Right now. In her house.
A house I stupidly talked my way into, if only to hurt us both in the process.
“You deserve everything, Riley,” I tell her, even though I recognise I’m getting into dangerous territory
She looks at me in that way that she has. Jesus, that look makes me hope and dream, longing for something that doesn’t belong to me…something that I’ll never have in my hands.
Something that will never be mine.
And then, Riley kills me simply and swiftly, burying me six feet under.
“I have everything I need. I have my adorable brother, my work, a few good friends, like you.”
Despite her words, her voice is melancholy, full of solitude.
Hers.
And mine.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to bring you down like this. Don’t feel like you have to tell me these things,” I tell her because I would prefer to suffer in silence rather than see her in pieces.
She shrugs. “I have to tell someone and…I wanted to tell you.”
“Me? Why?”
“Because you’re the only person I trust.”
She says it looking me in the eyes. She says it without hiding, without distraction, and without making it easier on herself.
In this moment, sitting on the sofa, Riley is speaking to me with her lips, her eyes, and her soul. She’s giving me a part of her that she doesn’t show to the rest of the world.
And she steals my heart.
I know this is probably the most painful part of her life, the part that she keeps locked up. The part you would never want to share with anyone. But she shared it with me.
Her story is something that opens old wounds and forces me to remember, It’s the thing that doesn’t let you close your eyes at night, that gives you nightmares of free-falling from the 78thfloor of a skyscraper in one of those never-ending flights where you are screaming but you can’t hear your own cries; where you try to react but you can’t move a muscle. Then you wake up in agony, drenched in a cold sweat. And you understand that you never want to feel that pain again, even if it was worth all of the love in the world.
I let her talk, in a voice that is barely audible, but that seems to be screaming in my ears. She speaks calmly, having already accepted what life has given her. She hasn’t shed one tear, and I know that in her place I would be sobbing under the table, hugging my knees to my chest.
She speaks and invades my world, seeking out my every piece.
And she finds them all. One by one.
The most absurd thing is that she isn’t aware of what’s happening. She couldn’t imagine that by opening this door today about her past, she’s also opened the same door into mine. She doesn’t know that her suffering has already become a part of mine, that I can’t think about anything but her. I’d like to find a way to erase what she’s gone through and colour myself into her world.
I’d like to tell her that not all men are like her father. That she can have everything, she just needs to open her arms to the right man. That I wouldn’t ask for anything more than to live in her eyes. That I wouldn’t ask for more than the chance to stay next to her every day of my life. That she never has to hide who she is, but that she has to let herself be discovered because there’s someone before her now who understands and feels all of the same things she does.
That I would be willing to do anything to be able to love her and be loved in return.
But I don’t tell her any of that, I keep it to myself, like I always do. I bury it, hiding it deep down, where all my fear and rage reside.
The pain is suffocating.
“Can I ask you something?” she asks, biting her lip.
God, I’d bite that lip off in an instant.
“Y-yeah, sure,” I stutter like an idiot.
