40. Collins
collins
NOW
Johnnie shifts her gaze, her eyes meeting mine.
I just stare at her. Disbelief, confusion…a heart full of ache, one that doesn’t quite know how to carry it all.
We sit on my bed, quite similar to the way we sat this morning.
Johnnie, her legs tucked beneath her, hands twisting and wringing over and over on her lap.
And me…trying to gather my thoughts, trying to find something, anything to grasp onto that won’t come out wrong, but damn, it’s hard.
Resting my head against the headboard, I squeeze my eyes shut, then open them again.
Squinting at the ceiling, trying to get it to come into focus, I take a deep breath in.
“Say something. Please.” Her voice reeks of desperation, cracking around the edges.
I remain still until I reach my arm out, laying a hand on her knee, the contact, hopefully, reassuring. I’m not sure about any of my decisions at the moment.
Then, resting a fist against my forehead, I force out the only thing I can muster, the words dragging against the weight of the situation.
“You didn’t know whose it was, did you?”
She doesn’t answer. But I feel it anyway, the bed beginning to shake beneath us. It’s subtle at first, then harder. A second later, warm drops of her tears land on my hand, one after another, soaking into my skin.
I can’t look at her.
I’m not…mad.
I just…don’t know what I am.
Everything inside me feels twisted up—tight, tangled, impossible to sort through. I hate seeing her in pain. I don’t want this for her, but I think I’m a little too lost in my own grief right now to reach for her the way she needs. To offer comfort. To be steady.
She just dropped a bomb on me.
Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse…they do.
She shifts beside me, moving her legs out from under her, pulling her knees up to her chin, folding into herself.
“Collins, I was so lost.” Her voice trembles, fragile and thin, as though it’s going to bend under its own weight. “Just thinking about where my head was back then, it’s scary enough to just want to stop. I don’t have the strength to go anywhere near that space anymore.”
I squeeze her knee, just enough to let her know I’m still here, still listening, even if I don’t have the right words.
“I was barely eighteen years old. He broke me. He stole so much, some of which I’ll never get back.”
I’m not looking at her, but I swear I see the expression on her face anyway. I can feel it in the air around us, heavy and unrelenting.
“I was so confused.” Her voice is almost unrecognizable now, worn down to something raw, crumpled. “So lost. Defeated. Disgusted. Scared.”
Each word lands harder than the last.
Her hands come up to cover her face, and when I finally turn to look at her, it hits me all at once. Her shoulders are shaking, breath catching in uneven gasps like she can’t pull in enough air to survive the moment. It kills me. It actually kills me to see her like this.
And still…I can’t bring myself to console her. Not yet.
“I’m so—Collins, I’m…I am so sorry.”
My heart lurches, sharp and sudden, like it’s been yanked right out of place.
“I don’t know if I would have actually gone through with it. Sometimes I tell myself I wouldn’t have been able to, but then I think maybe that’s just a cop-out to make myself feel better.”
I scoot closer to her without thinking. It’s automatic, instinct pulling me in even when everything else feels stuck.
“I know now that even thinking about it, considering it…it’s unforgivable.” Her voice cracks, splintering on the word. “It’s why I miscarried a second time, years later. I just feel it with everything in me. That I was punished for what I almost did, of the thoughts I had.”
She shakes her head faintly, hands still pressed to her face, like she can’t bear to be seen.
“It might have even been punishment in itself that I lost the baby when I did. Like I wasn’t going to get the choice, it was made for me.” A broken breath leaves her. “I wasn’t deserving.”
That doesn’t sound right.
I want to tell her as much. I want to tell her she’s interpreting everything wrong, that none of this is what she thinks it is. The words sit there, somewhere inside me, but they won’t come out.
Instead, I just sit here, staring at her.
Something is flooding over me, something I can’t make sense of. Pain and sadness churn together with confusion, the sharper edges of rage cutting through it all. It’s too much, all of it crashing in at once, too loud, too heavy to sort through.
This is too much.
I push up from the bed, the movement sudden. Crossing the room, I head for the bathroom, but I stop just before the door, forcing myself to glance back at her. I have to make sure she knows I’ll be back.
“Get in bed. I’m going to take a shower, then I’ll join you.”
What the fuck is wrong with me? She’s over here dying, unraveling right in front of me, and I can’t even show her an ounce of sympathy.
The door shuts behind me, cutting her off. I turn the shower on and remove my clothes, going through the motions but feeling quite numb.
The bathroom fills with steam, thick and curling into every corner. I stand there for a second before stepping under the spray.
Hot water hits every inch of my skin—sharp, relentless needles against my flesh. It’s a manifestation of the turbulence shaking my soul.
This day, everything after the most perfect morning, has turned into something else completely. Something dark. Something I wasn’t prepared for.
And the only thing anchoring me even remotely, is the woman on the other side of this bathroom wall.
I didn’t expect any of this. Everything she’s unloaded on me today, it’s more than I could have ever imagined.
So much darker.
So much more depressing.
And somehow…it explains so much.
All the scattered pieces that never fit together over the years, all the moments that never made sense are starting to shift, to connect, stitching themselves into understanding.
And god…it’s heavy.
Scrubbing soap everywhere I can reach, I pray it removes the confusion. I close my eyes and attempt to let the water carry away the hurt, rinse the anger down the drain.
For a moment, it’s enough.
Just enough to breathe.
Reaching out, I turn the handle, water cutting off abruptly. I step out, grab a towel, and wrap it around myself.
When I open the door to step into the bedroom, wisps of white escape into the dark room, lit only by the small nightlight plugged in on the wall.
For a second my heart stutters, thinking she left.
But then I see the faint outline of her hair draped on a pillow.
I step up beside her, lift the covers and let the towel fall to the floor as I slide in beside my girl.
Cool sheets are a nice reprieve to my scalded skin.
And when I reach out to wrap an arm around her, pulling her in close, her hair pokes and tickles my face.
Sitting up, I blindly reach down, running a hand along her arm until I find what I’m looking for.
The hair tie that’s always around her wrist. Pulling it off, I tell her to sit up and she does.
I gather all her hair the best I can. I’m no expert, but I wrap it up to the best of my ability in the tie and press a kiss to her temple.
We both lie back down, legs intertwined, wrapped in each other like we always used to be.
My arm wraps around her middle, pulling her tight to me without hesitation, and her hand finds mine like it belongs there, like it always has.
Our fingers lace together, quiet and certain.
Our breathing slowly evens out, the tension of the day easing just enough for sleep to start creeping in. An inevitable slumber.
Then I hear her.
So quiet I almost miss it.
“I still have mine, too.”
My brow furrows against the dark. Huh?
“The beer tab.”
Her words are gentle and unexpected. They cut through the heaviness, the hurt, the chaos of the day, replaced with something softer.
Something resembling a memory trying to reach for us. Clawing at reality, begging for us to remember.