Twenty-Five
Twenty-Five
I close the door behind me, my stomach clenching. “Please tell me it’s not true,” I beg, advancing on him.
Thomas stands up, irritated, and goes to his locker. “How’d you find out?”
“That’s not important.”
“It is to me. So give me the name of the motherfucker who talked.” He yanks the towel off his neck, briskly rubbing his hair before throwing it wrathfully into the hamper.
I completely lose my patience with his nonchalant attitude. I grab his face in both hands and force him to look me in the eye. “Look at me. I’m here freaking out, and your only concern is getting the name of the person who told me? What is wrong with you?”
“More than you can imagine,” he answers through gritted teeth, shaking off my hands.
I move aside, and blinking in confusion, I murmur, “What does that mean?”
“Nothing. Leave me alone.”
I rub my hands over my face, trying to sort out my thoughts, because sorting out his thoughts is impossible for me. “I thought that part of your life was over.” My voice lowers to a hiss, and I give him a regretful stare. “How long, Thomas? How long has this been going on?”
He gives an exhausted sigh. “It only happened once, twice at the most,” he explains with a vague wave of his hand, like we’re talking about binging on candy or chocolate.
He opens his locker and starts emptying his personal effects out of it.
“The other night at the frat party, there was some stuff floating around—” he continues, but I suddenly interrupt him because a realization has just torn my heart from my chest.
“Hold on a second…” I step back, my eyes full of horror. “The frat party? The one you left right before coming to see me?”
His eyes widen at me, but not so much as a breath comes out of his mouth. Silence. A damning and deafening silence.
“So that means that, when you came to me…you…you were high?” My voice is trembling and swallowing is a struggle.
He continues to stare unblinkingly at me, the lines of his face all tight and his jaw clenched. Like he’s just realized that he’s let out a secret he wanted to keep, and now there’s no going back. He closes his eyes for a moment, pushing his forehead against the locker.
“Fuck, Ness. This doesn’t change anything.”
I goggle at him, shocked. I cannot believe him. He was high. He was like that the whole time . How in the hell did I not see it? How? Who was I even with that night? Who was I kissing? Who was I touching? God, it feels like I’m losing my mind.
“It doesn’t change anything?” I shriek in anguish. “It changes everything, actually. Everything has changed!” I turn my back on him. I can’t take another minute shut up in this room with him while he looks at me like his admission doesn’t mean anything!
I run for the exit and grab the door handle. But the moment I start to leave, Thomas slams his palm against the door, closing it on me. He chest presses up against my back, trapping me between him and the wood of the door.
“Don’t,” he growls, only a breath away from my ear. There’s a pleading tone hidden in his voice, and against my will, it makes me weak.
“Don’t touch me,” I manage finally, my voice cracking with tears.
He takes me by the shoulders and turns me to face him. I don’t fight him. “I’m not expecting you to understand. But…fuck, I just needed to put an end to all the shit that was constantly going through my head.”
I shake my head, wiping my tears on my shirtsleeve. “It’s worse than I thought, if we’re already at the point where you’re making excuses for yourself.”
He doesn’t answer, he just gives me a look filled with resentment.
He might as well have stuck a knife right into my chest. It’s difficult for me, because my throat is burning with rage and sorrow, but I sniff, and like the true masochist that I am, I push the blade in deeper.
“It was all bullshit, wasn’t it? You didn’t come over the other night because you wanted to see me or because you missed me.
You came because you needed a body to use. ”
He shuts his eyes, guilty. “Ness.”
“Admit it.”
“What do you want me to say? That I needed to turn off my brain more than I needed you? Yeah, I did. You wanna hate me for that? Get in line. But I wasn’t looking for a fucking body to use; I was looking for you.
I wanted you. I needed to lose myself, and like a dumbass, I did, but you were the person I needed to do it with. ”
“Is that supposed to be comforting? Make me feel, I don’t know, special because you were able to use me as an escape hatch? Do you realize how humiliating that is? I should hate you for this. I should hate your guts for everything you’re doing to me!” I pound on his bare chest with my closed fists.
“Do you think I don’t know that? Why do you think I skipped out the next morning? I felt like a piece of shit!” He slaps the wood of the door next to my temples, making it vibrate. For a long moment, we just stare silently at each other, breathing heavily.
Finally, I speak. “You’ve handled everything poorly, Thomas.
All of it. Ever since your father’s death, it’s just gotten steadily worse.
A succession of bad choices and actions designed to hurt me, to get me as far away from you as possible.
You’ve locked me out and put up your walls again.
Still, despite all of that, I’ve tried to understand.
I’ve tried to take care of you, easing your pain, riding out your bad moods, watching you drink yourself into oblivion, swallowing bitterness after bitterness for days, waiting for being with you to feel good again,” I say, all in one breath.
“And I don’t regret it. I did it because I really believed that was what you needed, someone to be there for you even in your lowest moments.
Someone who accepted the worst of you. I did it because I wanted to do it, because I promised you.
” Because I love you , I scream internally.
“I promised you that I wouldn’t leave you alone and that I’d be here for you, no matter what.
But this…” I stop and suck in a deep breath. “This is beyond my limits. I’m sorry.”
With an angry jerk, he brings his face closer to mine, staring furiously at me. “What are you trying to say?”
“That I can’t keep running after you if all you’re going to do is push me away.”
I watch a flash of pain cross his face but, in a second, it’s gone. Thomas drops his arms to his sides and steps back, as though my words have produced a shock wave forcing him away. “Do you want to end it?”
The question makes me freeze up. No, that’s not what I want at all.
I don’t want to leave him; I struggle to breathe just at the thought of it.
But last night really was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
It is devastating to find out that he was on drugs when he was with me.
I feel like I don’t even recognize this person standing in front of me.
“N-no, that’s not what I’m saying. But it would be better if you stayed away from me for a while. I need to figure this all out, and I can’t do that when you’re around. You confuse me. You fog up my mind, and I can’t afford that anymore.”
He watches me intently, and it’s only a matter of moments before the disorientation on his face gives way to a contemptuous sneer. “Those fucking games won’t work on me,” he pronounces, running a hand through his damp hair in frustration. He walks away from me to a bench in the center of the room.
“What games are you talking about?” I ask him, bewildered.
“Asking me for time to think just because you don’t have the guts to tell me that you want to end it,” he answers icily, tossing his uniform into his bag. Then he turns his green eyes on me, full of anger. “I don’t do half measures. Either you’re in or you’re out.”
My throat tightens. “Excuse me? You, the guy who wanted me in his bed but not in his life, are telling me that you don’t do half measures?” I realize that this is not the point, but I find it ridiculous that he thinks he’s in a position to give me an ultimatum.
He shrugs his shoulders arrogantly, zipping up the bag. “Things change.”
“Oh, go to hell, Thomas! After everything you’ve put me through in the last few weeks, you have zero right to try to back me into a corner!
” I scream with an outrage that I can no longer contain.
“If we’ve reached that point, you are the one to blame.
You chose alcohol over me. You chose drugs over me.
Yet I’m still here, and all I’m asking for is time!
But if it’s easier for you to break up with me than to respect my decision, then you know what? Do it.”
I don’t give him any time to answer before I’m already out the door. He tries to catch my arm, but I wriggle free. He calls my name, but it’s not enough. The last thing I hear before I turn the corner is the locker room door slamming with a thud.
I run all the way home. I throw my bag on the floor and fall into bed.
I burst into tears, sobs wracking my body.
I cry all afternoon, all night, until I have no more tears left.
The next day, I call in sick to work and skip my classes.
I don’t want to do anything. I tell Alex and Tiffany that I’m too busy studying; I don’t want to talk to them either.
I just want to lie here in bed, surrounded by wet, crumpled tissues, and stare up at the ceiling.
And I know it’s contradictory because I was the one who wanted it, but Thomas’s silence hurts me. I really didn’t want to break up with him. I didn’t want him to break up with me. I just wanted it to go back to how it was before his father. Before everything collapsed.