because I have to be in control. Because I think I’m doing well! Because I’m a selfish fucking asshole! What right did I haveto say who Anka could and couldn’t love? We don’t choose who we love. We can’t change it.
And what right did I have to keep Athena’s father’s death from her? As though she didn’t have a right to grieve in whatever way she needed to.
I am not a man who cries. But I feel the salted tears burning against my eyes. I refuse to remove my palms from my eyes because I refuse to let the tears escape. But I feel them. I feel them everywhere. The pain of what I did in the past, and the pain of what I did again now. I destroy everything good that I have.
It takes me a long time to get myself under some semblance of control.
I shower. I get dressed. I make coffee, but I don’t drink it. I don’t even bother trying to make food because the thought of it churns my stomach.
All I want is to speak to Athena. And I can’t.
It’s an unconscious seeking of comfort when I dial my sister.
Maybe because she found a way to forgive me, maybe it gives me hope that Athena might do the same one day?
I dial Anka’s number and sit on the edge of the sofa with my head in my hand.
“Hi,” she answers.
“Hey. I fucked up. I fucked up so badly,” I groan in depression, my voice cracking.
“What happened?” she asks, flooded with empathy.
“I made the same mistake again and… Anka, I know I’ve said sorry to you before, but I have more understanding now. How much I hurt you… how…. I… she left me, Anka. I pushedher away because I tried to control things that I had no right to control,” I blurt out. “I made the same mistake again and only realized it too late.”
“Adrian,” she sighs softly. “Tell me everything.”
We speak for almost an hour. She tells me about what she went through when I hurt her. She speaks with honesty, from her heart, not hiding the brutal truth of her pain, but not seeking to accuse or judge. I listen. I listen because, somehow, understanding her will also help me understand Athena, and I owe it to both of them.
When she’s quiet, I ask her questions. She answers them.
We speak until I know everything. All the consequences of my selfish choices, my misguided attempts to keep them safe, were only ever brutal acts of control.
Near the end of the conversation, I cry.
But this time, I don’t stop the tears.
I let them fall, and I let Anka hear my embarrassment and my pain as I whisper again that I am so, so sorry for what I did to her.
“Where do you think she went?” I ask after I’ve caught my breath and have nothing but a hollow sense of numbness inside me.
“Maybe it’s best not to ask that for the moment. Let her be where she is because she chose it. If and when she wants to contact you… she will,” Anka says gently. “If she wants to forgive you, she has to do it in her own time.”
“She might never do that, though,” I mutter, not wanting to believe my own words.
“I did,” she replies.
***
That night I make spaghetti Bolognese.
But it doesn’t taste anything like hers.
Or it does, and I just don’t have the capacity to taste or feel anything right now. Anything except regret. After dinner, I leave the kitchen in a mess, not caring to clean it, and I trudge up to my bedroom and collapse onto the unmade bed.
But when I press my face into the sheets, I am overwhelmed by such intense loneliness that panic begins to set in.
So, I stand up.
