How can you live with a thing like that?It’s a genuine question.But maybe I shouldn’t have asked him that today.
I move like a machine—I can’t allow any closeness, any warmthbetween us.I ignore Colin’s apologies.I want him to shut the fuck up, but that’s getting harder with every minute.
God knows what he’s been drinking.He lets me press him down onto my bed as I force myself to say it’s OK.It’s not OK.Nothing’s OK.But we’re not getting anywhere tonight, so I might just as well pull myself together and do for him what he did for me not so long ago.I owe this guy nothing, but I love him, so I have no choice.
“I never wanted to hurt you,” he manages once he’s sitting on the bed in front of me, and I hate him for how dark his eyes are.Brown and desperate.
“But you did.”
“I know.”Stop looking at me like that.Stop doing this to me.Stop making me want to forgive you when I can’t.“I didn’t mean to.I didn’t want to feel all this again.I wanted to do something right for once, Livy.”
I have to shut my eyes because it hurts too much.Because I suddenly want to say stuff I shouldn’t.It’s not your fault.You did nothing wrong.I don’t know enough about the situation, and I’m too hurt.
Instead, I say, “Go to sleep.”I don’t manage to sound harsh.Colin is sitting there, broken, drunk.I’m worried, I’m bloody worried about him, and even though I want to hurt him as much as he hurt me, I also want him to be OK.It’s so tiring.
The booze has knocked him out, and so have the tears—that’s probably why he lets me lean him back.Now he’s in my bed, and I don’t know where to go.
“Olive,” he says.My name always sounds so hard from hislips, but loving too.I hate it when he does that.And now I hate it more than ever.
“No.”
“Please.”
“No,” I whisper, but now my eyes are burning again because even I don’t believe that.
It feels like I’m letting myself down as I lie beside him.I don’t want this, but I need it.My heart is racing.I’m not crying anymore.We have to talk tomorrow, calmly, once he’s slept and sobered up.I have to listen to everything and decide what it all means.Whether I can keep on loving him or whether it’s too awful for that.But I know the answer.Even if it is too awful, I won’t be able to stop, and that scares me.It fucking scares me.
I don’t want to touch him, but the bed is too narrow.So I lie beside him and feel him fall asleep.My thoughts are noisy; my head is throbbing with overwhelm.Every heartbeat is like a stabbing in my temples.
This has to stop.This all has to stop.
I screw my eyes shut.
30
Olive
I wake up and my first thought is Colin.
My second thought is that none of this can be true.But it wasn’t a dream.He’s really here in my room, and I must have fallen asleep.At least for a while.
I blink—it’s pitch dark, so still the middle of the night.
I turn over and see him stirring.And then I notice how shaky his breath is.
I jolt upright.“What’s wrong?Are you about to whitey?Wait, I’ll get...”
“No, I...”His voice trembles.“I have to...I think I’m having a hypo.”It takes me a moment to get what he’s talking about.His blood sugar.I’d pushed that issue way down in my mind.
“Have you checked?”
Colin just nods.
“So?”I ask.“Wait, I’ll put the light on.”
I lean over and switch on my bedside lamp, squinting because it’s so bright.My head aches, but never mind that.Now I can see.Colin’s even paler, and there’s sweat on his forehead.I grabhis phone and the number jumps out at me off the screen.Two digits.Low.Seriously low.
“Have you eaten?”
