by Ashe, Karina
The knowledge tastes bitter.
No. He can’t leave. He needs me, doesn’t he? Why else would he be here like this?
“Don’t go.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he repeats as if that’s an appropriate explanation.
“And what did you think would happen?” I know I should keep my voice down, but it’s hard. My mouth tastes like salt. My cheeks feel sticky. My chest is heaving so fast that my teeth chatter. I don’t like making a spectacle of myself, especially when I’m right behind him and he doesn’t even turn around—when he isn’t even moved by it. “Did you think that if we started fucking I’d just magically get bored of you and want to leave one day? Or did you think if you just left I’d be alright with it?”
“I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t really thinking.”
I grit my teeth. “That’s a pretty stupid reason.”
“I know.”
“How does knowing make it any better?”
He steps away from the bed. “If I were stronger, this wouldn’t have happened. This is the last time I’ll bother you.”
I shoot up out of bed. “What the hell does that mean?”
The words still haven’t sinked in. They don’t sink in until I see his hand on my window frame. “It means I won’t do this to you anymore.”
By the time I can move again, he’s already climbing out the window.
“You can’t leave!” I reach for him, but he’s already out the window. I rush to it and lean out the window, almost falling. “You can’t go!” I yell. I know he can hear me, and I can still see him, gracefully landing at the bottom of the courtyard and then turning for the gate without looking back.
He’s leaving. For good.
And I can’t let him.
I sprint to my bedroom door and throw it open. I run through the dorm room, through the halls, down the stairs. I only stop running when I’m past the gates to the courtyard and in the middle of the street, and only then because I don’t know which direction he went.
Shit!
I pull my bangs back, then hold them in a fist. No one else is on the street but me. No one I can see anyway.
I should start yelling. I should make another spectacle. Make him come out of hiding.
I hate how pathetic I am for even thinking that. I mean, am I the kind of girl who lets her life fall apart just because she got involved with an asshole? And he is an asshole. You know what? This whole thing was probably for the best. He’s delusional. He probably thinks he’s a superhero. I want to scream these things at him, and then my heart stops. The thought of never seeing him again hurts so bad.
Panic hits me like a drug. I start running up the street. I don’t know if this is the direction he went in. I don’t even know what I should yell, if anything. I don’t even know the guy’s name. So I just pant and run faster, but I see nothing. No one.
I bend over and rest my hands on my knees.
He’s gone.
I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. He’ll be back. He always comes back.
No, he won’t come back.
I try to convince myself he will, but I know the truth. I tried to unmask him. I tried to get closer. And this was my answer.
Chapter 5
I wake up late. Like 4pm, hey, are you starting to get hungry for dinner? late.
Cassie smiles a little too brightly when I enter the dining/living room. “Hey Laura.”
My three best friends are sitting on the couch in front of a scattering of chicken salad sandwiches—my favorite.
Oh God. What did they hear last night? Hopefully it wasn’t him and me…uh…
Anna’s brow furrows with concern. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay.” By which I mean: I don’t want to talk about this.
Of course that doesn’t fly, and if I’d said it out loud, it would have just made it worse.
Dolly finishes chewing the bite of chicken salad sandwich she’d had in her mouth when I first entered and cuts straight to the point. “What happened last night?”
Oh boy. “Hey, it’s strange to see the three of you here at this hour. Don’t you have a class, Anna?”
Anna shakes her head. “I don’t have anything planned but studying for my midterm—”
“Don’t get sidetracked, Anna,” Dolly interrupts.
Shit. Damn that Dolly.
I reach for a plate of food. “Who made the sandwiches? Chicken salad is my all-time fav.”
“We know,” Cassie drawls.
“We made them so you’d feel comfortable opening up to us,” Dolly ads.
I take a bite.
“Feeling comfortable enough yet?” Dolly asks.
“Don’t push her! She’ll tell us when she’s ready,” Anna butts in. Yes, go Anna!
Cassie raises a brow. “Anna made this treat for you so that you’d feel good enough to share what’s going on with your friends. You should have seen how worried she was about you this morning.”
Somehow, Anna’s eyes get even bigger, making me feel like I’d just kicked her puppy.
Get a grip! Anna doesn’t even have a puppy. You can’t fall for these tactics! You can’t…keep pushing away your friends.
I fold my hands in between my knees and press them together. “I saw him last night.”
Dolly drops her sandwich. Anna chokes on her tea, spilling some on her shirt. She sets down her cup and doesn’t try to dab away the stain. That’s a first.
I notice that they didn’t have to ask who he was.
“I take it things were a little different this time around,” Cassie notes.
I hang my head. I can’t look at them. I can’t speak for several seconds. I hear someone get up and then feel Anna’s small hand on my back, rubbing it in little semicircles. It almost tickles. It almost comforts me.
I glance up with a sigh. “I took it off,” I tell them.
My friends suck in a collective breath.
“He pushed himself away before I could see much,” I say. “But he didn’t appear deformed, at least from what I could tell. He might be, though. It was hard to see anything, and I only saw one corner of his face…”
“Oh Laura,” Dolly whispers.
“No, it’s alright,” I respond, but it isn’t alright, and without going into further detail they already know it isn’t. But I’ve already shared so much, and I’m afraid of my own neediness. I want to keep telling someone.
“He moved to the edge of the bed,” I whisper. “I reached out for him, and he held my hand. I told him everything. How much he meant to me, my mother, how I need him and how I…” I can’t bring myself to say the rest. It hurts too much. Even just remembering the darkness of the room, and the sheets that had followed his body, sliding off me when he turned away, hurts. “I laid my entire heart out there, and he left.”
“What do you mean he left?” Anna asks.
“I mean he left. He’s not coming back.”
No one says anything for a few moments.
“Well, look. There’s only two options,” Dolly says, standing.
“Dolly, sit,” Cassie murmurs.
Dolly isn’t hearing any of Cassie’s pleas. “He either thinks you’re worth more than his secret, or he doesn’t. That’s all there is to it.”
“Dolly,” Cassie warns, but Dolly shakes her head. “Look, Cass. We can sit here and spout sweet nothing and smell each other’s rainbow farts, but that isn’t going to change what happened. The fact is, Laura deserved the truth and she didn’t get it. This is on him, not her. She wanted more, he wasn’t willing to give it to her. Guys are assholes. Freaks who wear masks around are probably even bigger assholes than most, or they’re so mentally disturbed that it doesn’t even matter if they’re assholes or not because their hobby precludes them from treating others with respect.”
My friends look at Dolly with horror. I sigh and straighten my back. “Dolly is right. He didn’t want me enough. And it’s better I found out now rather
than later. I just wish I’d known sooner…”
Dolly sighs. “He didn’t want to ruin a good thing. Guys don’t turn down free pussy.”
“Jesus, Dolly! Are you trying to comfort her or make her jump out the window?” Cassie yells.
“I’m just calling it like I see it,” Dolly says. “You don’t do anyone any good, especially yourself, by hiding your head and believing in fairy tales.”
“It’s alright,” I interject. Cassie looks like she wants to pummel Dolly. “I can take it. It’s who I was before that I can’t take. I wasn’t satisfied, but I made myself believe that I was satisfied, because I was too much of a coward to accept the truth.”
Dolly’s eyes soften. Cassie kneels on the floor before me as Anna continues to rub my back.
“You aren’t pathetic. You just loved a jerk,” Dolly says.
“It takes a while to get over it, but you will. You’re strong,” Cassie tells me. “It will be alright.”
I don’t feel strong. I suppose they’re referring to the fact that I survived witnessing my mother’s death. I don’t know if it was strength that did it. I just coasted along. I endured. And I’ll survive this too, I know, because I’m good at enduring and burying the parts of myself I don’t want to look at. I’m good at pretending not to remember the memories that hurt.
“We always are here for you. We love you,” Anna says, hugging me. “Oh gosh, this scene is making me all snuffly.”
“Oh gosh, someone give her some tissue so she doesn’t use my shirt,” I laugh.
“Hey,” Anna pushes me playfully, “I’m trying to help you.”
“I know,” I say, wrapping my arm around her. “Thanks you guys.”
We all smile. None of us believe I’m over it, but I think that’s okay because I have them. I’ll find myself again. It might take a while, but I know I will. I can survive anything when my friends have my back.
Of course, it’s hard to stay happy for long. I fill up my days with The Notepad marathons with Anna. Sometimes Cassie feels so bad for the two of us weeping idiots that she joins in and lets me and Anna use her shirt as a handkerchief. Dolly doesn’t. She says I need to get to the club, but I’m not ready for it yet. I don’t know when I’ll be ready again.
I thought that I knew what longing was.
I thought that, maybe, if I stopped seeing him I would stop feeding this addiction.
That maybe, when he left, I would find myself again.
But it’s not like that. I was wrong. I feel more for him now that he’s gone.
I was so determined to forget him and I just couldn’t. Sometimes I stop playing by the fountain and search the crowd. I wonder if he’s watching. He’s watched for so long—longer than I know, if he was being honest with me—that I don’t understand how he could stop now. And I remember the regret in his voice. I replay the scene in my bedroom over and over, searching for some unspoken note that will allow me to understand what is happening. Why he left. Why he took so much of me with him when he did.
His letters remain under the bed. I haven’t received another one. I haven’t read them again, but I don’t need to. Lines from them filter through my mind when I least expect it: When the gate squeaks as I rush into the street; When the sunlight hits my eyes, too strong, making me squint and the back of my eyes ache; When the streets feel too cold, and even my wool overcoat can’t keep it out. Maybe others would think those lines were sappy. Maybe I coveted them only because they fed my vanity. But it doesn’t matter now whether they were sincere or not, whether they were good or not, whether I was only paying attention to what I wanted to hear or not. It doesn’t even matter if it was all a game. I need him.
You are so beautiful that sometimes I don’t believe you can truly exist; and then I hear you play, and I know that I am in heaven.
It doesn’t sound like heaven when I play now. It sounds like every part of me is breaking. Or maybe it’s just because it feels like I’m breaking all the time, so I can’t feel anything else.
I remember you. I don’t want to remember you, but I do. I know I told you I couldn’t take it, but this is worse. Please come back just once more and let me tell you. Please come back.
I can’t disintegrate. I am like a bead of water on a sheet of plastic. Sometimes at night I try to touch myself in the same places where he touched me—to wrap my hands around my stomach, to run my fingers up my neck. I don’t want to love you, I think before I amend: I never loved you. This is all a dream. Maybe I am still dreaming.
But I wake, empty. I drag my feet to the bathroom. I do my best not to recognize the young woman looking back at me in the mirror. Surely those aren’t my hollow eyes, my hollow cheeks, my dry, cracked lips.
I haven’t been able to dream since I met you. I look like a woman who’s never dreamed in her entire life. I only know nightmares and emptiness.
And then I turn on the water, wash my face, and begin another day.
Chapter 6
My eyes have been puffy for five days. They aren’t anymore, thanks to Dolly’s makeover. That woman can work magic. Unfortunately, it is usually hoochie magic, but tonight Cassie and Anna were able to reign her back. This was a tasteful gig at the Guchenberg, for Chrissake. You don’t show up to places like that in a sequence-infested halter top, much to her dismay.
Still, the little white dress I wore was a little shorter than appropriate. It’s not bad to have a little bit of hooch! Dolly insisted. I wish I could have come back at her with something snappy, but the truth is I like it. I feel more beautiful and feminine than I have in a long time.
Still, I put my foot down when it came to the heels. I didn’t want to fall on stage.
I glance at my friends, who were in various stages of getting ready for tonight. All of them were going out together, which was a rarity. Anna and Dolly love each other, but their tastes couldn’t be more different. One lapped up anything “culturally rewarding,” while the other seemed to want to get more ass than an entire frat house before graduation. Tonight, their goals aligned. They were meeting Dolly’s newest beau at an off-Broadway show.
“I wish I was going out with all of you,” I pouted.
“No you don’t. Alexander do-you-want-to-stick-your-hand-down-my-pants will be there,” Cassie mutters.
Anna makes a face as she tries not to laugh. “I’m not sitting next to him.”
Cassie groans. “Alright, but if he tries anything again I cannot be held responsible for my actions.”
I sigh. “You guys are going to have so much fun.”
“Uh, did you hear who Cassie was going to have to sit next to?” Dolly asks.
Dolly dodges Cassie’s attack. “What the hell? You’re supposed to be my friend! Why did you even let your boy toy invite along that jerk?”
I can’t help but laugh along with Anna. “I wish I was going.”
Anna tilts her head thoughtfully. “Laura, we’re going to have a great time, but so are you. We’ll all go out after Thanksgiving.”
That’s right. Tomorrow was the start of Thanksgiving break. Pretty much everyone in our building had already left.
I slip my feet into a pair of tasteful black flats. Anna hands me my cello case with a brilliant smile. “You’ll have fun, just see.”
I shift on my feet. “Okay.”
Anna isn’t discouraged. “You’re beautiful, and you’re going to do awesome.”
Dolly eyes Cassie to see if she’s going to spring another attack before giving me a thumbs-up. “My work is done. If tonight sucks, it’s your fault, not mine.”
“Thanks Dolly,” I laugh.
Cassie pats me on the back. “Kick some ass.”
“This isn’t really an ass-kicking event,” I explain.
“She means in the love department,” Dolly pipes in. “David’s going to be there.”
I groan. What was with all these comments about David? “Stop it you guys. There’s nothing there. All you’re doing is making me feel self-conscious around him.”
“A little bit of self-conscious wouldn’t hurt,” Cassie says.
“Just give him a chance,” Anna adds.
A chance at what? There’s nothing going on there! I groan and lean on the door right as someone proceeds to bang on it.
I fly back. “Shit!”
Cassie and Anna dart forward, catching me. The three of us are teetering and winding around each other like we’re playing Twister when Dolly opens the door with a smile. “David! You’re right on time.”
Cassie grunts as she pushes me onto my feet. Anna falls on her knees. Unfortunately she’s holding onto Cassie so Cassie goes down with her.
“You’re such a bitch, Dolly!” Cassie groans.
“Hey, watch your language in front of the gentleman,” Dolly snaps back.
David’s perfect brown eyes narrow with concern. “Is everything alright in here?”
“We’re fine.” I groan as I shake my ankle free of Cassie’s grip.
“Hey, you kicked me!” she squeals.
“Sorry!” I adjust my grip on my cello and stumble forward right into David’s arms.
“Hey Laura.”
His voice is lower than usual. It makes his chest rumble. I wonder why I noticed that.
He reaches for my cello case.
I move it out of his reach. “I got it.”
He grins. “But it’s part of my job.”
David volunteered to be the roadie for Bruigh na Boinne for the event. Why did he? I have no idea. It’s not like he’s the kind of guy who needs extra credit. “Don’t you think you’re taking this job a little too seriously? I’m not going to make my friends carry my shit.”
Cassie snickers. “Elegantly put, Laura.”
David grins. “I don’t mind hauling around your shit.”
I sigh. “You’re making this sound even worse!”
Dolly marches over and wrestles my cello case from my hands. “Hey! Don’t you dare deprive him of his sacred roadie duties!”
David grins as he takes it from her. “It’s my pleasure.”
“Hey.” I reach for it, but this time he moves it just out of my reach. “Come on. Stop playing around.”