Stitches

So, without another word, he leaves my office and begins the official steps of dissolving our friendship.

Moira snuggles up beside me on the couch, absently running her hand up and down my arm. All night she’s been trying to settle me down, but she doesn’t know what’s wrong. I haven’t been able to bring myself to tell her.

I keep feeling like if I don’t tell anyone, then it won’t happen.

That’s never worked before, so I’m not sure why it would now. When I was a child, standing at the double funeral of both my parents, it didn’t make me feel any better that I didn’t cry.

When I was first dumped into the home of strangers with four other children, not showing that I was scared didn’t make me feel any braver.

As I was dumped from house to house, forever without a family or a home to call my own, I could feel myself growing cold and hard, could feel my world getting smaller and smaller until I was the only one left. There may have been a whole world out there, a whole house full of people I lived with, but my personal microcosm shrunk and shrunk until there was only room for me.

If there was only room for me, it felt better. It wasn’t that no one else wanted to be a part of my world; it was that there was no room for them, anyway. It was my choice.

Then I met Griff. Someone else as cold as winter, as angry and lonely as I was. For a while, we were just lonely together. Two separate planets, sharing the same immense space, convinced we were worlds unto ourselves. We were islands, both of us. We learned not to need anyone—and that was true. That wasn’t a front. We truly learned to be self-reliant, impenetrable fortresses of solitude.

But then, over time, we got the idea that maybe since we were so alike, we could trust each other the way we trusted ourselves. Our worlds were so small, so exclusive, that “they” couldn’t get in.

But maybe we could. Maybe we were safe, because we were alike in the way that mattered. We knew what the world was. We saw the same things when we looked out the air holes of our tiny, self-imposed prisons of loneliness.

It was like that forever, until Moira. Until I let someone else in my world—not like the other girls I had dated. It had been different with Moira from the start.

Maybe he felt I abandoned him a long time ago.

Maybe he felt this years ago, and it’s only hitting me now.

“What’s wrong, honey?”

I look down at Moira, peering up at me with concern. For the first time since I met her, the thought crosses my mind that maybe she’s the intruder. I kill it instantly and feel shitty for even thinking it.

Moira is my other half. Moira makes me happy in a way no one ever has. She loves and accepts every piece of my soul, even the darkest, loneliest corner. I don’t need to be safe from Moira; she loves me unconditionally.

I’m the luckiest bastard in the city.

It just doesn’t feel like it right now.

There’s never going to be a better time to tell her, so I meet her gaze and break the news. “Griff wants out.”

Her expression clears and she brightens. “Of his shitty marriage? He’s finally leaving Ashley? Well, I think that’s great news.”

“No, sweetheart, not…” I pause, sigh, then say, “Of our partnership. Of our… friendship, I think. He hasn’t been talking to me and I don’t get the impression he will again, but I think he wants to leave Ashley and then… maybe leave town. Maybe start over somewhere else, with no ties.”

The horrified look on Moira’s face mirrors exactly what I’ve been feeling all day long. I feel shitty, because somehow this all feels like my fault. I’m not sure exactly what I did—or what I could have done differently—but it must have been something.

“Did he say why?” she asks, lowly.

I shake my head. “Not really. Some vague shit, but… He’s not happy. He thinks this is the way to fix that.”

Moira sighs, burying her face in her hands. I wrap an arm around her shoulders and tug her close, kissing the top of her head.

“But what about us?” she asks, sadly. “Why doesn’t…?” She trails off, shaking her head. “This is all my fault.”

“Don’t be absurd. This is not your fault,” I state.

Her gaze meets mine, dread swimming in the blue depths.

Alarm runs down my spine and I straighten. “What is it? What haven’t you told me?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s anything. I don’t know if it even has anything to do with this. I feel horrible even mentioning it, it feels so… so arrogant and inconsequential, and I don’t want to… I don’t even want to say anything about this.”