Chapter 8 #2
No. No, no, no. That’s bullshit.
“You’re lying. I can see it. This is insane.” I give up trying to hold it together the way he is and throw my hands in the air. “I’m going to go crazy!” I shout. “How is this happening? Do you have any idea how much worse this makes everything?”
“Yes! I do!” He takes one step forward, crumbling and shattering, and finally matching my intensity on the outside. “I do know. You were never supposed to know. At least not yet. Maybe not ever.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” I repeat, plaintive. Lost. Sad. My voice is full of cracks, as many as I am.
“Because you were always with my brother!” Wizard yelps.
“What was I supposed to do? Tell you he was trash? You knew that. Tell you to just give up and come be with me, that we could set up a life, and I’d do anything to try and make you happy?
That I’d be as pathetic as it took because my whole world was you?
That there wasn’t an atom of my body that you weren’t a part of?
That I knew the exact shape of you, even if I’d never properly held you in my hands because I felt so strongly that my soul was made for yours? ”
“Yes!” My face aches. I lift my hands to try to figure out where this pain is coming from.
They come away wet. So wet that I’m drowning myself silently.
I swallow. Hard. I force myself to do it again and again, until air flows down my throat and enters my screaming lungs.
It doesn’t do much, but it does keep me alive.
Physically. Inside, I feel like I’m dying.
“You would have said that I deserved better,” Wizard says calmly.
Patiently. He’s right. He’s always known me better than I’ve known myself.
“You would have said that our lives were going in different directions. You would have clung to James because you weren’t ready to let go.
I couldn’t push you into knowledge that you weren’t ready for. ”
“I might have understood,” I whimper. There’s no chance that I would have, and that’s what fractures me right down to my soul.
“I can’t… I can’t believe you’ve been living like this,” I stammer, fresh tears streaming hot down my cheeks.
“This is too much. I can’t do this right now.
” That’s rich, and I know it. I can’t do it right now?
What about him? For once in my life, I want to be selfless, but I can’t do it because I have this knowledge filling up my body to overflowing, and I don’t know how to fix what I’ve so badly ruined.
The past is gone. There’s nothing in it that can fix the present or give me a future.
I wasn’t even half worthy of Wizard’s love back then. His love of any kind.
Wizard’s eyes lock with mine. They’re so green. Fathomless. Bottomless. Endless. They’re the horizon that bleeds into a sky, that line of the bay that I stared at not so many nights ago, and wondered if the world went on forever.
He’s carried this knowledge for literally half our lives.
Has he been ruined by it? He’s not hard.
He hasn’t calcified or turned to stone around his broken heart.
He’s always been so good. So kind. He didn’t hesitate to help me.
He served his country and he came back to our hometown and found this brotherhood, and he gave all of himself to be a part of it.
He’s loved here and he loves in return. Does that seem like someone who is broken?
It doesn’t. Wizard isn’t like me. He’s unfathomable. He’s never looked at the world as an unfriendly, frightening place. He’s never flinched away from the hard bits, including the truth. He’s not a coward. He’s nothing like me.
I might not have wrecked him with my ignorance, with my choices and the silent years between us, but I don’t deserve him now any more than I did then. I need him to let this go. I need him to…
You need nothing from him. You have no right to demand anything.
“You were going to let me move somewhere else?” I ask, my voice so tiny and lost that I can barely even hear myself. “You were encouraging me. Why would you do that? Do you enjoy hurting yourself? Is this some kind of punishment?”
“No,” he breathes. “I want you to be happy.”
“What about you?”
“Seeing you happy would make me happy.”
I’m going to explode. I’m going to die. How could I have been so stupid? Wasted so much time?
Is this my story? A collection of memories that I now understand so differently? Words unsaid and near misses while all the time I contented myself with scraps?
“I’m freaking out,” I admit, like it’s not obvious.
“Maybe we shouldn’t talk right now. Not when we’re both messy and our emotions are all over the place, like a warzone.”
He’s exactly right about that. I feel like I’m bleeding out and I need to mop it up. I need space.
“I’m sorry.” Wizard’s breaking apart too. He’s the last person who deserves this. He’s always done everything he could to shelter me, and all he ever did truly ask was that I be happy. “I’ve always wanted to be your safe place, not the person who turns you inside out and wounds you.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“It’s not about fault at all.”
“I need some time. It might let me sort some things out so I can take a breath. This is… earthshattering.”
“You can still leave. Still find that perfect job and perfect place.”
“I can’t! Stop it.” I stomp my foot like a little kid throwing a tantrum. “Don’t say anything else. I won’t let you. There is no such thing as perfect, no matter what it looks like on the outside. I’ve learned that the hard way. Maybe I’d like to be done learning hard lessons.”
“Okay.” His eyes are all heat, even though they’re swimming and glassy.
If he cries, I’m not going to survive it.
Will I even survive as it is? I’m standing in the wake of this life shattering exhalation, not knowing if we’ll ever take another breath.
“Just please don’t leave the club alone.
If you want to go out, will you let me find someone to go with you? ”
“There’s almost no one here. Just the guys doing guard duty, or whatever, and they can’t leave. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. I think I’ve caused more than enough of that for your club. I’m not going out. I’ll go down to your room and I’ll stay there. I promise.”
“Will you stay if I need to leave?”
“Why are you leaving?” I want to step closer to him.
I want to give him just a fraction of the light I should have offered him all those years ago.
I know he’d say that I did, but I can’t see it.
If I have even a shred of humanity left in me, I need to be a friend for him now.
I need to look after him the way he’s always looked after me.
No matter how confused and broken I am, that doesn’t mean that I don’t care about him.
“You shouldn’t ride right now. You’re upset. ”
“I’m fine to ride. There’s something I need to do. I should have gone over there earlier, but I didn’t know how to say what I needed to say. I think I have the words now.”
“Angry words.”
“No.”
I can see that it’s the truth. I also know where he’s going, and he shouldn’t have to go there alone. “You don’t have to head to your parents’ house alone. I could go with you. We could tell them about all of this together.”
Wizard’s hands flex and curl at his sides again. “I need to tell them who my brother really is and if they refuse to believe me or see it, then that might be it.”
I don’t know what he means, but I can’t ask him to explain himself. He needs a minute and a breath as badly as I do. We both probably need to learn how to heal all the broken bones inside of us.
“Can I walk you down?”
Even after all of this, Wizard is so kind. It makes my lungs heavy. I smother another sob. My heart redlines in my chest, battering my bruised ribs and defunct lungs.
I nod and watch as he gathers up his tech and the blanket.
He walks behind me, always there, ready to catch me if I fall.
He opens the heavy steel door for me and lets me set the pace.
I walk quickly, but not because I’m eager to get away from him.
I just need the quiet and privacy of his room so I can attempt to pick this apart.
Wizard punches his code in for me. “We’ll talk soon?” He tries not to sound plaintive or put pressure on me, or to let hope and other emotions bleed through, but this is Wizard and it’s all there.
It makes me wonder all over again how I could have been so oblivious.
Can this be fixed? Can I even begin to undo the damage that I’ve caused such a beautiful human?
The fluorescent lighting overhead catches all over Wizard’s face.
On his granite jaw, on his pounding pulse, on his luminous eyes, fractured apart with a thousand emotions.
I want to hug him. I want to tell him that I’m sorry.
I want to cry into his shoulder and hold him, but what right do I have to any of that?
I can’t be his breath when I stole it from him in the first place.
I’m sorry, but not nearly sorry enough, and sorry doesn’t fix anything anyway.
“Yes.” It’s all I can say. A small assurance, but it reverberates through him.
I step into his room and shut the door behind me. I can’t move. I can’t sink down, I can’t throw myself onto the bed. I can’t sob, scream, punch something, or even take a breath.
We used to look for shooting stars because we really were obsessed. We’d spend hours watching and waiting for one. We never saw one. I don’t know what I would have wished then, but I know what I want now.
I want to know what the world would look like if I wasn’t so afraid all the time.