We were lost to it, lost to the idea of drawing our fears and hanging them up for all to see—this would hang forever in the life we created.
Even if it hung in our secret room, we’d know, we’d remember.
Sometimes we’d visit again to reminiscence. To see if we saw something different—shapes holding a different form, the colors not so awful together—because we’d moved away from that time.
Time defines, gives a different perspective the longer we move away from whatever it was we looked back on.
His eyes narrowed, trying to understand what my words truly didn’t say—I’m ugly now to you, because the reason you fell in love with me is no longer a part of me.
For once, I was the one having a hard time releasing the words that were pinned in place by daggers. Once free, scars would be left behind from their violent departure, ripped from the place they hid.
He held me up, my knees knocking, and my arms came up, shielding my heart—I was about to lose it.
He opened his mouth, about to speak, but then something crossed his face. Something quick and sharp. His mouth closed on a snap, deciding against whatever he was about to say.
His grip on me grew stronger, but I couldn’t find the strength to even complain, or to make a noise to alert him. I wanted to feel his strength, to know that he still held me up and refused to let me fall.
He lifted me up, my feet dangling above ground, and deposited me back in the rocker. He leaned against the arms, leaning closer to my face, but turned his eyes toward the driveway.
A bead of sweat ran down his throat, catching the light like a diamond, and then disappeared down his shirt. In an instant I regretted not touching him, catching it with a fingertip and then rubbing it into my skin.
Sudden or slow, though, I was too afraid to move.
He inhaled and released it through his nose in a warm stream. “You just told me that you tried to leave me because you lost the ability to dance. That when you were under, you already knew, and you didn’t want to live, afraid that I’d fall out of love. That I’d reject you. That I’d see you as less than how I saw you before. Am I fucking straight summing it up?”
I hadn’t said all those things—he had read me. Again, in his bones. A feeling that he’d accepted but still didn’t feel comfortable admitting. Though, he didn’t have to. His words were a testament to this…connection we shared.
He didn’t need an answer this time. He had only said those words to spell it out for me.
“I fell in love because she could dance,” he muttered, his hands squeezing the edges of the rocker’s arms. He braced himself against it, as though he braced against a storm. “All these years, I believed in the connection that ran between us. That it was the most truthful thing in my life. The most truthful thing that I’d ever experience in life. I believed it so deeply that I saw it—got a glimpse of what the blessed saw when water was turned into wine. A modern-day miracle. I felt it, as much as you did. Now I find out thatmy wifeliedto me.” He shook his head. “Our love has been a lie. Has to be if that’s the truth you claim to speak.”
His name drowned in my throat—I couldn’t even respond. I had cut him with my insecurities. He had cut me even deeper with his inability to understand how deep my fear of losing him ran. Who hemorrhaged faster, him or me, it was hard to tell, with both of us fading, getting weaker and weaker.
He released the rocker with force and it slid back before he lifted me from the chair again. A trembling breath escaped my lips, and instead of my heart falling out, it dropped to the pit of my stomach, too tired to even fight the enormity of the situation any longer.
“Where—”
“Pack your things,” he said, storming into the house. “You’re going to stay with your parents.”
23
Scarlett
After I’d touched death, closer than I had ever before, nothing felt real to me.
The nurses scurrying around the bedside, the doctors peering into my face, visitors coming and going, whispering words of encouragement in my ears, kissing my forehead, squeezing my hand, Italian love songs being sang, even down to all the smells.
The pain medication added to this disjointed feeling. One foot was set firmly in reality while the other slid slowly, drunkenly, over the line.
I hated the way the medicine made me feel. It deadened the pain, sure, but did nothing for the anxiety running through my veins. My heart always felt one beat away from suffocating me while it lodged in my throat. A frantic beating thing in a jar much too small. It contained the fear while it rendered me utterly useless.
Everything else had been numb to the world.
After I closed my eyes, then opened them, wouldthis still be my life, I wondered? Wouldthe current moment be real or a dream? Would my eyes blink and everything change?
One thing, though, always remained true. No matter where I was, reality or someplace on the other side of the veil, if he was there, time—or was it life?—moved forward.
Something solid and unwavering belonged to me. Something to count on, to hold on to, was allmine. So it really didn't matter where I was, or how long it would take me to understand what was real and what wasn’t.
