by Hall, Marie
Soundless sobs shake my chest, heat fills my nose as the snot starts to run freely. I’m an awful mess. “Ryan, I love you,” my voice cracks. “I need you so bad. I want you, don’t you understand, I just want to know you trust me. That you can share it with me, because all the what ifs are haunting me.”
Grabbing fistfuls of hair, he yanks. “Haunting you? You! Do you have any fucking idea how hard I work each and every damn day to keep this away from you? I don’t want you to see this, Lili. I never did, I don’t want you to know what a nasty piece of shit I really am. Because if you know, you will leave.”
His voice trembles and I shake my head. “That’s not true.”
“It is!” He grabs his stomach. “It fucking is, it always happens. Anytime I tell the truth, they leave. They run away and they never look back.”
“Are you talking about your parents? Ryan,” I stab my chest, “don’t ever compare me to them. I’m not them. I’m asking you to share this burden because it’s too heavy for one man to shoulder on his own. I’m asking you to give it to me, stop keeping this inside you, let me take it. Give it to me, Ryan. Please!” My voice escalates in pitch until I’m practically screaming my plea.
“No! No! NO!” He punches the locker again, harder, three times in a row, mumbling it over and over and over, each no a stab to my heart. “This wasn’t supposed to happen, no. You were supposed to say yes, I’d tell you then. I’d promised myself. You were supposed to say yes.”
I’ve never pushed him far this before, because I think deep down, I’d always feared this would be the outcome. “Ryan.”
His name, falling from my lips, it’s my last desperate plea.
Leaning his forehead on the lockers, all I can see is his body jerk and it kills me, because I know he’s crying.
I can’t leave him like this, I can’t just run away. Approaching him cautiously, hand raised, I sniff back the tears and touch his bare shoulder blade. His hot skin ripples beneath my hand and a horrible shuddering sound falls from him, but he doesn’t say anything, just grips the edge of the lockers like his life depends on it.
I want his arms around me, want his hot lips on mine, kissing away this hurt, making love to me all night long. But I’d said words I don’t think I can ever take back.
He’ll never forgive me for this.
I’ve shattered his heart on Christmas Day, ripped it from his chest and tossed it to the ground. Devastated, I wrap my hands around his waist, and kiss the line of his spine, my tears mingling with the kisses, tasting salty.
He doesn’t turn around, he doesn’t grab me and doesn’t try to stop me when I finally have to let him go.
Turning back to the door, I grip the knob and wait. For several heartbeats, I stand silent as a mouse, praying he’ll stop me, tell me something, anything.
But he doesn’t stop me.
Knowing he won’t understand, I speak to him in Spanish. “Te amo con todo me corazon, pero lo estas rompiendo.” I love you with all my heart, but you’re breaking it.
Ryan lets me go.
***
Ryan
I heard her leave, heard her footfalls echo down the hall until they faded completely. What just happened?
Numb, dazed, I stand there like a moron, feeling as if I’ve just died and am now a soul standing over my body, watching the crumpled, ravaged thing with a sense of detached shock.
She hadn’t just done that.
My Lili hadn’t just walked out.
Left me alone, given me an ultimatum. Tell me, or I walk.
She wouldn’t do that to me.
Because I’d always believed her when she’d said she loved me.
I’d felt it in each kiss, each touch, each gentle little sigh as I’d filled her. But as the lights flicker through the stadium, and she never returns, I know it’s really over.
Suddenly a violent, ripping tears through my gut and I grab the nearest waste bin, throwing it all up.
My life is over now.
Nobody cares anymore. Wiping the back of my mouth with my hand, I march to my bag and yank the box out, flicking open the lid I stare at the delicate ring.
I’m not sure how long I stand there, feeling betrayed, violated all over again.
I’d fucking given her everything and it hadn’t been enough.
With an inhuman roar I throw the box at the wall, watching as the ring sails out, plinking softly to the floor.
All my dreams, all my hopes… everything, it’s all gone now.
Grabbing my bag, I shove it onto my shoulder and turn, intending to leave it. Leave it all behind, the same way she’d left me.
But as I step outside into the depressing gray hallway, emptiness spreads through my skull. Dropping my bag, I run back inside, to the ring. Falling to my knees, I pick it up and fist it, tucking it to my chest as I kneel over and scream.
So loud and so long, that I know if anyone remains they’ll find me, they’ll hear. But I don’t give a damn. Not anymore.
Crumpled in a heap, I fall to my side and close my eyes and let my mind just drift.
A broken heart can kill. Maybe that will be the way I go, found dead in the morning, eyes open, this ring clenched in my fist. What a damn loser I’ve become.
But no matter how much anger there is, how much I tell myself not to let one woman do this to me, I can’t move.
I’m paralyzed and gasping for breath, waiting for that death. Praying for it.
That’s how Alex finds me.
He walks inside, his blond hair tussled, his shirt on crooked, as if he’s just rolled out of bed and thrown something on.
“She called me. Told me where you were.” His gray eyes miss nothing.
Sees me huddled like a baby, sees the garbage can full of my filth, sees the glint of ring… I close my eyes.
“Here to tell me ‘I told you so’? Because you were right,” I laugh, “you were fucking right.”
Kneeling next to me, he slaps my arm. “Get up. I’m not here to say any such thing. But you can’t stay here all night.”
I look at him. “She left me, Alex. What the hell am I supposed to do now?”
Shaking his head, he grips my shoulders and forces me to sit up.
“Fight. Live. Deal with this shit, but live and move on. Now get the hell up.”
Dropping my head into my hands, I shake it. “Tell me she wasn’t good enough, tell me I can do better, tell me something, Alex, because I think I’m going to die if you don’t.”
He just stares at me and thins his lips and that says everything.
She was better than I’d ever deserved, better than I could have ever expected to have.
“I should have told her, man. I should have…”
“Then call her, call her right now and tell her the truth. Do it, she told me what she told you, she didn’t leave you, Ryan. She walked away from the situation. She’s a mess, man. Both of you, this isn’t what either of you want. And I’m no damn psychologist, but this isn’t right. I shouldn’t have to be here. This shouldn’t be me. Why can’t you two get your shit together?” He squeezes his eyes shut, scrubbing his jaw.
I try to imagine that phone call, her picking up, me telling her everything, laying it all out there and her still saying no.
But behind the pain, there’s anger. A giant ball of it and it’s filling me, because she didn’t have to do this. I was going to tell her everything, I was going to. But she’d never given me time, she’d demanded and expected me to just jump and beg and wag my tail like a fucking dog.
Shoving to my feet, I tuck the ring into my pocket, grab my bag and look back at him. Locking Lili away into a vault deep, deep inside me. A place I won’t have to touch, won’t have to remember.
She wants no part of me, fine. It’s over. I won’t think about her, I’ll move on. Live, fight, show everyone I’m better than this. Better than me.
“You coming?” I ask him.
Alex reads it in my eyes, he must have, because he puts on the mask t
oo. The one we always wear, the one that demands nothing, the one that says everything’s okay… so long as you never talk, never remember.
“Yeah,” he sighs, “I’m coming.”
Chapter 26
Liliana
December rolls into January and then February.
Mama’s hardly talking anymore and some nights I just need her to. Need it desperately. Like tonight when the dreams haunt me.
I can’t get his face out of my head, the utter devastation that’d scrawled across it. The hurt and betrayal flashing in his brilliant blue eyes.
And he was right, I’d betrayed his trust. I’d begged him to trust me, to share, but I’d left him when he’d needed me most. Left him alone in that locker room, nursing my wounds, knowing his had to have been so much worse.
Hard rain falls against my roof. I miss him now, more than ever. Crawling out of bed, I stretch my arms across the window and stare into the night, wishing I could be lifted out of here. Taken away, somewhere, anywhere… where the pain is gone. Where the burden of so much, too much, doesn’t leave me panting and sweating each night.
It’s a constant yearning that never really goes away. Even when I’m laughing, hanging out with a group of friends, or sitting and focusing while a professor lectures me, it’s my constant companion.
Where is he?
Who is he with?
And Javi, he’s not doing well at all. He knows, senses something wrong. Sometimes I’ll catch him staring out the window, or watching a football game and just moaning.
The other night he’d let me hold him. And not while he’d been sleeping. He’d been watching the TV, sitting beside me, looking at my thigh, he’d gripped my hand and squeezed so hard my fingers had gone numb.
He missed Ryan desperately and that was his way of asking, where is he? Where is my Daddy?
And that’s how I honestly think he viewed Ryan. Because for ten months, that’s what he’d been.
The tears, they’re always there, always burning the back of my throat. The first few days had been hell. I’d sit and stare at my phone, go to school, come back and stare at my phone, go to work, come back home and stare at my phone. Knowing if I called he’d hang up.
I’d hurt him.
I knew that, but at the time I’d felt like I’d had no choice. After the night in the tub when he’d rocked and moaned and shuddered, I’d been so scared, because I hadn’t thought I could do it. Hadn’t thought I had it in me to just pretend anymore.
Now… I’d take it all back. I could deal with anything, so long as he’s by my side. So long as he strokes and loves me, but I don’t have that anymore. I have no one.
Ade’s busy with Mama.
Javi never speaks.
Past three in the morning… I close my eyes, I have to know. Have to know that at least he’s okay.
Grabbing my cell phone, hands shaking so hard I have to redial the number twice, I call.
“Hello?” Alex’s sleepy voice drawls across the line.
Sitting cross-legged on the edge of my bed, I grip my small phone with both hands.
“Alex,” I whisper.
It takes a minute before he speaks again. “Lily Bean?”
Taking a stuttering breath as the relief of hearing that name tugs a half-forgotten smile from the corner of my lips, I say, “Yeah?”
The sound of sheets moving, and him sitting ring through, then, “How you been?”
Not good. Miserable. Desperate. “Awful.”
“Yeah,” he whispers. “You haven’t been by the coffee shop in a while.”
Licking my lips, I nod. “I know. Didn’t think you’d forgiven me.”
A long exhale. “It’s not me, Lili. I was never angry at you. House has been silent without you though.”
Running the backs of my fingers along my chin, I wonder what that means. Was he being nice and just saying what I want to hear, or is he really telling me Ryan’s not filling his bed every night?
“How… how is he?” My heart thunders, pounds at the base of my throat.
“About as good as you’d expect. Fighting, eating, sleeping.”
“Does he… does he ever?” I close my eyes, unable to finish my thought.
“Talk about you?” he supplies and I nod, even knowing he can’t see me. After a lengthy pause, he sighs. “No. Never.”
It’s a blow to my chest.
Not that I should be surprised, I shouldn’t. That was Ryan’s M.O. Never talk about the things that hurt the most. Ignore it, pretend it doesn’t exist and move on.
But I hate that he’s doing that with me. I hate myself for doing that to him.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, empty static fills the line. I don’t know what else to say, but I’m also not ready to hang up. Alex is my tether to him, the connection between us. Like as long as I have him on the phone, Ryan isn’t all that far away.
“Is he…” I stutter, taking a deep calming breath, I just blurt it out, “is he with someone else?”
Ryan is quiet so long that I can’t help it, I wail. Because the silence is deafening and tells me everything I need to know. It’s a horrible sound, full of hurt and raw agony and I can’t breathe.
“Lili, stop,” he hisses, “he’s not seeing someone else. Look, Ryan’s breathing, okay. But he’s not good.”
I shove a fist in my mouth, hiccupping around the lump in my throat. The relief that floods through me makes my legs weak. But nipping on the heels of that relief are Alex’s words.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean he’s getting into fights. A lot of them.”
“He’s beating people up?” I ask, remembering the day I’d seen him brutalize Olivio.
“No,” I can almost picture him shaking his head, “no, I mean he’s antagonizing and picking at guys until they come at him, he just stand’s there, Lili, lets them just kick the shit out of him. Fucking drives me nuts. He laughs with each blow. Guys at the gym think he’s sick, or twisted, or some shit.”
I drop my head. “I didn’t mean to do this to him, I swear, Alex. I just wanted him to tell me, to share with me…”
“I know. Truthfully, I told him to tell you all this months ago.”
“You did?” My mouth goes dry.
“Lili, I’m a just a dude. But I love him, Ryan… he went through shit. Shit that changes a man. I’ll never leave him alone, he’s my responsibility to take care, but I hoped… hoped you were the one to fix him. I think you might have been, if he’d trusted you enough, if he’d just been willing… you know he was going to propose to you that night?”
The words fly at me like bullets, crashing into me, ripping me apart from the inside out. My body goes cold and I blink.
“What?”
“Yeah,” his voice sounds strained, tired, “he bought the ring the day we went shopping.”
Looking back, I remembered his excitement that day. How he’d worshipped my body that night, whispered over and over he loved me, it would be all right. We would be all right.
I had a heart palpitation. Not a hard one, but powerful enough to drive the breath from my lungs. I’d suffered with them my whole life, during times of high stress. When I was pregnant, when Mama got diagnosed, the day Papa left… the night I’d walked out on Ryan.
“Lili, you still there?”
I think I said yes, but I’m really not sure.
“I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have told you that.”
“It’s almost Valentine’s Day,” I whisper, “next week.”
The line goes still, so quiet I thought he’d hung up. “I know.”
“Are you going to another bar?”
“Not if I have anything to say about it. I’m going to put a pad lock on his door.”
“Alex?”
“Yeah?”
I close my eyes, heart still pounding too hard. “If he does something…”
“I’ll call you.”
We hang up then and I stare at the phone like maybe there’s some
way to reach inside and yank him out. Pull Ryan back to me.
The digital screen turns black and I throw it to carpet.
Getting up, I walk across the hall, quickly glancing into Javi’s room. His hands are tucked underneath his cheek. Opening Mama’s door, I walk inside.
She doesn’t move, doesn’t even open her eyes. Just lays there and the only color on her is the moon spilling across her frail, thin frame. Ade sits up from her pallet beside Mama, rubbing her eyes.
