Chapter 41
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
My feet pounded up the stairs. I shoved the metal door, but it wouldn’t budge. The padlock was broken but you could still slide it into the latch. I pounded my fists against the metal.
“Gabriel! Open this fucking door,” I screamed, throwing my entire body against it. I stood back and kicked the door with the flat of my sole, over and over again.
I kept kicking and throwing my weight against the door until it creaked open, just a couple of inches, but it was enough to squeeze my hand through.
I slid the ruby ring off my left hand and moved it to my right then shoved my hand through the crack, gritting my teeth when the metal scraped my knuckles.
I kept reaching and groping until finally, my fingers touched the padlock but I couldn’t gain purchase.
“Gabriel!” I screamed, still trying to maneuver the padlock.
Finally, it hit the tar roof with a thud, and I shouldered my way through the door and darted across the roof then stopped in my tracks.
Gabriel was standing on the ledge, casually leaning against the chimney with an upturned face as if he was contemplating life from six stories up.
The toes of his boots were right at the edge. One sudden move, one accidental slip and he’d fall.
“Gabriel,” I said softly, fighting to keep my voice steady and not startle him. “Please come down from that ledge. You don’t want to do this.”
“They told me that I was imagining things. That I brought the headaches on myself. That I was an attention seeker. My father locked me in a psych ward. No one believed me."
“I believed you,” I said, taking a step forward. “I have always believed you. The doctors were wrong in the past, Gabriel. But your new doctors were right. They saved your life.”
“What life?” He spread his arms wide and my heart skipped a beat. “I can’t even leave the house without being recognized. I feel trapped here. The walls are closing in. I don’t even know who the fuck I am.”
I moved a little closer. “Please come down and we can talk about this.”
“You know…when I woke up in that hospital, it wasn’t painful for me. You know why? Because I had no idea that I had any life before that. I didn’t know I had a career or a wife. You were just a stranger to me.”
I swallowed. “I know. And I’m sorry if I upset you…”
“When they gave me a mirror, I didn’t even recognize my own face.
Then I come home…” He laughed derisively.
“ Home . And every day when I wake up, I don’t even want to open my eyes because I know what I’ll see.
The hope in your eyes followed by the disappointment that I still don’t recognize you.
That I still don’t remember anything about the life we had before.
And you play my music non-fucking-stop and there are all these photos of a life I’ve lived but have forgotten and now…
now it’s become painful. Everyone wants me to be the man I was before, the better version, the one you loved.
But I’m letting you down. I’m letting everyone down. ”
“No, you’re not. You haven’t let anyone down.
None of this is your fault, Gabriel. It’s not your fault.
” I took another step forward. “You don’t have to look at any more photos or listen to any more stories.
I won’t play your music if you don’t want me to.
I was trying to help but now I know that it was the wrong thing to do.
I put too much pressure on you and I’m so, so sorry.
Just please come down. Please give me your hand,” I pleaded.
He looked down at me. “You’re so beautiful. How could I ever have forgotten that face, those lips, those green eyes?”
“It doesn’t matter. None of that matters.
All I care about is you. You are all I care about.
Choose yourself, Gabriel. You have so much more life to live, and I know that in time you’ll fall in love with the world all over again.
But you don’t have to worry about any of that right now.
You don’t have to worry about anything.”
He looked up at the sky and I wiped my sweaty palms on my cotton dress.
I didn’t know if I was getting through to him or saying all the wrong things, but I kept talking. As long as I was keeping him engaged, he would still be here.
“You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to,” I said.
“You can go anywhere you want to go. Anywhere in the world. Cities, beaches, mountains, the desert. There are so many beautiful places in the world. And you can be anyone you want to be. You don’t owe anyone anything, Gabriel.
You’re free. You have all this freedom. You have all the time in the world to figure it out and you’ll have all the space you need. ”
He was so close to the edge. So close.
With one more step forward, I was close enough now to reach out and grab him, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to make any wrong moves.
A fly circled my head but I didn’t swat it away.
I stood still, so still, with my hands clasped and my gaze so hyperfocused on him that all the edges blurred.
I was trying to anticipate his every move but my heart was pounding in my throat and my limbs felt too heavy.
He wasn’t leaning against the chimney anymore. He was standing straight and tall with his legs spread, hands at his sides and eyes straight ahead like he was preparing to take a swan dive off the ledge of the building.
“I’m sure I loved this place once but it’s too much for me right now,” he said quietly. “It’s not you. None of this is because of you. I just…I need you to know that.”
It sounded like a goodbye and there was no way in hell I would let that happen.
“Okay,” I said, my voice quavering. I took deep breaths through my nose and steadied my voice.
“That’s okay. You don’t have to stay here if it’s too much for you.
” I lifted my hand, slowly, slowly, and held it out to him.
“You don’t even have to stay with me if you don’t want to.
You’re free to go, Gabriel. Just please take my hand, okay? ”
I don’t even know if he heard me but as the seconds and then minutes passed without him moving a muscle to take my hand, I made my decision.
I forced my feet to move and without giving myself a chance to stop or change my mind, I climbed onto the ledge and I stood right next to him.
My breathing grew shallow. My legs shook.
Don’t look down. Don’t look down.
I stared straight ahead. Someone’s washing hung on the fire escape of the building behind ours. If I were Phillipe Petit I could tightrope walk between the buildings and think nothing of it. If we were two birds, we could soar into the sky and land safely. But we weren’t birds or tightrope walkers.
“What the hell are you doing?” Gabriel asked.
“If you jump, I jump.” I didn’t want someone’s laundry to be the last thing I saw so I lifted my gaze to the blue sky. “You want to die? Then you’ll just have to take me with you.”
“Get off the fucking ledge,” he gritted out.
Instead of climbing down, I shuffled closer to him and stood right on a crack in the concrete. The fault line.
Cold sweat coated my skin and I shivered.
“Just hold my hand and never let go.” I held out a shaky hand and he grabbed it.
When I looked over at him, my foot slipped. A loose piece of concrete broke off from the ledge and a scream tore from my throat.
I was falling.
“Cleo!” Gabriel’s voice sounded like it was coming from a long tunnel and my arm felt like it was being wrenched from the socket.
My back slammed against a hard surface and everything went quiet. So eerily quiet.
I couldn’t move my arms or legs. A heavy weight pressed down on my chest. After a few panicked seconds, I opened my eyes and wheezed, trying to get air into my lungs.
The weight of Gabriel’s body pinned me to the ground.
His dark eyes met mine. I could barely see him through the blur of tears.
“Fuck,” he said under his breath.
I didn’t know if it was because I’d thwarted his plans or something else.
With a groan, he rolled off me and we lay side by side on the roof. I stared at the cotton candy clouds and listened to Chopin with tears rolling down my cheeks.
What was I doing on that ledge? How did we get here?
We could have died today.
A shot of adrenaline surged through my veins and I started shaking uncontrollably. When had I become the kind of person who would willingly risk their life by climbing on a fucking ledge?
That’s not love, it’s suicide.
Red-hot rage replaced my tears and it rose up, and up, and up until it consumed me.
I rolled onto my knees, ignoring the twinges of pain in my hip and shoulder, and crouched over him, glaring.
“Did you want to die?” I asked, my voice shaking.
I shoved his shoulder. “Is that what you wanted?” I pummeled his chest with the heel of my closed fists.
“Did you want to jump off the fucking roof and kill yourself?” He sat up and I lunged at him, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him.
“Answer me, Gabriel. Did you want to die?” I screamed.
He captured my hands and pulled me to my feet. “No. I just don’t want to be here,” he yelled back.
I stared at him, my chest heaving. “They’re the same thing!” I cried. “Kurt Cobain didn’t want to be here and now he’s not. My dad didn’t want to be here and guess what?” I flattened my palms on his chest and shoved him. “Now he’s not.”
Gritting my teeth, I brushed past him and yanked the door open.
“And what about you, Cleo? Did you want to die? You could have gotten yourself killed with that little stunt of yours.”
I spun around to face him. “I was only up there because of you, asshole. I was trying to save your life.”
He advanced on me. “By telling me that you’d jump with me? Do you have any idea how fucking insane that sounds?”
“Well, it worked, didn’t it? Because here you are. And here I am.” With a shake of my head, I barrelled through the door and charged down the stairs, shaking.
This was the first time in five months that he’d shown anything other than apathy.
But I had to nearly get myself killed to elicit any real emotion from him.