This makes her anger flare up again. “I won’t forget it, Bear, and damn you for saying so! When will you fucking learn that this was never just about you! This affects all of us!”
I laugh bitterly. “You all say that, but you could never understand.”
“Only because you’re too fucking proud,” she snarls. “You want to talk of martyrdom, go take a look in the mirror.”
“I know that, Anna!” I cry at her.
“Then why are you so quick to judge those people who would do it for you?” she hisses. “How can you push those people away so easily?”
“You think it was easy?” I glare at her. “You think I haven’t regretted it every waking moment?”
“How would I know?” she says nastily. “You lied to me from the beginning.”
“I didn’t know what else to do, Anna! Everything was falling apart around me, and I was making it happen!”
“What were you so scared of? Why couldn’t you let somebody just help you because they wanted to?”
“Haven’t you been listening to a goddamn thing I’ve said?” I growl.
“So that’s it?” she asks, furiously pawing at her eyes. “That’s the whole story?”
“Yes, for God’s sakes,” I mutter as I wring my hands.
“You’re lying.”
“Anna, please….” I reach out my hand, but she ignores it.
“Is he in love with you, Bear?”
“No!”
“You’re lying.”
I bring my hands up and press my fists against my ears, trying to shut her out, trying to shut myself in, and it’s more than I can bear. I know what she’s going to ask next, and I know what I’m going to say, and I know I have an opportunity to be honest, to say something that my heart has been dreading. I know all of this, and it does little to fortify me against the way I shake, the way the tremors rip through my being. I bang my fists against my ears, hoping for some clarity, some light to magically appear and shine down and say, “Yes, yes, it’s okay to say yes.” But nothing happens, and it’s still dark, and I am left quaking.
“Are you in love with him?”
Oh God, oh my God. Bear….
“No!” I shout.
“You’re… lying.”
The plates shift, the earth moves.
How did we get here? I think, my mind all hot and panicky. How the hell did we get to this point? How could I have ever let it get so far?
She glares at me, then hangs her head. “You know,” she says, chuckling bitterly to herself, “for the longest time I thought it was Otter that had done something to you, but now… now I don’t know. I never thought it would come to this. I always thought that we would….”
My heart pounds in my ears. “Nothing happened,” I say hoarsely, hating how false I sound, even to myself. “Nothing happened.”
“Oh, Bear,” she says, raising her hand to her cover her mouth as she begins to sob quietly. “Oh, Bear,” she says again, and I can hear it in her voice, and this finally breaks down all the walls I have hastily constructed since we stepped onto the balcony. I rush to her and wrap my arms around her and hug her close and bury my face in her hair.
“Please,” I beg. “Please. God, please.”
She slides away from me, saying, “No, Bear, no,” and those words are like a dagger through my heart. I can feel her pulling away from me, feel her retreating, and fear smashes through me, glassy and sharp. I mutter please over and over and over again and try to grab her hands, her arms, her shoulders, anything to bring her back to me, but she tells me no, no, no, and I can see she’s going to leave me, just like everyone else has ever done. It is happening now, and she is going to leave me now, and I will be alone forever because one day I know Ty is going to leave me, too, because everyone… always… leaves.
She chokes back further tears and pushes me away again, and I collapse against the wall and hug myself, trying to feel anything other than this pain. She steps back and wipes her eyes and brushes her hair out of her face.