by A. S. Kelly
“And you had the great idea to share this with me? With me?”
“I thought it could be helpful.”
No, it isn’t helpful. I should never have known this. I certainly didn’t demand that Alex would never have anyone else, but hearing about it hurts me deeply and is causing chest spasms.
“Calm down, Jay—It happened a year ago and hasn’t happened since then. But judging by the effect this news has had on you, I’d say I’m right.”
“That’s not the point.”
“What is the point, then?”
“I told you, we were young and then you know what happened. We were distanced from one another and we went on. I’ve had other relationships and she—”
“—she hasn’t, apart from that asshole Conor. She hasn’t had anyone. She’s afraid her life will always be like this, afraid that no one will love her for what she is. Alex is such a…”
“Hey!”
“And you try to pretend like you don’t like her…”
“I didn’t say I don’t like her. It’s obvious that I do, I’ve known her my whole life, she’s my best friend…”
“Oh, let’s go!” he interrupts me again, moving to stand directly in front of me.
“Let’s give this ‘best friend’ story a break because no one believes it,” he yells at me. “I also tried to play that card for ten years, do you remember? And look where it got me. I can’t help but thinking if I hadn’t been such a coward, if I had faced the truth sooner, maybe Neil would still be….” He isn’t able to continue the phrase. “See, you’re like a brother Jay, you know. I’m worried about you. I don’t want you to make the same mistake I did.”
Liam isn’t able to forgive himself for the death of his brother. He’s always been in love with Rain, but she was with Neil since they were kids and he never wanted to interfere in their relationship.
It had been a suffering, immense love that slowly destroyed him and for which he still feels responsible. Neil died in that damned car accident just after he discovered that Liam and Rain were in love; but he was good and loved both of them completely and never would have wanted to see them separated and I’m sure if he were still alive, he would have done everything to see them together. He wanted their happiness. Liam still hasn’t been able to get over this enormous pain of having lost his brother and taking his place, and to be honest, I don’t think he ever will. He will always feel like an intruder in Rain’s heart.
I shake my head and sigh. “Things are different with us.”
“Not as different as you might think. You’ve always liked her, right? Maybe even something more…”
“Let’s not exaggerate now.”
“Did you love her? Before? Were you in love with her?”
Did I love Alex? We were so young, for God’s sake. Who talks about love at that age? Then it was a particularly difficult situation: my mother was dead, I was feeling lost and she was there…
Jesus, did I love her.
“You didn’t answer me,” Liam interrupts my train of thought.
“I don’t want to talk about it, and especially don’t want to discuss it with you.”
“You’ve got to talk with me or with someone else. But believe me, you shouldn’t bring it up with Rain because she’s about to lead a rebellion. She’s so protective about Alex…and she isn’t happy. Because Alex doesn’t want to be treated like a sick person, because she isn’t. She has some difficulties, okay, but that does not exclude her from having a normal life like mine or yours. She needs that, she needs to find someone, someone who cares about her.”
“I can’t be that person, Liam.”
“Well, you should know that Rain is going to help her find that someone who knows how to appreciate her as she is, for her qualities, and what she knows how to give. And I’m going to help her.”
I feel my jaw go rigid and my muscles stretching painfully.
I don’t have the right, she never was mine and never will be, but I cannot imagine someone else touching her, kissing her or…
“Jay? It’s not too late. I know what happened to your mother really shook your world, that it was an enormous loss. But Alex is alright, she’s going to be okay. She’s not going to die.”
I don’t want to answer him, not now, not with these contrasting sentiments fighting it out in my chest.
I did love her, she was my confidant, my friend. I never should have kissed her, I should not have gone over that line. But I was stupid, hurt and needing affection.
I ruined everything.
Now I have nothing.
I don’t have my mother and I don’t have Alex.
I lost everything and all because of my stupid weakness.
—
ALEX
Five years. What could have changed in five years? After having discovered my illness, which was dormant for years, I went through months of hell. I found myself having to face it all without help. I had just touched his heart with my fingers when it all ended before it could begin and without giving me a way to understand what happened between us that afternoon.
For the first time I felt like everything was changing, but we didn’t have time to discover in what way, and if it was just a weakness, a simple episode sparked by suffering, or if it could mean something more.
For me, it was already like that. Come on, we’re talking about Jason, the nicest guy in the neighborhood. Handsome enough to take your breath away, a great body and those clear far-seeing eyes in which anyone would go diving happily. And his smile, God, how could you resist?
I was one of those quiet girls, solitary and was happy with the company of a few good people, and among those, was him. We weren’t in many of the same classes at college and only had two or three in common. He was repeating the last year for the umpteenth time, but we spent most of our time together, our time.
Our relationship was always exclusive, we never opened our friendship up to others, it was something private and intimate.
Our families saw each other often, making it easy to stay in contact. But despite all of that, I was the timid one and he was the life and soul of the party.
Apart from the guys and Rain, his other friendships never could have compared with mine but what we had was enough for me, it was special and I would not have traded it for anything, not even for something more.
And instead things went differently.
That silence, that heartbreaking silence that played a terrible joke on us and in just a moment, our whole world exploded, spewing our bodies at least five miles from each other. From that moment, for me life has been full of doctors, hospitals, medicine and collateral effects. There is no cure for what’s wrong with me, I’ll be sick for life, at least that is if and when I finally get one.
My maternal grandmother died from a heart attack at forty. Something that happened suddenly, and it wasn’t really investigated fully. It killed her and that was it. No one thought that there might have been some underlying disease that caused it. When my illness was discovered, the doctors ran genetic tests and they were able to determine that what I have is indeed genetic, apparently passed down from my grandmother. She also had that particular gene, but luckily never had any symptoms or medical problems of any type.
My illness is under control, that’s clear, but the doctors think that it’s highly unlikely that it will manifest again, and that there’s no reason why I can’t lead a happy life.
But I cause people in the family to worry.
There are different degrees of severity to my illness. Some people afflicted have a condition that is lighter and more controllable, while others have symptoms and ailments that are more serious and dangerous. I happen to have fallen into the second category.
The medicines that help many people who suffer from my condition, and which seem to work well for them, allowing them to have long and happy lives, do not have a similar effect on me.
There is no explanation for these things, the doctors have explained to me that
this illness varies according to its subject. The most odious thing about this condition is that I can have a cardiac anomaly even in the most relaxing situations, such as when I’m sleeping.
My heart could slow down progressively until it stops completely, so I am forced to sleep with someone in the house with me, and have a monitor that is always on to recognize even the smallest changes in my heart’s rhythm so we can take remedial action before it’s too late.
I’m not an independent person and will never be.
I can’t do anything, or to put it more accurately, nothing can make me really feel like I’m alive. For instance I can’t be put under stress, I have to avoid any kind of anxiety-producing situation. I must avoid physical force and strenuous activity of every kind. But I can survive everything, day after day, hoping each one is not my last.
Everyone treats me like I’m made out of delicate crystal, something precious that could break in any moment, and I hate myself for this. I’d like to just be me, to be able to do what I enjoy without always having everyone’s eyes on me, making me feel guilty about the things I’d like to do.
I’d like everyone to stop worrying about my death and to start thinking about my life.
I don’t feel sick and I don’t want this to be the thing that defines me. I tried as hard as I could to do so, but then Conor came along. He was charming, nice, always ready with a joke. I liked him and I honestly thought it might work out.
In the beginning, things were fine: we started going out after having met at university. He liked me right away. He didn’t seem to be intimidated by me or my baggage. He didn’t constantly ask me if I was fine, if I had taken my medicine or if I did or did not feel like doing something with him. He treated me like Alex. Just Alex. And I was grateful to him for that.
When I was with Conor I almost believed I might be able to forget about him. Things were good and we were happy.
Then, than damned night it happened.
After that first heart attack, no others followed. There were a few episodes, a lot of them to be honest: fainting, racing heart, cardiac arrhythmia, but nothing so serious that it was beyond control. Nothing that my family and I weren’t used to by now.
It wasn’t like the first time, that had been a warning, an arrhythmia. But when it happened when I was with Conor, he went completely out of his mind because he had never seen me in that state before.
Conor and I had come pretty close to making love more than once. We spoke about the possibility of sexual intimacy with my doctor and he didn’t have any objections about it. But for me, it was the first time and maybe there was more to handle than I had anticipated.
That night something went wrong. All I remember was that I woke up in the hospital with my mother at my side. There was no sign of Conor. After I got back home, he came back to me and I let him do so, but he didn’t have the courage to touch me, or to really be with me.
It all became: ‘Are you alright?’, ‘Can I leave you alone tonight?’, ‘Do you feel like…’ and everything finished.
I was no longer a woman to be with as an equal partner, but a person to take care of. And I already had a family for that.
It seems like I can’t be loved without someone feeling the need to take care of me, or treating me like I could break in any moment.
I can’t love someone, or to explain it better, I can’t take on board all that love offers, because I know that someone could suffer from it as a result. I find myself acting the role of the weak, fragile woman who needs to be taken care of while someone else feels obliged to wait for the sudden bad news, and with this realization I feel as if it would be slowly destroying his life.
I can’t allow myself to suffer for love because my heart couldn’t bear it, certainly not, especially if it were with Jason. Especially if I had to see that devastating pain in his eyes every day, that ever-present fear of losing everything.
I can’t love him and I can’t have him around me.
I’ve lost everything.
I’ve lost my life and I’ve lost him.
9
JASON
I go out on my break to get a breath of fresh air. It’s a special night, the sky is clear and this mid-spring air is cold, but tolerable.
I exhale heavily, letting my nerves relax, enjoying the tranquility of this place and the view of the pier on the other side of the street, illuminated only by the lanterns on the floating boats at dock.
A reassuring silence that’s almost unnatural is able to uplift a part of my mind that has been too heavy in these days.
And then I hear it.
Her voice, her laughter.
Those relaxed muscles go rigid and I look around, trying to pin down where it’s coming from. And I see her a few meters down, joking around with Rain.
The wind is mussing her hair, which falls back over her shoulders. A waterfall of golden hair illuminating her face, which has taken on a grayish hue that worries me.
I stay where I am, watching her, but don’t let her see me, because I wouldn’t want to intrude on this moment.
I hear her talk, I hear her laugh.
I hear her living.
I’ve missed all of this so terribly and I curse myself a thousand times over for having thrown it all away and having denied myself these very same moments for all these years.
I wish I was the one who was making her laugh.
Five years have passed. Five shitty years, five years that seem to me like I haven’t lived myself.
I’ve had different female companions, it’s true, but I never let anyone get close to me, or to even touch with one finger something that was always destined for someone else.
I set my heart under lock and key a long time ago. After having seen first-hand what can happen to a man in love, I decided not to allow myself that luxury and find out to my cost.
My father loved my mother to death and look at how it ended: she’s dead and his happiness went when she left him.
As far as I’m concerned, I once tried to love someone. The result was a race against time to the hospital, a heart attack and the risk of death, death in fact for both of us. Because if I had lost her that day, I would have surely have died as well.
And now she’s alive, she’s here, a few meters away, and the only thing I want to do is to look at her and imagine touching her one more time just to see what it feels like.
I can’t allow myself to even go down this line of thinking. I can’t love, I can’t let myself get dragged down in these emotions, I can’t become one with someone and then lose her.
I can’t lose her.
“Hey, there you are!” Liam comes up from behind me accompanied by one of the guys who helps us out at the pub. “Come on Keith, I want to introduce to you to Rain’s friend Alex.” And so saying, he puts his hand on this asshole’s shoulder and leads him toward the two girls.
My vision goes cloudy, I lose my sense of reason and I can feel that I’m about to go raving mad, embark on a violent spree that would keep me behind bars.
Liam approaches Alex, bringing that asshole with him. She smiles kindly, but keeps her eyes down. She’s embarrassed and pale.
Shit. This is not okay.
I join them quickly, without thinking remotely about what I’m doing; she realizes that I’m approaching and is paralyzed, touching her heart with her left hand.
There we go, I’ve done it again, I’ve upset her.
I stop in front of her, take her hand and bring her away with me.
“What…Jason? Hey, what’s going on here?”
She’s angry and is trying to wriggle out of my grasp, but I will not allow it. We stop a hundred meters down the road from the pub while she continues to protest.
“You can’t do this,” I tell her in a serious tone. “You cannot,” I repeat, letting her go so I can massage my temples. My head is about to explode. “Why him?”
She sighs and sits on the sidewalk, defeated. I sit down next to her.
“Because h
e doesn’t know anything about me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“If he doesn’t know anything about me, maybe he would just treat me like any other girl he wants to get with and not turn a potential relationship into a humanitarian cause, and then I could finally know what it’s like to feel…” She stops, blushes and breaks eye contact with me.
“What? What is it that you need to feel?”
Then I stop to reflect for a few seconds and the rage comes back, taking control of me. I jump to my feet and scream at her.
“Are we talking about…are you talking about sex, Alex? Is that what you’re looking for?”
She stands up too, keeping a certain distance between us. I see her shaking and I’m not sure that she’s cold. She seems to become even paler in front of my eyes and I realize that I’ve been too aggressive, but the truth is I don’t know how to behave myself with her.
“Oh come on, Jason. It’s just sex, okay?”
“That’s what you want? Casual sex?”
How in God’s name we ended up talking about sex I do not know. I can’t talk to her about these things and I can’t think of her in that way.
I’ll never be able to have her.
Never.
“For you it’s just sex, Jason,” she starts to explain, as she tries to hide her embarrassment about this improbable conversation which is particularly destructive.
For me, obviously.
Because, seriously, I’m the one who could die at the thought of Alex in someone else’s arms.
“For me, it means feelings. Feeling my body. Feeling someone else’s body…Feeling something, feeling like I’m still here.”
And I fall down on the sidewalk: her words have knocked me out, punched me in the face and almost made me lose consciousness.
I cannot even imagine what she’s feeling, what a life like hers must be like. I have lived mine in a completely different way and I’m certainly not proud of it.
How do you respond to a confession like that? What should I tell my ex-best friend? How should I console her?
I take my head in my hands and breathe in deeply, squeezing my eyes tightly to force away the image I now have in front of me: that of Alex with another man.
