Ruin Me: The Summer of Secrets: Part 1

by Christina Hart

  I hardly have a rebuttal, after being lectured from her on the countless nights I spent crying and pining over him. “I’m not stupid,” is all I can muster in response. But I don’t even believe it myself.

  I can’t look at Sophie, knowing the hell she’s been through with her own first love, and admit to making similar mistakes. Lucky for her, though, when we came back, Seth was long gone. He’s still a ghost. She doesn’t understand what it’s like to come face to face with someone in the present that you gave your past to. She’s the lucky one here; she moved on.

  “I don’t hear you denying it,” Lucy says.

  She has this way of speaking in a tone that only edges on anger, making me miscalculate where we stand in any conversation. But the way she’s looking at me—and I’d know it even with my back turned—a pointed gaze that doesn’t let up, tells me I’m not off the hook.

  I turn around and stare at them both. “I’m not getting back together with him. I’m not going back down that road,” I say. “I already promised myself I wouldn’t, even if I wanted to. So don’t worry.”

  “Okay,” is all Lucy says, finally taking her eyes off of me, like she’s satisfied with the finality of my response.

  Sophie, the more easygoing of my two sisters, walks over to me and starts helping me put the new books up on the display I’m working on.

  “Well, look at the bright side, Kitty. He inspired some poetry in you and got you writing more, right? Just, leave it at that and let it go. For your own good,” she says.

  I offer a weak smile in response, glad to close the conversation at that.

  And I appreciate that she’s lost the judging tone. But I hate the fact that they hate him. Solely because of me.

  Sometimes, I wish I’d never confided in them about the darkest parts of our relationship. The lies. His reckless lifestyle and all the ways he wounded me.

  If I could go back in time and change anything about all this, it wouldn’t be my leaving. It would be the way I handled the disclosure of information about my relationship with my sisters.

  Because once people who love you know about all the bad, they refuse to acknowledge any good there ever was.

  And for all Joey’s bad, he had a lot of good in him.

  They also made it crystal clear that they would never stand for any sort of reconciliation between me and him.

  It’s exactly why I have to keep this to myself. Because I don’t know why I decided to meet him at that show.

  I don’t know why I have such a weakness when it comes to him.

  I don’t know if I’m lying to myself when I tell myself our last encounter was purely sexual and devoid of any emotion. Could it ever be? Once emotion has entered the mix?

  I change the subject once and for all and look at each of my sisters. “Well, what about you two? Why are we only talking about me? Any hot summer romances for either of you that I should know about?”

  Neither of them look at me as they quickly say “No” in unison and get back to work.

  13

  JULY 22, 9:02PM

  I lost you like a limb.

  A part of me, tethered,

  something I thought I’d have forever.

  I carved your initials inside of my heart,

  left a permanent engraving.

  Our goodbye was left in my marrow,

  in every aching part of me still longing for you.

  I wonder if I would have missed you like this

  had I never known you.

  I wonder if you could miss a person you never truly knew.

  The way comfort sounds, it’s just noise.

  It’s mere background music to my thoughts of you.

  I pull up outside Joey’s house and see his bike and truck both in the driveway. The lights are on and I try to breathe out both the relief and the butterflies.

  I shaved before coming here.

  This is what my sisters warned me of.

  I told myself I wouldn’t get swallowed by him again. I told myself I could stay away if I viewed this as something less than what it was in the past.

  But I wasn’t thinking about that when I took a shower earlier. I wasn’t being smart when I decided to show up at his place, unannounced and uninvited.

  But I know, regardless of the time that’s passed, that I’m always welcome here.

  That I’m always wanted here.

  He’s said it enough times. And by the tone of the conversation he started when I was last here, he still feels that way.

  I don’t use the rational part of my brain when it comes to him. All common sense ceases to exist and then I am telling my sisters I’m going to the movies.

  And then I’m pulling out of my driveway and into his.

  I get out of my car and walk up the path to his front door, where I knock to the tune of Push It by Salt N’ Pepa—our signature code.

  I couldn’t stand the fighting anymore, between Sophie and Lucy. Their harsh words aimed at each other. The details they keep excluding me from. It all sounds like misplaced anger and bitching to me, and it’s too loud. And since they don’t seem to want to let me in on what they’re really fighting about, I saw myself out.

  I just wanted peace.

  That’s a lie.

  Part of me wanted peace, and part of me wanted…

  “Hi,” I say as he opens the door—shirtless. I swallow the grin that’s taking over my face as I take the sight of him in.

  His low-rise jeans. His boxers peeking out of the top of them. The defined V of his abdomen. His arms. How I’ve missed those arms.

  How feeling them wrapped around me reignited a hunger I foolishly thought had lessened because of time and distance.

  He swings open the door for me to come in and after I fully appreciate the sight of him, I notice his face is not the happy face I thought I’d see.

  But I walk inside anyway.

  “Hi,” he says, sitting on the couch and lighting a cigarette. “Wasn’t sure if you’d be back or not.”

  Oh, right.

  “I called an Uber in the morning and left before you got up. I didn’t want my sisters worrying about where I was,” I tell him.

  He nods, exhaling smoke, and I can tell he’s hurt.

  I touch his arm. “Joey…”

  But he shrugs it away from me. “Kitty, I don’t know if I can do this the way you want to do this. If you stay over here, I want to wake up with you here.”

  I nod. “Okay. I’ll stay.” I run through a stream of expletives in my head as I curse myself for giving in, yet again. If he would have put a damn shirt on, maybe I could have refused.

  But if that simple request is what he needs to be okay with my conditions, I will grant it to him.

  I almost forgot how needy he was. For me, for security, for us.

  Only Joey could be such a rebel and a romantic. Only he could crack my ribs with his smile.

  He looks at me and his face softens. “Okay,” he says, a smirk finally creasing his face before he puts his cigarette down in the ashtray on the coffee table. “Now get the fuck over here.”

  He grabs me and pulls me onto his lap, giving me the hello I thought I’d initially get. Our lips and tongues meet in a vicious need and before I know it, he’s pulled my shirt off and I’m fumbling with the button on his jeans.

  This certain kind of passion is so delicious, but so dangerous. It ropes you in just before it hangs you.

  And you never see it coming.

  Maybe that’s the fun in it. The thing we all chase.

  In my case, time and time again.

  I’ve died a thousand deaths with Joey and here I am, wrists out, begging for him to bind them once more.

  14

  JULY 22, 11:58PM

  “Tell me everything,” I say to her, as she’s rolled over on her side staring up at me with those beautiful brown eyes.

  Laughing, she says, “What do you mean?”

  “I mean what were you doing in all that time you were gone? Wha
t’s new? What’s different? What’s changed?” I ask.

  My appetite to learn everything about this version of her is bottomless. The Kitty that’s here now is different than the one who left. This Kitty is older, more guarded if it’s even possible, and protective. What she’s protecting, I’ve yet to find out.

  “I don’t know,” she says, looking down, playing with a loose thread on my comforter. “That’s a lot of time to try to summarize really quick.”

  “Will you try for me?” I ask her. “It doesn’t have to be quick.”

  “Well, let’s see. I left. Lived in a new place for the first time in my entire life. It made me realize how big the world is, how small I allowed myself to remain by staying here, not growing, not evolving. I started writing more. More poetry. Some short stories here and there, but I don’t know, there’s something about poetry that just moves me. It just falls out of me sometimes. More so after I left you.”

  I nod, encouraging her to go on.

  “And I’ve been trying to figure out what I want to do with my life, but it doesn’t feel that simple. You know, I’m nineteen now. I feel like I should have it all figured out at this point. But I just don’t. All I know is I want the words to always come. I want the poetry to always be there, whether it’s spilling out of me or my life. I want the words to be beautiful. I want my life to be beautiful. In every aspect of every single thing, I want nothing less than magnificence.” She turns to me. “Sounds dumb, doesn’t it?”

  “Not at all.” And it doesn’t. The optimist in her, the dreamer, it draws me in. Such a contrast to the pessimistic and nihilistic way I often view things, at least when she isn’t around. “It sounds like leaving me inspired you in certain ways,” I say. What I don’t say is how much that hurts me, how it kills me to think she might be better off without me.

  “It inspired the melancholy,” she says, almost like she regrets that fact. “And for some reason, sadness is such a better muse than happiness.”

  “Seems like it. You didn’t write that much when we were together,” I say.

  “Not true,” she says. “I just never shared it with you.”

  I sit up a bit to face her. “Why not? I would have liked to read it.”

  “No, you wouldn’t have.”

  “Why do you think that?” I ask, probing for the truth she doesn’t want to admit.

  “Because it wasn’t all happy stuff. In the beginning, sure. You inspired some of my most cheesy poems. Blocks of swiss, if you will. But after time, it changed. The poems got darker, more intense, more honest. It would have hurt you to know how much you were hurting me,” she states.

  “Maybe it would have sped up the change I made for you,” I counter.

  “Or maybe it would have pushed you to another extreme, knowing how deeply your lifestyle was impacting me. Maybe you would have been the one to leave,” she says.

  I shake my head and look at her. “I would never leave you.”

  A look of guilt passes over her face. “It doesn’t matter. I may have left you, but you were still with me. All this time, you were still with me,” she says quietly.

  “There was no one else?” I ask, the question I’ve been dreading asking.

  She laughs. “No. Who could follow in your footsteps, Joey Madden?”

  I don’t even try to suppress the grin that’s taking over my face at this new information. “I don’t know, but no one could follow in yours, either. It was a lonely two years, I’ll tell you that. The porn was getting old.”

  Her face changes and she grabs mine. “Wait, you mean, you haven’t been with anyone else? This whole time?”

  “Nope. Embarrassing, I know,” I admit.

  “Why?” she asks, with a look of shock. “What if I never came back?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, shrugging. “I guess I was just holding on to the idea that you would be back. That I’d have a chance to fix things with us. Your sister was still here. I knew at the very least you’d come to visit.”

  I don’t tell her that I’ve had eyes and ears on the street since the moment she disappeared. I don’t tell her that I’ve had watchdogs on corners. Friends of friends of the Bordeaus. I don’t tell her I was going to make damn sure I’d see her when she returned, whether she was interested or not.

  And I don’t remind her that I deserved at least a goodbye. But it’s on the tip of my tongue, wanting to come out.

  “And is that what this is to you?” she asks. “Your way of trying to fix things with us?”

  “No. I did the fixing while you were gone. My way of doing that was changing my entire life for you. I got out of the club. I stopped all the shady shit. I wanted to be the man you wanted me to be by the time you came home,” I tell her. “So I became him.”

  A tear forms in her eye and she wipes it away before it can fall. “You really stopped everything?”

  “Yeah. Because I love you way more than all the shit you ever hated,” I say, hoping she knows I mean it. “I’m sorry it took me so long. And I’m sorry you ever had a sad thing to write about.”

  “I’m not,” she says. “Not sorry about the writing, I mean. It helped me. With you I learned what I did and didn’t want in a relationship. It’s funny how you gave me both. I’ll always appreciate it. Even the bad.”

  I take her words in for a moment before I speak next. “You know, you leaving, without saying goodbye, that shit really hurt, Kitty. Why didn’t you at least tell me you were done? Why didn’t you give me any sort of warning or heads up?”

  “I’d been telling you for so long that I was done, or would be done if things didn’t change, that those words had no meaning anymore. And I knew I couldn’t look at you and say goodbye. The cycle would just repeat, as it always did. Plus, you were metaphorically severing that tie with us for so long, it finally gave way.”

  “That wasn’t the right way to handle it,” I say quietly.

  “Maybe not,” she says. “I’ve thought about it, a lot. I’m sorry it hurt you. But I need you to know it hurt me, too. And I’m sorry I felt like I had no choice but to leave like that.”

  “I may not like it, but I can understand why you did it. Just please, don’t ever do that to me again,” I tell her.

  Looking into my eyes, she says, “Don’t give me a reason to, and I won’t. I promise.”

  “I won’t,” I tell her. Finally feeling a certain release of bitterness, I try to lighten the mood and take a risk. “What do you say we start fresh? Get to know the new and improved versions of each other?”

  She grins and climbs onto my lap. “I don’t know…is this seat taken?”

  15

  JULY 27, 6:34PM

  For a moment we slipped and said what we meant.

  The truth has a way of escaping the things we say

  when the earth falls away.

  When masks slip and feelings drip.

  When your hand in mine

  means more to me

  than all the ways you hurt me in the past.

  And I see it now. The thing that scares me most.

  Rock, paper, scissors, shoot.

  I choose you.

  Every time, I’ll choose you.

  And I’m afraid that someday,

  you won’t choose me.

  We pull into the restaurant parking lot and I wait for Joey to park the bike before I swing my leg over the side and hop down. I’m silently praying no one will be here that knows either of my sisters, but when he asked me out for dinner with a hopeful look on his face, I couldn’t say no.

  He’s been trying—really trying—to show me how important I am to him. To make things right between us. He keeps using the word “again” but to me, it’s the first time things have ever been even close to a positive place with us.

  After the initial glamour faded from the honeymoon phase, I saw what kind of life he really lived. The decisions he made. The danger he put himself in, daily, and in turn, me, by association and attachment.

  But tonight,
two years after I severed our romance with a butcher knife and no goodbye, he reaches for my hand, and I let him take it.

  He leads me inside the crowded Italian restaurant and the hostess seats us in a corner booth.

  He’s wearing a button-down shirt and a familiar, comfortable smile.

  I would have opted for my sleeveless black dress, but he insisted we take the bike, so I’m in booties, skinny jeans, and a three-quarter sleeve top.

  He reaches across the table, searching for my hand once more.

  “Thank you for letting me take you out,” he says.

  “Don’t flatter yourself, I only came for the Alfredo,” I tease.

  He laughs. “I’m serious. It means a lot to me. That we’re here together right now.”

  I squeeze his hand. “Me too.”

  After what feels like a heap of food in my stomach and relaxed conversation, I think the night is about to wind down, but Joey says he has a surprise for me.

  I give him a curious stare and raise an eyebrow before I try to get it out of him what it is. But his response lacks any real answer, and he tells me to just get on the bike and hold on.

  We pull up to another restaurant/bar type of place, off the lake. I haven’t been here before. It seems new, like they opened it at some point while I was gone.

  He grabs my hand for the third time tonight and with an eager face says, “You ready?”

  “For what, exactly?” I ask nervously.

  As we reach the entrance, I see there’s a chalkboard sign outside that reads Poetry Slam/Open Mic. All voices welcome.

  I instantly freeze where I’m standing and grip his arm with my other hand. “Joey,” I say cautiously, staring at the sign and blinking, “what are you doing?”

  “It’s time you share your words with the world, darlin’,” he says, like it’s nothing, like it’s no big deal.

  Meanwhile, the anxiety buzzing in my chest is almost enough to make me go into cardiac arrest right on the spot. I’ve never read my words aloud. I’ve never shared my words with anyone. Not even my sisters.