Chapter 24 Neil #3
“What do you want to talk about?” I asked, wishing I could light up a cigarette.
“I’d like to know how you are. How the internship’s going…” I knew that wasn’t what he really wanted to ask, but I played along anyway.
“I’m not great… I do like my work, though,” I interrupted bluntly.
“Not great? You miss your siblings, don’t you?” he pressed.
I didn’t say anything, but the memory of how I’d driven them away knocked the air out of me. My godforsaken pride had trapped me in this corrosive hatred that I couldn’t help but vent on everyone around me, even the people who didn’t have a fucking thing to do with it.
“They weren’t involved in any of this, Neil.
William was a son of a bitch, telling you like that, but they had nothing to do with it.
You are all still bonded by the good, loving relationship you’ve cultivated with them all their lives.
Don’t let that man shape anything else about your life,” John said urgently.
He knew that, deep down, I loved them. My love for my siblings and theirs for me was the only kind of love that I actually believed in.
Still, there was something inside me, some dark power that urged me to give them up, crushing the smaller, more human part of me.
I heaved a frustrated sigh and stared unwaveringly at him. It had always been easier for me to pretend to be inscrutable rather than showing myself fragile and miserable.
“I’m perfectly capable of managing my life and my relationships with my siblings. I don’t need advice from you,” I said scornfully.
“That goes for Selene too…” He hesitated slightly.
“She doesn’t have anything to do with it either, Neil.
I’ve heard from her a few times in the past six months, and she told me that you were the one who made the choice to end it between the two of you.
She knows about her mother and what you two talked about, and still she doesn’t accept your decision,” he said, soft and disappointed.
And then the anger, that anger that turned me into nothing but a beast, got the upper hand.
I let my arms fall to my sides and stood up straight, instantly demonstrating the power Babygirl still held over me.
Even from so far away. Even though there was no longer an “us.”
“She needs to live her life, John, and she needs to get away from me to do it. Her mother was fucking right. Why can’t anyone understand where I’m coming from?
Do you know how much easier it would have been to bring her to Chicago with me?
To take her and use her up at my leisure?
She’s the only person I’ve ever shown my soul to.
I made the right choice for both of us.” My voice got louder and louder before faltering.
It was a bitter taste that I’d experienced twice before: the first time when I was a child and the second at in my early twenties.
And that was why I went to war internally. I wasn’t going to drive Babygirl crazy.
She wasn’t going to live this cursed life and have this dreamless future because of me.
“I’m afraid it’s not only up to you to make that decision. You should have told her about Chicago and let her decide what she was going to do. She accepted you, Neil. She never would have abandoned you…” John stood up to face me.
I gave him a sardonic smile. All I wanted for Selene was a better life. Why was that so hard to understand?
“I’ve forgotten her already anyway. I’ve moved on…” I finished tersely. I needed to shut him up and shut down this line of inquiry and get back to work.
“You’ve forgotten about her?” John lifted his eyebrows like I’d just said the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard.
“Typically, one’s pearl isn’t so easily forgotten,” he continued.
“I did hear she was seeing someone, though.” He tucked his hands into his pockets and scrutinized my face, probing for reactions, for emotional shifts.
I wasn’t surprised to hear that about Selene.
I’d figured she’d eventually go out with someone.
Apparently that love she was always talking about really was just a lie after all.
I’d always known that. It just took her a little longer to realize.
“So she’s got a boyfriend now?” I blurted out, feeling a strange, acidic feeling rising from my stomach into my throat. John smiled a smug little half-smile, and I scrubbed a hand over my face.
Just the thought of it made me feel on edge.
“So what if she does?” he answered pointedly with an amused undertone to his voice. My eyes bugged slightly—so what? So, I didn’t want to think about some guy’s lips on her; I didn’t want to think about him rubbing his slimy mitts all over her.
She had only ever been mine.
I was the one who took her virginity. I was the one who had given her her first orgasm. I had tasted every part of her, touched her everywhere, and possessed her in every possible way. I was the first man to ever see her naked, the only person she’d explored sexuality with in her entire life.
I couldn’t deal with the idea that she’d now shared those same things with someone else.
“It’s her life. If she’s happy, I’m happy.
” I shrugged and tried to look indifferent, but I almost puked as I said it.
I knew I couldn’t blame her for anything.
After all, I’d also let other hands and mouths kiss and touch me.
Though none of them got in me, to the place where only she had been. The place where I still kept her.
I tried to quell some of my possessiveness and think clearly: She had moved on just like I had told her to, and I couldn’t judge her for that. I had no right to get all pissy about it. It was tough to admit it, but it was true: finding out she had a boyfriend put me off my game.
I shook my head and smiled ruefully.
I had been right all along: pleasure was real, and so were orgasms and the loneliness that made people cling to one another just to believe in something.
But love was just a big lie, and Selene’s was no different.
This was only confirmation of that.
“You know, Neil, we often feel haunted by our best memories because our souls long to return to the people and places that allowed us to feel our best,” John answered. He seemed concerned by my exhausted silence.
That was true enough: Selene was the only good memory I had. Which, I supposed, meant she’d never stop haunting me. Babygirl had cast a fucking spell on me; nothing else explained this turmoil.
“I’m good right now. I have everything I need,” I said, trying to make him—and even more so myself—buy my bullshit.
In reality, I was like a desperate man walking through the endless desert.
I was looking for my path.
But it wasn’t there; I couldn’t find it.
I looked up at the sky, but it always looked the same, one uniform color without hues.
I looked at the ground beneath my feet, and that was always the same as well: barren, devoid of anything that bloomed.
“You have everything you need, except the things you really want…” John met my gaze, but I immediately lowered my eyes to conceal my weakness. I didn’t know what I really wanted.
I had gotten used to surviving on my own, and sometimes I thought I didn’t want anyone by my side. Other times, I wondered why I couldn’t be like any other normal human being, capable of developing healthy relationships and nurturing them over time.
“People like me don’t get better, John. We’re fucked up, and we stay fucked up,” I said sadly. “I need to get back to work now. You should leave.” I pointed at the door.
He didn’t answer but just watched me closely for a few seconds, assessing my sudden coldness. Then he sighed heavily before giving me a knowing look.
“Don’t be afraid of life, Neil. She is not our enemy.” He strolled over to the door with his hands still in his pockets, and with one last quick glance, walked out and left me alone to fill the void with even more emptiness.
I knew that it was just fear.
Fear of loving.
Fear of being loved.
Fear of forgiving only to suffer again.
Fear of trusting.
Fear of offering myself up again.
Fear of the world.
Fear of me—of what I was.
I wasn’t going to seek out Selene. I wasn’t going backward.
I would keep my Babygirl safe and sound deep down in my soul. And as the soul was immortal, so too would be my Tinkerbell.