The Lonely (34 page)

He
stops the car and looks down, "Yesterday was amazing. I don’t even know
what to say about it all. But I think I'm out of patience, Sarah. I won't be
back or waiting around. I think I've gone as far as I can, waiting for you to get
better."

"I
know." I want to tell him I'll never be better. This is better. But I
don’t want to prolong the conversation. I just want out of the car.

He
looks at me and smiles bitterly, "I'm leaving Boston. I'm going to Los
Angeles for work and I don’t know when I will be back."

"Okay."

He
leans over and kisses my cheek so softly it barely touches, "Take care of
yourself."

"I
will. You too."

He
looks back at the steering wheel. I climb out, hating myself.

My
brain hurts.

I
storm up the steps to my building and to my room. I open the door and collapse
on the bed. I grab the remote and switch on the TV. I don’t think I'll ever be
able to watch Amelie again. I turn on a vampire movie and hang with my people,
the stupid girls who always pick the monster.

The
next day I'm walking across the path to my dorm when my phone vibrates.

I
pull it out of my pocket and answer it with anger worthy of the annoyance of
him calling every five-minutes. "WHAT!" I snap.

His
voice is desperate. All the anger is gone. "You have to see this isn’t
about you. She wants you and I under her thumb. I haven’t had a session with
her since it happened. She isn’t my therapist. It isn’t even a big deal. You
slept with that Sebastian fellow on your birthday and I never brought it up. I
haven’t been with anyone since I found you. I swear to god. I haven’t slept
with anyone since I found you."

"YOU
LET ME GO THERE! YOU LET HER TREAT ME! YOU TWO FUCKING TORTURED ME IN A CELL!
YOU FUCKED A WOMAN YOU LET TORTURE ME!" I forget I'm in the middle of the
path on campus.

"SHE
IS THE BEST, SARAH. FOR FUCK'S SAKE!" He screams and swears. He's mad. I
hang up, slightly panicking. He is never that mad.

I
run to my dorm and pack my bag. I'm opening the door when Shell walks in. She
frowns, "What's happened?"

"I
need to go box. I just need it." She sees my face and texts Stuart and
grabs her bag too. She loops her arm through mine and walks with me down the
stairs.

"Tell
Shell Shell what's wrong."

I
shake my head, "I just need time."

"Did
you and Eli hash things out?" She asks.

I
look at her like she is crazy, "Hash out what? He slept with our therapist
and let her treat me. She loves him or is obsessed with him and lied about his
feelings for me. She told me he liked me because he'd mentally made me his
sister."

She
holds my arm tight and walks me across the campus to the SUV. She stops just
shy of it and looks at me, "You know I'm the biggest Sebastian fan ever. I
have long wished you would beat this thing you have with Eli and marry
Sebastian. I was thinking senior year, in Chicago. Let your mom and my mom plan
everything so we can listen to them bicker about how you're actually Italian
from my side of the family."

I
laugh weakly.

She
shakes her head, "I don’t think that anymore. I have never been team Eli,
but after watching him with you, I am all team Eli. I am one hundred percent
Eli. He is so in love with you. He took care of you and forced you out of
survival orphan mode. He has spent his entire life either looking for you or
figuring out the way to help you. He has no one, Sarah. No one. His parents are
ridiculous and his therapist is a tart. He hasn’t had girlfriends or anything.
I have grilled Stuart like a mutha. That boy has literally spent his life
devoted to you. All you. Not his sister. Not replacing you with her. Just you.
He had the tombstone made for Emalyn. He was the one who started the Emalyn
Adams Foundation for victims of child abuse. Stuart said he did that to get
closure. There is a whole other Eli we don’t know."

I
slump, "Well shit."

She
sighs, "I know right. All that badass and tattoos and he's a fucking
score. It's so not fair." She grins. I nudge her and walk to the car.

I
smirk at Stuart, "Thanks for coming."

He
nods at Shell, "I was already here."

I
laugh and climb in. We drive over to the gym.

I
look out the window processing everything she said. It sounds true. In my
heart, which is blind to his faults, it feels right. He loves me. I know he
does. God I hope he does. I hate the control he has, but at the same time I'm
so grateful he has it. He has me and everything else taken care of. In a
twisted way, loaded with codependency, I love that about him. I trust him.

We
pull into the gym parking lot. I climb out on my own and point at Stuart,
"Stop." He backs off and laughs.

I
shoulder my bag and walk up to the doors. I don’t feel like boxing suddenly. I
feel like closing up and refusing the entire world so I can sit and ponder the
shit I don’t want to deal with.

My
phone vibrates.

'Where
are you?'

I
look at it and rub my thumb over the screen where the snow is falling. I shake
my head muttering, "God I hate Boston. I hate snow."

Shell
laughs. "Oh my god, me too. I just want to go to Cuba for like two weeks
and lay on a beach."

Stuart
smirks, "Spring break?"

She
grins, "For real?"

He
nods and pulls her into his embrace. My heart hurts. I walk inside, leaving
them making out in the goddamned snow.

I
tape up my hands and walk slowly out to the rings.

He's
there.

I
shake my head, "Do you have a GPS tracker on me?" I ask.

He
laughs but it doesn’t reach his eyes, "I do."

I
cross my arms, "What? What do you want to say?"

He
turns and walks away. I follow. He's still got the control. He climbs into a
ring. I look around and see the gym is empty of other people. I climb into the
ring with him.

He
brings over gloves and pulls them on to my hands, delicately. More so than he
has ever been.

He
speaks softly, still confidently though, "She is the best. She was the
only one who believed that you could be rescued and I needed you." His
eyes are wide and filled with tears. "I needed you." His
vulnerability scares me. He walks slowly to get his gloves and slides his hands
into them. "No one believed me about you - that I didn’t invent you. No
one saw me as a hero. No one but you, and for that belief in me that you had, I
let you down. I left you sleeping in that barn, thinking it would be better if
you didn’t have to see the police. I was protecting you even then. You have
never, nor will you ever, be my sister. I know I'm messed up and I am insane in
so many different ways, but the fact you could believe me capable of such a
horrific thing…" He looks at me as a single tear leaks from his icy-blue
eye, "It kills me inside." His statement and his face break my heart.
Somehow I'm the bad guy again.

His
lip trembles, making his voice unsteady. "You have always been the girl
who took my hand and trusted me to save her. The girl who saved my sister from
a fate worse than any. The girl whose sadness matched my own. The girl whose
face has haunted me my entire life. You saw Emalyn's eyes, well I saw yours.
You are the bravest girl I have ever known."

I'm
trembling and scared as he draws closer.

"I
have thought of no one but you for fourteen years. I can't have a regular
relationship. It isn’t you I'm punishing, it's me. I don’t deserve the kindness
of love. I failed her and you. I should have fought harder and saved you both.
I never should have left you. I'm so sorry. I never should have left you. You
ended up there because of me."

I
am a sobbing mess. The kaleidoscopes have taken my eyes. The angles and shapes
that make my world harsh and sharp have taken over my eyes. I step forward,
grabbing his hands. "You saved me. You saved me from the dirty house and
you saved me from being a waitress in a café the rest of my life." I reach
up and run my hands across his cheeks, taking his tears. "I see you."
I whisper.

He
wraps around me, we become one. Our skin is so close, that in the crease
between us, I feel a spark that could light up the entire world.

I
hold him and caress him and for the first time, I see him. His hatred for
himself is stronger than any feeling he could possibly ever have. He will
always be the broken mess he is. I get the feelings of self-preservation
Sebastian had when he left me. I get it. I could walk now and choose survival.

But
I don’t. I hold him closer and choose him. The hard work and constant
frustration is worth the moments like this one, where I get to see inside. Even
if it's just for a moment. I hate that we are both so damaged.

I
hold him and know that without him there never was survival. But that doesn’t
mean I need to self-destruct. I know what I have to do, for us both.

He
shakes and sobs into me and I have a bad feeling it's the first time he has
truly let himself cry. My back hurts from the pressure and weight of him, but I
hold him tight until he's ready to stand up on his own again.

We
hold on to each other, like we did when we were little.

He
looks at me and shakes his head, "I'm sorry. I just panicked. I don’t know
what to do without you. I don’t know what I am without you."

"We
can't be two broken things and have a relationship."

He
frowns.

I
rise in my toes and kiss his lips softly, "I don’t want anyone but you.
But at the same time, I don’t want to be the china doll you glued back together.
I don’t want to look whole from a distance, but when you get close enough you
can see all the cracks."

He
runs a gloved hand down my cheeks, "The cracks make us who we are."

I
shake my head, "We can be better than this. But it feels like we need to
be better for ourselves. I need to be better for me and you need to be better
for you. If you can't love you and I can't love me, then we will never truly
love each other."

He
looks stressed and confused. "You don’t want to be with me?"

I
kiss his frozen lips again, "I do. But not like this. I don’t want to need
you to make me whole. My whole life I've wanted normal. I don’t care about that
anymore. Shell is right, there is no normal. But with us there is a danger that
we will let this consume us. We won't ever get better if we don't let go of
each other and find ourselves."

He
kisses me back after a minute of my gentle pecks brushing his lips,
"You're so much stronger than I am. I can't do this without you."

I
grin, "You need like a year with some hard-ass nuns and you'll feel
better. Trust me."

He
laughs and shakes his head, "I need you."

"I
need you too. When we don’t need each other anymore and just want each other,
we can try again."

He
grips me. I can feel his hands trembling, "I can't be without you."

I
nestle my face into his hard chest and nod, "Yes, you can. You just have
to trust me. If you trust me to take care of myself, you'll see."

"What
if I lose you again?"

I
smile and listen to his rapid heartbeat, "You found me once, you'll find
me again." My own heart is breaking. I don’t want to be strong. I want him
to drag me back into the change room and punish me for such thoughts. I want to
be weak and succumb to his every whim. But I don’t.

"It
doesn’t feel like it right now, but this is me choosing you." I whisper.

He
holds me tighter. "You're right it doesn’t feel like it now."

I
close my eyes and feel the right path before me, "It will."

He
pulls back, "Are we going to box then?"

I
laugh, "I need all the help I can get and we both already look beat
up."

I
tremble as she wraps the tape. She looks at me and smiles, "You got
this."

I
laugh, "I've got an ass whooping coming. That’s what I've got."

She
smirks, "Yup. But you look sexy in your t-shirt." I glance down and
laugh. The Tinkerbell tee is exactly what I needed. When Lance gave it to me I
almost killed him. But then watching him hand out the t-shirts to the boys made
me feel better.

I
hop back and forth and try to loosen up.

"Okay,
if you panic, kick him in the balls and run. We both know Eli won't let
anything happen to you."

I
nod.

"Or
Lyle and Jake."

I
nod again. She sanitizes her hands and slides the guard into my mouth.

"Ready?"

I
shake my head.

She
laughs and drags me out to the rings. My brothers smile at me, but I can see
they're scared. I grin my mouth guard at them. Jake laughs and shakes his head.
Lyle doesn’t laugh. He watches me and then the door, where Angelo walks out.