But I Love Him (14 page)

But more and more, I have to talk him into it. More and more, I have to be clever and smart and I have to lead him down the path to get him to see it.

“I want to walk to the bridge,” he says. The words break through my daze as if he literally shook me awake. There’s no threat in his voice. Just a promise. Just reality.

I sit up in bed and wrap the blanket around my shoulders. “Don’t do this, please.”

“I have nothing, Ann. You don’t understand.”

“Just don’t do this,” I repeat. “You have so much. You know you do.”

He sniffles. I know he’s crying. Even though there are times he seems whole, the cracks still show. And today they are spreading and splintering, and today he may crumble.

“If I come over, will you wait for me?”

The silence is deafening. I think I may have lost him already.

“I’ll wait for you.”

“Be there in ten.”

And I hang up before he can argue, before he can change his mind. I find yesterday’s clothes and pull them on, but take my time opening my door. My mom’s bedroom is on the opposite end of the hall. I can hear her snore.

She has no idea.

I slip down the stairs and write a note on the notepad on the fridge. “Went to school early. Cramming for Lit class.”

I know my mom will get up at six thirty. I know it doesn’t make sense that I’d be gone by then to go cram for a class, but I don’t care.

And I know she will know. But she can’t prove it. And sometimes I think she’d rather just believe everything is perfect than question it all and admit it’s not. Her way of dealing has always been avoidance.

Our driveway is sloped, so I let out the emergency brake and my car glides backward into the street. And then I start it up and drive away.

My car is silent. I don’t touch the radio or the heat; I just shiver in the quiet as I pass under the streetlamps and past all the dark houses. I wonder what everyone else is doing right now. I wonder if they are warm and secure in their beds, if they know things like this are happening all around them.

When I arrive at his house, the front door is unlocked, and I slip back to his room, past his parents’ door.

He’s lying in his bed, the radio playing a haunting piano melody. For a moment I just stand at the door and stare, because he isn’t moving and I think he might be asleep. But then I see him move and rub his eyes.

I walk to his bed and slide in and he turns to me, and he wraps his arms around me and buries his face in my hair. I let out a long sigh, and the tension leaves my body.

We don’t speak. We just fall asleep. All he needed was for me to be here, and he can relax and sleep.

And tomorrow he will forget all of this. Tomorrow he will be himself again, and we can forget all this and just be together.

And even if I have to do this many more times until things get better, I’ll do it, because I love him, and it makes a difference in his life.

Together, we’re unstoppable.

November 21

Two Months, Twenty-two days

When I arrive at Connor’s house today, his stereo is so loud I have to cover both ears with my hands as I walk down the hall toward his room. When I open the door, it’s even louder. The sounds flood my senses, a bass-heavy rock sound.

When I swing his bedroom door open, Connor whirls on me so fast I stumble backward. I see the flash of anger in his eyes before it changes. Before he realizes it’s just me.

His mouth drops, and he pulls me close so I can hear what he says. He has to shout over the music. “Oh God, I’m sorry, I thought you were my dad.” He wraps his arms around me. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

I wriggle away from him. This is just weird. He looks into my eyes, and I know I must look worried because he gives me the “one minute” signal and goes to the stereo. The sounds stop abruptly. My ears ring in the silence.

I wait for him to explain what’s going on.

“It’s been a long day.” Connor sinks into the little recliner in his room, but I just stand there, near the door. I’m still a little off-kilter from that look he gave me. From the anger that swarmed in his eyes. He was someone else. Someone I’ve never seen before.

I hit things, not people. That’s what he told me. But for just a second there, it was like he could hit someone. Not me. But maybe his dad.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Connor lets loose with a long, slow sigh. “I don’t know. I mean, do you really want to know it all? I told you my life is just … messed up.”

I step further into the room. “Tell me. It’ll make you feel better.”

He purses his lips for a second. He’s holding back, not sure if I can handle it. I can. I know I can. If he’d just let me help.

“My dad took a bunch of my mom’s favorite pictures and ripped them all up.”

“Why?”

“My mom wanted to go away for the weekend and see her mom. My grandma’s sick or something. He said she was choosing sides.”

“Oh.”

I say that word too much around him. It’s always oh. Why don’t I ever know what to say? Why can’t I just fix everything by making him see that his dad doesn’t matter anymore?

Connor interlaces his hands into a steeple, but then starts twisting them around, full of nervous energy. Or is it fury? I’m still not sure.

“He doesn’t have the right to do that to her. To take everything and just destroy it like that. It’s her mom. And she’s old. She could die of whatever it is, and he doesn’t want to let her go see her.” His voice is quieter now. I think the anger has gone.

I walk up to him so that I’m standing right in front of the chair, our knees are almost touching. “You’re right. That’s screwed up.”

Connor gives me a sad, pathetic little smile, but he doesn’t look me in the eyes. “I told ya you didn’t want to know all this.”

“But I do. I want to know everything about you. No secrets.”

Connor looks back at his hands and nods. I can almost see the relief, that he’s happy I haven’t turned and run straight out the door. “My dad takes everything from everyone. He wants it all. If he can’t be happy, you can’t either. He’s done it to me hundreds of times. You find something that you love, something that makes you happy, and he’ll destroy it.”

He finally looks up at me, and I realize it’s just sadness—no anger, no fury. He reaches up and tugs on the loop on my jeans, and I sit on his lap, so that my side is against his chest, and I lean until I’m curled into him and he puts his arms around my waist. He’s warm, his breath hot on my neck.

His voice gets quieter now that I’m closer. “He got a dog once, a beagle. I loved him. Named him Peanut. But once he realized how much the dog meant to me, he got rid of it. I have no idea if he gave it away or shot it or what. It was just gone. I cried for a week.” He starts tracing circles on my back. “It’s so hard to live like this. To have this constant turmoil. I just want it to be over. I want it to be all over.”

Something in his voice isn’t right. It’s like he’s not saying he wants the turmoil to be over, but that he wants his life to be over. I take my time answering him. All the words are important. It’s about so much more than what he’s saying.

“It will be, eventually. You won’t live with it forever. You’ll find a job soon, and you can move out and leave it all behind.”

I stare at us in the mirrored closet doors, at him with his face against my neck, at me just sitting there, a tired, pained look on my face. It’s such a miserable little portrait that I want to march across the house and go scream at his father for screwing everything up.

“I’ve been saying that to myself for years. I’ve been thinking it for years. But it’s never over. I can never walk away from it. My mom needs my help. All the time. Why do you think he’s gone right now? I had to get in his face for him to back down. It will never end. I just want it all over.”

There it is again. What is he saying?

I close my eyes, because I don’t want to look at our reflection anymore, and concentrate on the soothing feeling of his palm on the back of my knit top, on the feeling of his breath on my skin.

“I know,” I say, even though I don’t. Even though I have no idea what he’s talking about.

“Sometimes I just want to … I just want to …”

His voice trails off. I don’t think he’ll finish it. “I’m just so depressed I want to end it all. My life.”

And there it is. The statement that’s been between the lines all along is finally out there.

I sit more upright so I can turn and look at him. Implore him. “Don’t say that. I love you. Things will get better, I promise.”

“But how can they? I’m stuck with this. It’s what I was born into and it’s what I’ll die as. Surrounded by it.”

I’m shaking my head before he’s even done talking. Can’t he see? He doesn’t have to be this forever. “Yeah, but you have me now. We’ll get through it together. I’ll help you. I promise you. I’m here to stay.”

It’s so stupid, what I’m saying. But he looks up at me and one side of his mouth lifts in the tiniest smile. It doesn’t reach his eyes, but it’s still a smile. “You’re so good to me.”

And I smile back at him and he pulls me closer, kissing my neck, my collarbone, my arm, and I know I’ve said the right thing.

But even as we get lost in our kiss, I can’t erase the image of the anger flashing in his eyes. It was foreign. It didn’t belong there.

He’s not like that.

November 19

Two months, twenty days

Connor and I are playing another board game today. This time it’s Battleship. I’m terrible at it. He’s sunk three of mine and I have yet to land a hit. He’s good at all these games and I’m always terrible. But for some reason I still love every minute of it.

“B-7,” I say, picking up a white peg.

“Miss.”

“Oh, how ever did I know? I think you’re cheating.”

“Am not.”

I set my game board down on the hardwood and sit up on my knees and try to look over at his board, but he tips it away from me. “Now look who’s trying to cheat!”

“I swear you’re moving your boats or you didn’t put them on there at all. How can I have zero hits so far? That defies the laws of probability.”

“I’m just good at this,” he says, grinning at me with a toothy smile.

“I don’t believe you.”

And then I launch after him and he’s so surprised he falls over, and before I know it I’m straddling him and we’re wrestling with his board.

“No fair—I can’t hurt you!” He’s grinning and loving every minute of this, just like I am.

“So? You don’t play fair anyway.”

He rolls me over so fast I hardly blink before I’m pinned under him and the board is forgotten. The television is still on in the background, casting hazy blue light around us. His eyes are so intense I could get lost in them all night, but then he’s kissing me and I close mine again.

Every night, we get closer to the moment. Every night, I step closer to the edge.

And tonight I’m ready to jump. I was ready before, but nervous, and I’ve thought about it long enough. I don’t just think I’m ready, I am ready.

He pulls a blanket over us both, on the ground, and I lose all sense of time, but somehow it’s just us and the blanket, skin on skin in our warm little cocoon.

He looks straight at me, his eyes piercing mine, and I nod at him. I can’t say it. Not out loud.

But he knows. He reaches a hand outside the blanket, pulls something from the nightstand, and is back with me again.

“Are you sure?” he whispers as he settles back on top of me.

And I nod again and watch his eyes darken like a storm cloud, and then I squeeze my eyes shut.

After tonight, there will be nothing left in between us.

That is the way I want it.

“I love you,” I say.

“I love you too,” he whispers, his breath hot in my ear.

For a second, when it happens, there is a burst of pain and I squeeze my knees together, even though he’s between them and it won’t do me any good.

He freezes. “Are you okay?”

I don’t talk for a moment, the breath stolen from my lungs, but then the pain ebbs and I nod. “Yes. Just go slow,” I say, my voice hoarse.

He kisses my cheek, my temple, my ear, and finally my lips, and then he eases back a little before going forward, and I tense for a moment, but it doesn’t hurt anymore, and I breathe normally again.

As he picks up a rhythm, his breath quickens and so does my own, and our blanket cocoon quickly warms, until we have to pull it back.

I almost don’t recognize the low, quiet growl that tears loose from the back of his throat, but I know what it means when he collapses on top of me, his breath still coming in heavy gasps.

After a few seconds in silence, he pulls back and looks at me, a sheepish blush spreading from his hairline to his lips. “I’m sorry I … I mean, that wasn’t … I’m sorry that wasn’t—uh—longer lasting.”

And then I can’t help it. I burst out laughing. I have to push him off my chest because my stomach hurts, I laugh so hard.