Keep Me in the Dark (6 page)

He reaches behind and holds my hand. I wonder how he knew where it would be.

“I want you to belong to me,” I say.

He squeezes my hand.

“I want to know more about you,” I continue. “I need you so much that it scares me, and it scares me that I know nothing…that anything could happen to you and I wouldn’t know.

“I don’t think I’ve told you this. Well of course I haven’t told you, because I’ve never told you anything and we don’t really talk, but my mother died when I was younger, right in front of me. She was shot accidentally, the police said. We were there at the wrong place at the wrong time. We were from upstate, but we drove down to New York because I was offered a scholarship.

“After that, I just didn’t want to get close to anyone. Every time I did, it felt like I was abandoning her. I didn’t want to be happy without her. I even stopped playing the cello, and the only reason why I picked it back up was because playing made me remember her.”

He’s breathing deeply, his grip on my hand so tight it feels as if my bones might shatter. Still, he says nothing. I don’t know what he’s thinking.

“I’m not used to being close to someone like this,” I admit. “For my entire life, I’ve been running, trying to lose myself in something so I won’t have to think about it. When I’m with you, I feel like nothing else exists. Sometimes, I almost think I’ve imagined everything we’ve done together, but I haven’t. A part of me is afraid to touch you because it doesn’t want this to be real. It wants to keep hiding. But I can’t do that anymore. You mean too much to me.”

My body is in his shadow. I feel cold, everywhere, and the thin sheet over my left calf only makes me feel colder and even more distant from him. “This escape came from you, not me, and so I started to need you more and more. You began to fill that place where the desire to disappear used to be, until it wasn’t an escape I wanted, but you. I guess it was only a matter of time before I wanted to keep you next to me.”

“I’m already next to you.”

Finally he’s said something. Even if it isn’t what I want to hear, I’m happy. “Then let me see you.”

He inhales slowly. Exhales slowly. As if he’s also running from something, but instead of embracing it he runs faster.

Or maybe it just isn’t me he’s looking for.

He stands. “I’m sorry.”

I pull my knees to my chest and prop myself up with my elbow. “What do you mean, you’re sorry?”

“I’m sorry for wanting you. For showing myself to you. For writing. For watching for so long before I wrote anything. I never wanted to hurt you.”

He’s leaving.

The knowledge tastes bitter.

No. He can’t leave. He needs me, doesn’t he? Why else would he be here like this?

“Don’t go.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he repeats as if that’s an appropriate explanation.

“And what did you think would happen?” I know I should keep my voice down, but it’s hard. My mouth tastes like salt. My cheeks feel sticky. My chest is heaving so fast that my teeth chatter. I don’t like making a spectacle of myself, especially when I’m right behind him and he doesn’t even turn around—when he isn’t even moved by it. “Did you think that if we started fucking I’d just magically get bored of you and want to leave one day? Or did you think if you just left I’d be alright with it?”

“I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t really thinking.”

I grit my teeth. “That’s a pretty stupid reason.”

“I know.”

“How does knowing make it any better?”

He steps away from the bed. “If I were stronger, this wouldn’t have happened. This is the last time I’ll bother you.”

I shoot up out of bed. “What the hell does that mean?”

The words still haven’t sinked in. They don’t sink in until I see his hand on my window frame. “It means I won’t do this to you anymore.”

By the time I can move again, he’s already climbing out the window.

“You can’t leave!” I reach for him, but he’s already out the window. I rush to it and lean out the window, almost falling. “You can’t go!” I yell. I know he can hear me, and I can still see him, gracefully landing at the bottom of the courtyard and then turning for the gate without looking back.

He’s leaving. For good
.

And I can’t let him.

I sprint to my bedroom door and throw it open. I run through the dorm room, through the halls, down the stairs. I only stop running when I’m past the gates to the courtyard and in the middle of the street, and only then because I don’t know which direction he went.

Shit!

I pull my bangs back, then hold them in a fist. No one else is on the street but me. No one I can see anyway.

I should start yelling. I should make another spectacle. Make him come out of hiding.

I hate how pathetic I am for even thinking that. I mean, am I the kind of girl who lets her life fall apart just because she got involved with an asshole? And he
is
an asshole. You know what? This whole thing was probably for the best. He’s delusional. He probably thinks he’s a superhero. I want to scream these things at him, and then my heart stops. The thought of never seeing him again hurts so bad.

Panic hits me like a drug. I start running up the street. I don’t know if this is the direction he went in. I don’t even know what I should yell, if anything. I don’t even know the guy’s name. So I just pant and run faster, but I see nothing. No one.

I bend over and rest my hands on my knees.

He’s gone
.

I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. He’ll be back. He always comes back.

No, he won’t come back
.

I try to convince myself he will, but I know the truth. I tried to unmask him. I tried to get closer. And this was my answer.

I wake up late. Like 4pm,
hey, are you starting to get hungry for dinner?
late.

Cassie smiles a little too brightly when I enter the dining/living room. “Hey Laura.”

My three best friends are sitting on the couch in front of a scattering of chicken salad sandwiches—my favorite.

Oh God. What did they hear last night? Hopefully it wasn’t him and me…uh…

Anna’s brow furrows with concern. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay.” By which I mean:
I don’t want to talk about this
.

Of course that doesn’t fly, and if I’d said it out loud, it would have just made it worse.

Dolly finishes chewing the bite of chicken salad sandwich she’d had in her mouth when I first entered and cuts straight to the point. “What happened last night?”

Oh boy. “Hey, it’s strange to see the three of you here at this hour. Don’t you have a class, Anna?”

Anna shakes her head. “I don’t have anything planned but studying for my midterm—”

“Don’t get sidetracked, Anna,” Dolly interrupts.

Shit. Damn that Dolly.

I reach for a plate of food. “Who made the sandwiches? Chicken salad is my all-time fav.”

“We know,” Cassie drawls.

“We made them so you’d feel comfortable opening up to us,” Dolly ads.

I take a bite.

“Feeling comfortable enough yet?” Dolly asks.

“Don’t push her! She’ll tell us when she’s ready,” Anna butts in.
Yes, go Anna!

Cassie raises a brow. “Anna made this treat for you so that you’d feel good enough to share what’s going on with your friends. You should have seen how worried she was about you this morning.”

Somehow, Anna’s eyes get even bigger, making me feel like I’d just kicked her puppy.

Get a grip! Anna doesn’t even have a puppy. You can’t fall for these tactics! You can’t…keep pushing away your friends.

I fold my hands in between my knees and press them together. “I saw him last night.”

Dolly drops her sandwich. Anna chokes on her tea, spilling some on her shirt. She sets down her cup and doesn’t try to dab away the stain. That’s a first.

I notice that they didn’t have to ask who he was.

“I take it things were a little different this time around,” Cassie notes.

I hang my head. I can’t look at them. I can’t speak for several seconds. I hear someone get up and then feel Anna’s small hand on my back, rubbing it in little semicircles. It almost tickles. It almost comforts me.

I glance up with a sigh. “I took it off,” I tell them.

My friends suck in a collective breath.

“He pushed himself away before I could see much,” I say. “But he didn’t appear deformed, at least from what I could tell. He might be, though. It was hard to see anything, and I only saw one corner of his face…”

“Oh Laura,” Dolly whispers.

“No, it’s alright,” I respond, but it isn’t alright, and without going into further detail they already know it isn’t. But I’ve already shared so much, and I’m afraid of my own neediness. I want to keep telling someone.

“He moved to the edge of the bed,” I whisper. “I reached out for him, and he held my hand. I told him everything. How much he meant to me, my mother, how I need him and how I…” I can’t bring myself to say the rest. It hurts too much. Even just remembering the darkness of the room, and the sheets that had followed his body, sliding off me when he turned away, hurts. “I laid my entire heart out there, and he left.”

“What do you mean he left?” Anna asks.

“I mean he left. He’s not coming back.”

No one says anything for a few moments.

“Well, look. There’s only two options,” Dolly says, standing.

“Dolly, sit,” Cassie murmurs.

Dolly isn’t hearing any of Cassie’s pleas. “He either thinks you’re worth more than his secret, or he doesn’t. That’s all there is to it.”

“Dolly,” Cassie warns, but Dolly shakes her head. “Look, Cass. We can sit here and spout sweet nothing and smell each other’s rainbow farts, but that isn’t going to change what happened. The fact is, Laura deserved the truth and she didn’t get it. This is on him, not her. She wanted more, he wasn’t willing to give it to her. Guys are assholes. Freaks who wear masks around are probably even bigger assholes than most, or they’re so mentally disturbed that it doesn’t even matter if they’re assholes or not because their hobby precludes them from treating others with respect.”

My friends look at Dolly with horror. I sigh and straighten my back. “Dolly is right. He didn’t want me enough. And it’s better I found out now rather than later. I just wish I’d known sooner…”

Dolly sighs. “He didn’t want to ruin a good thing. Guys don’t turn down free pussy.”

“Jesus, Dolly! Are you trying to comfort her or make her jump out the window?” Cassie yells.

“I’m just calling it like I see it,” Dolly says. “You don’t do anyone any good,
especially
yourself, by hiding your head and believing in fairy tales.”

“It’s alright,” I interject. Cassie looks like she wants to pummel Dolly. “I can take it. It’s who I was before that I can’t take. I wasn’t satisfied, but I made myself believe that I was satisfied, because I was too much of a coward to accept the truth.”

Dolly’s eyes soften. Cassie kneels on the floor before me as Anna continues to rub my back.

“You aren’t pathetic. You just loved a jerk,” Dolly says.

“It takes a while to get over it, but you will. You’re strong,” Cassie tells me. “It will be alright.”

I don’t feel strong. I suppose they’re referring to the fact that I survived witnessing my mother’s death. I don’t know if it was strength that did it. I just coasted along. I endured. And I’ll survive this too, I know, because I’m good at enduring and burying the parts of myself I don’t want to look at. I’m good at pretending not to remember the memories that hurt.

“We always are here for you. We love you,” Anna says, hugging me. “Oh gosh, this scene is making me all snuffly.”

“Oh
gosh
, someone give her some tissue so she doesn’t use my shirt,” I laugh.

“Hey,” Anna pushes me playfully, “I’m trying to help you.”

“I know,” I say, wrapping my arm around her. “Thanks you guys.”

We all smile. None of us believe I’m over it, but I think that’s okay because I have them. I’ll find myself again. It might take a while, but I know I will. I can survive anything when my friends have my back.

Of course, it’s hard to stay happy for long. I fill up my days with
The Notepad
marathons with Anna. Sometimes Cassie feels so bad for the two of us weeping idiots that she joins in and lets me and Anna use her shirt as a handkerchief. Dolly doesn’t. She says I need to get to the club, but I’m not ready for it yet. I don’t know when I’ll be ready again.

I thought that I knew what longing was.

I thought that, maybe, if I stopped seeing him I would stop feeding this addiction.

That maybe, when he left, I would find myself again.

But it’s not like that. I was wrong. I feel more for him now that he’s gone.

I was so determined to forget him and I just couldn’t. Sometimes I stop playing by the fountain and search the crowd. I wonder if he’s watching. He’s watched for so long—longer than I know, if he was being honest with me—that I don’t understand how he could stop now. And I remember the regret in his voice. I replay the scene in my bedroom over and over, searching for some unspoken note that will allow me to understand what is happening. Why he left. Why he took so much of me with him when he did.