by LJ Evans
“Give us a call if you need us.” She hugged PJ and got in the car.
“Love you!” PJ said.
“Love you too, Peej.”
And she drove away.
Inside, the house was quiet. No food smells. Seth hadn’t had time to cook because he’d been out car shopping. It made her feel guilty. Guilty because she’d rejected his gift. Guilty that he would think her rejection of the car was a rejection of him.
She went to the kitchen and tried to figure out what she could cook that would be ready when he got back. There wasn’t much she was good at. There was a frozen spaghetti sauce that Seth had made the other day, and she grabbed that to heat up.
She was still in the kitchen cooking when she heard the garage open and the slamming of a car door. When he didn’t come in right away, she wondered if he’d gone for a run on the beach. He seemed to take his frustration out running so that he wouldn’t take it out on her.
Noise out front caught her attention, the backup beeping of a big truck. When she looked out the front window, she saw a tow truck lifting the Caterpillar onto its back. She flung open the door and ran outside.
“What are you doing?” she demanded of the tow truck driver.
He looked up confused.
Seth came out from the garage.
“It doesn’t run,” Seth said matter-of-factly, standing in his typical stance with arms crossed.
“I know.”
“You need a running vehicle, right?” he said, face shuttered. “I’m having it towed to the garage.”
She stared at him for a moment. It was a thoughtful gesture. It was his way of apologizing for buying her the car, but also saying he wasn’t going to tolerate her in something that broke down. PJ didn’t know which of the emotions he provoked to process first. Gratitude. Guilt. Love. Embarrassment.
“Fine. But it needs to go to my guy, Hank.”
“Because he’s done such a great job of keeping it running for you?”
“Because I trust him to not rip me off on things that I don’t need right now.”
“Like a running vehicle,” Seth said with a quiet ferocity.
“Am I towing the car, lady?” The tow truck driver pulled at his long beard, finally having gotten the drift that the car didn’t belong to Seth.
“Yes. Thank you. But to Hank’s A-1 Car Garage on Mason Street,” she told him.
Seth threw his hands in the air and stormed off into the house while she made the final arrangements with the tow truck driver. She even ran inside and got her insurance card so that he could bill her instead of Seth.
When he’d finally towed the Bug down the street, she went in to find Seth finishing up the dinner preparations.
“I was cooking,” she told him.
“I can’t do anything for you today? Not even a meal?” he said harshly.
She eased up to him and forced her way between him and the stove. She hugged him and could feel the tension in him by the tightness of his back muscles.
“I was trying to say thank you.”
He laughed severely. “Thank you for what? Every goddamn thing I tried to do for you today, you turned down.”
“I know. I haven’t expressed myself very well. I love that you wanted to do all those things for me. Buy me a car. Fix the Caterpillar. But, you have to understand, if I let you do those things for me, then I lose some of myself.”
“This is ridiculous. It was just a car.”
“To you. Maybe.”
“I wanted to do this for you.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
He kissed her on her forehead and held her close. But it was yet another thing that they hadn’t handled quite right. It was more words left unsaid. It was another hole being poked into the weave of their relationship.
* * *
The next day, Seth had to drive her back and forth to the gym. When he picked her up, he was quiet. Silent. Moody. Seth’s way of fighting without words.
When they got to the house, he flung his keys on the table and then went to the studio instead of the kitchen. She followed him.
“What’s going on?”
He picked up pieces of metal and slammed them around.
“Jesus. Just tell me before you break something you’ll regret,” PJ said.
“Why don’t you tell me?” he hissed back.
She furrowed her brow thinking.
“Are you leaving?” he finally asked.
And then she realized she’d left the letter from Pratt out.
She let out a breath. “You saw the letter.”
She couldn’t help twisting her t-shirt as she said it. She was nervous. Unsure of how he would react to this news. He hated her being gone for two hours these days. How would he react to the idea of her being across the country?
She could feel him watching her. Feel his eyes on her twisting hands, and she stopped, pushing them up the sleeves of her t-shirt instead.
“There are programs here in L.A.” His tone was cold. Another shut door.
He walked to the huge windows that looked out on the ocean from his studio with his back to her. You couldn’t see the ocean tonight because the marine layer was so thick. All you could see was a whirl of gray in the darkness. It was how she felt. A whirl of gray.
She loved him so much. She hated the thought that she was the one causing him pain. And it was pain. Pain that she could see as he placed his hands behind his head, his entire body tense. His movement lifted his shirt, accentuating his lean, muscled body. Showing a piece of his scar. A scar that was only one physical reminder of the broken pieces inside him.
She gulped in. It was going to take more courage than she might have to leave him. But she also knew that she didn’t know how to stay and still be whole. To still be PJ.
When he finally turned to look at her, she inhaled sharply again because along with the pain in his eyes there was self-condemnation. That look alone almost made her lose her resolve.
“Do I scare you so much that you have to run away?” he asked, voice full of heartache.
“I’m not afraid of you.”
He closed the distance between them, grabbing her shoulders and tilting her chin so that she was forced to look into his eyes.
“Prove it,” he said as he ran his hands along her skin, that ever-present current that seemed to live between them coursing through her.
“You can’t dare me into staying, Seth. I have to figure out what’s best for me on my own.” She stepped away from him.
“You act like I’m asking you to give up everything. I don’t care what you do for school or if you go to school. I don’t care what you do for a job or if you have a job. All I care about is that at the end of the day you’re here at my side. Nothing will ever be right in my world if you’re not here.”
His words hit her heart and made it ache because she knew she couldn’t stay with him without giving up the last piece of herself that she had to give, and she also knew that he deserved to have her give up everything for him. But she couldn’t help holding back. Some of it was because of her past. The mistakes she’d made long ago, but some of it was also because she was terrified of giving in to everything only to have it be ripped away and have nothing left to hold on to.
“I haven’t made a decision yet,” she finally breathed out.
He slammed his fist into the wall and she jumped.
“And I get no say in this even though it affects us?”
She couldn’t respond. She knew this had to be her decision. She knew she’d regret it someday if it wasn’t. If she let him convince her to stay. When she didn’t respond, he continued.
“All I want is you,” he said quietly, achingly.
God it hurt PJ to hear him say it that way, but that was part of the problem. He thought he loved her. He thought he knew her. He thought he wanted her. And yet she hadn’t even been honest with him about who she really was. About her past. He didn’t know the worst of her. He didn’t know, so he couldn’t really love her. All o
f her.
She threw a hand out at the art in the room. The art that was supposed to be her. “I’m not this angelic saint you have pictured in your head and all over your studio.”
She took a deep breath and stepped further away from him, trying to find the nerve to say the things she’d left unsaid. Finally, she raised her chin and met his eyes. “You don’t even know that I slept with ten guys in two years.”
His blue eyes filled with emotions. His normally emotionless face was a wave of them. Shock. Anger. But not the disgust she had thought she’d see. She didn’t know if that made her hopeful or regretful.
“See. Not an angel.”
“Were any of them after me?” he said with a voice so barely controlled that PJ was slightly afraid.
“God, no,” PJ swallowed. “They were all in high school.”
The memories overtook her. The moment she’d heard the truth from her second boyfriend.
“Bella.”
“Stop. I need you to know. I want to tell you. I was so lost after moving to L.A. I was missing my parents and my old life. Justice and Locke, they were great, but I was full of regret that Justice had given up everything for me. I was looking for something to fill the hole that was burning up my insides. And, I thought the first boy loved me. When he broke up with me, the second one stepped in to comfort me, and I thought that was better.”
She half expected Seth to pursue her, but he didn’t.
“Then, at a party. I heard them talking. My boyfriend and my ex. They were talking to a third boy, and he was upset because my boyfriend hadn’t broken up with me yet. He said it was his turn. He’d waited to lose his… v-card… and it was his turn.”
Seth’s anger was coming off him in waves again. And she knew it was directed at the unseen boys, but she also knew it needed to be directed at her. Because she hadn’t risen to the occasion. No, she’d lowered herself down to it.
“I was hurt. Crushed. But, I decided that if I was going to be passed around, that I’d be the one to decide who I got passed to. I walked in, broke up with the second boy, grabbed the third boy by the arm and took him to a back bedroom where I let him… lose his….”
He made a strangled noise in his throat, and she plowed forward through her story. Determined to get it all out.
“After that, I moved through a whole series of boys. I chose them, so I thought it was okay. Until Locke caught me. He came in... The boy was…”
PJ flushed at the memory.
“And even though I’d always used protection, Locke still made me get tested, and had me go on the pill. And then he and Justice sent me to a therapist.”
“I’ve seen my fair share,” Seth said as if to make it okay. That she’d needed therapy to tell her why she was trying to fill the hole in her life by sleeping with boys.
Seth was standing, arms crossed watching her, as if he was waiting for her to finish.
“I made a promise to myself after that. That I wouldn’t have sex anymore when it was just sex.”
“We’re not just sex.”
“I know that!”
“Do you?”
And finally, he didn’t wait any more. He had her in his arms and caught up against the workbench like he had that first day they were together.
“I do know, Seth. I do. But, it’s just that feeling I had then. Of being frustrated. And pissed. And lost.” PJ trailed away.
“It’s how you feel now.” He finished for her.
She nodded.
“Not being able to see the ground right now is not the same as being lost,” he told her, and one hand went to her waist, and another to her chin so that she was forced to look into his smoldering eyes.
“I know you, Bella, do you know how?”
She shook her head.
“Do you think you are the only person to blow through people because they’re searching for love? For someone to finally see the real them with their fucking torn up soul? For them to think that the shreds that are left are beautiful? I see you. I see you because it’s like looking in a mirror.”
His fingers caressed her cheek. She closed her eyes and leaned into it.
“When you touch me… I forget where I was going,” PJ breathed into him.
“Maybe it’s because you’re already where you need to be,” he said quietly. She didn’t know how to respond to that. She didn’t know how to tell him that even though he was trying to make her feel better, she felt like she was in a new hole of her own making. One that was just getting bigger.
* * *
PJ hugs his last letter to her chest. Her memories bring tears to her eyes. She used to be so good at keeping tears at bay, but since everything that happened, since leaving Seth, since coming to New York, it’s hard to keep them in check.
She thought she’d feel better in New York. Not better about leaving Seth or her family. But, she’d thought she’d stop feeling like she was drowning in waves of regret and shame. She thought she’d be able to find some peace again.
Her therapist said that her own inability to forgive herself for her mistakes in high school had her overreacting to Seth and their relationship. That what had happened with the stalker just accentuated everything that had already been twirling unconsciously in her brain.
The doctor said the words that PJ wouldn’t. That she’d felt like Seth’s live-in mistress because PJ still saw every sexual encounter as an exchange instead of a simple act of love. It wasn’t Seth that had made her feel that way. He’d acted like he wanted to give her the world and keep her by his side forever. It was only her own messed up head that had made it feel temporary. As if she was a momentary fixture in his life that would someday be replaced with a kiss on the cheek and an envelope.
It was why she’d overreacted to every gift he gave her. To the car he’d tried to buy her. To the office he’d redone for her. To the gold and silver beads dangling from her wrist. She hadn’t wanted the gifts because she had twisted it into a payment. It was why she tried to force the money on him and was upset when he left it unused in the cookie jar.
It was crazy. Her head knew it was crazy. And her heart was slowly getting there. Slowly.
If the whole debacle after the party at Dylan’s mansion hadn’t happened, maybe it wouldn’t have pushed her over the edge and maybe she would have been able to get to a place of acceptance on her own, but she isn’t sure.
Because she also knows that their relationship wasn’t healthy for more reasons than just her own baggage from her past. Seth had been dealing with his baggage too. It was what had made him possessive and silent. It was what made him walk a dangerous line where he couldn’t let her out of his sight. He’d never crossed the line. He’d struggled with it. But, it was yet another thing that had made their relationship a well of troubled waters.
Waters that they should have been able to traverse because they loved each other. Waters that could have been traversed if she’d only stayed. She’d thought that leaving him had been a moment of strength, but really, it was weakness. It would have been stronger to turn and face both their demons. Both their pasts. But she’d been afraid to do it. Afraid of herself. Afraid of him. Afraid of them.
The truth is, even with all the therapy and space, in some ways she feels worse now than she did before. She feels less whole. And, she’s torn out his heart and her own in the process.
Scars On This Guitar
Letter Nine
“She’s the place I go when there’s nowhere left to run…”
-Bon Jovi, Falcon, James
DEAR BELLA,
The night I found the Pratt letter, and I realized you were actually considering it; the night you told me about the guys from your past, it made me want to kill a whole crap load of people. It made me ache because I understood the self-loathing in your voice now, but it didn’t make me think less of you. I know you’d thrown it out at me because you were trying to do that. Make me hate you so that you could run away to Pratt without regretting it.
I c
ouldn’t ever hate you. Instead, the things you told me made me want to show you even more just how beautiful you are. How having the strength to deal with all that shit when you were so young, having to deal with the shit you were now, how it just made you exactly the Ninja Warrior you laughed about being. Maybe a Ninja Fairy Warrior because you must have a bit of magic in you to have survived everything you did.
But, it also made me want to keep you even closer while it really should have been a flag to back off and give you some room to breathe. I didn’t let you go anywhere without me. And it was easy to do until you got the fucking Bug back from the shop. In the meantime, it was as if by just being there, I could force you to make the decision to stay.
At Otis, I had spent some time studying the Japanese art of Kintsugi. It had felt healing at the time that the Japanese embraced flawed and imperfect pieces as if they were more valuable than a newly formed object. They highlighted broken pieces with gold as if those breaks were the most valuable part of the object. And, it made me feel like maybe the scars on the inside and outside of my body could be my most valuable pieces.
Now, you have some physical scars to add to your emotional ones. I hate that, but I also know that it has made you even stronger, and I wish you were here for me to show you that because you never believe it on your own. Instead you hate yourself more because of them. I’ve come to believe deep in my soul that broken can be beautiful.
Too bad we don’t live in Japan because then you might believe it too.
After I dropped you off at work the day after you told me about Pratt, I headed back up the coast. I hated that I still needed the meetings, but I also knew it was stupid to try it on my own when I felt like I was on the edge of everything collapsing.
On the way there, I thought about you, and I thought about how you felt trapped by what you were going through. I thought of a cage I’d built once upon a time that now sat on my shoulder, and I wondered if I could somehow recreate it in a way that would reflect the powerlessness you felt now.
I was a little late by the time I got to the meeting, and they were already letting people talk. I eased into a chair near the back. I didn’t recognize the guy leading the session that day. That was okay by me. I was never there to make friends. I was there to get calm. To be able to head back into life without a drink in my hands.