I don’t want soft, gentle looks full of quiet tenderness.
I don’t want wistfulness or longing.
I don’t want anyone to tell me that my story is still unfolding, or blah, blah, other boring bullshit. I don’t want alecture about how precious hope is. Hope is nothing. My past, present, and future are nothing. I was okay with that until this woman with the white-blonde hair, and the heavy makeup and her… her fucking safety pins and piercings and goddamn ideas about connection, rolled into town. I was fine until she got ideas about me not being fine even though I said I was fine.
The finest of the finest of the fine.
I didn’t even get to see Fawnie’s cat, I insulted her cookies, and I ran away like a scared five-year-old because shit was exactly as real as I knew it would be.
Fuck. I amthewinner.
Yup. One hundred percent unsalvageable material right here.
I don’t even know what my problem is anymore.
Hard to pick when there are SOOOOO many.
I want silence. I don’t want to be smothered and ruled and erased by it. I don’t want to be loved, but I undeniably keep shoving down the need for it. I purposely cling to the shadows, all the while hating it and craving the sunlight. I don’t give a shit about being deserving, and at the same time, I want so very badly to beworthy.
Let her think it’s all because of the scars. I know they aren’t so bad. But it gives me something to hide behind.
Slap, slap, slap, slap.
My head angles at the sound of bare feet hitting concrete.
Damn it. Why can’t she just back off?
My heart gives a nasty stutter, then leaps into my throat. I’ve never in my life felt so…fragile. Not through all the years after, or all the years before the fire when I was told I was useless, a waste of space. I won’t say my emotions were what they should have been or that they approached anything close to normal, but I feel as though if I tripped and fell now, I’d break all over the ground. If I fell, I’d never be able to get up again.
I turn around, knowing what I’m going to see. Her hair flies out behind her, her bare legs flash with every fast stride. Her skirt swishes around her golden thighs. She looks like a bronze statue come to life, but the tears glistening on her cheeks, running over her jawline, her nose, and even her perfect coral lips, are very human.
She’s crushed. I did that to her.
She looks so innocent and kind and good.
I’ve stopped walking and I’mstaring. I want to turn around and run, disappear where she can’t chase me, to save her from herself, but just like the first time we did this, I don’t move. I can’t.
Especially when I finally notice what she’s cradling in her arms.
A wrapped up plate filled with cookies.
She’s been running for blocks, carrying fucking cookies, crying, in bare feet. She took time to make me a plate of cookies and to wrap it up, but not to put on shoes, so that she didn’t lose me. She had no idea where I was parked.
She slows down thirty feet from me. She tries to compose herself, but it doesn’t work. She sniffles loudly as she walks right up to me.
I’m so raw. The past has been dredged up. I’ve been scraped down to nothing.
There’s no chance in hell that I’m going to be able to come up with words. I need to tell her that I’m sorry for being such a douchebag. I’ve tortured her for no reason other than that I hate myself and that I’m an asshole. I don’t want to be the dumpster fire that lights her way. We’ve both had enough flames. It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that I can’t chase her away and that makes me feel even shittier.
Turns out, I don’t need words. She thrusts the paper plate of wrapped cookies straight into my arms. “I’m s-sorry,” she gets out between gulps of air and sniffles. She swallows forcefully. “I know you don’t want to hear it, so let me say it once and then it will be done forever and you won’t have to hear it again. I’m sorry that I broke my word to my dad and to you, and I’m sorry that I should be sorrier about that. I’m sorry that you were right. You’re always going to be my hero for saving me and Bubby, but I haven’t built you up into some god or- or- I don’t know…” she pauses, trying to get her breath.
“Look, I know you’re just a person. I can see how lonely you are, and that kills me. I’m sorry that you got hurt. I’m sorry for the burns. I’m sorry about all the other hurts that have nothing to do with scars. I’m so sorry for the people in your life who should have been there and weren’t. I know why you needed to get away tonight, but I also know that you don’t want to be alone. I don’t understand thewhyof it. I just know that I need to be here for you, even if you say you don’t want me to. I have this feeling that I can’t explain. It’s not magic. It’s real. And- and…”
She swipes at her cheeks, takes a deep breath, and launches herself at me. I didn’t play fair all night, and she matches my gameplan. I’m clutching a plate of cookies and can’tstop her from wrapping her arms around my shoulders. Her hand carefully traces a pattern up to the back of my neck. Her fingers are scalding hot when she tilts my face down and raises hers.
She doesn’t mash our mouths together and kiss me with the aching desperation of someone who has thought about this moment, longed for it, for years. She doesn’t climb me or whimper into my mouth, bite me, or tease me. The kiss is slow. Almost chaste.
It still rocks my entire goddamn world.
