Letter Two #5
I’ll never forget it, Casey. You reared back with a frozen look on your face. A look that said both What the fuck? and Who is this girl?
“Okay, first of all,” you said, voice dipped dangerously low, “I have no intention of hurting Michael or doing anything inappropriate with his girlfriend. And second of all, you could try to come after me, but I promise you wouldn’t get very far.”
I smirked at that. “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”
“And you’ve no idea what I’m capable of,” you fired back. “You don’t know me. I could be anyone.”
I dragged my gaze down your body. Tall and lean, but not too lean.
Definitely athletic enough to fill out the suit.
What gave me pause, however, were the ankle-length trousers and the loafers you wore without socks—two fashion statements Michael wouldn’t be caught dead making.
I’d eventually learn such details never precluded you from violence, but right then I couldn’t see how a fashionable guy like yourself could be a serious threat to someone like me.
So I said, “You don’t seem all that dangerous. ”
“Lucky for you, I’m not dangerous,” you said, “but the way you’re speaking to me is. You shouldn’t make a habit of threatening guys you only just met. Say shit like that to the wrong one, and you might find yourself in a terrible situation.”
How right you were again, Casey. How right you were, even then. Right from the very beginning. If only I’d listened to you, I might not have found myself in that terrible situation a year later.
“I’m not scared of anything,” I said.
“That’s because you don’t know what it is to be scared. You’ve been safely tucked away inside this great big house, where—if I’m to believe a word that’s come out of your mouth—the greatest thing to fear is you.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I don’t,” you said. “I think this is an act. If you were as bad as you make yourself out to be, you wouldn’t be so desperate to prove it.”
I didn’t like that, either, Casey. How you kept trying to see the good inside me when most people were quick to see the bad. How it felt like you were scolding me, and how I actually kind of liked it.
I started to respond, but the back door opened, cutting me off.
“There you are,” my dad said, eyeing me as he walked down the first few steps. “What are you doing out here?”
I’d hidden both hands behind my back the second the door had opened, effectively concealing the cigarette still clutched between my fingers.
On a hard swallow, I looked at you, and it’s not that I didn’t have a choice.
Because I did. I could’ve closed my palm around the glowing ember of that cigarette and burned a hole into my own flesh, and it would’ve hurt me a lot less than the other option.
But I couldn’t let you think you were right, Casey, even if you were right about a lot. I couldn’t let you think I feared being caught or made up the story about the nanny, or that you—this beautiful boy I’d only just met—had already unraveled the truth about me.
Which is why I withdrew that hand from behind my back and revealed the truth to him.
My dad zeroed in on the cigarette. “Elliot,” he said, his gaze scorching as it rushed back up to meet mine.
Lifting the cigarette to my mouth, I forced myself to watch the truth register on my dad’s face, watch as truth gave way to acceptance and acceptance gave way to white-hot fury.
“So it was you,” he said, gripping the handrail.
I blinked back tears, releasing a thin stream of smoke, visible evidence of both my lie and the betrayal. “It was me all along.”
Nic closed his eyes, unable to look at me. That’s how angry he was. Voice shaking, he said, “Get upstairs now. I better not see you again for the rest of the night.”
I dropped the cigarette, stamped it out with my shoe, and headed for the house.
Inside, as I climbed the stairs to my room, you appeared in the entry hall, hands buried in your pockets, your face upturned, eyes fixed on me. Watching. Understanding. Seeing—what, I didn’t know yet. But I would.
Two years later, I’d understand that the cruelest moments in life had a way of clarifying everything.
At the time, though, I didn’t care if I ever saw your beautiful face again.
The following week, Nic would take me back to therapy, where I’d sit on a couch and work through my rationale for lying.
Then my therapist would tell me to write two letters—one to my dad and one to the nanny—where I’d have to apologize and break down my reasons for lying a second time.
Then Nic would read both letters in front of me at the dining table, where I’d have to discuss those reasons a third time.
Then Nic would call that nanny back to our house, where I’d be forced to read my letter of apology to her and repeat those reasons a fourth time.
And when that woman refused to accept my apology, I would beg her to forgive me.
And by the end of the whole process, I would be all cried out, emptied of the darkness, wrung so dry I’d vow to never be bad again.
But the darkness always trickled back in, didn’t it, Casey? You eventually saw that about me, too.