Chapter 39 London
London
The five days following my embarrassing gesture to Archer are filled with mostly self-loathing and ignoring my responsibilities.
I call out of work, using the excuse that I'm still recovering from the gunshot wound, some aches and pains lingering that prevent me from going in.
Grace doesn't buy it. She shows up anyway, and despite my best efforts, she forces herself into my apartment with the key I gave her and pokes around.
"You can't live like this," she says while turning up her nose. "This place is a disaster." Grace uses a pair of tongs from the kitchen to pick up a shirt hanging on the back of a chair. "Where's your hamper?"
"I don't have a hamper." I plop onto the couch, not caring at all that she's disrespecting my personal space. With Grace, those things don't matter, and I don't exactly have it in me to put up a fight.
"You're going to shower." Grace goes over to the bathroom, turns the faucet on, and then goes into my room.
"Don't you have any clean clothes? Ah, there we go.
" She has a pile of my belongings in her grasp as she goes back into the bathroom, returning a minute later to drag me from the couch.
"I'm going to order Chinese food, and you're going to wash your ass.
When I get back, we're going to make a plan, an actionable one. A how-to of sorts."
She shoves me into the bathroom but I just stand there as it fills up with steam.
Grace groans and comes inside, reaching for the hem of my shirt.
I smack her hand. "I can undress myself, Grace, I'm not completely helpless."
"Could have fooled me." She makes her way to the door, turning around to face me. "I'll be back in half an hour. I've let you mope enough. This ends today." Grace shuts me in and I know if I don't do exactly as she says, she'll bathe me herself and never let me live it down.
So I strip out of my clothes, tossing them into the pile heaped on the floor, and step into the piping hot water.
Closing my eyes, I'm grateful my tears have a place to escape as they're washed down the drain.
I wash my hair, breaking momentarily here or there to sob, my back against the wall.
I do what I can to clean my body well, not wanting to leave it to Grace to verify I followed through.
Once I'm done, I sink onto the shower floor and bring my knees to my chest, hugging my body tightly.
The hot water spills onto me and I lower my head, considering what it would take to accidentally waterboard myself to death.
It's not that I want to die, I just don't exactly want to be alive, not when everything reminds me of the life I gave up when I finally had it all.
I was an idiot for thinking what I was risking was worth it, and by the time I realized it, it was too late. Too late for me, for Archer, for us.
A loud knock fills my bathroom, but I don't move.
If it's Grace, she'll use her key, and if it's anyone else, I can't be bothered to find out what they want.
The only person I want to hear from wants nothing to do with me, and I can't even blame him.
I lectured Archer about telling me the truth and then I went behind his back to put his entire family in danger.
He has every right to hate me, and honestly, I'm surprised he didn't kill me just to make sure it never happens again.
I can't get the image of him out of my head, shutting the door on us forever after baring myself to him in a way I never had with anyone ever.
I've relived that moment over and over, and reworked that speech a million different ways, but each one ends with the same outcome—Archer shutting me out.
Why couldn't I make him change his mind? Why couldn't I fix what I had broken? Why couldn't I just make him love me?
But Grace is right, I have to move on from what can't be changed, because if I continue to sit in this state of misery, I'm going to go completely mad.
I wipe away my tears and climb out of the shower, towel-drying and throwing on the clothes that she had picked out for me—nothing special, a pair of jeans I bought the first week I lived with Archer and a fitted black top.
I slide my palm across the steamed-up mirror and take a look at myself, my eyes red and puffy, my hair in wet ringlets on my shoulders.
A booming sound rattles my walls and my first instinct is to reach for my phone, to call Archer, but those days are behind me, and I have to figure out how to move on without him in my life, even if I'd prefer nothing less.
Not to mention I haven't gotten a phone since I left mine at his place and I haven't had it in me to figure out where to even do that.
I'm sure Grace would help me, but I don't want to, not yet, not when I'd have to step out into a hallway that we share, walk down steps we walked together, exist in the world without him.
What we had was temporary but it was the first real thing I'd felt in my entire life and I let it go up in smoke because I was too afraid it would consume me like everything else had up until that point.
I follow the rattling that fills my apartment, stepping out of my bathroom with caution, another blast crackling loudly.
The hung pictures shake and the glassware rattles in my kitchen cabinets.
Is this an earthquake? We had plenty of those on the West Coast but none of them were quite like this.
Maybe this is how they are in New York, something else I'm going to have to get used to if I'm going to be living here.
I guess I hadn't thought too much past getting free of Joe. Now that I regained my name, I could return home to California and be London Gardella once again, that name feeling so foreign despite spending my entire life living as that person.
Another bang shakes me to my core and I gasp as a piece of drywall goes flying, the wall separating my apartment from Archer's quite literally being torn to shreds.
With my hand to my chest, I gawk at the sight unfolding in front of me, a sledgehammer blasting the wall apart and Archer stepping through in a cloud of dust particles.
With my eyes wide, I take him in, his chest heaving, his tattooed muscles bulging his shirt more than they ever have.
"What the fuck, Archer?" I blurt out because that's the only thing I can think of. I didn't exactly pay it, but I won't be getting the security deposit back on this place anytime soon.
"You," Archer says as he catches his breath. "You didn't answer the door."
I blink a few times and process what he just said. "I didn't answer so you busted the wall down?" I point at my wet hair. "I was in the shower."
He nods and shrugs. "Right, yeah, that makes sense."
"What if I wasn't home?"
"I, uh, I guess I would have waited until you came back."
"Waited for what? You told me you never wanted to see me ever again." Even saying it out loud reopens the wound I keep trying to mend. "What is this about?"
"I need to talk to you." His eyes frantically roam my body and suddenly I'm exposed and vulnerable, even more so than when I was holding that stupid fucking boom box over my head and confessing my feelings for him.
"You couldn't have called? You had to break the—"
Archer cuts me off. "Will you please shut up, for one minute?"
"Fine, sorry, by all means, the floor is yours." I sigh at the mess he made but realize I've done far worse and yet he's still here, standing in front of me, a beautiful ghost from my recent past. My heart aches and I'm not sure how much more I can take of his rejection.
"I have been in that apartment rotting every single day since I last saw you, and every day before.
I can't tell you the last time I slept, not deeply, and when I have, I dreamt of you, waking up in a cold sweat because it wasn't real.
I have thought of and played things over and over in my head.
I have theorized what happened, and I have done everything I can to shut it off, to shut you off.
I stare at this fucking wall, and at this point, it's like it's been talking to me, taunting me, daring me to tear it down. "
Archer pauses to loosen a breath and I take one with him like I had been holding it that entire time.
"I don't know what else to do. I can't keep this up. My work is suffering. My family is suffering. I am suffering."
He takes a cautious step, barely moving at all.
"I hate you, London. I hate your father, I hate what he did to you, what he did to me.
I hate everything you stand for. I hate how you never shut up and how you leave destruction in your wake everywhere you go.
I hate that your hair is all over my apartment, tangled in my laundry and clogging up my drain.
I hate how the scent of you no longer remains on my sheets.
I hate how you fight with me over everything and I hate how you think you're always right.
I hate that you never listen to me, and you're so fucking hardheaded.
I hate how independent you are and that you never really needed me.
I hate that I have no idea what you're doing, or who you're with, and I hate that you've been living this close to me.
I hate that I don't trust you, and I hate that despite hating you, you consume every single one of my thoughts.
And I think the thing I hate the most is that I don't hate you at all. "
Archer drops the sledgehammer in his hands and it thuds against the floor.
My heart stutters and I freeze, unable, unsure, unwilling to move.
"What I'm trying to say, my little tornado, is that I love you." Archer comes closer. "I can't stand another second without you in it. I don't know how to fix what's been broken, but I refuse to waste another moment not trying to figure out how."
He bridges almost every shred of distance between us and looks down at me. "Say something," Archer whispers. "Say anything."