The Lonely

by Brown, Tara

'Yup.'

  I hate what I'm about to do. I'm selfish sometimes.

  We pull up in front of the building. I dash from the SUV and run across the road to the white Porsche parked out front. I jump in and point, "Just drive, please."

  My phone rings. I glance at it and sigh.

  "What's going on? Are you alright?" Sebastian looks confused.

  I shake my head, "No. I needed to talk to you." I look at him as the engine revs. "Can you take me to the dorms?"

  He looks angry and I don’t blame him. He sighs and turns up a road. "Are you breaking up with me?" He glances at me.

  I nod, "It's not that I'm breaking up with you. I'm freeing you from the insanity that is me." I turn and face him, "You told me you didn’t want some other guy's girl."

  He licks his lips and nods. I hate what I about to do to him.

  I clear my throat and speak softly, "Fourteen years ago a boy held his hand out for me. He rescued me from my prison. I have never gotten past it. No matter what I do, or where I go, all I see is his hand. His fucked up, bizarre, damaged hand." I stop and listen to myself. I shake my head, "I realize I'm not even making sense. But let me just say this, no matter what happens in this world, I will always be that guy's girl. I've made him so big in my mind that I can't even move around in there. It's not that I can even be with him. I just won't ever be without him. I'll never be whole without him."

  He frowns, "This is insanity. You're going on the emotions of your family and the feelings that are overwhelming you. You need to distance yourself and find your true feelings."

  "From both of you." I whisper.

  He looks at me with the greenest hazel eyes ever and the most broken look on his face. I force myself to look at him and see every ounce of pain.

  He stops the car and looks down, "Yesterday was amazing. I don’t even know what to say about it all. But I think I'm out of patience, Sarah. I won't be back or waiting around. I think I've gone as far as I can, waiting for you to get better."

  "I know." I want to tell him I'll never be better. This is better. But I don’t want to prolong the conversation. I just want out of the car.

  He looks at me and smiles bitterly, "I'm leaving Boston. I'm going to Los Angeles for work and I don’t know when I will be back."

  "Okay."

  He leans over and kisses my cheek so softly it barely touches, "Take care of yourself."

  "I will. You too."

  He looks back at the steering wheel. I climb out, hating myself.

  My brain hurts.

  I storm up the steps to my building and to my room. I open the door and collapse on the bed. I grab the remote and switch on the TV. I don’t think I'll ever be able to watch Amelie again. I turn on a vampire movie and hang with my people, the stupid girls who always pick the monster.

  The next day I'm walking across the path to my dorm when my phone vibrates.

  I pull it out of my pocket and answer it with anger worthy of the annoyance of him calling every five-minutes. "WHAT!" I snap.

  His voice is desperate. All the anger is gone. "You have to see this isn’t about you. She wants you and I under her thumb. I haven’t had a session with her since it happened. She isn’t my therapist. It isn’t even a big deal. You slept with that Sebastian fellow on your birthday and I never brought it up. I haven’t been with anyone since I found you. I swear to god. I haven’t slept with anyone since I found you."

  "YOU LET ME GO THERE! YOU LET HER TREAT ME! YOU TWO FUCKING TORTURED ME IN A CELL! YOU FUCKED A WOMAN YOU LET TORTURE ME!" I forget I'm in the middle of the path on campus.

  "SHE IS THE BEST, SARAH. FOR FUCK'S SAKE!" He screams and swears. He's mad. I hang up, slightly panicking. He is never that mad.

  I run to my dorm and pack my bag. I'm opening the door when Shell walks in. She frowns, "What's happened?"

  "I need to go box. I just need it." She sees my face and texts Stuart and grabs her bag too. She loops her arm through mine and walks with me down the stairs.

  "Tell Shell Shell what's wrong."

  I shake my head, "I just need time."

  "Did you and Eli hash things out?" She asks.

  I look at her like she is crazy, "Hash out what? He slept with our therapist and let her treat me. She loves him or is obsessed with him and lied about his feelings for me. She told me he liked me because he'd mentally made me his sister."

  She holds my arm tight and walks me across the campus to the SUV. She stops just shy of it and looks at me, "You know I'm the biggest Sebastian fan ever. I have long wished you would beat this thing you have with Eli and marry Sebastian. I was thinking senior year, in Chicago. Let your mom and my mom plan everything so we can listen to them bicker about how you're actually Italian from my side of the family."

  I laugh weakly.

  She shakes her head, "I don’t think that anymore. I have never been team Eli, but after watching him with you, I am all team Eli. I am one hundred percent Eli. He is so in love with you. He took care of you and forced you out of survival orphan mode. He has spent his entire life either looking for you or figuring out the way to help you. He has no one, Sarah. No one. His parents are ridiculous and his therapist is a tart. He hasn’t had girlfriends or anything. I have grilled Stuart like a mutha. That boy has literally spent his life devoted to you. All you. Not his sister. Not replacing you with her. Just you. He had the tombstone made for Emalyn. He was the one who started the Emalyn Adams Foundation for victims of child abuse. Stuart said he did that to get closure. There is a whole other Eli we don’t know."

  I slump, "Well shit."

  She sighs, "I know right. All that badass and tattoos and he's a fucking score. It's so not fair." She grins. I nudge her and walk to the car.

  I smirk at Stuart, "Thanks for coming."

  He nods at Shell, "I was already here."

  I laugh and climb in. We drive over to the gym.

  I look out the window processing everything she said. It sounds true. In my heart, which is blind to his faults, it feels right. He loves me. I know he does. God I hope he does. I hate the control he has, but at the same time I'm so grateful he has it. He has me and everything else taken care of. In a twisted way, loaded with codependency, I love that about him. I trust him.

  We pull into the gym parking lot. I climb out on my own and point at Stuart, "Stop." He backs off and laughs.

  I shoulder my bag and walk up to the doors. I don’t feel like boxing suddenly. I feel like closing up and refusing the entire world so I can sit and ponder the shit I don’t want to deal with.

  My phone vibrates.

  'Where are you?'

  I look at it and rub my thumb over the screen where the snow is falling. I shake my head muttering, "God I hate Boston. I hate snow."

  Shell laughs. "Oh my god, me too. I just want to go to Cuba for like two weeks and lay on a beach."

  Stuart smirks, "Spring break?"

  She grins, "For real?"

  He nods and pulls her into his embrace. My heart hurts. I walk inside, leaving them making out in the goddamned snow.

  I tape up my hands and walk slowly out to the rings.

  He's there.

  I shake my head, "Do you have a GPS tracker on me?" I ask.

  He laughs but it doesn’t reach his eyes, "I do."

  I cross my arms, "What? What do you want to say?"

  He turns and walks away. I follow. He's still got the control. He climbs into a ring. I look around and see the gym is empty of other people. I climb into the ring with him.

  He brings over gloves and pulls them on to my hands, delicately. More so than he has ever been.

  He speaks softly, still confidently though, "She is the best. She was the only one who believed that you could be rescued and I needed you." His eyes are wide and filled with tears. "I needed you." His vulnerability scares me. He walks slowly to get his gloves and slides his hands into them. "No one believed me about you - that I didn’t invent you. No one saw me as a hero. No one but you, and for that belief in me
that you had, I let you down. I left you sleeping in that barn, thinking it would be better if you didn’t have to see the police. I was protecting you even then. You have never, nor will you ever, be my sister. I know I'm messed up and I am insane in so many different ways, but the fact you could believe me capable of such a horrific thing…" He looks at me as a single tear leaks from his icy-blue eye, "It kills me inside." His statement and his face break my heart. Somehow I'm the bad guy again.

  His lip trembles, making his voice unsteady. "You have always been the girl who took my hand and trusted me to save her. The girl who saved my sister from a fate worse than any. The girl whose sadness matched my own. The girl whose face has haunted me my entire life. You saw Emalyn's eyes, well I saw yours. You are the bravest girl I have ever known."

  I'm trembling and scared as he draws closer.

  "I have thought of no one but you for fourteen years. I can't have a regular relationship. It isn’t you I'm punishing, it's me. I don’t deserve the kindness of love. I failed her and you. I should have fought harder and saved you both. I never should have left you. I'm so sorry. I never should have left you. You ended up there because of me."

  I am a sobbing mess. The kaleidoscopes have taken my eyes. The angles and shapes that make my world harsh and sharp have taken over my eyes. I step forward, grabbing his hands. "You saved me. You saved me from the dirty house and you saved me from being a waitress in a café the rest of my life." I reach up and run my hands across his cheeks, taking his tears. "I see you." I whisper.

  He wraps around me, we become one. Our skin is so close, that in the crease between us, I feel a spark that could light up the entire world.

  I hold him and caress him and for the first time, I see him. His hatred for himself is stronger than any feeling he could possibly ever have. He will always be the broken mess he is. I get the feelings of self-preservation Sebastian had when he left me. I get it. I could walk now and choose survival.

  But I don’t. I hold him closer and choose him. The hard work and constant frustration is worth the moments like this one, where I get to see inside. Even if it's just for a moment. I hate that we are both so damaged.

  I hold him and know that without him there never was survival. But that doesn’t mean I need to self-destruct. I know what I have to do, for us both.

  He shakes and sobs into me and I have a bad feeling it's the first time he has truly let himself cry. My back hurts from the pressure and weight of him, but I hold him tight until he's ready to stand up on his own again.

  We hold on to each other, like we did when we were little.

  He looks at me and shakes his head, "I'm sorry. I just panicked. I don’t know what to do without you. I don’t know what I am without you."

  "We can't be two broken things and have a relationship."

  He frowns.

  I rise in my toes and kiss his lips softly, "I don’t want anyone but you. But at the same time, I don’t want to be the china doll you glued back together. I don’t want to look whole from a distance, but when you get close enough you can see all the cracks."

  He runs a gloved hand down my cheeks, "The cracks make us who we are."

  I shake my head, "We can be better than this. But it feels like we need to be better for ourselves. I need to be better for me and you need to be better for you. If you can't love you and I can't love me, then we will never truly love each other."

  He looks stressed and confused. "You don’t want to be with me?"

  I kiss his frozen lips again, "I do. But not like this. I don’t want to need you to make me whole. My whole life I've wanted normal. I don’t care about that anymore. Shell is right, there is no normal. But with us there is a danger that we will let this consume us. We won't ever get better if we don't let go of each other and find ourselves."

  He kisses me back after a minute of my gentle pecks brushing his lips, "You're so much stronger than I am. I can't do this without you."

  I grin, "You need like a year with some hard-ass nuns and you'll feel better. Trust me."

  He laughs and shakes his head, "I need you."

  "I need you too. When we don’t need each other anymore and just want each other, we can try again."

  He grips me. I can feel his hands trembling, "I can't be without you."

  I nestle my face into his hard chest and nod, "Yes, you can. You just have to trust me. If you trust me to take care of myself, you'll see."

  "What if I lose you again?"

  I smile and listen to his rapid heartbeat, "You found me once, you'll find me again." My own heart is breaking. I don’t want to be strong. I want him to drag me back into the change room and punish me for such thoughts. I want to be weak and succumb to his every whim. But I don’t.

  "It doesn’t feel like it right now, but this is me choosing you." I whisper.

  He holds me tighter. "You're right it doesn’t feel like it now."

  I close my eyes and feel the right path before me, "It will."

  He pulls back, "Are we going to box then?"

  I laugh, "I need all the help I can get and we both already look beat up."

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I tremble as she wraps the tape. She looks at me and smiles, "You got this."

  I laugh, "I've got an ass whooping coming. That’s what I've got."

  She smirks, "Yup. But you look sexy in your t-shirt." I glance down and laugh. The Tinkerbell tee is exactly what I needed. When Lance gave it to me I almost killed him. But then watching him hand out the t-shirts to the boys made me feel better.

  I hop back and forth and try to loosen up.

  "Okay, if you panic, kick him in the balls and run. We both know Eli won't let anything happen to you."

  I nod.

  "Or Lyle and Jake."

  I nod again. She sanitizes her hands and slides the guard into my mouth.

  "Ready?"

  I shake my head.

  She laughs and drags me out to the rings. My brothers smile at me, but I can see they're scared. I grin my mouth guard at them. Jake laughs and shakes his head. Lyle doesn’t laugh. He watches me and then the door, where Angelo walks out.

  He grins at me and points his glove, "My turn."

  I laugh. I have a secret weapon he doesn’t know about. I look around for the only face I really need to see. His icy-blue eyes meet mine from a doorway. He's leaning with his arms crossed. He looks deadly sexy. I have to focus the blood in my body. I force my eyes away from his. We've been hanging out like regular people but it's been painful.

  I climb into the ring and start to hop around. I move my neck around and roll my shoulders. Angelo is doing the same. I smirk at the boys all wearing their Lost Boys t-shirts that Lance made for them. They're cheering, even Brandon, the little shit.

  Lance steps in, "Clean fighting. No cheating. No biting. No kicking. No kissing."

  I grin.

  Angelo holds a mitt up, "If you gotta kish me, I get it."

  I narrow my eyes and hold my mitts up. He knocks them with his. We step back and get ready. Lance throws his arms down, "FIGHT!"

  Angelo comes hard and fast. Thankfully I can tell he's holding back, but if he hits me it's gonna hurt. His right connects with my arm, but grazes off. He frowns. I grin. He hits with the left, but I move and it grazes off again.

  He's confused and underestimating me. I take advantage of it and hit him in the jaw. His head barely moves. He laughs and comes at me.

  I turtle as his shots connect. They still hurt, even though they glance off my arms.

  "Tink, you got shomeshing you want to tell me about? Like a magical forshfield thatsh prtotecting you?"

  I hit him with my pathetic swipes. He laughs. I attack harder, making his laugh get louder.

  He swings at me, connecting with my face. I fall back. Luckily, it too glances off.

  "TINK!" He jumps and grabs me. I'm laughing now instead of him. I rub my glove against my face. His gloves drop. He looks scared, "Can we be done now? I didn’t even hit t
hat hard and my shots aren’t connecting, but this is stressing me out."

  I laugh and nod. The cocky bastard is gone and replaced by this pussycat. He looks at my face and frowns. He looks at his glove and shakes his head, "Cheater, cheater."

  I laugh. I'm sure I have a very glittery face.

  He looks at Shell, who waves at him holding the bottle of glitter body oil.

  He holds up his sparkly gloves, "How did I mish thish?"

  Lyle and Jake are there beside me, lifting me up. Protective isn’t the right way to describe them. They moved to Boston the week after my birthday and we had planned family outings every second day until they finally got us to agree to move in with them. They even joined my boxing club. They're out of control. But I like it.

  "You okay?" Lyle asks and glares at Angelo. Jake pulls off my gloves. I drop the guard into my hand and grimace. Lyle makes the same face. He has a thing with germs. It warms my heart.

  I look around the gym for Eli, but he isn’t there. He's gone.

  "We have to leave for Easter. You ready?" Lyle asks. I nod.

  "Is Eli coming?" Jake looks around the gym.

  "Not sure." I say.

  Jake looks worried, "You guys are cool still right?"

  I blush, "Yup."

  Lance comes up smirking, "You went down like a sack of potatoes Tink. We gotta work on your ducking."

  Brandon scoffs, "She lasted ten times longer than I thought she would and she hit him." I glance at Angelo and wink. He laughs.

  "Race when I get back?"

  He nods, "Then we start working on that plan of yours."

  I smile, "Thanks Angelo."

  He nods at me, "Get that girl to call me again. She's not returning any of my texts."

  I look at Shell, talking to the Lost Boys and shake my head, "She's off the market dude."

  "Bummer. Have a good Easter Tink."

  "You too."

  I get cleaned up, staring at my phone the entire time. I miss him, even if I asked for it.

  We leave the gym. Stuart is standing at the SUV looking at his watch, "Come on!" He's waving his arms, motioning for us to get in. He drives like a madman.

  "We're gonna miss him if we don’t hurry."