“God …” Lindsey tipped her head back, her long dandelion hair cascading between her shoulderblades. “What a perfect night.”
“Only perfect because I’m here, with you,” I replied, watching her feet as she unsteadily walked. One foot in front of the other.
“And if you weren’t with me?”
“Well,” I said, “if I wasn’t with you, it’d be just another night. Not perfect, not … anything, really. Just a night.”
She looked to me with incredulous eyes. “It’s your best friend’s wedding night. Of course it wouldn’t be just another night.”
I considered her response and wet my lips before saying, “No, you’re right. It would be different from any other night. If you weren’t here, I would be sitting by myself, while looking at all the happiness around me, and wondering what the feck I ever did so wrong to not deserve some of my own. I would’ve been bitter, I would’ve been jealous, but, having you here, I have nothing to be jealous of. Because, for once in my life, I’m the one to be envied.” I stopped myself there, while my mind continued. Reminding me that, once she was gone, the only person I would ever envy again was my past self, for having lived those perfect moments.
“Romeo,” she said, grabbing me by the wrist and pulling me to her. I stood flush with her chest, her lips tipped up toward mine. “Why—”
I shook my head. “Don’t say anythin’ yet.”
Standing on the stones, she was near eye-level, and I grasped the opportunity to kiss her. Pushing aside the goodbyes, I pressed my lips to hers, felt the brush of her skin against the ends of my growing beard. Nerves ignited, and I took the chance to separate my lips, to brush my tongue over hers, to taste her mouth of champagne and longing. She whimpered, releasing my wrist and her shoes to raise her hands and grip the cool linen of my shirt. My hands, restless and eager, held the back of her neck, thrusting my fingers into her hair, and I pulled her closer, sliding my tongue in deeper. A desperate attempt at being swallowed, at living inside her forever.
Flushed and gasping for air, she pulled away, her chin blotched from my beard. “Oh God,” she sighed, her eyes dropping to her hands on my shirt. Thumbs edged toward the buttons, flicking at them lightly. “That mouth does amazing things to me.”
I hummed. “I can think of other parts that can also do amazin’ things.”
“I think your family will start to wonder where we went …” She laughed lightly, smoothing her hands over my chest and shoulders, around my neck. She tipped her head back, looking into my eyes.
“I think they already know where we went,” I said, waggling my eyebrows, successfully putting on a façade of not crumbling into tiny pieces.
Lindsey lightly rolled her eyes as a small smile stretched her lips. I was tempted to kiss her again, to bruise her lips with the urgency of my desire for her—for us. But I was stopped by the void within her eyes. Bottomless in the moonlit night, a galaxy of golden stars, and my breath slipped through my lips, leaving me empty and hopeless.
“What?” she whispered, lacing her fingers behind my head. Her thumbs brushed along the edge of my hairline, again awakening the bundle of nerves from their love-drunk slumber.
I swallowed with a small shake of my head. “Your eyes,” I said.
Her lips parted softly. “What about them?”
My thumb ran the outside of her face, curving around her cheekbone, and I stared into the abyss. “Well … all eyes have a lens behind the iris. It’s what allows the eye to bring in the light, to help them see, but your eyes …” I swallowed, questioning if I should go on.
“Tell me,” she whispered.
I pulled in a jagged gust of air. “Your eyes are endless, and when I look into them, I don’t see you absorbing light, but in actuality, my soul. Like you see things that I’ve tried to deny myself, like you alone are able to awaken these things I’ve tried to suppress, and I’m just afraid of who I’ll go back to bein’ once you’re not here to reach into my soul and pull me out.”
She blinked, dropping her gaze back to my chest. “Why do you talk to me like that?”
“Like what?” My eyes settled on her lips. They were trembling.
“Like you love me.”
“Because I do.” There was no second-guessing in the words that tumbled out of my mouth. There was no fear, no anxious, palm-sweating terror. There was only that one nagging little question, digging at the back of my mind and the center of my heart, saying, “What if this is your last chance?”
So, I took it.
I waited for the reaction. The look of panic, or the sound of thunder when her voice shouted.
But neither happened.
Instead, the world ended.
Her dark eyes flooded, resembling ocean depths and black holes and nothingness. Her glossed-pink lips fell open, shuddering, and mascara accompanied the tears as they paved their wet way over blushed cheeks.
“Don’t say that,” she whispered, shaking her head. Pinching her eyes shut, she took a step off of the bricks. Away from me. “You can’t love me.”
“But I do,” I insisted.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
I had indulged in my share of alcohol that night, and had a buzz going that made the world around me fuzzy. But my feelings for her, the sirens in my heart, the tears on her face … Those things … They were clear. They were as vivid as if I were sober, and they hurt. They hurt so goddamn badly I thought they might shatter my bones from the inside out. Every single fecking one of them.
“But it did happen,” I said forcefully. Stern. Why was I angry? Why was I scolding her?
Because she’s still ending it. She’s letting you go. She doesn’t care, and she’s saying goodbye.
“Don’t say that!” She repeated those words again, louder and harsher. “How can you love me, Sean? How can you love me when you haven’t even known me for a week?”
I shrugged, sheepish and dumb, and wishing I wasn’t so buzzed in that moment while also wishing I was obliterated. “I don’t know.”
She took another step away and turned her back on me, arms wrapping themselves around her body as though she were freezing. I had to focus on keeping my hands at my sides when all I wanted was to hold her. She shook her head, pulling in a breath that sounded like a chore, and her chin dipped to her chest.
“I don’t …” She began, but stopped. She shook her head again, and I waited, imagining every possible thing she could say. “Sean, I don’t know how to not break your heart, and I’m …” I watched the back of her head as she nodded to herself, sniffling loudly into what should have been the best night of my life. “I’m sorry I ever talked to you, or made any of this happen, and I’m—”
I stepped forward, clenched her arm in my hand and spun her around. Her eyes revealed the shock I had hoped she’d feel, and my jaw ticked with faint satisfaction that I had her attention.
“I want you to shut up,” I said in a voice calmer than I had anticipated.
She blinked, fresh tears falling. “Don’t—”
“No,” I said, shaking my head fervently. “You’re going to listen to me. If you’re leavin’, there’s no way you’re going to save me from dealin’ with that, but you will not feel sorry for this.”
Lindsey’s eyes stared up into mine, her bottom lip hung open and quivering. “You were supposed to be safe,” she whispered. “You’ve only known me for less than a week. You weren’t supposed to fall in love with me.”
“It’ll be a week tomorrow,” I reminded her, as though that mattered at all. As though that would change her mind.
She shook her head again. “Please let me go,” she said, her voice so hushed, I barely heard her over the rush of a nearby fountain.
“Why won’t you be with me?”
“Sean …” Lindsey tried to wrench from my grasp, but I held tight. “You’re hurting me.”
“You’re hurting me,” I shot back at her, but I loosened my grip. “Please, just explain this. We’re good tog
ether—I love you, and I’m pretty sure you feel somethin’ for—”
“Stop!” she shouted, and I dropped my hand from her arm. “Stop it,” she growled through clenched teeth, tears dripping over her cheeks. “Just stop it.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, inhaled and exhaled deeply, before she slowly opened her lids. “I need to tell you something Sean,” she said. “Remember, I told you I had cancer when I was a kid,” and my stomach dropped.
“It’s back?” She shook her head, and I exhaled.
Without a second thought, I stepped over the bricks and grabbed for her hand and pulled her down to sit on the grass and dirt. The moisture from the lawn sprinklers clung to the blades of grass, soaking through my pants and her dress, but I didn’t care. Because if that was the last chance I’d have to sit in a beautiful garden with her, I was going to take it. I was going to grasp onto it and hold tight. Even if my heart threatened to combust, even if she spent the whole time crying. I would pin it down, hold on tight—if this was my last chance.
Lindsey twisted the material of her dress in her hands. Loose gauzy fabric slipping between her fingers. There was a metaphor there—time, ours—but I looked away, looked to the fountain in the distance. A never-ending cycle of pouring, spraying water. Continuous beauty.
Her.
“Having cancer really scared me, Sean.”
“Of course,” I said, whispering. “Of course it would. Cancer scares the shite out of everybody, and you were a kid, and—”
“It scared the fucking shit out of me, because it was the first time in my life that I realized I was going to die,” she said, so quietly I barely heard her. That damn fountain. Beautiful, endless, and so goddamn loud.
“Lindsey, everybody—”
“Yeah, Sean, I know that. Everybody dies. My parents, me … you …” She wouldn’t look at me, and the gears started to twist. They ground together, they tried to turn in my head.
What was I missing? What wasn’t I getting? I could solve advanced mathematical equations without the use of a calculator. I could write high-marked essays in a matter of hours without breaking a sweat. I had graduated top of my class, thought I was so smart, and I couldn’t figure her out.
I had never felt so stupid.
I had never held my breathe for so long. Never felt my heart threaten to give out as much as it did in that moment.
And I had never been so afraid.
“That night in the hospital, when I watched my parents watching me … You know, my moment … I thought, ‘They only feel this way because they love me.’ And then I started thinking, how fucking shitty is love?” She lowered her head, gripped fistfuls of hair between her hands.
My brain chugged, worked. “The things you’ve done this week …”
Asking me out.
Having sex.
Staying at my place.
Her last chance at something real.
“… you’re afraid of love.”
She didn’t nod. She didn’t give me confirmation. She didn’t have to.
I had figured her out.
She covered her eyes with a hand, leaned her elbow against her knee. That scared little girl. Scared of life, scared of her own mortality. Scared of what would happen if she let love in, let herself fall. Scared of leaving, scared of being left.
“They were the only ones Sean, and I didn’t want there to be any others. I didn’t want to die, knowing I was leaving behind all of these people, knowing they would be feeling all this fucking pain over me … And oh my God, I had been so selfish. I had been such a spoiled little bitch, and so I figured, if they’re the only people to ever love me, to be stuck loving me, then I would do whatever I could to make them happy.”
“You were with Jack,” I countered, sliding my glasses off and pinching that space between my brows.
“My parents thought setting me up with him would be a great idea, and I knew I would never love him. He wasn’t my type. He wasn’t—”
I barked a short laugh. “Do ya even have a type?”
“I … I’ve liked people before, Sean. I know what I like and don’t like, and I know I don’t like stuck-up lawyers who think with their wallets.”
“But you could’ve loved him. He told me you never came out of your feckin’ shell, that it was like—”
She looked up at me, narrowed her bleary, tired, never-ending eyes. “He talked to you?”
My lips tightened into a thin line. They were so dry. “Ehm … Yeah. That day we picked up your things.” How many days ago was that? It felt like weeks, months.
She swallowed loudly, glancing in the direction of that fountain. “What … What did he say?” Her voice was so choked, so restrained.
I shook my head, shrugged, tapped at my knee. Avoided the question until I couldn’t anymore. “That you’re, ehm … a scared little girl, and that no matter what he did, you wouldn’t come out of your shell.” I looked up to her, to her sodden face. “You wouldn’t let him in, Lindsey, and, I don’t know for sure, but I think he tried and eventually had to give up.”
“Wow, Sean.” She sniffed and laughed without an ounce of humor. “Yeah, well, whatever. I’m going home tomorrow, and my parents will set me up with some other guy who will pay the bills and keep me company until I finally die.”
She had only been sixteen—a feckin’ kid, I kept saying to myself, as I sat there on the wet grass in my soaked pants and wishing I had my poetic words to make the moment better. But all of that shite about Goats-beard and Irish fields suddenly felt like nothing more than what it was: shite. It was all feckin’ shite that couldn’t wipe away thoughts about death and never-ending nothing.
Thoughts about being used and manipulated. About being a pawn in a game she desperately needed to play with herself before running home to her parents. To bide her time until the next guy could support her and provide her with a loveless existence.
I had never felt so sorry for someone in my feckin’ life.
“Will you say something?” she finally asked after moments of deafening silence, save for that feckin’ fountain.
“What do—” My voice cracked in my throat, and I coughed around the obstruction of emotions. I wished I was so much more drunk than I was. Wasted and passed out. “What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know,” she said. So quiet, so weak, so small.
I dropped my hand from that space between my eyebrows, let it rest over my knee, and looked at her. Her golden mermaid hair had fallen over her shoulders, shrouding her body and face in glistening waves.
“I think … I think you want me to say that I was kiddin’ when I said I love you,” I said, watching the gentle sway of her hair with every soft breeze. “But you’re not gettin’ that from me, Lindsey.”
“That’s not what I want,” she whispered.
“Then, what?” I didn’t mean to raise my voice. I didn’t mean to sound so desperate and so feckin’ frustrated, and I sighed.
“I just keep thinkin’ … You’ve been happy this week, with me,” I said, as though it meant anything. “And so was I, and I fell in love with you,” I added, as though that meant anything.
“Love is nothing more than having to let someone go, Sean. At least you have to do it now, after a week, instead of waiting for something else to get me in ten, twenty, thirty years.”
“You’re wrong.” She shook her head, questioning me, and I said, “You talk about love like it’s the beginning of an end, because I think that makes it easier for you to walk away. But you’re wrong, Lindsey. You’re so feckin’ wrong, because this? This is only a beginning. This is forever.”
I leaned forward, and kissed her forehead. Then, I leaned back, put my glasses on, and forced a smile as I pulled myself to my feet.
“Where are you going?”
I shook my head. “You convinced me to let go and live for a week, and that’s exactly what I did. It was the best time of my life, and I fell in love with you. Not the idea of you or somethin’ I was
forcin’ myself to see, but the real you, who I’m convinced nobody else in the world has ever seen. I was hopin’ that it was mutual, but apparently I was wrong. And ya know, that’s fine. I’m okay with that, because I fell for this. I fell for you. And if ya don’t mind, I think I’m gonna call it a night, because the longer I stay out here, the harder it is to keep my shite together.” I paused, pinching my lips between my teeth, and swallowed. Then, I cleared my throat. “I just … I just keep remindin’ myself that this was your last chance to fall in love, to have something real—something you could have forever, even after death, because death isn’t gonna stop the way I feel. But you’re not takin’ it, and that’s the part that hurts the most.”
And with that, I took the folded piece of paper that had been burning a hole in my pocket all feckin’ day long, bent over, and closed her hand around it.
And I walked away.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN |
Poems & Parents
Sunday
Midnight brought a soft knock on the door, and I pulled myself from my cold bed, and opened it to find Lindsey standing on the other side. She looked small, meek, and thoroughly beaten. Her makeup was smudged around her eyes, her hair hung limp over her shoulders.
“I, um … I have to, uh …” She began, but I stepped aside, granting her entry. “Thanks.”
The folded piece of paper was opened between her hands, and she stood in the middle of the living room. Caressing the edges like it were a good omen.
Maybe it was.
“I put all of your stuff over there,” I said, gesturing toward a bundle of suitcases in the corner. I thought it was best to not mention I had considered burning all of it.
Including my bed.
“Thanks.”
And then she just stood there, eyes welling up and gazing at the paper in her hands. I ran a hand through my hair, thoroughly exhausted, and looked around the apartment. “So, ehm … Was there somethin’ else? Because if not, then I’m gonna head back to bed. You can sleep on the—”
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