How can he say that?
How can he say that when we’ve been building it together over the past few weeks?
I run and run after him so I can tell him, it’s ours.
This is our home.
But he’s gone and I don’t see him, not even the tail-end of his black truck, and that just takes away all my fight, and I crumple to the ground and fall on the pieces of my broken heart and my dreams.
The cabin feels dead.
It feels like it did the first day I moved back in after years and years of being away. During those initial days, everything was covered in a thick film of dust and old memories.
I cleaned it up the best I could before letting it go and drowning in alcohol.
Until she showed up.
Until she fixed everything. Fixed me. Saved me.
I walk in further, my legs taking me to the kitchen without my volition. As if they can’t believe she’s gone and they need to check it for themselves. The kitchen is usually where she’d be when I came home from work, always baking something, smelling so sweet and looking so soft.
When I find the kitchen empty – expectedly – my feet stumble.
My body and my heart can’t understand the fact that she’s gone. They can’t believe that I’ve sent her away.
They can’t comprehend this thing that I’ve done.
This awful, cruel thing.
They don’t get how I called her mother. How I hurt her when I’ve always promised to destroy anything and everything that dares to harm her.
My brain understands it though.
My brain grasps the betrayal.
It understands the fact that I haven’t been able to protect her. I haven’t been able to keep her safe from the world.
I understood that last night when I was reading her journals. Her thoughts and dreams that she left for me so casually on the coffee table.
Where they sit even now exactly like I left them.
All this time I kept thinking that my ruined relationship with Brian and gossip, that article, were the only casualty and consequence of that kiss.
And I could’ve stopped it all.
I could’ve stopped that kiss from happening if I had just stepped away that night and not been greedy to bask in her light. If I could’ve just walked inside my house and not approached her when I saw her through the windshield of my truck.
She was there, picking the roses, and she looked so… beautiful and fragile and pale with the moonlight illuminating her delicate lines that I had to go to her.
I had to approach her.
My legs wouldn’t listen. Like tonight, they had a mind of their own.
I wish they had obeyed me.
I wish I’d stopped myself from going to her like I had done a million times before.
Then none of this would’ve happened.
She wouldn’t have suffered like she did.
Because the biggest casualty of that kiss was the girl that I sent away this morning.
Violet.
Her.
She paid for it; she was fucking crucified for it. For something so pure and innocent. Something that was supposed to be private and for her and her only.
I could’ve protected her.
I should’ve protected her. Like I should’ve tried harder to send her away.
Because I’ve been hurting her. I’ve been hurting her in the ways I didn’t understand until I read her journals.
She’s in love with me.
She loves me.
Or maybe I did understand. She said she had a crush on me, didn’t she? So maybe I knew about her love but still, I kept her here.
She’s in love with me.
Jesus Christ.
That’s why she came here. That’s why she took everything I gave. She took it and smiled and kept coming back for more.
And I was letting her.
I was letting her take less than what she deserves. I was letting her settle. I was keeping her here because I couldn’t let go of her.
Because the thought of letting go of her makes me break out in a sweat.
It makes me panic. It twists and screws and digs the knife in my chest.
I was being selfish. So fucking selfish.
So I did the right thing. The thing I should’ve done weeks ago.
I let her go.
I let her go so she could live her life. So she could find someone worthy of her.
Someone who knows how to love. Someone who knows how to protect her and make her smile and laugh.
Someone unlike me.
Someone who doesn’t get terrified at the thought of love. At the thought of making himself so vulnerable to another human being that he can’t think straight.
I leave the kitchen and walk toward her journals, pick one up and open a random page. I sniff it like a junkie and her smell hits me in the gut.
My heart starts banging. Pounding, roaring.
My legs give out and I drop down to the couch.
I take another sniff and again, it hits me like a bullet. It makes me almost groan.
And after that, I can’t stop myself.
I can’t stop myself from flicking pages and reading her handwriting and smelling her. I rub my fingers on it, on the pages. Like they are her skin.
Like by touching them, I can touch her. I can touch her warmth, her softness. I can touch her scent.
I can’t.
She’s gone. She’s not here. I sent her away.
I did the most horrible thing I could do to her so she’d hate me. So she’d finally go back. Go back to where she belongs.
Go back home.
This is my home.
Her words echo around the cabin. They echo and crash against the windows and I hear them clearly.
Not that I haven’t been hearing them.
I’ve been driving aimlessly around all day, because I took today off for her birthday, and I’ve been hearing her voice. I’ve been playing her words on repeat.
But something about coming back to this old cabin – that doesn’t feel like home at all – makes me hear her clearer.
This is her home, she said.
How could it be though when it was never mine? How could she say that?
Her home is Connecticut. Her home is with her parents.
But then, that’s not true, is it?
Her parents have never been her home. Her parents never really cared about her. She was lonely back there.
She was lonely and ignored and alone and… strangely unseen.
Until me.
Until I saw her that night, climbing up on the roof. I saw her and couldn’t stop watching her.
And I watched her be ignored and passed over by narrow-minded, unimaginative people. I watched men and boys salivate after her but staying away because she was unconventional. She was in her own world.
I watched that. I watched all of that and I sent her back to it.
I sent her back to those people who hurt her in the first place. Who took away her safety. Who made her feel unsafe in her own skin. Who made her so afraid that she was ready to drive out of there – drunk – putting herself in jeopardy.
That still terrifies me. It makes my breathing stop. She was so unsafe and so unhappy there that she didn’t think about anything except getting out of there.
Fucking Christ.
You make me feel safe…
I make her feel safe. She told me that and I just ignored it.
I ignored it and I sent her back.
I sent her back to people who judged her from the beginning, from the very beginning for being who she was.
Moon and magic.
Fuck.
Fuck.
But then, what’s the other option? Keeping her here? With me?
I don’t even know how…
But I can learn, can’t I?
I can fucking learn.
I look a
t her journals with new eyes. These are her dreams. These have been her dreams since she was sixteen and she gave them to me. She didn’t trust me. She thought I’d reject her but still, she gave me her dreams.
Because she’s brave.
If she can be that brave, then I can learn to be brave too.
Can’t I?
If she can love a hard man like me, cynical and old and emotionally stunted, then I can learn to be soft for her. I can learn to protect her better.
Yeah, I can learn.
I can fucking learn.
For her.
They think I’m crazy.
They think I’m in shock.
They think I’ll snap out of it sooner or later when I see that the thing I believe in, the thing that I trust is not going to happen.
They even tell me this.
My mother is the first one to say I’m being crazy and unrealistic. She says I’m being a moon-eyed teenager, a dreamer who’ll get both her heart and her mind broken.
She even tells me about my father.
My real father, the one who I’ve never met before. I never thought she’d tell me his story. She guards that secret like her life depends on it and since the only reason I found out was because she was drunk one night and didn’t know what she was saying, I never expected her to tell me about him.
But she does.
She sits on the edge of my bed – my old bed in Connecticut – and for the first time ever caresses my hair. She strokes it and I have to blink back tears while I’m lying on my side, with my hands under my cheek.
She tells me that my real father was this charming guy she met at her country club. He lived in New York City and was in town visiting some friends for a while.
“We fell in love,” she says soothingly. “Or at least, I did. I even wanted to leave your father for him. For Christopher. We spent lazy afternoons together when your dad wasn’t here. I thought he was going to marry me. He said he loved me and I’d never felt that before. Your dad doesn’t love me. I don’t love him either. Never did, never will. Anyway, I’d never been in love before, you know. So I thought I was finally getting a chance at it. I was finally getting that dream that I didn’t even have for myself. I never thought I’d fall in love. But then, his trip ended and he left. And when I found out about you, I tried to contact him. He told me to move on. It was an affair and it was over. I didn’t even get a chance to tell him about you before I found out that he had a family of his own.”
My tears sluice down to my pillow but hers are still at the edge, filling her pretty eyes with pain.
“So I decided that I’d never tell him. I decided that I hated him. It was easier to pretend that than actually face the fact that I was a bored, easy suburban wife who fell in love with a charming man from out of town. It was easy to pretend to myself that it was an affair like all my other affairs.”
So we’re a lot alike, then. My mom and I. We both pretended to be okay. We both were living a lie.
And for the first time ever, I feel like my mom’s daughter. As painful as it was to hear, this story brought us closer.
“You look like him. You always did. Brown hair with golden strands that look blonde and chocolate brown eyes. It was hard for me to look at you. To look at the reminder of my broken dream. It’s not an excuse but I want you to know that. I want you to know why I was an awful mother to you. Because I was in love with your father. Maybe I still am.”
She wipes my tears off and it causes this wound in my chest, my soul to gape open. He does that.
He wipes my tears off, even if he’s the one to give them to me.
Swallowing, I grab her hand and squeeze, my already broken heart breaking for her a little. “Thanks for telling me.”
She blinks back her tears. “You can’t be like me, Violet. Do you understand? I won’t let you be like me. He’s not coming back, Vi. He’s not coming back for you. He called me, remember? He told me where you were. He sent you away. You have to give up hope, okay? Give it up. You have to pick up the pieces and move on because if you don’t, you’ll end up like me.”
This isn’t the first time that she’s said it. Give up hope, I mean.
She told me this five days ago when she suddenly came to Colorado.
After Graham left in his truck and I ran after him, she found me in the woods. She lifted me up, helped me up to the house, calmed my sobs down. She packed my bags while I just sat there on the couch, wondering what just happened.
When she told me that we were leaving, I refused. I told her that he’d come back and we’d talk and all of this would be over.
Surprisingly, she agreed and we waited.
We sat there for hours, with my journals scattered around us – I didn’t let her pack those.
Give up hope, Violet, she said, after a while. He isn’t coming back. I know men like him. He’s a predator who’s looking for innocent girls like you.
I asked her then, about the article in the paper and if she was behind it. She said yes.
“And now, you have proof. You’ve seen it with your own eyes that he’s not coming back. He discarded you. So let’s go. Don’t pin your hopes on him.”
To make her happy and to not argue with her anymore, I did leave. But I didn’t give up hope.
I haven’t. I won’t.
I trust him.
As crazy as that sounds after what happened. After he pulled that move on me, called my mother like that.
But the thing is: I didn’t before. I didn’t trust him, not completely – he was right. I hid things from him and I lied to him because even after everything he did for me, there was a teeny-tiny part of me that thought he’d be like everyone else in my life. I was too scared.
I’m not scared now.
I mean, I am. Of course I am, a little. But I’m choosing to be brave. I’m choosing to be what he made me realize I am.
I even tell Nelson that when I go for our session. We sit on our respective couches and he smiles at me.
I smile back.
Then he inches up his glasses and asks in his friendly, non-threatening voice, “So how was yoga camp?”
There’s an amused glint in his eyes and I let out a broken laugh.
Moon and magic.
I hear his words in my ears and the answer slips out. “Magical.”
“Was it?”
I nod, picking at the threads on his sofa. “I learned a lot.”
“What did you learn?”
I glance up at him. “That I’m in love with a man who ended up sending me away.”
He nods at that, gravely. “How do you feel about him now?”
I shrug. “I love him. I know he’ll be back.”
Nelson pauses. I know that pause. He’s deliberating, trying to come up with a way to break bad news to me.
These might be just crutches, Violet. These might be keeping you from dealing with the real issue.
“What if he doesn’t?”
I know what he means.
I’ve been to enough therapists and doctors to know that they don’t tell you to do things. They ask you questions and give you a chance to realize things on your own.
Oh, and they are realists.
They want you to have realistic expectations. They want you to make goals and wish for things that you can make happen. They want you to have control of your thoughts and your actions. Because they want you to live a healthy life.
I’m all for that. At least, I am now.
I want a healthy life. I want to deal with my issues. I don’t want to deny anything like I did before because it was easier.
This isn’t denial though, my trust in him.
I’m not denying what happened. I’m not denying that he hurt me. I’m not denying that it hurts to breathe. It hurts to wake up every morning day after day. It hurts that it’s almost been a week and he isn’t here yet.
It hurts so much that I cry into my pillow every nigh
t and beg for him to come to me. I beg for him to come back in my dreams.
So this isn’t a case of denial. This is a case of pure faith.
This is trust.
“He’ll come,” I tell Nelson, calmly.
Nelson puts a finger on his lips. “Okay.”
Smiling at his obvious disbelief that he’s trying to hide behind his cool mask, I say, “So I want you to teach me how to get rid of my crutches because I learned something else at the magical yoga camp.”
“What?”
“That I’m brave. And that if I want, I can work on myself. I can learn to live in the Outside world.”
And I want to.
I don’t want to be shy or anxious or at least, work on not being those things. I’ve been those things my entire life. Long before, I hid behind my sunglasses and cap, I used my hair and my headphones as my crutches.
I don’t want that anymore.
I want to be this new me, the one I discovered while I was with him.
The one who looks people in the eyes and doesn’t hide behind her crutches.
The one who’s wild and beauty.
Anyway, same thing happens when the girls come to visit. They all tell me to move on, look at me with pity and throw me sad smiles, hug me like someone has died, and I don’t want to accept that.
Through it all, I keep smiling.
I keep my trust in him.
I keep it even when Brian comes to visit.
At first, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe that I’m seeing him. That he’s here. He was supposed to be somewhere in California. And he looks it, too.
He looks tan. Not to mention, he looks tall and broad and so unlike my best friend whom I haven’t seen in a year.
My best friend.
I’m so shocked that I don’t move from my spot on the couch. We keep staring at each other, then he throws me a sheepish smile and I can’t stop myself.
I spring up from my seat and run to him where he’s standing at the door that the housekeeper has just opened.
I give him a tight hug, which he returns, and I can’t help but squeal, “Oh my God, what are you doing here?”
But as soon as I ask it, my heart starts pounding. My breaths go haywire. I break the hug and stare at him with wide eyes.
With eyes full of hope.
I don’t have to spell it out for him. We were best friends – still are. He knows what I’m asking him.
DREAMS of 18 Page 31