“Because you can’t.” It was the truth. My truth.
He couldn’t, because I wouldn’t let him.
“Are you okay?” he asked, concern in his eyes.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t have to be like this! There is no way you can be fine right now!” Jake smoothed his hand over his goatee. “Someone bursts in here in the middle of the night and attacks you, and you’re just fine? Cause I’ll tell ya, I’m not fine!”
“Calm the hell down! I’m okay, really. I promise.”
“Okay is worse than fine. For fuck’s sake, I would rather you scream, and yell, and cry, and blame me!” Suddenly, he was quiet. “I just...I just want to hold, and comfort you.” He made a move toward me, but this time I refrained from flinching.
As long as he didn’t touch me, he couldn’t break me.
“Why do you want those things from me? It doesn’t change anything. I’m okay because I choose to be okay.”
I'd been saying it my whole life. It was all I knew.
“No!” Jake shouted. He jumped off the bed and started pacing the room. “No, you’re not okay because you choose to be—you just think you're okay because you choose to avoid the situation. You’re not honest about your feelings, and that’s not okay at all!”
He reached for me, and I scurried to the other side of the bed as if he were wielding a knife instead of offering comfort.
“No,” I screamed. My heart was racing. I didn’t want to feel the burn. I didn’t want to be pulled down into a place I didn’t know if I could ever climb out of.
I didn’t want to feel.
“Just let me hold you, Bee.”
“No. Fuck you. Leave me alone!”
“Why don’t you want me to touch you?” he asked again, this time louder, his voice laced with anger.
“Why do you want to touch me? I’m nothing. I’m no one.” My voice was shaky. I was on the verge of my first real tears since I was a child, and I was hell bent on not letting them come.
“Why do I want to touch you? Are you fucking kidding me right now? I want to help you. I want to hold you. I want to make it all okay for you. I want to fucking touch you because you are the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen, and I can’t imagine never being able to hold your hand or kiss you.” I thought that was everything, but then he added, “And yes—I want to fuck you, too, like I’ve never wanted anything in my whole life.”
Why would he want me?
Sincerity played behind his eyes, the same eyes that had held so much hatred for his father no more than an hour earlier. “You’re not nothing. Don’t ever fucking say that again, because you’re everything.” He said it again, quietly this time, “You’re fucking everything, Bee.”
It was all I ever wanted and didn’t want to hear at the same time. We hardly even knew each other. We couldn’t have a real relationship. I could never give him what he needed or wanted, and there was no way in hell he was ever going to be able to make things okay for me. He didn’t even know what he’d be trying to make okay.
Who the fuck did he think he was?
“How?” I snapped at him. “How the fuck are you going to make it all okay for me? Huh? Are you going to travel back in time and make my parents treat me like I'm worth more than the neighborhood dog? Are you going to tell them to take me to school instead of keeping me home to torture me? Are you going to read to me and teach me how to cook? Are you going to close my bedroom door when they're having a fuck-party in the middle of the goddamned living room? Is that what you’re going to do, Jake?”
He stayed silent.
“You think a hug is going to heal me? You can’t help me. Nobody can help me! I help myself. I’m okay, because I fucking want to be okay! I don’t want to be touched, because I don’t want all the shit that comes with it.” The next part spilled out of me before I could reconsider. “It burns, okay? Is that what you want to hear? It burns down into my bones, and it physically fucking hurts me to be touched!”
I sank from the bed onto the floor so I didn’t have to see his reaction to my confession.
“Are you going to make them love me, Jake?” I pulled my knees up to my chest. “You say you want to help me, but how can you when you keep so much from me? You won’t even tell me why this ‘business’ of yours is such a secret.”
“You want to know what I do? Do you really want to know? Because once I tell you, I can’t just take it back.” Jake rounded the bed and crouched on the floor in front of me. “I’m fucking afraid that I’m going to look at your perfect face and you’ll see me for the first time as the monster I am. I haven’t told you because I can’t stand to think of you looking at me like that. I don’t want you to judge me for what I’ve done…for what I do.”
He did reach out then, trying to brush a strand of hair out of my eyes.