“Well, it’s the truth. I’m so fucked up Shane, too much dirty laundry.”
“Well, then we’ll be fucked up with each other. Look, I know we have a lot to work out, I have a lot to work out. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but it’s worth a try. I’ve seen your dirty laundry; it isn’t anything I can’t handle. Besides I own a laundromat, remember?”
“Not everything’s a joke, Shane. You can’t love someone like me. Someone you can’t take home to your parents, I’m not Martie.”
“My parents would love whoever I’d bring home.”
“Well, good, then they probably already love Martie.”
“Stop it, Rose! I don’t want Martie. I want you. Maybe I’m crazy for wanting to be with you.”
He stepped closer I stepped back against the building.
“Do you hear what you are saying? I’m not a forever girl, Shane.”
“I don’t care, I want you, Rose. Only you.”
Well, you shouldn’t. I’m no good for you.”
“How can you say that, when every time I’m with you I suddenly feel alive? Like I can take on the world. How can I get you to see that when I’m with you everything feels right?”
“Because I heard you, in your office with Crystal, you told her that you don’t want to fuck someone like her . . . like me, a whore!”
“Rose, you’re right, I don’t want to fuck Crystal! I don’t want to fuck Martie, I want to be with you! Why can’t you accept that? Why can’t you see what you do to me? What are you so damn afraid of?” he asked as his hands caught my face, pushed me against the hospital building, he had me trapped between my pain and my fear.
My body responded to him, God, I wanted him to take me away. I needed him to bury himself so deep inside of me, he’d take away all the pain that was exploding through my body.
He lowered his mouth toward mine, brushing delicate against the salty tears that caked my lips. His tongue skated against the fault line of my mouth. I wanted to open to him, I wanted to get tangled up in his kiss, I wanted to do the only thing I knew how to, but I couldn’t. I pushed him away; my cheeks ran as cold as my lips. Shane planted his hands against the building just above my shoulders, leaning in toward me again. I pushed my hands against his chest, holding him back from trying to kiss me.
“I can’t do this. I can’t handle another wrecked heart, girls like me don’t deserve to be loved by someone like you. It just isn’t in my DNA. Please, don’t make this any harder than it already has become, just forget about me. You’ll be better off.” I ducked under his arm and hurried away from him. I only looked back once and saw that he didn’t follow me, he just watched me walk away.
He had no intention of following me, and I had no intentions on making it harder than it had to be. I just needed to go home alone and grieve the loss of my best friend.
I PUSHED THE door open to my apartment. Heavier than before, the door scraped just a little harder against the hardwood floor. The colors seemed different, the sun burned through the rippled glass of the old kitchen window and it gave the apartment a different energy. Suddenly, everything in the apartment was soaked in the essence of Sybil. The vacuum lines she put in the plush area rug in the middle of the room. Even down to the pillows on the couch she’d angle just right to give the illusion we were expecting guests. I remember her telling me through her recovery she found healing in controlling the things she could and letting go of the things she couldn’t. Call it OCD, or replacing one addiction for another, but she found comfort in keeping the apartment nice and organized.
I pushed my fingers to the chartreuse green pillow she had put on her side of the couch. The embroidered lines across the silky front caught the pads of my fingers, for some reason they were more defined than ever before. Each stitch representing a day she was clean, or so I pretended. I pulled the pillow to my chest; her perfume soaked the lining of my nose and down my throat, sweet with a touch of spice. I sat down in her spot on our couch and curled my feet up under my body. Coiled, I held Sybil’s pillow against my face, feeling the chill from the silk against my lips and nose, I breathed her in. I felt like I was living between reality and something I had no name for.
I ached to have Sybil walk through the door. Argue with me, laugh at me, and get pissed because I creased her favorite pillow. God, I just wanted someone to come and take me away. I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin, in my thoughts, or in the expired promises we made to each other. Sybil wasn’t coming back and I wasn’t ready to figure out what I had to do. Where was I going to belong now?