“Henry, what is this?”
“Take a seat, Molly,” he said, I couldn’t see his face, but his voice was a little cold as he let go of my shoulders and gave me a little push forward. I slowly walked towards the table. Henry pulled the chair out for me. I was facing the back of the boat, watching the pier disappear behind me as Henry took a seat down next to me. This time his smile seemed more genuine. But I leaned back in my chair. Keeping my hands clasped tight in my lap.
“Henry, what is this?” I asked again, saying each word clearly. I wanted fucking answers, and I wanted them now.
“It’s just like our first date, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. It’s exactly what I thought as soon as I saw it. Although, when I came to meet you on that date. There wasn’t exactly an elephant sitting between us, you know about the fact, you know something about what I believed to be the hair of a dead person that I saw today.”
Henry sat up taller, clearing his throat, as he clasped his hands together on the table. Suddenly Jackie appeared from behind me, placing a tall glass of sparkling wine in between both of us, without saying a word before quickly disappearing.
“I am very aware that there is an elephant in between us. I’ve been aware that there has been an elephant in between us since the moment that I met you, because I swallowed that elephant. I’ve lived with it dormant inside of me for most of my adult life. Even the people who are close to me don’t know about it. And the moment that I met you, I knew it had to be shared. I knew that it was something that I would finally need to talk about. Because I can’t hide anything from you. And I don’t want to.” He unclenched his hand and reached towards my arm. His fingers were dancing along my skin. “I also don’t feel like I have to, you told me yourself, I will never be judged by you, and visa versa. Because we understand each other, in a way that no one else can. We were meant to meet, you and I.”
I sat still, once again locked in his eyes. In our vortex. “I can’t hear any more words from you that don’t give me answers, Henry. What have you been hiding from me?” My voice squeaked as I felt a lump rise in my throat. I didn’t want to say it, but I couldn’t hold it back. “Whatever it is that you have been hiding from me, I highly doubt that I am the first person who knows about it. You can’t tell me that Jackie doesn’t. Otherwise, why would she be here now?” And there it was, my obvious jealousy now on display.
Henry sighed, he didn’t say a word. He knew what this did to me. He placed both of his hands on either side of the table laying them palm up in front of me. At first, I hesitated, but in his gaze I felt safe. In his gaze I melted. In his gaze all of the possible stories that I had made up began to fade. There was no point in making them up anyway. Not until I knew the truth. I hesitated at first, but then my hands reached towards his as he wrapped his fingers into mine.
“Yes, she does know. That is true. Jackie has really been my right-hand lady. But, not in the way you might think… never in fact.” I nodded. I knew that he was clearly not interested in her, but I didn’t necessarily believe that Jackie’s feelings were the same.
“I don’t want flowers, I don’t want wine. I want the truth. All of the truth, and I want it now goddamn it, Henry, please.” I said as I pulled my hands away from his again.
“I just need to know that you’re calm first. I need to know that you’re in your best state. I want you to hear me and hearme clearly. Which is why I wanted to bring you here. Not only, am I taking you here to show you something… I wanted to recreate our first date as best that I could so that you still remembered that everything that I am about to tell you… Well, I’m still me. I’ve still given you all of me. Heck, I’ve given you more of me than I have given anyone else before. And I would never take any of it back. Everything that I told you this morning, what I am about to tell you, it doesn’t change any of this. I’m so in love with you, Molly. I want this life with you, all of it.”
His eyes were peeled on me, watering again, but this time tears fell. And there he was again, the hurt little boy that still lived inside of him. The one that my loveless inner child felt nothing but loved by. My stomach churned and my heart panged. I wanted to reach for his hands again. This morning was possibly the best morning of my whole entire life, and now we were here. Now I didn’t know if I wanted to know the truth. Maybe it was best to let it be, stay in ignorance and stay inside my dream. But I kept my mouth shut. There was nothing left for me to say, and everything for him to.
“Can I ask you a question first?” he said.
I sighed, crossing my arms in front of my chest, breaking his gaze. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said nervously. “I know, you want answers. But to explain everything… I just wondered, what is it that you want most in life, Molly? What is it that fuels and fills everything that you do.”
Love. If he had asked me that question on the very night that we met, I knew that I wouldn’t have been able to answer it. I was lost, even though the answers to what was driving me was right in front of my eyes. The real reason that I had applied for that reality television show was the same reason that millions of people across the country tuned into watch it. We all wanted to believe in true love. It was the only thing that had been missing most of my life. It was the one thing that I craved from the very moment that the ones who were meant to give it to me unconditionally were taken away from me. I had Elyse, but I knew deep down she craved the same thing. She never wanted to end up in the marriage she did. She craved the feeling of more… just as much as I did.
Love was my answer. And by the way that he was looking back at me right now, I didn’t even need to ask that question in return. His was the same. We craved love, not just love but a deeper understanding. We craved a love where we could be seen fully in each other’s eyes with no judgement, nothing to hide. That was why there was a completely different word inside our gaze. Because together we had that. I’d waited so long for something like this, I hoped to God there was some logical answer to all of this mess.
“I think you’re very aware of my answer,” I said, “You know all too well, it is the same as yours.” I was mad at Henry for just speaking words and not getting to the point. When I was doing the exact same thing. We’d told each other that we’d loved each other before, but I wasn’t going to scream it from the rooftopsagain. Because I wanted his love more than I wanted him to know. I wanted to please him more than he would ever know. There was still a part that a woman with my wants and needs would need to play. And that was no matter what, he would have to fight for me. That was the only way that both of our fucked-up notions of love would be fed.
“I’ve told you a lot of my story, but there are some defining moments that I left out. I haven’t been completely honest, and there have been some white lies… all of which I will confess to you now. But just like you said… we both do what we do for the very same reasons, the reasons that hinder us, hurt us and that have bought us both together in this very moment right now….” I bit my lips shut.
Henry’s island was now nothing but a speck in the distance. The rain had stopped and the thick grey clouds behind his head began to disappear. A simple ray of light shining down between the clouds, and I wondered if this was a sign of a silver lining in his truth.
“Okay, start from the start,” I said, “I want to hear it all, start from the first lie.”
“I told you about the very moment that I knew, I loved blood. The smell of it, the taste of it. All of the comfort that it gave me. I told you that I hid that fetish for so long. In fact, I hid it for most of my life. It wasn’t until my mid-twenties, when I decided that I wanted to explore it.”
I gulped. So I wasn’t the first one who had given him what he wanted. I guess I should have known that. It was probablystupid of me to even presume that from the start. But I was the one that was sitting here, I was the one that had given him it, and I was the one that had stayed.
“Obviously by my mid-twenties, my name was very popular. The press was already calling me the bachelor of the city and my face was pinned in a lot more places than I wanted it to be. So, I did some research, I found a place underground in the city, where I could learn to explore the fetish. It seemed safe, sanitary. But still, I was too nervous to visit. If I ever got caught there my life would have been over. I had run into Jackie not too long before this. It was when we had reconnected. I believed that she told you the whole truth to our story, and she was living in one of my apartments and doing some personal assistant work for me. One night over dinner and a couple of wines. I spilled the beans, told her about the dark secret that I had been living with and how much it felt like it was eating away at my insides needing to be unleashed. She didn’t judge me at all, in fact she helped me. She called the facility that I found, and she had organized someone who worked there to come over to my house… She was a lovely girl, beautiful girl. Pale skin, freckles, bright green eyes and long red hair. Hair as red as her blood in fact. Her needs were the same as mine, so we explored them. Until I took it too far. I cut too deep. She bled out over my apartment. And there she was, lying dead. I’d murdered her, Molly. I’d killed her.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
He had killed someone. He had killed someone, with the exact same fetish that I had let him express on me. He had taken things too far with me only last night. With this new information there was only one thing that I was thinking. And it was… there was someone else before me. I knew death. I knew that I had killed. It was the only vivid memory I kept from my childhood. I too knew what it was like to kill by accident. I was the one who they screamed at. I was the one who wished it would all end. I was the one who threw the toy with that very intention. The very toy locked dad’s break in the moment that ended my parents’ life.
But he had fully unleashed on someone who had died. She had spread her blood all through his luxurious penthouse, and I bet he licked up every single bit of her pouring blood. Images flooded my mind of his tongue becoming the mop to liquid that once gave her life.
Is that what he wanted the most? Is that what this fetish was about? Did he want someone to die for him? Was that the highest expression of love that he needed? Because it was the only one that he had ever known.
“I wanted her image to live on, so that’s when I created the digital version of her. She was so bright, there needed to be some sort of memory for her life.”
“Ruth…” I sighed and he nodded.
