I am Bexley – Chap 25: “Heavy”

The weight settled in my bones before I even stepped into the room. Heavy. It was suffocating and relentless, like gravity had increased overnight and sucked all breath from my lungs. I stared at the familiar cracked leather chair in my parents’ living room—one of the few constants in a world shifting faster than I could keep pace with.

Every scar on that chair mirrored old arguments, secrets traded beneath hushed tones, and moments of brittle calm after storms no one knew had passed. Tonight, it hummed with a different tension—one born not of past wounds, but of readings mapped out in my mother’s eyes, of grief she still carried.

Despite the silence, the air volleyed with electricity. My mother watched me, hollowed and distant. It was unsettling how she looked older than she was

Her fingertips trembled over the edge of the ottoman, like she expected it to crumble beneath her.

I lingered in the doorway, leaning against the frame as though I could anchor myself there. My chest tightened. The letter in my pocket—delivered that morning—felt like hot coals, burning through every rational thought.

“We regret to inform you…” it began. I could still taste the metallic tang of fear as I read those words, their echoes still lodged in my mind. Every wintry breeze recalled that moment; my breath caught in my throat, and I dropped everything to run home. Refuse to believe. But the ink had dried, and denial offered no comfort.

I swallowed. No sound came.

My mother blinked, then pressed her lips together. My father hovered nearby, silent strength stiff as steel framing the entrance to the kitchen. Dad had always been steady. A lighthouse in turbulent seas. But even lighthouses falter when the sea rises too high.

Finally, I moved, sinking into the chair my knees protested against. My father exhaled softly, like a sigh of resignation I didn’t want to receive. My mother clasped her hands, knuckles white.

"I'm so sorry," she said, voice brittle as china.

I looked at the coffee table, at the mugs we used to share at breakfast. The one with the chipped rim that dad swore upstream as a sign of charm, not neglect.

“Is,” I caught, “Is there really no other way?”

Dad shifted. “We’ve called around. We tried appealing—”

I shook my head. “But...” My voice cracked. “I wasn’t prepared for this.” A laugh escaped me, twisted and hollow. Prepared? Who could ever be?

The silence thickened, oppressive as fog. I swallowed again, eyes brimming. I wasn’t a child anymore, but grief didn’t respect neat boundaries. It wrapped its claws around you no matter how tall you’d grown.

“Your application—” Dad began, carefully. “Even with everything—”

“So that’s it?” I interrupted. “It’s over?”

Mom pressed a palm to her chest, as though she’d been shot. “No. No, that's not what we mean.”

But what else could it mean? I’d poured years into those essays, late nights pacing across college dorm floors, passion seeping into every sentence about equity, about change. Internship recruiters, summer programs—propelling me forward. My hopes had been pinned on that acceptance.

We slipped into a quiet that swallowed words. My gaze drifted to the window, and I watched streetlamps flicker against the dusk outside. Each one stubborn, resisting darkness—like me, fighting a future swallowed by shadow.

My father cleared his throat. “There may be an option.”

I sat up, chest heaving. “What do you mean?”

Mom exchanged a look with him, a ghost of hope flashing in her eyes. “There’s a waitlist,” she said softly. “We can—”

“But that's not acceptance,” I murmured. “It's limbo.”

She shook her head. “It's something.”

Limbo. I closed my eyes, burning against the weight of possibility. A chance, maybe. A thread I could reach for. But what if that thread snapped?

I exhaled. “How long?”

“We’re still verifying—” Dad said. “Could be weeks.”

I pulled in a ragged breath. Weeks, in the universe of my plans, was too long. Weeks meant uncertainty, anxious nights blanketed in dread. Weeks were spent planning with both hands behind my back.

My throat went dry. I looked into my mother’s eyes and saw fear—how it had carved canyons in her features. She took a shaky breath. “Maybe... we can fill out more applications?”

My muscles bunched. “But they’re all late now.”

“It’s okay,” Dad said. “There are other programs, scholarships…”

My behavior, my stance, reeked of denial. But it wasn’t denial—was it? It was grief. It was mourning a dream I had already lost, before it ever fully bloomed.

I lay back, the heaviness pressing me into the chair as though it wanted me to understand: grief doesn’t wait for closure. It anchors itself in the present and doesn’t loosen unless you wrestle free.

The clock ticked heavy in the near-silent house, each second echoing. I clenched and unclenched my fists in my lap.

"How did this happen?" I whispered to the air. “With everything we did—”

Mom dabbed at her eyes. “It wasn’t enough,” she said. “Not for the university.”

“But that’s not fair,” I breathed. “I did everything right.”

Sometimes doing everything right just isn’t enough. That reality slammed through my chest, heavy as a punch.

My father adjusted his posture, like a brace. “There are other paths,” he repeated.

I turned to him, fully present in the moment, shaking. “But none of them feel like mine.”

My mother rose from the piano bench near the corner, her silhouette fragile against the lamplight. Her hands rested on the piano’s lid, and she closed her eyes. “Maybe yours isn’t the one you thought it was.”

Silence roared back at us. The piano keys sat idle—unplayed futures waiting for their chance to sing.

I pushed to my feet, voice low. "I don't know how to proceed," I admitted.

Mom moved beside me, placing a hand softly on my shoulder. It was the same place she’d comforted me as a child scraped my knee. Now I was an adult, blades of ambition slicing into my chest, and she offered the same steady presence.

“We’ll find a way,” she said, voice steady. “Maybe not the way we had in mind—but a way.”

And I believed her. Because the weight in my bones, as crushing as it felt, also drove me to stand—to rise. The gravity of disappointment was real, but so was the strength that rising offered.

I exhaled slowly, bracing myself.

They’d already offered me something I didn’t yet accept: a lifeline.

I nodded. “Okay.”

Mom squeezed my shoulder. Dad nodded, watching me as though he expected me to shatter—but I stood, heavy and unresolved, refusing to break.

In the murmur of that living room, in the trembling lull of possibility, I resolved to find the path I didn’t know yet. Heavy—but unbroken.