Roar (9 page)

I whisper against his breath, “You want to save me, but you can’t save what is no longer there.” I can see the confusion, the pain, and I hate myself even more. “You showed me what it’s like to love again and feel for the first time. But I never deserved it in the first place. I deserve to live and die in this slow, ugly life for every sin I committed. This is my hell and my kingdom that I deserve, as does Paul, I guess. You, though, are beautiful on the inside and out, and deserve so much more.” I take a step back, and he reaches for me, his mouth about to voice his objection.

“You can’t save me,” I repeat and keep retreating. This time Nate doesn’t come for me. He stands there, filled with pain and loss as I turn and begin to run.

We finally had the goodbye we should have had eleven years ago. We finally shared the last piece of ourselves, and I have nothing left to give. He gave me a gift today, a gift of choice where I have known very few. I chose to share a small part of myself with him without fear of it being taken. I would have loved to make love to him, but that would have broken him; I would have taken everything. Now this is my gift to him―to let him go before I trap him again.

I want to chase her, grab her, kiss her and make her see sense. She is so far from the wild and free woman I wanted her to be, that I thought I would find after all this time and sacrifice.

I don’t know why, but my feet have brought me to the shell of hell. I stand on the slab that was once Charlie’s dad’s garage. It was where I lost the love of my life and my innocence. I’m not talking about my virginity. That, at least, we took for ourselves. I’m talking about unrestricted childhood innocence. The kind that believed in Santa, the Easter Bunny, and that adults were our protectors. The day I took Charlie’s hand and followed her to this fucked-up slab of concrete; I knew the world was filled with a darkness that stalked all that was good.

I stand where
he
would sit masturbating in his pants. I stand here and vision Charlie sitting on my lap in the old single sofa ready for me to carry out our dirty routine. Yeah, it became just that, a routine. We grew to know what to do, and we did it. But what became non-routine was that we began to enjoy it.

I crouch down and close my eyes against the disgust of my memories, and the pull in my balls. I don’t want to feel it. I don’t want to remember it, because it’s beyond wrong, beyond monstrous. When I got out of prison, I came home to Nona and Davey. But when I went to bed that night, I couldn’t stop looking at my window, knowing her house was just outside; the structure that took my life and love stood untouched, while we were forced to face the debris of what was left of our lives.

I couldn’t handle it. I ran from my room to my shed in the dark of night, grabbed the gas can and matches from the shelf and took to Charlie’s. I no longer ran; I walked with purpose and anger, bent on revenge. I splashed every damn wall and broke the old window of the door, throwing the can containing the last lick of gas. I struck the match and watched for a long time as a small red flame burned almost to my fingers. I wasn’t thinking if I was doing the right thing or not; I was thinking whether I could say that final goodbye to Charlie and our history in one match.

I watched the flaming match spiral in the air as though it was all in slow motion, and then I sighed the longest sigh in my life as it hit the pool of gas and roared with life.

I watched as it spread wildly across remnants of our old life until it caught that one piece of furniture. What I will never understand is my next action. I scrambled for the door, needing to get that sofa out. I couldn’t burn that, not
that.
The door was locked; heat had already spread into the wood and steel doorknob. I took a step back and prepared for the onslaught of pain to the shoulder as I rammed the door. It gave in easier than I thought, whether by weakness of age or fire, I don’t know. But I was on the ground and in the flames when I heard a scream from behind me. My clothes were alight, and the screaming behind me grew louder. I don’t know how, but I was rolling and eating grass. The heat was intense, more than any bomb fire. The roaring noise and crackling filled my ears; I couldn’t even hear my own breathing.

Nona and Davey come into view when I finally got to my feet; both had tears streaming down their eyes and firelight flickering across their skin. I looked over my shoulder to what I had done; the fire was growing and the sofa I wanted desperately to save… was gone, melted almost. I had to step back; the heat was getting unbearable, but with each step my shoulders shook. I was a twenty-three-year-old man, and I was sobbing like a lost baby. The sobs wracked over me so hard it was painful. I fell to my knees as I watched our demons burn and melt.

I felt hands on my shoulder; Nona kissed my head as my family stood with me, allowing me to grieve. But I didn’t want them. How fucking selfish is that? I wanted her; I wanted it all back even if it meant we were in pain and tormented by a dooming date every month. I wanted to undo what I just did, and I wanted to… I just wanted her.

The roof crashed in; embers and flames flashed out toward us. That was when I snapped out of the darkness of my selfishness. Davey was on the ground crying, cupping his head. He wasn’t hurt, but this was too much for him, and it was my fault. I had done this to him. I created more pain to the ones I love. I scrambled to my brother where Nona was rubbing his back, and she looked at me with the most heartbroken eyes. I know that look; I know it intimately. It’s called blame. For so long we had all been fucked up by blame, and it was killing us. That was when I realized I needed to stop.

I had lost my best friend over five years ago, violently. She was ripped from my arms, tears saturating her face, blood on her cheek and neck. She was reaching for me, screaming as I was thrust into the back of the cop car, and she was taken into another. Nona and Davey were sobbing by Charlie’s house; some officers were trying to ask her questions, but she was in no state to answer them.

Everyone lost someone that day.

The final loss came when I turned my back on the pile of flames and took Nona and my brother home as the fire department arrived and saved the house. The garage was beyond saving; it was almost all gone, but the house only suffered minor damage.

Unfortunately, the damage I created in my family could never be fixed with a couple of slats of timber and a lick of paint.

Now, running my fingers along the cracks of the concrete the fire had tormented, I realize burning this garage down did absolutely fucking nothing for the person who needed it most. It was a turnaround for me back then, but for her… she was lost, fucked up by the guilt and blame with no one to hold her. Eleven years after being ripped from all she knew, she’s more broken and empty than before.

The death of her father was for fucking nothing! I did everything… for nothing.

I RUN HOME. RUN
harder than I have ever run in my life until I reach home and heave bile into my front garden. I don’t know if I have neighbors who are home during the day; I keep to myself. But if there are, I don’t want them to come ask me if I’m okay or call the sheriff. So, I make for the front door in such a rush that I trip on the second step and I hurt my knee.

I look behind me; there is no one there, but I scramble like my life depends on it. Fumbling with the lock, I fall into the house, slamming the door behind me. I sit on the cool timber floor, my sweat dripping around me, under me, and my body shakes. It shake in fear, shock, and, more than likely, a little dehydration. I crawl across my floor and relish the smoothness against my skin until my knee protests too much, and then I scramble to my feet. I feel drugged and heavy, my runners practically dragging across the floor because my muscles are incapable of anything else. I just don’t have it in me.

The bathroom is bright but cool, the tiles hard and yet wonderful on my hot skin as I lean against the wall and close the door. I’m so tired. Tired of everything that I can’t change or just don’t want to. Drenched and dirty, I drag across the wall and turn the shower on, just the cold; I don’t need the hot. I step in clothes and all.

The deathly cold water takes my breath away and I struggle to make my body not retreat into a corner where the jet is less. Panting, I slump to the floor and turn my head to the pouring water, opening my mouth and allowing the water to fill and overflow, flooding down my chin with the rest of the water. I drink it in, filling my stomach, but my tongue needs more. I let it just flow and fill until the need to breathe properly takes precedence.

Dipping my head, I pull my knees up to my chest, feeling the tightness in my ribs to the bruise. My eyes fall on my heaving chest; my crotch that I know carries the dirty desire and blame of today. I would have had sex with Nate in a heartbeat today, any day. He is my home. No, no, no! Nate is not my home anymore. Paul is, or should be.

I was dripping wet for Nate long before he was resting against my sex, and I would have let his cock fill me had the guilt not shook me. The thing about guilt and shame is it’s like tar; it sticks.

I wish it was different. I wish I could save myself from the sticky sin or the monster of a man I live and bed with every day, but I deserve the life I now reside in. I deserve to allow the water to run over me and wash the memory of the only person I love away.

I pull at my runners that are full of water and throw them out of the shower with a wet thud. Palming the smooth tiles, I stand and begin to rid the drenched clothes that stick to my skin and throw them out, too. But that’s not enough. I still feel him on me, his soft lips on my neck, so I take the loofah and soap, and begin to scrub. I don’t deserve him in my life, and I can’t afford to live with the memory of how much I wanted to make love to him as an adult. Paul will know. He will smell it on me and then I will be in… I scrub and lather until I reach my sex where it throbs for Nate still.

The soapy loofah gives me relief as it runs over my swollen clit. My breath catches and I gasp as a flash of Nate’s face fills my mind, the way his fingers glide across me in a way that’s all consuming and never disappointing. Before I know what I’m doing, I’m working my clit with my loofah and fingers, until my back falls back against the tiles, and again I gasp. Not from lust, tiles, or the delight in the physical need for him, but from the disgust. My old friend is shadowing me with a feeling I know well and welcome. I don’t deserve anything else, and yet, every time I think of Nate, I want more than what my shadows give me.

I want to beg for more, for freedom and the promises he made in our youth. Though, that is not what I am, or will ever be—free. Freedom is for the good or the deserving, even the lucky. No, freedom is not mine. From the moment I took Nate’s hand and led him to his despair, I lost that God-given right because I took his.

I hate myself for what I did to him, twisted his love for me into something dark. He loved me more than I loved him; well, maybe just differently. I loved him more than anything in the entire world. But if it were true love, I would never have kept him in the hell that is my life. He, on the other hand, did everything selflessly.
Everything
.

And then, he was taken from me, from my prison to his own. While I was taken to foster care, he was taken to a detention center, followed by jail. While I went from family to family, his family were left with no one. All these travesties because of me, because of my selfish love, because I allowed him to be selfless.