by Damian Bloom
I love you. Horrible little words. Meaningless. Manipulative. Hideous.
A sly voice, as distant as if it were traveling from a different era, whispers them in my ear. “Oh, Adam, you’ll never know how much I love you.”
How I used to eat those lies up from Mia. I wonder how many different men heard those words from her every day.
How badly they make you want to believe them…Does a more convincing lie exist?
When I hear Luis’s bare feet patter down the hallway, I close the diary and toss it back where it fell from. My stomach squeezes again, and all of a sudden, bile rises in my throat.
“Good morn—” Luis begins, but I shove past him into the bathroom. As soon as I kneel in front of the toilet bowl, my poor excuse for a breakfast gushes out.
Luis is by my side in seconds, reassuringly rubbing my back. “Still sick, huh?”
I shake my head. This doesn’t have anything to do with booze and everything to do with—
Another wave of sickness courses through me, and I heave again.
When I seem to be out of the danger zone, Luis helps me to my bed and drags the covers up to my chin. I expected him to be upset about last night. Or at least confused. I imagined he’d demand to talk about it, but he doesn’t. All I feel from him is care and patience. That repulsive, rotten word swirls around in my mind—love.
“You should probably rest today,” he says. “I’ll make you a cup of tea. Tell me when you think you’re ready to eat, and I’ll make you something small, okay?” With a smile much sweeter than I deserve, he pats my chest and stands up.
I squeeze my eyes shut and grind my teeth. This needs to end. Oh, man, this needs to end right now. He believes he loves me. Goddammit, he’s in love with me. The thought makes all of my hair stand on end. I thought he knew not to. I was clear enough, wasn’t I? That this isn’t a game I’ll ever play again. That my heart is not only wounded but gone forever, broken and incapable of taking the responsibility of such feelings from anyone. Not even someone as perfect as Luis. Especially Luis, who deserves so much more, who deserves the world, who deserves a man who’s not a deplorable emotional ruin. “Luis,” I murmur.
He whirls on his feet, concern etched on his forehead. “What’s up?”
My throat squeezes. It’s time to do what I’ve known I should do this entire time. Put an end to a dangerous, selfish game that only ever had one final destination. One I disregarded because it was too hard to be selfless, my desires too forceful not to give in. And now, I have to do what Luis always knew I would.
What I don’t know is how. How can I break this man’s heart? “I think it would be best for you to go home.”
He scoffs, dismissing the idea with a careless flick of his hand. “Don’t be silly. Who’s gonna take care of you?”
“I can take care of myself.” My mouth dries up. “I’ll just sleep…”
“That’s a good idea. Sleep it off. And I’ll go write, and then when you wake up, I’ll be here if you need me.”
“No, Luis.” I clear my throat. He shifts under the weight of the ominous silence that follows. “I want you to go,” I say, each word a sharp blade gliding across my body.
Luis falters. The muscles in his face seem to quiver for a second. But he regroups almost instantly, plasters a smile on his face, straightens his back, and says: “Okay, no problem. It’s a good idea, actually. You probably need some peace and quiet after last night. But if you need anything, you just have to call me. And maybe tomorrow—”
I wiggle a hand free from under the covers and press it to my brow, applying some pressure to the throbbing ache. Just get it over with. “No, no tomorrow,” I almost bark. “It would be best if we stopped seeing each other.”
Luis opens and closes his mouth a few times, but no sound comes out. Unable to watch him process the information, I choose to keep my eyes closed. There’s no why. There’s no how dare you.
“But…the book…” he eventually stammers.
“You’re almost done with it.”
“But there’s no ending.” His faltering voice slices through me. Please don’t cry. Please don’t cry. I can’t take it.
I attempt to speak through the lump in my throat. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” I struggle with a shaky breath that squirms its way into my frozen chest. “It’s not like I’m much help to you anymore.”
For an interminable moment, Luis doesn’t budge or speak. “But…there’s no ending.”
The sadness in his voice is an endless void. Something inside of me mirrors it. It’s like my heart, poorly sutured as it is, now tears open into a gaping wound, so big and ugly and painful that it could swallow my entire world.
It hurts. It all hurts so badly.
“Sometimes, no ending is the ending, Luis.” It’s like an invisible force is strangling me. My throat hurts from the poison of my words, my limbs ache as well because of how badly I need to rush out of bed and pull Luis into my arms and say, “Please don’t be in love with me. Please don’t expect anything from me. Please let what we’ve had so far be enough. Enough forever.” But I can’t. I can’t force Luis to limit his dreams, his ideals, only because I can’t fulfill them. Because, as much as I liked denying it, that’s what I’ve been doing all this time—forcing Luis to make of a frozen moment his home. And although I now have to live with the knowledge that I’m the worst kind of monster for it, I’ve got the chance to do something right for Luis. Let him go. Let him grow. Pray he finds what he’s looking for.
“Please go, Luis. It’s over.”
Luis
My vision wells up with tears before I can escape the room—Adam’s room; our room. Grinding my teeth, I will my tears to wait. I will not cry in front of him. I will not cry in this house.
Like a hurricane, I charge through the living room and the kitchen on some sort of depressing scavenger hunt. I drop my laptop, a few paperbacks, my diary, and a couple of clothes into my backpack. The house is littered with several others of my belongings, but it can’t all fit, and whatever doesn’t will have to stay here.
Hector almost trips me up when he crawls between my legs. He meows. Confused, scared, sad. A similar sound escapes my throat. For a second, I almost lose it and collapse into a blubbering, sobbing mess on the floor next to him.
But I grit my teeth again, and I curl my hands into tight fists of determination, and after a quick peck on the cat’s forehead—I can’t believe I’ll never see Hector again—I storm out of that house. Adam’s house. Our house.
No, just Adam’s house.
The cold late autumn wind scratches my skin, and I welcome it because external pain pulls focus from the mind-numbing internal agony I’m writhing in. Don’t cry, I tell myself. Not yet. Since my car’s not here, I’m forced to brave a thirty-minute walk home even though I feel like I’m being torn apart limb from limb. I briefly consider asking Peter to pick me up, but I can’t stop walking. Stopping would give my thoughts time to catch up with me, and once that happens, I’m done for. I struggle to hold myself together as it is.
Each breath is strenuous and must miss my lungs, because I continue to suffocate. Is this what heartbreak is? A dozen different deaths?
At the crossroad, an old lady in a fuzzy pink hat sneaks a look at my face and starts. “Sweetheart, are you okay?”
“Yes, Ma’am.” My voice trembles as much as hers.
Like a hologram, Adam’s face hovers before my eyes everywhere I look. Suddenly, my cheek is wet. I wipe the tear away. Not yet, goddammit! At least wait until you get home.
But more tears already line up at the back of my throat, and so does this feral, forlorn howl that begs to be let out.
It’s just like I’ve been told. Just like I’ve suspected. There’s no pain I can compare a shattered heart to.
It’s over.
But why? That’s all I wanted to ask Adam. Was it something I said or did? Did he pick up on what I couldn’t tell him, and it scared him away? My mind throbs with w
hys, and I regret not sticking around to coax an answer out of him. But I still had enough self-respect not to overstay my welcome.
Hopeless realizations of everything I’ve lost today crash into me like an endless line of derailed wagons. I’ll never see that wide smile that made his entire beard bristle. I’ll never hold him again, feel his heart beating against mine. I’ll never fall asleep to the low rumble of his voice.
Breathing gets increasingly harder. I lean against the side of an office building, and the street bustles with busy-looking, suit-clad people. Where are they rushing to? Don’t they know the world’s about to end? I’m vaguely aware of a few concerned and confused looks coming my way.
Nothing makes any sense. It’s like I’ve lost a part of myself.
Water drips down my cheek, but it’s not a tear.
It’s over.
Overhead, thunder shakes the sky. It starts pouring vigorously, as if until now, the rain’s been pooling in a giant pair of hands that have finally parted. Those who don’t have umbrellas run for shelter. They’re all too surprised by the sudden weather change to notice me anymore.
Finally, I let myself cry.
26
Adam
It’s been two weeks since I saw Luis last, and I still reach for him every morning. I fling a hand onto his side of the bed—the other side of the bed—only to clutch the empty sheets. And for a moment, I believe it was all a dream, and my heart squeezes. And then I remember it wasn’t, and my heart squeezes harder.
But for the most part, I’m doing just fine. My writing is darker, scarier than ever—gory even. And I’m productive. Man, am I productive. I could probably count on my fingers the non-work-related thoughts I allow myself in a day. I’m painfully aware of each one because they all revolve around Luis and…well, uhm, I guess they still sting a little.
But that’s bound to pass. One day, Luis will sneak out the back door of my mind, never to return. And I’ll stop drinking myself to sleep almost every night, and I won’t speak to him as if he’s there whenever I’m drunk, and I’ll no longer mumble his name in my sleep so loudly that I wake myself up, and for a second I hope he’s actually there, and I sit up and, breath bated, I wait to hear his breathing, but I don’t, and so it all comes back to me like a flood, and I almost cry, and sometimes I even do cry, and then I curse myself and—
Yes, it’s all bound to go back to normal eventually. All I can do is wait and take advantage of this distraction-free time to power through the rest of the first draft for this final book.
“Man, you look like a zombie,” Tim says one day when he video-calls me. “What’s the matter with you? Did your boyfriend leave you or something?”
My nostrils flare, but I calm myself down with a deep breath. “He wasn’t my boyfriend. But yes, if you must know, we stopped seeing each other.” I hope Tim doesn’t pick up on that pathetic voice crack on the last sentence.
He probably does, though, because he suddenly turns serious. “I’m sorry to hear that. I was actually…I mean, I thought you might have finally found someone who—”
I raise a hand to stop him from saying something I might not be ready to hear. “It wasn’t like that at all. We just had some fun, but I don’t have much time for fun these days anyway. I’m trying to get as much done as possible. Speaking of which…”
After successfully directing the conversation toward less personal topics, it manages to distract me from the ever-present pinch in my chest for a little over half an hour. But before he hangs up, an infuriatingly worried expression still anchored to his face, Tim says, “Hey, man, promise me you’ll take care of yourself, okay?”
I scoff and roll my eyes. “Will you ease up on the melodrama?”
“I’m being serious. You’re kind of freaking me out. Your eyes are dead, you speak like you’re in a trance, your beard threatens to devour your face, and you’re long overdue for a haircut.”
“Please,” I say, the last of my patience draining from me, “don’t hold back, tell me how you really feel.”
“I’m not trying to be mean. Adam, you look like you’re hurting, and there’s no reason you should go through it alone.” He sucks in a deep, self-encouraging breath. “I know breakups can be hard, especially if you might have cared for this guy in ways you haven’t for a long time…”
Bitterness surges through me, and, raising my voice, I bang my fist on the desk. “I’m not in love with him.” I’m as surprised by my outburst as Tim, but I refuse to backtrack. “And you need to stay the fuck out of my personal life.” There’s not enough time for Tim to react before I end the call and shove the phone away.
My own panting rings in my ears, each breath so labored it sounds like I’ve run a marathon. Why’s this fucking house so damn quiet? I reach for the first thing I can grab—a spiraled brainstorming notebook—and toss it across the room.
Luis’s presence persists, heavy on my shoulders. “I’m not in love with you,” I growl.
Stop talking to yourself, that exasperating voice of reason mocks. Luis isn’t here. You sent him away, remember?
But my imaginary Luis continues to scorn me—here but not really, forever gone but lingering just enough to drive me mad. “I’m not. I don’t love you. I liked you. I enjoyed the time we spent together, and I liked you enough as a person to not want to hurt you…”
Not even Hector breaks the silence of the house. Since Luis left, he’s returned to his old wandering habits.
“But I did hurt you.” I spit the words out, and they drip with self-disgust. “And now I feel guilty. It’s what I deserve.”
Yes. That’s what’s been troubling me, what’s been keeping me up at night. Guilt.
After cracking open a beer, I sit down at my desk to write. But my mind is reeling, and my hands are a little jittery, and I’m tired. It’s like I’ve been running for weeks. From myself. From reality, which won’t give up until it catches up with me.
Desperate for any sort of distraction, I decide to play some music. Maybe it could help. A bit of music to drown everything out.
Rushing through the list, I pick a playlist at random—anything but silence. To my dismay, it’s made up of mostly slow songs meant to allow me to focus on my writing. But tonight, they sound depressing. So I skip. One, two, three songs. I skip what feels like a dozen of them until the first few notes of that song hit.
The song. My skin prickles. A shiver snakes down my spine.
I turn the volume up, and all of a sudden, I’m outside in the driveway again, on a chilly night, coat and arms wrapped around my Luis, holding him tight.
The lyrics rip through me like bullets, bullets shot from a past I’d give anything to visit now.
I hope the encore lasts forever…
I catch myself swaying to the music, and then I stop, embarrassed. But I can’t hold back for long before I begin to rock again.
Stay forever, you know more than anyone…
My life teems with truths to choose from for today. It’s true that I hate dancing, just as it’s true I want nothing more than to dance right now. It’s true that I miss Luis so hard I could scream. And it’s true there’s a fucking tear in the corner of my eye.
What if by the time I realize, it’s too far behind to see?
How long? A voice inside me asks? How long will you screw yourself over until you realize that sheltering yourself from pain hurts worse than the pain itself?
As the scorching flames I’ve repressed for the past two weeks spread through my veins like a wildfire, I settle on two truths: Firstly, I love Luis more than I thought I had it in me to love anyone. And secondly, I need to get him back.
27
Luis
There’s a lot I’ve learned first-hand about heartbreak in the past two weeks. For example, it’s impossible to predict when it will hit. In the throes of it, when sorrow wrings you like a towel, it doesn’t feel like it will ever get any better. But then it does, for a little while. From time to time, it lets up a littl
e. You’re lucky enough to have something else to focus on, and for an hour or two, you don’t think about the person you’ve lost. Treading the water instead of drowning, you now believe you’ve begun healing. A light sparkles at the end of the tunnel.
But then, the same gut-wrenching pain hits again. Harder than before. Sometimes, it strikes at night, like a thief. I wake up, and I’m already crying. It seems like it would be only fair for it to at least give you a break when you need to sleep, but it rarely does. For me, nights are the worst, as anyone can tell by the low-hanging, bruised bags under my eyes.
Perceptive as always, Lena eyes me like I’m a wounded wild animal and lets me be. I’m happy she doesn’t pry, but it adds to my feeling like a menacing can of worms that no one wants to open.
Peter is the only one who doesn’t walk on eggshells around me, not fearing to bring up the topic whenever he sees me moping.
“Please, just a punch. Damn, it would feel so good.” Lying on his side, my brother props his head up on one hand and studies my face. My puffy, red, just-finished-my-fourth-crying-fit-of-the-day face. “I can film it for you.”
I sniffle and choke on a bitter chuckle. “Just let him be, Peter.”
He’s been begging for my blessing to kick Adam’s ass, like he promised. My answer’s invariably been no. And only partially because I’m worried about my brother’s chances to win in a fight against him. Despite my bitterness, I wish Adam no harm.
“Hey, at least it’s smooth sailing from here on out, right? Prince Charming should be right around the corner…If his first impression of you is this, he must be the real deal.” Peter scrunches up his nose at my swollen eyes and red nose, and it makes me laugh. I notice his shoulders relax a little at the sound of my giggling. It’s a rare occurrence these days.
But then his words register, and my stomach rumbles in protest. Who cares about stupid Prince Charming? “Ugh. He can go fuck himself for all I care.”