Chapter Forty-Eight #2
Another gentle laugh. “Yeah, I remember.”
“When he didn’t come in, I realised that this was another deterrent. So I asked you to sleep over more and more. It wasn’t just because of him. It was also because you were my best friend, and I felt good around you. You made me forget him. That hadn’t happened before.”
“And then your mum got you a double bed so I didn’t have to sleep on the floor anymore,” Mari adds.
“Yeah, it was Bodi’s, and I got it when he went off to uni. I think we were fourteen when that happened, right?”
“Yeah. About that.”
“That was when I was falling in love with you,” I admit. “For the first time.”
“Even then?” Mari sounds surprised. “We didn’t have our first kiss until two years later.”
“Oh, I know. It felt like eternity waiting for that,” I say, flooded with nostalgia – the good kind.
“But yes, I was already in love with you back then. Honestly, it was possibly because I discovered I was safe from him when you were there. He didn’t even talk to me when you were at our house. Didn’t even look at me or you.”
“I always thought that was because I was queer and non-binary,” Mari says.
“Yes, possibly. That was another thing that put him off me, I think,” I muse. “But also, he could tell I loved you. He was envious.”
“Did he stop?” Roos pipes up, and she sounds desperate for the answer to her question.
“Yes,” I say, and a twisted smile lands on my lips.
“The day after I turned sixteen, I asked for a lock for my bedroom door. Mum was hesitant. I think she already thought you and me were fucking, Mari. But my grandmother strangely supported the idea. Said I needed my privacy. It was no surprise my grandfather sided with Mum, and considering he was the one who did all the DIY jobs in our house, I thought that was the end of it. But by that time, I’d already established myself as a rebel.
I’d gotten that tattoo in Bath with a fake ID – do you remember?
” Mari nods. “And I’d dyed my hair all the colours of the rainbow and given myself that godawful undercut.
So I just woke up one day and decided to do it myself.
I went to B I’d not sat in the same room as him when it was just us two there.
I’d definitely not wanted to watch TV with him.
So he looked over at me, and I just lifted the sledgehammer and dropped it again, tapping the head in the palm of my hand.
He stared at it for a moment and then looked up at me.
Without saying a word, he turned his attention back to the television, and I left just as silently.
“I didn’t expect it to work. I was still nearly a foot shorter than him, and I wasn’t particularly strong.
But I had already proved myself as a bit unpredictable.
I wasn’t meek and weak anymore. I was in detention most weeks.
I stayed up too late, and my mum had found weed in my room more than once.
I wasn’t a known quantity. And also, sickeningly, I wasn’t a child anymore.
I think a combination of all of that finally stopped him.
But I slept with that sledgehammer under my bed for years after that day.
And I locked my bedroom door every damn night. ”
Silence falls in the room like a blanket I can’t decide if I want or need. It feels warm and grounding but also stuffy and charged. I know there is so much more to say, to explain, but I’m suddenly at a loss for what to say next.
“So that’s why you left?” Mari asks eventually. “When we were nineteen?”
I sigh. I wish I could just say yes and leave it at that, but that wouldn’t be fair to them or me.
“Yes and no,” I finally say. “Yes, I wanted to be as far away from him as possible. But I was also running away from much more.”
I pause, trying to find a logical thread to help me tell this story. It’s a big mistake.
“Were you running away from me?” Mari asks in the quietest voice I think they’re capable of. I roll over in Roos’ embrace and face them, our heads sharing a pillow.
“No, Mari, no,” I say firmly. “I wasn’t running away from you.”
They stare at me, and I can tell they’re not convinced.
“But I was running away from how you made me feel.” I flinch as Mari blinks with clear hurt. “You cracked me open. You saw parts of me that I had kept hidden with tattoos and piercings and clothes that repelled people. You wanted to know and love me, all of me. And that was terrifying.”
“I was too much?” they ask, and their vulnerability is causing tectonic-like fractures through my body.
“No, never,” I say, holding their stare. “I wasn’t enough.”
We both start crying at the same time, our tears silent and slow.
“I knew if I stayed with you, whether here or there or anywhere, I would have to tell you what happened to me. I would have to dive into that endless well of pain and grief and rage, and I didn’t want to do that.
Selfishly, for myself, I didn’t want to feel that level of devastation, but also I didn’t want to inflict it on you. ”
Mari’s lips part, and I can almost hear the gurgling of words bubbling to the surface from inside them, but they generously close their mouth and give me a simple nod of acknowledgement.
“Also, I knew you didn’t want to leave, which you confirmed when I asked you to come with me on New Year’s Eve.”
This time, the simmering words get the better of Mari. “But if I had known what you’d been through… If I had known why you were leaving… If I had known it wasn’t about me, about us,” they blurt, “I would have said yes.”
I narrow my eyes at them. “I don’t know if that’s true. And I don’t think it should have been.”
“What do you mean?” they ask, and I feel Roos’ arm tighten around my waist.
“I wasn’t a very good…partner back then.
Or lover. I was selfish and self-obsessed and very closed off.
I know we thought we were playing around with power dynamics in the safe confines of kink at that time, but we weren’t, not really.
Or I wasn’t. I didn’t desire the power exchanges we had.
I needed them. I used them to feel comfortable, not just with sex but with my own body and with my own fucked-up mind.
I was cruel and inconsiderate. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I know I probably hurt you many times, mentally and emotionally, if not physically, and for that, I’m very sorry. ”
Mari’s eyes fill with fresh tears. “We were so young,” they say, and it sounds like my apology is accepted, but I will keep on apologising anyway.
“The fact I begged you to come with me at the last minute, barely a week after splitting up with you, should show you how unhinged I was back then. I wasn’t just playing with your mind and your heart.
I was fucking with my own. You did the right thing not coming with me.
Although it killed me at the time, and made me say things to you I will forever regret, I’m so glad you didn’t come with me.
I know if you had, I would have blown us up so spectacularly that there would have been no coming back from it. ”
I roll onto my back so I can see Roos, too. “And I’m glad I didn’t meet you then either, in those early years here. I wasn’t a good person then.”
“What changed?”
“I sold a painting,” I say simply. “For a lot of money.
Enough money to stop squatting. Enough money to buy nice food and good clothes.
Enough money to live on my own. And when I did that, when I stopped surrounding myself with people, sex, drugs, parties, booze, and chaos, then I had to finally face myself.
“But of course that wasn’t my happy ending,” I sigh with impatience at a former version of myself.
“Yes, I sobered up, and I threw myself into my work, but that became a whole new problem. I became obsessed. I started to have those days-long binge-making and painting and creating sessions. You both know what I’m talking about.
I would literally drop off the planet. I’d eat next to nothing.
I’d drink only a glass or two of water a day.
I’d lose track of time and my phone, and God forbid I had any engagements to go to.
When I’d emerge from it, I’d realise how selfish I’d been, how irresponsible, but I couldn’t stop myself.
I could justify it all too easily. I wasn’t hurting anyone, not really; I was making art that would make me money, so I had to listen to the muse when she showed up.