I couldn't wait to tell her.

"What was that all about? You sounded like a fucking schoolgirl."

"I am a schoolgirl," I said, taking a sip.

"Then you should totally flounce around in a little skirt in front of the shop so we can get more walk-ins."

"Pretty sure that'll drive customers away, but if you really want me to…"

He looked down at my pale thighs, knee pads, hairy shins, and shook his head. "Yeah, maybe not. So what's going on?"

I smiled over the lip of the mug, said in a sing-songy voice, "I'm going to be a lab assistant."

"Congrats."

We all have that moment where we wish we could go back in time and warn ourselves about something. Usually, my intuition steers me in the right direction. Other times, anxiety kicks in and just makes me confused and sick. When I'm smitten with someone, all of those mental barriers go to hell in a handbasket. I want to go back, grab my own shoulders before putting on that lab coat, and say, "You're already one wave short of a shipwreck. Craig Tucker is a hurricane."