Come To Me (Owned 3)

“No you don’t know!” She snapped away from me. “You have no clue. You think I’m suicidal because that’s what crazy people are: they’re suicidal. You don’t realize that the very drugs you want me on make me suicidal. I don’t want to die. I want to be normal. I want t

o stand in the sun and feel the rays and actually enjoy it. I don’t want to wonder why there’s a pit in my stomach that keeps expanding. I just want to feel…feel something real.”

Reaching down, she traced a small picture in the sand. The ocean washed it away before I could see what it was. “I love you Vic.” She turned up to me and tears were in her eyes. “I love you so much it hurts. But maybe it isn’t supposed to hurt.”

Silence settled, which for anyone else might have meant it was over. Lenny wasn’t anyone else. Lenny was a storm. Silence before a storm meant chaos and ruination. I stared at her as she looked out over the ocean and waited, preparing myself, battening down the hatches of my mind.

“Do you think I want to be like this?” She shot me a glare. “Do you think I like hurting the people I love? Have you even researched bipolar disorder?”

I opened my mouth to respond but then shut up. I hadn’t. I hadn’t done any research.

“What do you think the symptoms of bipolar disorder are?” She pressed, her mouth forming into a disapproving line.

I folded my arms. “That’s a loaded question.”

“It’s not.” Lenny sighed and sat down on the sand. After a few moments she said, “I promise I won’t get mad. I just want to know what you think it means to be bipolar.” Putting my hands in my pockets, I stared out at the ocean. We both were looking at the same thing, but I knew we saw something different. The sun had long since set and the only way to tell the difference between the water and the sky was the moon. It was all inky blackness. When I looked back to Lenny, she was staring at me, waiting for my answer. “You get mad and happy really easily, like there are two sides to you.” Lenny looked away from me and back to the ocean, tears in her eyes.

“Yeah, that’s what most people think, and it’s pretty fucking incorrect.” I shrugged, not sure what to say. “There are times when I don’t even know what I’m feeling. When I feel like an alien trying to live among humans. When the only way I know what I’m feeling is wrong is by the way people react to me. When every step and move I make feels like being in one of those fucking temples from Indiana Jones. I don’t do this on purpose. I don’t start arguments because it’s fun. I don’t hurt people because I like it. I just genuinely don’t understand.”

“Lenny…” She was only on the ground a few inches from me, but it felt like she was miles away. Tears fell freely from her eyes and I wanted to soothe her, but I’d learned over the years that sometimes I couldn’t do that. I’d learned that sometimes there was absolutely nothing I could do.

Fuck.

How do you soothe someone when the ache comes from their own mind? It was almost impossible to know when I should wrap her up in blankets and when I should leave her the fuck alone. Maybe that was the problem with us, because lately I’d just been leaving her the fuck alone. All. The. Time.

I took my cue this time and reached down to comfort her.

Lenny slapped my hand away. “I’m not about to give you an entire list of symptoms like I’m freaking Web MD, but maybe you should look it up, Vic, before saying something as ignorant as ‘take your meds.’ For someone as smart as you are, you sound like a real ass. I mean, if I had a type of cancer, would you look that up?”

“I thought you weren’t going to get mad,” I pointed out, folding my arms again.

Lenny stood up and faced me. “Well I’m bipolar, right? So it’s what I do.” I geared myself up for another fight, because it was what we did. It was what Lenny and I always did. We were like ancient warriors, fucking and fighting. Instead she turned away from me and faced the ocean.

“I think I should stay at Lissie and Zoe’s for a while.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, syllables caught in the wind

The drive to Lissie and Zoe’s was silent and pressure filled. Not the good kind of pressure, either. Not the tension that wrapped around my cock, telling me to take her then or explode with unmet need. It was bad strain. It was cloying and suffocating.

“How long will you be here?” It was as if I was watching a movie I’d already seen. I knew the ending, I knew the bad parts, but I still wished I could change it.

“I don’t know Vic…” Lenny opened her door, all previous fire gone. I wished she would slam the door. I wished she would do something. At least then it meant she was fighting. Now…nothing. “I’m tired, Vic. I’m tired of us. I just need a break.”

Lenny’s fingers lightly caressed the metal of the door as her eyes traveled over to the porch. A lone lamp cast dusky yellow light on the stoop. She turned back, still refusing to meet my eyes. “Can you leave the apartment for a few hours?”

“What?” I turned off the car, chest tight. “Why?”

“Lissie said she’d help me get my stuff. It will be too difficult with you there…” The thing about Lenny was that she always ripped it out of me. From the beginning, she’d ripped out my emotions. Maybe that meant we fought more than most, but it also meant she was able to do what most couldn’t: she ripped out my love. But now, with only one arm on the car and the rest of her poised to leave, it meant I was an open wound, bleeding.

“How fucking long will you be gone?” I demanded. I thought back to the night, trying to think on the differences. Had anything been different? Why was this fight different than the others? Why this fight?

“I don’t know!” Her eyes shot to mine, dark and pain filled. It hit me then that this was for real. We’d been fighting for months. She’d been threatening to leave for months. But this, right then, was real. She was really leaving.

I should’ve fought.

I should’ve yanked her by the wrist and dragged her back inside the car.

Instead I said, “Yeah, whatever.”

I watched her ascend the stairs to Lissie and Zoe’s new house: white stucco, orange tiled roof, green lawn. It was pretty average, but then there was nothing wrong with that. I imagined it would be nice to have an average life. Wake up, make coffee, go to work, come home, and just hang out with the person you love. No murder. No subterfuge. Just…life.