Because It Was You
The bad weather seemed here to stay as the darkness of night pressed in on the windowpanes. The thunder growled, the lightning carved furrows across the sky, and strange shadows crisscrossed the walls.
At least the wind had calmed, along with the drumming of the rain on the roof, which was now a soft, hypnotic mutter.
Trey didn’t say a word as I told my story, and he looked down the whole time, his fists balled on his thighs, his knuckles white. His lips were downturned; the muscles in his face were rigid.
It all felt so distant once I’d finished and I saw him looking so defeated.
“I don’t know what to say!” he shouted, barely visible in the glow of the embers. Then he cursed and sank back, overcome by sadness. “I don’t know how I was capable of such a thing.”
“It was a long time ago. Just forget about it.”
“I remember…”
“Trey, seriously, you don’t have to.”
“I need to talk about it.”
“Okay.” I gave in.
“I remember seeing you on the stairs. Talking with Hoyt. I was having a good time. All those people were there for me. Then myphone rang and…it was my grandfather. My mother’s heart had given out. She’d died…” Those words seemed to crush him beneath their weight. “I’ve always been a coward, and when something overwhelms me and I don’t know how to deal with it, I run. I’m trying to fix that part of myself, but that night…that night, too, I ran away. I remember I got hammered and I smoked a bunch of weed. But that didn’t make the pain go away, so I took some pills.” Ashamed, he concluded, “I didn’t usually take that shit, Harper, I promise.”
“I believe you.”
“After that, everything’s blurry for a bit, and then it goes completely dark.”
All sorts of emotions were gathering inside me. For him, that night was a black hole. For me, it was the aftermath of a bombing, and I was still feeling the aftershocks.
I stared at a ribbon of smoke rising up the chimney so as not to have to look at him, and with just a thread of voice, he went on.
“The next thing I recall is waking up and seeing you there. And I lost whatever last bit of reasonableness I had. I wasn’t thinking, I just reacted. All that mattered to me then was the thought that someone might find you in my room. It never occurred to me that you and I had…you know. I just never even thought of that.”
I nodded. His words were sincere, and he didn’t have to try harder to convince me. Overcome with emotion, he apologized. “I’m sorry, Harper. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. If I could, I’d go back in time and change everything.”
“Yeah. Me too.” I breathed in and out and tried to be completely honest. “Or not everything. I would only erase the part where you woke up and screamed at me. All that came before that… I liked it.”
I could tell my words surprised him, and my cheeks suddenly felt hot. I was grateful it was dark enough that he might not be able to tell.
“Come on, you can’t really think that! You slept with an idiot whowas so fucked up he couldn’t remember anything, and…” Now the gravity of what had happened had struck him. “My God, it was your first time! Someone should beat the shit out of me!”
“Don’t worry about it. There’s only one person who has the right to avenge me, and that’s me. And I’m not going to do it.”
“Did I… Was I gentle with you?”
“Very, very gentle, and very caring,” I admitted timidly, almost starting to sweat. “And I liked it. I mean, it wasn’t like in novels, where the virgin has four orgasms in a row and everything’s perfect. But it was nice. It was nice because…because it was you, Trey.”
“What does that mean?”
“I was so hung up on you back then, and you’d never give me the time of day. I was invisible to you. You were always surrounded by the hottest chicks and that made me feel like a zero.” What followed I didn’t want to say, but it seemed like the perfect night for confessions, so I went on, “And when you told me all that stuff in your room, I…”
“I did, though.”
“You did what?”
“I did notice you. You were the only thing I ever saw when you were around. What I said to you before I got angry… I meant those things, Harper. I wasn’t lying. I liked you. I thought you were gorgeous. Perfect. You grew up and you turned into a dream for me. I couldn’t take my eyes off of you, and when you came up to my room…I guess I let my feelings get the better of me.”
His confession had surprised me and had brought back to me how incredible that night had been, how sweet. The thought of it stung me. Looking at his lips, I wondered if I had imagined his words.
