And I am desperate; my words tumble faster and faster as they leave me. As I try to get her to see me. She sits up and she slaps my hands away when I try to touch her. She’s crying and I want to too, because I hate seeing her so upset. She’s ugly when she cries, especially with her face all banged up, but I still love her. Despite everything that’s changed, that’s the one thing that hasn’t.
“I love you,” I say, imploring her to see me like I see her.
“I hate you,” she replies.
“You don’t mean that.” My heart is frozen in my chest mid-beat as it waits for the knife to drop, the axe to slice through my veins and sever my soul from my body.
“I do, Ethan. I really, really do. I never loved you. I used you right from the start, why don’t you see that?” And she’s crying, but she’s also angry, and I don’t know why she’s angry. What did I do that was so wrong? What did I do that made her fall out of love for me? Because you can’t fake love, and I saw love in her eyes so many times when we were kids. It couldn’t have been an act, it couldn’t have.
It was real.
It was true.
She had my heart.
And I had hers too!
“I wanted to get away from my life—my dad, my mom, your dad, and you. Everything. It was all bad. It was all fucked up. Why don’t you see that, Ethan? Why don’t you see how fucked up it all was?” She puts her head in her hands, and she’s not crying now but tears are still falling. When she looks up her eyes are empty, and her face is twisted in anger and pain and gratefulness. Yes, gratefulness, and I see it, that spark.
“You killed for me, Ethan.”
“Because I loved you.”
“Because there’s something wrong with you!” she screams. “And I knew that, and I used you for that!”
I shake my head no, but deep down I know she’s right. I’m not completely stupid. There has to be something wrong with someone who kills another person. That’s not a normal thing to do. That’s why we’re so perfect for each other.
“He was hurting you,” I whisper to her. The words want to come louder, but my throat is tight and closed. “I told you I wouldn’t let him hurt you anymore.”
“I’m bad,” she says. “I’m no good for you. I never was.”
And she sounds just like my mom. And I guess, if I’m being truthful with myself, deep down I know she’s right.
But that’s the crazy thing about love.
Love doesn’t care about the bad or the good. It just is.
It loves regardless.
“I know, but I don’t care,” I return, and I look into her face and I reach for her hands, and she lets me hold them. And they are so soft—not like mine at all, rough and calloused from years of cleaning toilets in prison. From bleaching and mopping and dusting. I’ve cleaned my whole life. Going from one mess to another. I cleaned up Carrie’s mess. And I cleaned up Benny’s blood. I cleaned up Carrie’s kitchen, and I’ll clean this mess up too.
“You have to let me go,” she pleads, and her tears are back now. They trail down her bruised cheeks like raindrops on a window.
And I think it’s funny how now she’s asking me to let her go when it was only an hour or so ago that I asked her to do that very same thing for me. Wow, how things are changing and turning all the time, but they still come back to the same thing.
“You can’t keep me,” she says.
“But I want you,” I say, and I choke on the sadness that I’m trying to keep down. On the trueness of that pitiful statement. My heart feels like it will burst out of my chest at any minute. It’s swollen and painful and I can’t breathe through my own panic.
“You always did,” she says. “But I’m no one’s. I’m not a thing you can own and keep. You can’t buy me, or bribe me. You can’t force me. I’m my own person and I make my own choices and my own mistakes. And I’m making this one too, just like I did all those years ago. Because it’s my decision to make. I am bad, and I accept that. I’ll do whatever I have to do to survive.” She slams her hand on the table. “You have to know that by now, Ethan!”
All those years ago. So many years have passed, but everything is still so fresh. So crystal clear in my mind. Finally. I see it all now. Like a perpetually shifting reality, everything is now finally clicking into place.
