He slid down the doorframe until he was sitting on the threadbare carpet. His room was a museum of a younger self: guitar picks that no longer inspired him, a half-finished model of a ’69 Charger, a stack of college brochures he hadn’t opened. Everyone kept asking, “What do you want to do with your life?” As if seventeen was supposed to be the answer and not the question itself.
“He’s just so angry,” she whispered, her voice a razor blade wrapped in tissue. “I don’t know this person anymore.”
Her face did something complicated. Relief. Worry. A flicker of the woman she used to be before life made her careful. “Okay, Roo. Be safe.” rocco-s pov 17
His mother’s knock came. Two soft raps.
The world, Rocco had decided, was not built for a boy who felt everything in capital letters. At seventeen, his bones ached with a fatigue that had nothing to do with sleep and everything to do with the performance of being fine. He stood in the doorway of his bedroom, one hand pressed flat against the jamb, watching his mother cry on the phone in the kitchen. She thought he couldn’t hear her. He heard everything. He slid down the doorframe until he was
Rocco stood up. He walked to his mirror and looked at the boy staring back. Dark circles. A jaw that needed shaving but not badly enough to bother. A small scar above his eyebrow from a bike crash when he was twelve—back when pain was simple, just gravel and blood and a mother’s kiss.
She looked up, startled.
“Yeah,” he said. And for once, he didn’t say it like a lie.