233 - Two Hundred Thirty Three

Breaker Whiskey

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[TRANSCRIPT]

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I just realized—I never even finished my story the other day. I got distracted telling you about that other fight, the one we had when I came in from the cold.

After she said that, about our future, I stormed off. Obviously. I couldn’t stand there and look at her after I’d revealed so much in one simple sentence and been completely rejected so I took a shower and ignored her for the rest of the day. Then, that night, I was sitting by the fire, and I remembered, I was reading—god knows what, I don’t think I was paying attention to a single sentence, I think I just wanted something that would make it look like I wasn’t just sitting and moping—and I fell asleep.

And when I woke up—well, I was woken up. I felt something, on my face, a warm brush of something and I opened my eyes and Harry was there, pushing my hair off my forehead. And she’s bookmarked my place in the book too, closed it and put it on the coffee table and then she’d…

She jerked back the moment I opened my eyes. But there was no mistaking what she’d been doing. And I just…lost it. That’s what broke me. That she’d show me affection only when I wasn’t awake to see it.

I never expected—never planned to ask her outright. But I did. I just asked her what she felt for me. What she wanted from me. And she—she fucking refused to answer. Fifty seconds earlier she’d had her fingertips tenderly stroking my hair and she couldn’t answer a simple fucking question. So I told her my answer.

I told her—I told her I’d been in love with her since the first time I saw her laugh. That I’d respected her first, stood in awe of her art knowledge, her talent, her expert way of handling beautiful things. I’d watch her hands when we were packing up the goods and thought I’d never seen someone treat something with such care and make it look like art unto itself. Like some kind of meditative practice. Like something holy.

And then, the moment it left my mouth, I told her that was actually a lie—that I’d really been attracted to her first, and then came the respect. And that I’d bounced between those two feelings and complete irritation for months and months and then I saw her crack up at a dumb joke and it was like an air raid siren went off in my head. I immediately knew I was in the kind of trouble I wasn’t going to get out of.

And the whole time—the whole time I’m telling her this, she’s just backing away and shaking her head like she doesn’t want to hear it. Like I’m being cruel to her in saying it. And I say that I thought that maybe, maybe, she felt the same way but clearly I was wrong. And that it’s been long enough, and the house is…in shape enough and that she’s got enough supplies and know-how that she’ll be fine, probably, and now she’s looking at me like I’m crazy because she doesn’t understand yet what I’m saying.

So I tell her outright—I have to go. I have to leave, have to see what’s out there, who’s out there, because staying here now that I know we have no future is torture and that’s when she shouts at me. That she’s the one who’s been agonized all this time. That she’s wanted me for so long, but she never had the courage to do anything before and that she couldn’t now because it would all be a lie. That she couldn’t let me think she loved me when I didn’t know that she’d betrayed me.

Well, she didn’t say exactly that. I was the only one who used…that particular word in the conversation. Not betrayed, the—the other one. I’d never used that word for anyone before, not since my parents, and never in that kind of context. And she couldn't even…

It didn’t matter. Once she started telling me what she meant—started telling me the truth, the full truth…it was worse than any rejection would have been. She tried to explain it away, tried to say that she was trying to protect me, that she wanted to get us both out of a bad situation but all I heard was that she’d betrayed me and then lied about it. All I heard was that she, like always, thought she knew what was best and removed my own wants and needs and fucking free will from the equation entirely.

And then she begged me not to go. She begged me to let her make things right and I…I couldn’t look at her like that, after all that, and walk away. So I didn’t. I stayed and I—

I stayed and I punished her. I didn’t speak to her, didn’t let her try to apologize, I barely stayed in a room if she walked in. And then even that got to be too much to bear.

So I did the thing she was most afraid of, and I left.

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