“Not nearly. Dr. Winters?”
At this, she almost went berserk. It took all the strength I had to keep her under control without hurting her. If I let her go, I worried that she’d really hurt herself by hurting me.
“Go to hell!” She shoved so hard against me that I moved an inch, but came back again, more ravenous than before.
I was so close to losing control of my own restraint, my muscles trembling with suppressed rage.
“Are you going to kill me?” she said, her voice so serious that it stopped me cold. “Are you going to become so impassioned by my silence that you take my life? You’ve thought about it before. I know you have! When you were mistaken about me and Rocco. But all you had to do…” She inhaled a huge breath, almost choking on it. “All you have to do is leave me to kill me! Clean, no blood stains on your hands.”
Releasing her wrists, not caring if she came after me with a knife or loaded gun, I took a step back, feeling like she’d wounded me with either one.
“Scarlett,” my voice came out in a hoarse whisper. “What the fuck are you telling me.”
“I’m telling you…” Her hands came to her heart, like the words alone would send the organ out of her chest, and she was holding it in. “I was sick, Brando. So, so sick. After you pushed me away, after you made me leave, after you made it clear I wasn’t who you wanted…It was hard for me to live. I did nothing but practice, dance.” She took a deep breath and released it. “Then Rainer took me out, that day, and I—wanted something, needed something, but nothing felt right. He asked me if I was in love. I told him yes. He asked me if the man loved me back. I told him no—not in the same way. He seemed to understand. He recommended that I speak to his mother.”
“Dr. Winters,” I said, my fists clenching.
“Yes. Dr. Winters.”
“You fucking lied,” I said.
Her eyes rose slowly to meet mine, her fists clenching again, all the resentment and anger bubbling to the surface once more, about to burst forth like a volcano, damming us both to ashes.
“Ifucking lied?” she whispered. “Is that whatIdid?”
“You told him no—I didn’t love you in the same way. You fucking lied.”
The moment seemed to linger, while her anger grew and grew and grew, untilBOOM, she came at me, grabbing me by the suit, wanting to hit me but restraining herself.
Her ferocity made it clear though—she wanted to shake me until all solids were jumbled loose.
“You broke me!” she wailed, though no tears were coming.
She had cried that river out. All that was left were memories and a deep gorge that had once been filled. I could never heal that hurt in her heart. It stood as a reminder of how much my decision had cost us both.
Rainer had reminded her tonight, taking her on a journey through desolate grounds.
“Youbrokeme! I had to see a doctor! Adoctor. I was sick! So sick that some nights I thought my heart was slowing, dying in my chest. When the next morning came, my heart still beating, that same slow, subtle beat, Ihatedthe sun because it came! I asked, no, begged for pills, something to—” She let go of me, slamming her hands against her chest. “Ease the pain! The constant ache. Nothing. Nothing helped me! And there you were, still breathing, still living. The one pill that was unavailable to me. The cure to it all.”
Wiping her cheeks, though she wasn’t crying, she shook her head, almost in disbelief.
“You know what Dr. Winters told me? There is no such pill, none to heal the pain of a broken heart. She advised me to let it hurt, to let the pain run its course.” She laughed that bitter laugh again, almost crazed, a bit of the witch Ettore had assumed she was. “Live, anyway, she’d said. Push through it, if only to go through the motions. The motions will lead you back to life.Hafuckingha! What a joke.
“The joke was on me, though, wasn’t it? I’d convinced myself that she was nothing but a fool who couldn’t understand what we have. She couldn’t have known our love, what we shared. But all lovesick people think that way, don’t they?No one understands. No one can understand.Listen to a love song, Violet told me; othersdounderstand.”
Her words were jagged stones, all her sharp pieces being hurled at me.
“So I did as the good doctor said. I went through the motions. Took cooking classes, read until my eyes blurred, explored the city on my bike until my legs felt like jelly, filled books with pictures of places I had been all alone, bought clothes and items for a ghost of a man, returned a real man’s smile now and then, went to the movies to see French films, danced until my feet bled, and then danced some more, and when the clock struck midnight, the eleventh of the month came along.Everymonth. Twelve months. A dozen roses. Adozenof them. Four hundred and thirty-two roses, marking three years of separation. Perfect, even with their sharp thorns. No card. No name. No ‘wait for me.’ No ‘I love you still.’ No promises.Nessuna.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath.
“Then I’d remember. I’d remember, and the nights would come again, the slow beats, and that hateful, spiteful sun. It would come too. It wouldalwayscome and shine its bright light on the inevitable wilting. Night, night hides everything, doesn’t it? The death. Even the smell of rot. But light, it’s brutal to its core, when all you want to do is hide. And no matter how hard a heart breaks, time moves. Despite it all, day and night come whether we want the days to or not. Especially if we’re hanging on just in case—just in case!—the one who has broken us decides today is the day to come back and fix the crack.”
Gaining my bearings, I cleared my throat, desperate for her not to hear the weakness in my voice. “You never needed to be fixed.” I opened and closed my hands, almost helpless. “It was me. I needed to be fixed.” There were no other words to use, no way for her to understand what it felt like to be a man.
No matter how well she understood me, there was one part of me that she didn’t know better than I did. That was the part of me that longed to prove to her what I could become. What I could amount to.
In many ways, I had to prove it to myself.
