Chapter 7 #2
And it’s actually so scary to think about all the ways you could’ve been. If things had been different.
I open my wallet and leave five hundred dollars on the coffee table, trapping the bills beneath a warped stack of coasters. Then I rise to my feet to tuck the threadbare blanket more securely around my mother, to stave off her shivering. “I’m going now,” I say. “Love you.”
She doesn’t say anything back, but that’s typical. High or not.
It’s another hour’s walk from here to Revere Beach.
I walk it anyway.
I emerge onto the boulevard, sweating and footsore, where there are these little open air covered areas with seating that overlook the ocean, right by the low seawall.
The beach is crowded but the benches are mercifully empty, and after crossing the street I collapse onto one, lean back and close my eyes.
The sound and the wind and the waves drown out the passing cars behind me and the incessant cries of gulls wheeling above drown out the laughter and shouts of beachgoers, but of course there’s nothing quite loud enough to drown out my thoughts or my misery.
Is this rock bottom?
It shouldn’t be. Like, my life at a glance isn’t that bad.
I’ve got a roof over my head, and my bills are mostly paid.
I’ve got my dream job—illustrating anatomy textbooks for all two years I’m contracted for it, but I’m not worried about finding more work after that—and I’ve got my commission work that’s nothing to sneeze at.
And I’ve got my friends still. Somehow they haven’t gotten sick of me even though I’ve given them no reason to stick around and have no clue why they even like me anymore.
I get to spend a reasonable amount of time with them.
I can’t claim that they neglect me. We’re adults and we’re all busy with our own things.
It’s the everything else.
How nothing changes, really, how I still hate myself, no matter what I do.
How I’m never happy with anything I’ve got going because of this pervasive hate, the culpability, the role I take in my own value or lack thereof.
The fact I can go to therapy and take my medication and do all the things I’m supposed to do to improve my life and make myself easy to digest for the average person and still just fucking suffer.
Hits just keep coming, one after another and I don’t know what to do or who to blame or if this is my lot in life that I’m supposed to just accept.
Do I just take it? Do I give up? Am I meant to roll with those punches until they, too, stop hurting?
Once upon a time not long ago I would hurt myself in lieu of the hurt until it all stopped hurting, until I was floating on it as I emptied it out through my skin.
Now I don’t even get the relief of that anymore.
I’m in this box, my strange little purgatory, bereft of extremes.
Cannot grieve too hard. Cannot despair too much.
Cannot embroil myself in fury. I thought that would be a good thing, and I guess sometimes it is.
But neither is there any joy.
I open my eyes. On the opposite bench stands an old, fat seagull who is looking at me quite stupidly.
For a moment I wonder, just as idiotically, if he is staring into my very damaged soul, but then I realize of course he fucking isn’t.
This is not The Lighthouse and I am not Robert Pattinson and there is no mermaid washing up on the shores of Revere, and even if there was, I couldn’t fuck it. Not that I would want to, anyway.
“Noel?”
It’s not really a surprise, hearing my name in Luca’s voice.
This is his turf, and this is just how my day is going.
After all, this is where Luca first told me he loved me: down on the beach, not all that far from where I sit now, holding me close and kissing me until night fell and we just couldn’t take it anymore.
Such an inexorable need to consummate this fragile thing that had emerged between us before it was too late, and there would be a too late.
I just didn’t know how soon it would come.
I turn my head and look at him where he stands framed in the shelter’s arch.
His white-blonde hair is burned gold by the afternoon sun—the dark roots are gone—and he looks as magnificent as he ever did, tall in his t-shirt and jeans, arms tanned and tattooed.
He’s watching me with an expression that is so careful and holding the leash of another familiar face, his beautiful black greyhound Amelia.
Maybe with slightly more gray sprinkled around the muzzle than the last time I saw her, but it happens fast for dogs, I guess, getting old.
Her funny little ears are pricked and her tail whips the air. She remembers me.
I hold my hands out and he drops the leash. She comes right to me, bounding into my arms with excited snuffles against my cheek and whining happily. “Hi,” I whisper to her, rubbing her ears. “Hi there.”
“What are you doing here?” Luca asks me.
He stands in the arch still, seemingly rooted to the concrete beneath his feet.
“Are you—were you—?” Stutter-stop before he goes quiet again, but I know what he wants to ask, the question he won’t allow himself: if I came out here looking for him, specifically, if I came out here hoping he would somehow show up.
The truth is that I did. Consciously or unconsciously.
I know there are tears on my cheeks because Amelia keeps licking at them. And I can’t speak because my voice is suddenly trapped in a throat that has constricted so tightly it’s impossible to swallow or breathe, let alone speak.
I just want him so bad. The way I have since I first saw him and the way I have since he last left me.
I want him in a way that transcends carnal; I want all of him on me and in me and around me.
I want him as my absolute fucking everything even as I hate him because I love him and I never, ever stopped loving him.
He’s been gone longer than I’ve known him, and I feel this way anyway.
He is the first and only person to give me what I need, and since he’s been gone, I’ve been nothing at all. I don’t even know who I am anymore.
And he’s moving closer, step by agonizing step as if afraid I’ll bolt, until he’s kneeling before me.
Amelia sits to my right, and I keep one hand on her as if she’s the only thing anchoring me here, keeping me from tipping forward into the still and fathomless green of his eyes.
He gazes up into my face and it’s almost reverent how he looks at me, like I’ve got all the answers to questions he didn’t even know he had.
I just want to throw my arms around his neck and sink into him forever.
Forget the rest, all the ways we’ve hurt each other.
It just doesn’t seem to matter right now.
I still love you. I think it, but I don’t say it. I’m choking on tears and sentiment both. I think I might just dissolve.
Luca doesn’t keep guessing at why I’m here. His hand reaches for me until it closes gently around my upper arm. “Do you want me to take you home?” he says quietly.
I shake my head. There is nowhere I want to be less than alone in my apartment.
His thumb brushes over my bare skin and I die yet another death. “Do you want to come home with me?”
“With you?” I echo. My voice is creaky, threatening to break altogether.
“Demi’s out of town for the weekend. Visiting her sister.”
If I didn’t feel like bursting into tears I might’ve laughed.
Laughed at him, specifically, and at how insane and pathetic this all is, that the married man and father-to-be who I am so in love with is inviting me to his house while the wife is away.
If I had a shred of self-respect, I might’ve laughed through the tears anyway.
But I don’t. Because I love him. And I want that to be okay, if only for a little while.
“Okay,” I whisper.