by NJ Flatman
“Will you stay Spencer?”
“I’ll try.”
~Avery~
Did he really say he’d try? What the hell was that even supposed to mean? It’d been ten minutes since he’d had me against the wall. Ten fucking minutes since he’d told me that I belonged to him and shown me that he was right. How does a man go from making demands like that to something as stupid as I’ll try? I couldn’t take it any more. This back and forth with Spencer was worse than any mood swing. It was killing me and I was tired of dealing with it!
Why didn’t Spencer seem to understand what he was doing to me? I never knew what was going on. I had no clue from one day to the next if he was going to be hot or cold— there or gone. How could he not realize that the back and forth would damage me? Did he just not care? Was Spencer really so self-absorbed that the effects on me didn’t matter to him?
One moment at a time, he was destroying who I was. This was why I had to let go of her — the old Avery— completely. She couldn’t be there or he’d just keep tearing her apart. Every time I’d get comfortable and relax— believing that he was going to be there— he wouldn’t. He would leave. Sometimes I’d get a reason, sometimes he’d just disappear with nothing. It never really seemed to matter. It all affected me the same.
Somewhere in his mind, I think Spencer believed that his love— the way he felt for me— was enough to be worth the struggle. That somehow, the connection we shared made it worth the hell I’d been through. Truthfully, there were times that I believed it was. Knowing that what we had I’d never find with another made it seem like I should hold on— fight til the end.
Then I’d collapse again. Unable to function. Unable to find myself. I’d battle through the lowest of lows only to pull my heart from the trenches and find a way to go on. Just as I did, he’d come back and the process would start again. I couldn’t do it anymore. No matter how much he loved me, I couldn’t keep going through that.
He did love me. That much I’d always known. Regardless of how many people had tried to tell me otherwise. I’d never doubted his love. It was the one thing in this fucked up world I had any confidence in. Spencer loved me.
They had quit trying to convince me, but their opinions had never changed. They just thought I didn’t notice. The snickers and the sideways glances. The pity in their eyes. The way they whispered about me when they thought I didn’t hear them. Always the same. I was naive and dumb. I didn’t see things clearly. I wanted so badly for him to love me that I refused to admit he didn’t. None of it bothered me. Even now as I stood there, heartbroken that he couldn’t say the words I most needed to hear, I knew without any question that Spencer loved me and he loved me in a way that no man ever had or ever would again. They didn’t have to know that because I did.
Moments like we’d had against the wall were the reason I knew. Fuck, nobody really had those things happen. Not that I knew of anyway. Who needed romance and foreplay when a man could literally bring you to the edge with silence? But those same moments weren’t really explainable. They’d just make people laugh. Poor Avery. So hopeful. So wrong. It didn’t matter. I knew. I knew he loved me.
It just didn’t make it okay to keep breaking my heart. And I wasn’t going to do it anymore. Not even for him. If Spencer wanted me, he would have to be all in. If he couldn’t do that he needed to get all out.
A twinge of guilt shot through me knowing that there was a lot I’d failed to tell him as well. Spencer had no idea about the drugs. He had no clue about the new me. Hell, he didn’t even know for sure what role Luke played in my life and that was killing him. But if he wanted a right to that information, he would have to give me what I wanted. And he didn’t seem to be able to do that.
I could feel myself breaking down. The dope had worn off and the feelings were overwhelming me. It was time to get this over with and get him out of my apartment so I could stop the pain. I wouldn’t argue. I wouldn’t cry. I would just tell him the truth.
"You'll try? What the fuck is that even supposed to mean? That's all you can ever tell me. You'll fucking try." The words came pouring out without much thought, questions I’d never had the guts to ask directly for fear of the answers.
"Avery," his face frozen, Spencer looked breathless and confused. A familiar feeling tugged inside of me. Sadness. I caused his pain. I wanted to stop it. "I don't know what to say."
"You'll never get it, will you?" Questions lingered in his eyes. Clenching my fists-- fighting back tears -- I continued. "It's you. It's always been you. From day one Spencer." So much for the not crying and not arguing thing. Clearly this wasn’t going to go as I’d planned it.
His lips parted, words about to come out. Speaking quickly, I shut him up before he had a chance.
"I didn't want you because you were the hot guy. I wanted you because you were the perfect guy. Everything you said-- everything you did..." my voice trailed temporarily-- my body fighting the breakdown it wanted to have. "If I'd sat and created my idea of the perfect man..." inhaling quickly, I didn't stop until I'd said what I wanted to say. "It would have been you."
Hanging his head, Spencer couldn't look at me. It would only make it harder to hear.
"Try? I never had to try. This was just natural for me. From day fucking one Spencer. It was the easiest thing I'd ever done in my life. Loving you took no effort. No work. I just did. I still do."
Meeting my eyes, he lifted his head slightly, waiting to hear what else I'd say.
"It was you that brought me to life. It was you that loved me when I thought nobody could love me like that. It was you that I chose-- every god damned time. It was you." tears fell down my cheeks against my wishes. Emotions I couldn't handle ripped me apart. "It was you that broke me. It was you that shattered every part of that love I had. It was you that tore my heart right out of my chest...over and over again."
Brown eyes glistened underneath the light. Words he didn't want to hear were flying at him faster than he could catch them. Breaking his spirit, crushing his hope.
"It was always you," I whispered. "You did this. What you see, was you. The person who can’t trust you— you brought her out. You made me who I am now. The person you claim to want me to be—the one that belongs to you— she's gone. And you sent her away while you were 'trying'."
Once the words had come out, I wanted to take them back. Seeing the broken expression across his face— watching the tears glisten in his eyes as he tried to decide what to do— it was more than I could handle. But it was true. All of it. I was tired of him playing games with me. I was tired of him acting like I could just bounce from mood to mood and moment to moment as if none of it mattered.
Of course opening up like that made me vulnerable. A feeling I didn’t want to have. Telling him how I’d felt, how I still felt, gave him an advantage and I didn’t like it. He didn’t need any other way to be able to sneak into my heart and my life. I was trying like hell to cope.
“Avery, I….”
“Save it Spencer,” the energy I’d had only moments before evaporated and I sank into the couch. I needed a hit. I had to numb the feelings. Instead, I clawed at my arms and rocked back and forth against the sofa. He had to go. I couldn’t let him see me like this. “Just go.”
“No,” he argued, causing me to look at him with surprise. “You can’t just decide that you want to tell me what I’ve done wrong and not let me talk. You can’t just force me to walk away without even having a chance to defend myself.”
“What is there to defend? You know that what I said was true. You can’t deny it.”
"I didn't want this. I didn't want love. I knew I'd fuck it up. I didn't want to love you," his words pushed through me as if sharp and pointed- aiming right for my soul.
"You think I wanted this? Do you really think that I decided the best thing for my life was to fall completely in love with a man that couldn't commit and would destroy me piece by piece?"
Harsh maybe, but true. I was tired of him acting l
ike the victim. As if I'd slapped a chain around him and forced him to follow me into the deep abyss of hell that we were in.
"This is the way it goes Spencer. You don't get to fucking choose. You just fall in love. Sometimes its good. Sometimes it's bad. And sometimes it just sucks the life right out of you." taking a quick breath I didn't pause long enough for much else to be said. "You make me crazy. You fuck with every emotion I have and some that I didn't even know I possessed. Sometimes I hate you for the way I feel. Yet I still love you just as much today as I did the first time I realized I loved you. Before I saw how badly that would hurt me. That's love Spencer and we don't get to choose it. It just fucking happens."
Colt had sold me a small amount to bring home and knowing it was in my purse was making me crazy. I needed Spencer to leave so I could calm down the beast that was raging inside. He couldn’t see me like this and he most certainly couldn’t see me the way I was about to be.
“Go Spencer,” I repeated. “I don’t want you here.”
“I don’t care,” his tone shocked me. Gone was the sensitive Spencer from moments before. “I don’t really care what you want Avery.”
“You never have,” the truth was the truth.
I saw the flinch as the words hit him, like a knife through his gut. Again I wished I could remove the pain. When Spencer hurt, I hurt and I wanted to stop it. But I couldn’t. This was a pain he’d brought on himself. It was time for him to understand that he couldn’t keep doing this to me.
“I’ve always cared about you,” he argued, his voice a little softer. “I left because I cared about you. There is so much that you don’t understand. So much that I didn’t want you to know. Things that would change you. Change the way you view the world. I left to protect you.”
“What a crock of fucking shit,” I turned to him, glaring and tired of hearing the same stupid line he’d told me since I’d come back home. “You didn’t leave to protect me. You left to fucking protect you. You left because everyone always leaves you. Poor Spencer is always the last one standing. So rather than risk that this time, you decided to break Avery instead. Leave her waiting and hoping and wondering.”
“That’s not true. I was doing what I had to do. I wanted to— “
“You wanted to run before I did,” I’d always pretended that I believed whatever Spencer fed me, but I was done with that. I wanted him to leave and maybe if I was honest enough he’d go. Perhaps if I hurt him just badly enough he would leave and I could stop the swirling of emotions that was causing me to mentally collapse. Before I said or did something I wouldn’t be able to take back. “You wanted to hide because you didn’t trust in my love enough to believe it’d still be there.”
His head hung low as he fought the urge to cry. Good choice because that might have caused me to completely unravel. I couldn’t stand the fact that my pain became his excuse to feel sorry for himself. At the same time, his pain overwhelmed me. I wanted to make it stop. I lived a life of contradiction. A life of feelings that confused me and messed with my head. Spencer may not be killing me, but he sure as hell was fucking me up mentally.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” he mumbled.
“I don’t have any words for that. You are the person that has hurt me the most.”
“My life is…”
“Not an issue between me and you. Not an issue at all. We should have been stronger than that.”
“We were,” he argued. “We are.”
“No,” I told him, my tone flat and emotionless. “We are nothing. Because you weren’t strong enough to love me through your own damn fear. What I felt — what we had— it wasn’t enough. Now, I can’t trust that you ever will.”
“What are you saying Avery?”
I thought long and hard about my words before I said them. What was I saying? Goodbye? Was I truly ready to tell him to go? A world without Spencer scared the shit out of me. Even as half-assed as I had him, I had him. I couldn’t imagine waking up and not knowing for sure that he’d be there. I couldn’t fathom moving on or him doing so. If I said goodbye, would that be what happened?
Feelings clouded my mind. My body ached for something I’d never have. My heart longed for a feeling I’d never get. A commitment that he couldn’t make. A promise that wouldn’t be kept. Pain began to seep in. Life without Spencer. Curled up on the beach. Hearing that his phone was disconnected. No words. No making sure I was okay. Nothing. Just emptiness.
Going back to the room and Colby was gone. She’d left. Not just the room, the state. She’d gone home. Choosing to walk away from me when I’d needed her the most. Everything that’d ever happened between us— all of the things we’d been through— she’d thrown them away when she stepped on the plane.
Sweat formed at my brows and began to drip down my face. Heat overwhelmed my body. The pain was too much. The need and longing too strong. Worse than any feeling I’d ever had. I needed my hit. I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Avery, are you okay?” He was watching me. I was sitting there, rocking back and forth and clawing at my skin, and he was watching me. It couldn’t happen like that. “Ave…” he stepped towards me.
“Go home Spencer,” I ordered again, hoping he would leave.
“No,” he walked over and sat on the couch, refusing to go anywhere until we talked. Why did he have to pick that moment to be pushy? “We can work this out. We are worth it.”
“There is no we! There will never be a we!”
“You don’t mean that,” he argued. “You love me.”
In that moment all that consumed me was the pain and the need for an escape. The knowledge that Spencer couldn’t see me like this— couldn’t watch as I pushed the needle into my arm. He needed to go and no matter what I had to make sure that he did.
I had to get rid of it. The pain. The feelings that she still had for him. I needed to be numb and that wouldn’t happen if he was standing there.
That was why. It was the only reason I let the words escape my lips. The only reason I’d have ever said anything near what I said.
I knew it’d work and it did. Broken and battered, he had stood up and walked out the door without another word. All from one simple sentence. The last words he’d hear from me and the last thing I’d say before I collapsed on the ground, unable to even get the fix I’d needed badly enough to say it.
“If I loved you Spencer, then why would I have spent my night with another man?”
~Spencer~
“This is not at all what it means to grow a fucking pair Spencer,” her voice rang through my head as if I were in the middle of a bad dream. If only I’d been so lucky. Maybe the pounding as she spoke them wouldn’t exist in my dream. “Get your drunken ass up off the couch.”
“I think I’ve died and gone to hell,” I mumbled, rolling over and pretending she wasn’t there. “Satan himself is punishing me in the worst possible way.”
“Trust me,” she huffed, scurrying around the room and clanging bottles. “I’d rather be anywhere else. So how about we stop the pity party now mmmmkay?”
Rolling back over I managed to barely squeeze open one eye to look at her. Blond curls bounced as she picked up the trash that had accumulated all over the living room. She looked mad as hell and I was not about to want to deal with her.
“So then go elsewhere,” I huffed, covering my eyes with my shirt and only then realizing how badly it smelled. “Why are you here anyway?”
“Your brother thought you needed a friend,” she sat down on the recliner, but not before scrunching her face as if she might catch something when she did. “Seems they are in short supply these days, so he called me.”
I found Kevin across the room, standing against the wall in a position that made him look just like our mother. A glare at him told him quickly that I wasn’t happy about his choice. His shrug told me that he didn’t really care.
