But I Love Him

by Amanda Grace

  I’m shaking my head so fast the tears land everywhere.

  “Stop crying,” he says.

  “I can’t!”

  “It doesn’t fix anything.”

  I bury my face in my knees and sob, big choking gasps that rack my body. I can’t breathe. The tears are stealing the air and life away from me.

  I can’t live without him. I don’t know who I am anymore if I’m not Connor’s girlfriend. Doesn’t he see that’s all I am now? Doesn’t he see that I’ve given up everything for him? That I didn’t apply to college, that I gave up my friends, that I picked him over my mom?

  Doesn’t he get that I exist for him?

  “How can you do this to me?” I say. I try to look up at him through my tears, but I can’t see him. He’s swimming in them. “Why do you always do this and hurt me? I don’t do this to you.”

  “I have to. You have to leave. You don’t understand this. I’m never going to be the person you want me to be.”

  “But you are the person I want you to be!”

  “That’s a lie,” he says, practically spitting the words.

  And it is. I know it is. I know the person I see only exists in tiny little scenes. I know it’s not the whole Connor. He’s still ruled by things his dad has done, by the past he has lived, by his anger. It will be a long time before he’s really the person I know he can be.

  I gasp for air. It’s not coming fast enough. My lungs are inflating but it’s not enough. I can’t breathe.

  He seems to realize what I’m doing and all at once he’s beside me on the bed, pulling me to him, into his lap, until his arms are around me. I turn to him and bury my face in his shoulder. His shirt is wet with my tears.

  “I need you. Please, I need you.” I don’t know if he understands my words. I can hardly hear them through my tears. The lump in my throat makes it too hard to speak.

  “I’m sorry. Don’t cry. It’s okay. Just don’t cry.”

  I don’t know how long we sit like that, him rocking me and whispering in my ear. My sobs continue until I’m empty of them.

  “Shh. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Don’t cry. I love you. Please, please don’t cry.” He rocks me and rubs my back, and I can finally breathe again. His other hand is stroking my hair, soothing and soft. “Please, shhh. I love you. I love you I love you I love you.”

  I inhale several long, slow breaths, and my tears slow enough that I can blink them back. “I need to blow my nose,” I say, my voice bloated and raspy.

  He reaches over to his dresser and hands me a big fluffy white towel. I blow three times before I can get any air in through my nose. Even when I do, it rattles through the snot.

  We fall back against the bed and he pulls me closer to him, wrapping himself around me until I can’t tell where I end and he begins. I don’t want to know anymore. I want us to be the same person.

  His room is dark, like it always is. The sounds of the radio fade away until all I hear is his breathing mixed with mine.

  It’s just us again, calm and quiet. He grabs the blankets and pulls them up around us, and I nestle closer.

  I’m so tired of this. I’m exhausted to my bones. The pain is even deeper. The fear that one day he will truly leave. That he will think he’s doing me a favor. I feel as if I’m falling down a mountain, clawing at anything I can grab, and I’m missing everything and picking up speed, and eventually there will be a cliff, and I will have nothing.

  “I’m sorry I do this to you,” he whispers.

  “Yes,” I say, because that’s all I can manage. I have no energy for more words. My eyes are closed and heavy.

  “I don’t want to be like this anymore. I want to be happy.”

  I don’t respond because I’m falling now, sleep is coming. He doesn’t seem to mind, he just turns his face into my hair and breathes deeply. The smell of his cologne washes over me like a lullaby.

  And we fall asleep like that. Holding on so tight our arms ache.

  July 6

  Ten Months, Six days

  There was a note on my windshield today. I saw it as I walked up to my car. It made me grin. He used to leave me notes everywhere, in my jacket pockets and on my car and inside my books. But it has been weeks since his last one.

  You’re so beautiful to me.

  I smile and tuck the note into my pocket. I keep them all. They fill a box in the closet, and I often take them out and filter through his words.

  When I arrive at his apartment I know he’s in a good mood. I used to make him this happy all the time. He could be a ball of stress and nerves when I showed up, and I could soothe him. It’s what made me special. And I’m not like his mom—I don’t have to be there like she does. I choose to. And that’s what makes a difference. I choose him and I love him, and he knows it.

  But that rarely works anymore. I don’t know why. I don’t know when I stopped mattering to him, and I don’t know how to undo it. I want it to be like it used to, when all he needed was me.

  Today he cooked me dinner and bought me flowers, and we eat in front of the television as an old Tom Hanks movie plays out on the screen.

  It’s cozy. He laughs at the movie, his voice bubbling up, a smile breaking through and lighting up his eyes. He is the Connor I fell in love with. I want to laugh with him, but I don’t have it in me. I think my laughter might be broken, like everything else inside me. If he looks at me, I will fake it, because I want him to stay happy.

  He sets his fork down on the edge of his plate and slips his arm around me, and I melt into him. I rest my face against his chest and hear his heart beat steadily.

  If I close my eyes, I can lose myself and slip away from everything. These moments are like islands in a stormy sea, and I take them and hide and hope that no one ever finds me. I want to be the castaway, like Tom Hanks, forgotten on my private little island.

  He rests his chin on the top of my head. “I love you,” he says.

  He says it a lot. I think he worries that I will forget.

  But I still don’t think he loves me as much as I love him. I’m desperate for him to understand. I need him to understand. If he knew, he wouldn’t feel like he does. He’d know he can take on the world, he’d know we are unstoppable together. He’d know it’s us against them.

  Soon, he will understand, because the sculpture is almost done. The glue has to cure for a few more days. And then I will give it to him, and then he’ll finally see.

  “Do you want to go for a walk?” he asks.

  The movie isn’t over, but I nod anyway. We’ve seen this film a half-dozen times because it’s one of Connor’s favorites.

  He hands me his jacket, the one I always wear. I slip it over my shoulders and push my arms into the sleeves. They’re big and warm. I feel good inside it, like it’s a coat of armor. He never wears jackets. He never feels cold, I guess.

  His apartment complex is small, so we’re out of the lot in thirty seconds, walking down the road. The wet pavement sparkles under the streetlamps, a mid-summer rain that can’t dampen our mood.

  We walk hand-in-hand through the little residential neighborhoods, past all the broken-down cars and ugly chain-link fences. A pit bull growls at us, but Connor just flips it off. I don’t know why he does that. It’s not like the dog cares.

  Eventually, the houses get bigger. The fences become wood. The cars get shinier. We’re back to the land of the privileged, the ones who have no idea the kinds of things that go on behind closed doors. I once belonged to this world, but I don’t think it ever belonged to me.

  And then before we can get lost in our walk, like we usually do, I see him, and my heart leaps into my throat and I can’t breathe.

  Everything around him fades and all I see is him, and I know he sees us, because he is just standing next to his car, frozen, one hand still on the door. He stares straight at me, as if he’s caught in headlights. As if we won’t see him if only he doesn’t move.

  He knows what will happen if Connor sees him. Just as I
know.

  How did I not notice that we’d drifted into his neighborhood? How could I be so stupid as to bring Connor here?

  “Let’s, um, let’s go this way,” I say, tugging on Connor’s arm. He can’t see him. Not tonight. Not when everything is going so well and I just want to be with him and I just want the drama to stop and I just want to forget that everything is so fucked up. I just want to walk in the darkness and forget all this and now I can’t.

  Because Connor sees Blake. He sees him and he’s letting go of my hand and walking straight at him. I recognize his posture. It’s gone rigid. His shoulders are square, his hands are in fists. His strides are long and purposeful. I know every muscle in his body is tense. Ready.

  And I know what’s coming.

  It’s Connor who takes the first swing. Blake goes down, sprawling across the concrete that I’d thought looked so pretty with fresh rain just moments before.

  But it’s not rain on the road anymore. It’s blood.

  I fall to my knees, just as Blake has. All these months of protecting him. All this time playing peacekeeper and martyr and smoothing out the edges of the conversations and downplaying everything and avoiding Blake and never once mentioning his name.

  And it’s over, and they’re fighting.

  But Blake doesn’t go down that easily. He gets back up and I hear the crack his fist makes as it connects with Connor’s chin. I see him in a way I’ve never seen him. Angry. And I know it’s because of me. I know all these months that Blake’s wanted this, he’s wanted to take Connor and shake him and scream at him and make him see what he’s done to me.

  All those times I stood in front of him, those words swam in his eyes, but none of them were spoken. And now it has come to this. This is what I’ve caused.

  A porch light flicks on and someone’s door creaks open. A man’s voice shouts out.

  A car alarm goes off when Connor backs up and falls half onto the hood. He kicks Blake in the leg and Blake grunts with the pain, keeling over, gripping his shin. Shadows dance under the streetlight as they spar.

  I crawl to the stop sign beside me and use it to drag myself off the street.

  And then I run. I turn away from them both, away from the sounds. My feet pound on the concrete. There is no air in my lungs to run like this, but my legs don’t want to stop. My years of cross country and track have developed muscles that yearn to race like they once did, so I don’t stop. Connor’s jacket flies out behind me like a cape, the zipper rattling in the wind.

  I don’t go back to our apartment. I run straight past it and keep going, away from town, toward the country roads. I run past the elementary school and its swing sets and slides. I run alongside ditches filled with trash and cattails.

  I run until I collapse in front of my mom’s house.

  But I haven’t outrun anything. It will catch me. There is no escaping who I am now.

  I sit on the front lawn, my legs crossed, staring at the dark house. My mom’s bedroom window faces this lawn, but I know she’s not awake. It’s well past midnight, now. I must have run for over an hour.

  I wonder what she would think if she knew I was here. If she could see how broken I am inside. If she could see the faded bruises on my shoulders where he grabbed me last. If she knew the haunted world I live in, she would lock me away and never let me see him again, even if that meant I hated her forever.

  That house is not home anymore, but I ache for it anyway. I want to open the door and ascend the stairs and fall into a bed where nothing can get me, where I will sleep for hours and not dream. My chest throbs with the desire to do it—to cross the lawn and pick up the hidden key and slip inside the door and lock it behind me, and never answer it again.

  I want to wake up and eat pancakes and talk about going to the mall and my next cross-country meet. I want my mom to tell me the last crazy thing Grandma said, and I want to laugh at it.

  I want to sit in her kitchen and bathe in the light. I want to help her plant flowers in the spring and bulbs in the fall. I want to watch one of her horrible black and white movies and whine the whole time about how boring it is until she hands me the remote and I make her watch America’s Next Top Model instead.

  I want my dad to come back and make everything okay again, like he did when I was little. He’d swoop in and fix my Barbies and my flat bicycle tires. He could fix anything.

  I wonder if he could fix this.

  The shadows of the trees dance in a breeze. I try to remember who I was the last time I was in that house, but I can’t. I can remember the things, but I can’t remember me. I don’t know the old me anymore. She was smiley and bubbly and outgoing. She had everything; the world was at her feet.

  I wish I could have it both ways. I wish I could be there for him and help him and be the one he needs me to be, and still be that other person, too. But I can’t, and I can’t live without him, either.

  And he would drown in himself if I left him.

  I know he’s waiting. I know that his face is probably swollen, and that he will need me. I know I will have to call in sick for him tomorrow and help him ice his new black eye, and we will have to come up with a way of explaining it.

  I don’t know when it stopped being what it was, when it became something else. When it became this. It wasn’t this way in the beginning. It was beautiful and passionate and filled with things I’ve never felt before. Things I want back so desperately I can taste it.

  I don’t want this anymore; I don’t want this horrible whirlpool of constant emotion, churning and bubbling at every turn. And yet I feel as if I don’t know any other life—like the other seventeen years never existed. I feel like I was born into this.

  I get up and walk away from the house. It is too big for me; it stands over me, leaving me in the shadows, and I can’t sit here anymore.

  I turn toward the street and begin the descent back toward town, toward Connor and his apartment. In the distance, the ocean sparkles under the full moon, until the clouds shift and blot out the light.

  I glance back one more time as my house disappears behind me. The house I grew up in, the house full of so much laughter.

  I don’t know what happiness feels like anymore.

  I am dead to it.

  June 12

  Nine Months, Thirteen days

  Today is graduation. I don’t know how I made it this far. I don’t know why they are giving me a diploma. But I’m proud, because I have done it. And I deserve it after this year.

  He’s out there somewhere. He’s proud of me too.

  But I still feel alone. I wonder if my mom knows the ceremony is today. I wonder what she would have said if I’d asked her to come.

  She would have been surprised, but I bet she would have liked it.

  My classmates surround me as I sit in this folding chair. They laugh and hug one another and talk about how much they will miss each other once they’re gone. And all I can think is that I have been gone for a long time, but none of them miss me.

  I know Abby is somewhere behind me, with the other R’s and S’s, and I can’t stop wondering if she’s looking at me. I can’t stop wondering if she even cares who I am anymore. I want to turn around and look for her. I want to turn around and look at her. But if she gives me the kind of look the rest of these people do, the look that says they forgot I even went here, it will kill me.

  I don’t look in Blake’s direction, either, though I can guess where he’s sitting in the sea of other purple graduation caps and gowns. I haven’t seen him since the street fair last week.

  Since the disaster last week.

  One of my classmates is standing at the microphone, blasting a pearly white smile at all of us. She’s talking about the future and possibilities and how we can dream of anything we want and it will become ours.

  That’s not true. For some people, their destinies are decided when they are little. For some people, they don’t get a chance at a future. They only get darkness and a stolen childhood. And
it ruins everything, forever.

  It goes on for hours, or so it seems. Name after name. Flashbulbs and cheers. I wonder if they all think this is a big deal. I wonder if they think this is some life-changing moment, if it actually means anything at all.

  It doesn’t. It’s a piece of paper.

  When my row stands, I almost stay where I am. I’m not one of them anymore. It feels wrong to follow Veronica Masterson and Vic Mathews. I don’t belong here.

  When it’s my turn, I walk to the podium and reach out to take the roll of paper. The principal nods toward the camera guy and he takes our picture.

  I don’t smile.

  Just as I’m about to walk away, back to my seat, I see her.

  My mom. She’s staring at me with intense blue eyes. Her dark hair is spilling over her forehead, casting shadows on her face, but I know she’s looking right at me. We lock eyes. She’s here. I can’t believe she’s here. Watching me. Supporting me, like she once did from the stands at my track meets.

  I freeze. I have not spoken to her in at least a month, and it was a short, awkward phone call. She hasn’t tried calling since.

  We are strangers. And yet she’s here. That has to mean something. I have to mean something to her.

  The principal nudges me into motion and the moment is broken, and I walk away, but I can still feel her eyes on me, following me.

  Why is she here? Does she want to talk to me? Does she want to take me home, away from Connor?

  I want to get out of here. I don’t want her to find me afterwards and try to convince me to leave him. I don’t want to listen to that same conversation, over and over. I don’t want to defend myself and defend him. It takes too much out of me. Even I know my words sound empty and stupid and that I’ll never convince her.

  She’ll never understand him. She’ll never understand us. I hate the voice she uses when she talks about him.