Chapter 46 THEO #2
I get one fucking weekend to be happy, so I work hard to lock all of it away and have a perfect weekend with my perfect girlfriend who loves the version of me she thinks she’s getting. We’re back to sharing a fantasy, except this time it’s real for her, and I do my best to lose myself in it, too.
I push down the thoughts, and I fantasize about her letting me put all the cameras back up and follow her around again, about getting full access to her at all times the way I want.
I fantasize about moving her out of her shitty apartment and into my huge, depressing house and making it a home with her.
I fantasize about killing her husband and giving her every part of her life back, and her turning around and sharing it all with me.
I fantasize about marrying her, about building a life with her, about having a family with her, about getting to spoil the shit out of a kid with my eyes and her freckles and then getting to spoil the shit out of her for making me so fucking happy.
I fantasize about spending the rest of my life making her happy in any way I can.
I ignore that I'm fantasizing about everything I want but can’t have, just like I’m ignoring everything else this weekend.
I ignore that I’ve been trying to memorize the open looks of adoration she’s giving me because I know I’ll never see them again if she finds out what I’ve done.
I ignore that Dr. Mills is probably right when she implies that I’m a manipulative fuck who’s abusing Alex.
It isn’t what she says, but I can tell it’s what she thinks.
I especially ignore the fact that I know, deep down, taking the tracker out of Alex isn’t going to fix anything.
I force myself to stay in the bubble and have another perfect day with her.
I take her hiking, and we go tide pooling afterward.
We make love and lie in bed, talking and joking and holding each other for hours, and I drink myself to sleep in the middle of the night again.
I’m on the brink of losing my shit, so I resolve to keep her in a hazy, slightly dissociated state with sex on her birthday.
She’ll love it, and she’ll be too zoned out to notice that I’m stressed.
The next morning, I spend a long time with my head between her legs until she wakes up in the middle of an orgasm, and then I pin her down and fuck her mercilessly.
She’s blissed out and dreamy when I make her French toast and give her more gifts, and then I tie her up on the couch and shove a vibrator between her legs as I touch and kiss every inch of her body, forcing her to come until she’s a tired, crying mess.
She’s barely coherent when I take her to the spa, and she practically floats out two hours later because she’s so relaxed and happy and, most importantly, thoughtless.
I drive us home that afternoon, reveling in her dreamy, giddy happiness and pushing down the feelings that get harder to ignore the closer we get to home.
We go to her place, and I put away all the gifts I have finally badgered her into accepting before I give her soft, slow head. I make her come over and over to keep her distracted, because I’m barely holding it together.
Afterward, I draw her a bath, pour her a glass of wine, and leave her to relax while I make her dinner and a cake, trying not to hyperventilate.
I dote on her and cling to the happiness I can when she tells me she loves dinner, she loves the cake, and she loves me.
I open a bottle of champagne, get her a little drunk, and give her a small, wrapped box with a set of my house keys in it.
She's so ecstatic she fucking cries, and I fight off a panic attack.
She goes to bed happy and spoiled and relaxed, having noticed nothing wrong with me, and I lay in bed with her in my arms, all the thoughts and feelings I’ve been fighting off for days worming their way back into my brain and body.
I pull Alex closer as a black hole opens inside of me, sucking away all the happiness from this weekend.
None of it was real in the first place.
I’ve fucking ruined everything, again, except this time I’ve ruined my life instead of hers.
All the therapy has ruined any chance of me being happy.
Alex wanted me to try hard in therapy, and I wanted her to love me, so I tried really fucking hard for her, and I wish I hadn’t.
Enough of the shit I’ve begrudgingly learned has gotten through to me to know that, by her own definition, Alex can’t love me back.
I wouldn’t have known or cared when I was in my delusion, but now I fucking care. Now I don’t want her to love me back unless it’s real, unless I’ve actually earned it.
She believes she loves me because she thought she had the option to, but she didn’t.
I’ve worked so fucking hard to give her back control of her life, but I didn’t give up everything, and I lied to her about it.
I’ve had so many opportunities to tell her, but I kept lying to her because I wanted her to give me a chance, and then because I didn’t want to ruin my chance, and now because I want to keep her.
She told me she wanted to choose me, and I didn’t believe she would, but I was wrong. Based on how absolutely in love with me she thinks she is, I’m starting to suspect that she still would have given me a shot if I’d told her about the tracker right after Christmas.
I wish I could tell her about it now, beg for forgiveness, tell her that I never checked her location, never kind of, sort of, technically stalked her after she asked me not to, but that would be another lie.
I’m so fucking tired of lying to her.
I stupidly thought I could just fix it by taking the tracker out, but that won’t fix it.
I can take it out and pretend that everything is fine, but no matter what, I’ll always know that she can’t truly love me back.
I told her at one point that I’d take whatever she was offering, but that feels wrong to me now.
I know I can make her happy, I know she can love me, I know this can work for real, I know that she can want me the way I want her, and I want that so badly it hurts.
I wouldn’t be in this situation if I’d just killed myself when I had the motivation, which I probably should have done. It would have saved us both a lot of pain, because she’ll be fucking devastated if she finds out.
I look down at Alex’s relaxed, sleeping face, and I think about how incandescently happy she was this weekend. For a second, I wonder if I could deal with hating myself forever just to keep making her that happy, but I know I’m too fucking selfish for that.
I want to be that happy, too.
I slip out of bed, making sure she doesn’t wake up as I change into running clothes, and I lean in the doorway for a moment to watch her sleep, feeling a deep ache of longing as I stare at her. She’s such a wonderful person, and I’m a miserable, selfish fucking bastard.
I need to make an impossible choice, and I have to do it tonight. I can either lie and keep her forever, or I can tell her the truth and lose her forever.
I can’t stand the idea of spending a life with her knowing she can’t love me back, but I can’t lose her.
I have no idea what to do.
I’m fucking trapped.