A Five-Minute Life
Page 130
“I’m not.”
“Since breakfast, when I talked about my life before the accident. I was thinking, maybe you wanted to talk about yours too. Maybe you need to—”
“I don’t.”
“Jimmy…”
“There’s nothing to talk about. It’s done.”
“Yes, but—”
“Why is it important, Thea? Just drop it.”
I stared. “Why is it important? Because you are. You’re important to me.” He started to turn, but I grabbed his arm. “No. We’re going to talk about this.”
“About what? My fucked-up childhood?”
“Yes,” I cried. “Or whatever it is that’s making you so upset right now.”
“You want to hear about it, Thea? Why? What fucking difference will it make?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But it will. Because I care about you.”
He flinched as if the words whipped him. “You want to know what it was like? Fine. Let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about how one foster mother came home from her job every day and locked me in a closet until dinner so she wouldn’t have to deal with me. Or about the racist asshole who saw me hanging out with a black friend after school when I was in third grade. He chained me to a fence in the backyard in the dead of winter and said he’d leave me there for a week if he saw me with that friend again. Or how about Doris, the foster mother I was with the longest? She insulted me day in, day out until I thought my n-n-name was Fucking Moron, or Big Dummy. She made sure I knew every fucking day of my life that I was n-n-nothing and no one.”
His skin reddened, his face a mask of rage and humiliation.
“And this f-f-fucking stutter,” he seethed. “Are you listening to it, Thea? Is this the shit you want t-t-to hear?”
“Yes,” I said, tears streaming down my cheeks and my voice quavering. “Yes, I want to hear it.”
“It’s fucking pathetic.”
“It’s not. It’s what happened to you and it matters.”
“Yeah, it happened, Thea,” he said, breathing heavily, in and out. “You wanted to know what it was like? That’s what it was like. That’s what I know. That’s life.”
“So is this,” I whispered. “You and me. Right here. Now.”
He stared at me and my heart broke for him, ached for him. Yet it filled with a fierce pride that he had endured all that he had and didn’t let it turn him rotten. He was still a good man.
The best kind. He deserves everything.
I moved in. My hands holding his face, my forehead pressed to his. His eyes fell shut.
“I’m going to fuck it up,” he said hoarsely. “Or your meds are going to fail.”
“Neither of those things is going to happen,” I said. “Or they both might. Or maybe I’ll fuck us up with one too many bad jokes. But we can’t live waiting around for that.”
He pulled back enough to hold me with his hands and his gaze. “I’ve never had anything as good as this.”
“Neither have I,” I said. “I’ve never felt this way about anyone. Ever.” I kissed him once. Twice. “I’m scared too. But let me…”
Love you.
“… take care of you.”
I kissed his lips. Each corner of his mouth.