Her bright red lips edge into a flirty smile.“A girl who knows what she wants even if she doesn’t know what it is… hmm.”She saunters away.
My attention falls back to Henry, where I want it to be.Not on a menu.I shrug lightly.“They like my outfit.”
“You’re beautiful, Venus,” he says, sounding defeated.
I’m about to thank him, as is customary after a compliment, but he leans forward, his expression turning serious.
“I need to say something.You’ve helped me understand your point of view, and I’m thankful for it, but I need you to understand mine.”
I nod, nerves rising with his intensity.“I’m listening.”
He hesitates, his eyes roaming toward the jukebox as the song switches to “Still Into You” by Paramore.“This was Uncle Jay’s favorite place.He restored the jukebox—his grand opening gift to DeeDee.His own business was floundering, but he still invested in seeing hers succeed… He um, he died four months ago.”
“Henry, I’m sorry,” I offer, remembering the friendly man who nicknamed me Rapunzel for my long, blonde hair.
He fiddles with his silverware.“He struggled with his mental health, and instead of asking for help or even talking to us, he decided it’d be better to die, not to be a burden.”
My heart seizes at the pain evident in his pinched lips and furrowed brow.His words slice through me, mirroring what I said to him on the boat.
“That’s how it felt when you left, Venus.Like grief.Like life and love were ripped away from me without understanding why.It still feels that way.”
Tears weigh down my lashes as I comprehend what he’s telling me—that two people he’s loved have believed themselves to be burdens and vanished from his life.Forced him to grieve.Left him with unanswered questions.I should apologize again, but I know it won’t make any difference.That pain remains, nestled in like a burr, sharp on all sides.No apology will remove it.
“For me, too,” I breathe, though he only shakes his head.
“But you weren’tabandoned,” he says.“I should’ve been a better friend to you.A better boyfriend.I took you for granted.I wasn’t there for you, not the way you needed me.I knew you suffered, but not how much… maybe if I looked harder, paid more attention?—”
“It wasn’t your fault?—”
“Letting you believe you were aburden?Yes, that’s my fault.”He leans against the booth and pulls his inhaler from his pocket.
“You didn’tknow, Henry.You couldn’t have changed what you didn’tknow,” I say.
“Then, why didn’t you tell me?You always acted likenothingbothered you.You always said you were fine.You lied.”
“No, I didn’t lie.I don’t lie.Iwasfine… with you.Don’t you see?You were my only relief!”
DeeDee arrives with two frosty IPAs.“You two okay?”she asks, as he takes a quick puff off his inhaler.
“Fine,” he manages shortly.
Her penciled eyebrow quirks, but she disappears into the dining room.Henry stares into his beer, his messy brown hair hitting the rim of his glasses and shadowing his thoughtful eyes.He doesn’t seem angry anymore, but desperately sad, which might be worse.
“I kept my distance from you at school because, yeah, it was easier sometimes, but that’s what I thought you wanted.That’s what you said for me to do.I didn’t realize things were… that bad for you.I’m sorry, Vee.”
I lean forward, catching his eyes in mine.“Don’t be sorry.You made it all better.Bearable.With you, I was… just Venus.Do you understand what that meant to me?It was everything to me, Henry.Everything.”
I grab a napkin from the metal box on the table and dab my eyes, vaguely remembering how it felt to be myself without fear of judgment and missing that comfort and freedom.This conversation has probably been the most honest of my life.It hurts being this vulnerable, like I’m offering consent to be dissected on an examination table.Ah, here’s Venus’s broken heart.Let’s get that under the microscope and measure the cracks.Henry was the only person I could trust to hold a scalpel to my inner workings, and even then, sometimes the scalpel would slip, nicking my heart.I ache to return to our weird and lovely relationship that no one understood but us, and now that pain surges in me, a flood of want, bursting through my carefully designed barriers.I want him to know me beyond being the woman whodevastatedhim.
Devastated.I never thought I could hurt him like that.
When I left, I grieved.I feared the unknown.I lost my entire world, everyone, and everything I’d ever known.All those former pains shift behind a bigger one—that I devastated Henry.I trusted in his love for me then, but I suppose I expected him to dismiss it, the same way he did at school, or when we drifted into one of our long silences.Rather than grief, I imagined relief for him.Eventually.
Taking the scalpel to my inner workings means enduring another nick—I see how much I hurt him.His pain pours into me, saturating me, devastating me all over again.
A feeling that worsens when he says, “Youwere everything to me, Venus.I would’ve run with you if you’d let me.You and me, off on another adventure, like always.”
His hand flies up to catch the tears slipping from his eyes, and I crumble into a quiet sob, imagining that missed adventure.I never considered the possibility that he’d run with me.
