Read The Last Time We Say Goodbye for Free Online

says.
    That’s my middle name these days. Alexis Sad Riggs.
    â€œYou don’t have to go through this by yourself,” Dave says. “Try to let people in. That’s the only way they can help you.”
    I can’t be helped, I think. There is no magic spell that will bring Ty back. There’s nothing anybody can do.
    â€œI’ll work on that,” I say, and go back to fiddling with the rug.
    It’s quiet again. I can literally hear the clock in his office ticking. Four minutes of therapy left to go.
    Three minutes.
    Two.
    â€œSo do you have anything else you want to talk about?” Dave asks.
    Last chance, I think. Tell him about seeing Ty.
    â€œNo,” I say. “I’m good.”
    Which has to be like Lie #17 in this session alone.
    Then I stand up, even though I still have ninety-six seconds left, and walk away from therapy as fast as I can go.
    I have dinner with Dad at Olive Garden. We normally have dinner together on Tuesday nights, after my regular Tuesday session with Dave. Because Megan has yoga on Tuesdays. Dinner with Dad is always a quiet affair because he has even less to say than I do. He doesn’t have the most exciting job in the world—he’s an accountant—and he knows I don’t want to hear about Megan or the house he lives in with her or how they pass their time, so there’s not much left to discuss. It was easier when Ty was with us (although Ty hated the Dad dinners and was always finding last-minute excuses not to show), because at least then we could talk about sports.
    Now we’re down to one safe topic of conversation.
    â€œHow’s school?” Dad asks.
    â€œI got a seventy-one on my calculus midterm,” I blurt out.
    I don’t know why I tell him. It’s embarrassing, especially with my dad, who’s obviously a bit of a numbers guy himself. I can’t lookat him when I say it. I’m sure my face is bright red, but I keep picking at the salad like everything is fine.
    Dad puts down his breadstick. “That sounds serious.”
    â€œIt is serious,” I agree. “My grade’s down to at least an A-minus. Which means I’m not going to be valedictorian.”
    â€œCan you retake it?” he asks.
    â€œNo.” Lie #18.
    â€œI see.” He clears his throat, then goes back to eating the breadstick.
    â€œI’m sorry, Dad,” I say after a minute. And I am. I hate disappointing him, even after everything. I care what he thinks.
    â€œIt’s not important,” he says, but he doesn’t mean it. Dad’s always going on about how hard you have to work to be the best, to excel at everything, to reach for the very top—the best grades, the best education, the best job—so that you can live up to your potential, he always says, which is where I read so that you don’t end up an accountant in Nebraska with a divorce and two (wait, make that one now) kids when you could have been so much more.
    We eat. Dad drinks two glasses of red wine, even though he hates wine. Then he pressures me into ordering dessert.
    â€œHow’s your mother?” he asks as I disassemble a piece of tiramisu.
    I could tell him about the crying thing. But he doesn’t want to hear that. He doesn’t want to know that she cries all the time and that she doesn’t get out of bed unless she has to be at work or church and that she sleeps with Ty’s old stuffed monkey clutched to her chest. He doesn’t want to hear that she thinks Ty is still in thehouse, and I don’t even know what he’d do if I told him what I saw in the basement.
    He wants me to say that Mom’s okay.
    So I say, “She’s all right”—Lie #19—and Dad pays the check. We put on our coats and wander out into the cold night air, and he hugs me stiffly, and then, as usual, we go our separate ways.

5.
    THE HOUSE IS DARK WHEN I GET HOME. Mom must have already gone to bed, which