But then he sits up to stare at me with this horrified, confused face.
“Who the fuck are you?” He asks—and yeah. Who am I? This guy is incredibly handsome. Big brown eyes, neatly groomed mustache, obvious gym rat. He’s got no shirt on—hair wet and I can smell from here that he smells just like Aaron’s body wash.
Who am I? Who am I to think I belong here? Of course this is what he’d want.
I bet this guy doesn’t scream in the middle of the night—doesn’t have panic attacks when women get too close.
I can hear the shower running—can hear him in there. Washing away the evidence, rinsing away the betrayal. From this shower I won’t be able to taste this shirtless man when Aaron holds me tonight.
“Sorry—” I mumble, taking a step back. “Wrong apartment.”
“Okay…” The guy’s still staring at me like I’m a crackhead who wandered in off the streets and honestly, I probably look like one. I can feel my heart constricting.
I can see me and Aaron all around this apartment when my eyes flicker away from the couch guy. In the kitchen making French toast—watchingJawsin the living room. If I walked down the hall we’d be laughing as we make bubble beards on each other in theshower—listening to me yell at Aaron for never emptying his pockets as I switch out his laundry for him.
And way in the back—in his bedroom on that bed—he’s making love to me.
Pushing deep inside of me he’s telling me he loves me, that we’re one, that he can’t live without me. He’s holding me down so I can’t leave him—he’s digging his teeth into my flesh and promising to be my god forever.He’s making love to me.
Has he made love to this guy? On that bed? On this couch? Every wound on my body aches.
“Dude?” The guy prompts and I turn around and leave.
I’m taking the public bus. No one will recognize me like this anyway.
I’m staring at my hands in my lap—watching how they shake, how they crust over with my blood. I’ve barely seen my blood over the past few months. A few weeks ago, when Aaron marked my neck, I bled—but I never saw it. He cleaned it quickly, licking at it then washing it with soap and water. Then he disinfected it, added ointment and a bandage. Has he… if couch guy turned around would he have one too? A scar? A testament to Aaron’s true love—his heart and soul?
I don’t remember having bled since that night, since the night he first told me he loved me. And now I bleed again—a tribute to the cruelty this existence demands.
Nothing in this world will ever make sense to me. How am I able to try so hard to want to live—to be good, to push on—and still have this be my reality? Aren’t you supposed to achieve something when you work really hard? Aren’t you supposed to reach a goal at some point?
The world is acting like it doesn’t want me in it. And if that’s the case—then like a toxic lover—please stop leading me on and justlet me go. Why make me fight? Why have me beg, desperate and crying, clawing at your feet every single day when you don’t even want me?
Aaron—why? I don’t… there was no reason. He’s the one who told me he loved me first. He didn’t have to say that. It was an unnecessary lie, so cruel. And if it was true—and when I was admitted he truly did fall out of love with me—he should have just said so when I confronted him. Want to know what’s more harmful to a person in recovery than telling them you don’t love them anymore? Saying you do when you don’t. Giving them a few weeks of bliss and ripping it away. Aaron decided to show me exactly what life can offer you—that you can live a life of happiness. And then reminded me that it just isn’t possible formespecifically.
“I want to fuck you. I want to marry you. I wish I could get you pregnant—make you have my kids.”
What really bothers me—what I really can’t wrap my head around—is howrealhe looked. Those tears—the cries. His pleas as he held me and begged me to love him back, as he fucked up into me and told me to never leave him. Those hands—his body trying to merge with mine. It all felt so honest.So real. How? How was he able to do that? To fake it—lie? That kind of passion, that sincerity is life-altering and he threw it on like a mask. Like a performance he gives once a week to little boys like me.
“Every time I fuck you from now on—whether it’s nice and slow, or like an animal in heat—know I’m so fucking in love with you the entire time I’m doing it, and I always have been.”
Andfuck—I looked nothing like that guy. We were polar opposites in every way. Did he lie about that Connor guy, and he really was talking about not being attracted to guys like me the whole time?
“Baby—you take me so well. I told you—destined. Set in motion the moment I saw you. I watched you grow up right next to me—watched as our bodies grew in sync to fit together this perfectly.”
Yet he doesn’t even find me attractive? How is this possible? Fuck—my head hurts—I think Ronnie punched me in the temple a few times. I went in and out of consciousness one or twice there in themiddle.
I’d rather Ronnie beat me to a pulp every day for the rest of my life than lose Aaron’s love. I’d rather go all the way back in time and restart—never saying hello to Felix, if this is how it ends. If my destiny is to love him so briefly—to carve him into my body, paint myself into his, and then let him go—then I don’t fucking want destiny. I want death. I don’t care how it sounds—he was all I was living for. The life we could have, what his love meant to me. What it made the world—the meaning of this lifemean to me.
I can’t even pretend to hate him if I wanted to. If I wanted to take this heartbreak and twist it into something nasty—something volatile and terrifying, something akin to anger—I would not be able to. I would not be able to look at his face—at those hands, at that little blue bird and hate him. I can’t hate him for flying away as all birds do. They always leave the nest in the end. It’s the circle of life—and all things in my life must hurt me at least once.
“I would die if you asked me to.”
I watch the scenery fly by as I sit through the ride to the Dickinson house—ready to enter for the first time in years.
You may not have meant it Aaron, but I did. No, I won’t kill myself—not when I know what it’ll do to Felix, do to all of our friends and the Archer parents—but I’ll want to. I’ll want to every fucking day.
And if you ever,everhave mercy on me and ask me to kill myself—I’ll consider it your last act of love—the grace of my benevolent God.
