Letter Seventeen #3
Clutching a small stack of pages in my lap, I willed my hands to stop shaking as I read Sienna’s letter next.
I told her how jealous I was of her life, how it felt like she kept intruding on my time with Michael, how it hurt my feelings when she made fun of me for going to therapy.
Then I apologized for sending her to the emergency room and asked for her forgiveness.
But that bitch looked at me with her haughty bitch face, and she said, “I don’t know if I can, Elliot. What you did to me was pretty vicious.”
Michael squeezed her leg, but she didn’t seem to care.
When I apologized again, she said, “You’re only saying you’re sorry because you were told to say it. I mean, you sent me to the ER for hitting on someone.”
“You did more than just hit on him,” I said through clenched teeth. “You fu—”
“Elliot,” Nic said.
Again—but with greater effort this time—I forced those two little words past my lips.
“You don’t sound sorry,” she said. “In fact, you don’t look like a person who feels any remorse at all.”
I looked at my dad, and my dad looked at me—in the quiet, challenging way he often did when this happened, almost as if to say, Prove it—and that’s when I groveled.
Not because I needed her to forgive me. Because I couldn’t allow her to be right.
I couldn’t ever allow them to have the final say about me.
I could feel remorse. Felt it deeper and sharper than they could possibly imagine.
Often carved that remorse into my skin. Bleeding to silence it.
Which is why, over and over, I continued to apologize to her.
But Sienna would not accept my apology. And when people won’t forgive me, Casey, I get desperate.
I cry. I say things that don’t always make sense to the person listening, but make perfect sense to Michael: I’m not a bad person.
I want to go back. I wan’t to stop myself from ever doing it. Please forgive me. Please.
That day—while I continued to beg, and Sienna continued to withhold her forgiveness—Michael leaned forward with his head in his hands, miserable, muttering things under his breath.
He hates the way I cry and carry on. He knew it would come to this with her—we both did.
That’s why he’d asked Nic to punish him instead.
“Jesus, Sienna,” he said. “Forgive her already. Just say you forgive her. Please.”
When Nic could see she wasn’t going to, he placed a hand on my knee. “That’s enough. Calm down, Elliot. It’s okay.”
“No,” I said, shoving his hand off me. “She has to believe I’m sorry. She has to.”
Nic shook his head. “No, honey. She doesn’t—and that’s okay.”
But it wasn’t okay, not when they refused to believe me. Just another tally in the wrong column. Another “psychopath” muttered under their breath. Another person who looked at me and thought, Bad. Fucked-up. Crazy. Monster.
Michael grabbed Sienna’s hand, practically dragging her up and out the front door, slamming it behind them. Nic walked me upstairs, where I crawled under my covers. He sat on the edge of my bed, brushing the tears from my face.
“Do you really believe I’m sorry?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, the same way he always did.
But it felt like a lie.
Why else would he make me do that?
The next day, we found Michael in the kitchen when we returned home from school.
“Hey,” he said, pushing off the kitchen counter next to the fridge. He watched me as I dropped my bag to the floor and shrugged out of my coat, then draped it over the back of a stool. “Are you okay?”
I didn’t answer him, catching the look he exchanged with you as I took a seat at the island.
“Would you like me to make you a sandwich or something?” you asked.
“No.”
You tossed me a serious look. “You have to eat, Elliot. It’s been twenty-four hours since you’ve eaten.”
“How do you know I didn’t eat at school?”
You winced. “Bree.”
I glared. “Stop trying to feed me, Casey. I don’t want anything.”
Sighing, you crossed your arms over a heather-blue cardigan.
“She gets like this—after,” Michael told you.
I glared at him, too. “Shut up, Michael.”
“Elliot,” he said softly. “I’m sorry about yesterday.”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” I said, slinging my eyes in your direction. “Especially not in front of him.”
I saw you flinch before I jerked my gaze back to Michael.
“Look, we don’t have to talk about it,” he said. “But I want you to know—I ended things with her last night.”
“Why?”
“Seriously?” A look of disgust flashed across Michael’s face. “I didn’t appreciate the bitchy way she handled that. I’m still pissed about it.”
I felt the tiniest bit better after hearing this.
“Also, your dad told me not to bring her back here.”
“He did?”
“He texted me after we left. He said, and I quote, ‘That bitch isn’t welcome at my house anymore.’ It’s not like I would’ve brought her back, anyway. But I’m glad Nic saw it, too, for once.”
“Saw what?”
“How messed up it was.”
But I wondered if that were true. Did Nic really see how messed up the apology routine was? Or just the part where he’d allowed Sienna to humiliate me?
The following week, my dad traveled to New York for two days.
That first night, when I had trouble falling asleep, I picked up a book I’d borrowed from Tinsley about a bunch of prep school kids partaking in some salacious activities at their boarding school.
I’m not saying the subject matter of that book caused me to end up in your bedroom in the middle of the night, just that I tiptoed downstairs and spotted your bedroom door ajar, and I could just make out your bare leg, draped across the duvet. So I thought, Why the hell not?
Despite how creepy and weird it was for me to watch you sleep.
Lying on your back, you had one arm slung out to the side while the other rested across your abdomen, tattooed hand rising and falling with each breath you took. I studied your face in profile: hair mussed, mouth closed, long black eyelashes fluttering against your cheek.
“Go figure,” I whispered. Because you were perfect and beautiful, even in sleep.
But the most enticing thing to me as I watched you that night wasn’t your face, or even the sight of your bare chest.
It was the white duvet draped dangerously low on your waist. More specifically, the jut of bare hip peeking out from beneath the wrinkled fabric.
You were naked under there. It was obvious.
A hot, prickling sensation moved through my body as I stood beside your bed, trancelike, entertaining the idea of slipping underneath your covers, curiosity thrashing violently in my chest. Wild and ravenous, Casey.
Like a living thing. This need to know you.
Be closer to you. Feel you. A need so unbearable it bordered on ache.
Standing there, I fantasized about it: your mouth, your hands, the hard planes of your body. Other parts of you, too. The secret parts. How I could take those parts and fit them inside me. How I could memorize each piece of you until I knew them all by heart.
What would you do if I joined you? Would you turn to me? Lean into me? Press your mouth to mine?
I tiptoed closer, feeling just brave enough to find out.
When I went to lift the duvet, however, the floor creaked beneath my weight, and you stirred.
I snatched my hand back, heart pounding as your eyes slowly drifted open.
You blinked a few times, like I might be an apparition or something, then jerked awake.
“Elliot?” you said, voice a sleepy rasp. You lifted up on your elbows and wiped a hand over your eyes. “What are you doing up?”
“I thought I heard something downstairs,” I lied. “It was loud. I got scared.”
You sat upright and glanced down, grabbing the duvet just in time to keep it from slipping any lower. Your hard swallow pierced the silence, your gaze locked with mine. “Go back up. I’ll check it out.”
My gaze fell to your hand, cinched tightly at your waist.
“Elliot. Go back up. I’ll check downstairs.”
Reluctantly, I backed out of your room. Ten minutes later, you came into mine, dressed in pajama pants and a t-shirt. “All clear down there. You okay?”
When I nodded from my bed, you turned to leave. “I can’t sleep,” I rushed to say. “Will you stay and talk to me?”
“Sure,” you said, grabbing my desk chair. You brought it over to the side of the bed, turned it backward, and straddled it.
With a contented sigh, I turned onto my side, tucking a hand underneath my head. “When I was little, my dad used to sit with me until I fell back asleep.”
You smiled. “That’s nice.”
“Yeah. He used to make me feel safe.”
“Are you saying he doesn’t anymore?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes, he just makes me feel…stifled.”
You stared at me. Chewed on your bottom lip. Hesitated. “How many times have you done that?”
“Done what?”
“The apology thing.” Your gaze turned serious. “The begging.”
I lifted up on one elbow. “You heard that?”
“You made such a big deal of it, and Michael couldn’t explain it without getting upset. So I wanted to hear it for myself.”
“You eavesdropped?” I demanded. “I thought we weren’t supposed to lurk about in the shadows?”
“Please don’t be angry,” you said, thrusting one hand out. “It’s just—you were so desperate to get out of it, and I—look, if it’s any consolation, I’ve been deeply bothered by what I heard ever since.”
I glared.
“Listen,” you said. “I got angry with Nic. I asked him what the fucking point of it was. Not the letter or the apology itself—I mean, you owed her an apology, for Christ’s sake, you sent her to hospital—but the begging, Elliot.
The begging was too much. He shouldn’t have let it go on as long as he did.
He shouldn’t have allowed it to happen at all. ”
“What did he say?”