The apartment I shared with Ren is my dirty little secret.
David thinks I terminated my lease and sold everything I didn’t need.
I lied.
I go there on the days when the loneliness and anger hurt the most. I sit on the couch where Ren kissed, hugged, and wiped away my tears, and rock around the never ending ball of sick, sick sorrow.
The rent money Ren left behind has been diligently used to ensure the space remains untouched by others.
I don’t know why I do it.
I know he’s not coming back.
It’s a waste of money to hold on to something I haven’t lived in for months.
So why is there this inability to move on?
Why do I keep distance between David and me?
Why do I cringe whenever he takes my hand?
And why…why did I push him away when he kissed me last week? Why did I freeze on the stairs as he caught my wrist, pushed me against the wall, and apologised just before pressing his lips to mine?
We’ve kissed before.
We’ve slept together once, yet he apologised as if he knew what he was doing wasn’t what I wanted.
Home life has been a little strained since then.
Natty knows what happened because I told her. She encouraged me to go for it. That David was a good guy: sweet, kind, loving.
I’d laughed and faked interest.
While she was encouraging me to jump into bed with David, I wasn’t picturing the boy she spoke about, but the boy from my past. I lived in my little fantasy where the man I went home to at night—the one I kissed in the dark and let enter my body—wasn’t a sweet, kind boy like David but a tortured, determined man like Ren.
So, you see?
That’s why I’m writing to you for the first time in a month.
David is taking me out for my birthday tonight, and I already know what he’s going to ask.
He’s going to see if we can go from room-mates to lovers.
And…
And this is so hard to admit…but I know what answer I’ll give him.
Are you judging me?
Do you know what you’d do in my shoes?
Would you forever pay rent on an unlived-in apartment just because it’s the only thing you have left of a boy who would forever own your heart? Or would you terminate the lease, accept the inevitable, and try to find happiness in any place you could?
I’ll tell you what my answer is going to be.
It’s yes.
I’m going to move on.
Or at least, I’m going to try.
If only it wasn’t for those eyes.
The eyes that follow me.
The eyes that know me.
The eyes that somehow, somewhere, belong to the boy I’ll never be free from.
CHAPTER EIGHT
REN
* * * * * *
Previous Month
I TRIED LEAVING for three interminably long months.
Every morning, I’d pack up my tent, snuff out my fire, and stride from camp toward the horizon. And every evening, I’d end up at the same ash-scattered, tent-crushed earth I’d left nine hours before.
A perfect boomerang—unable to break from the forgone conclusion that I couldn’t take another step farther from Della.
I was bound to her in sickness, health, love, and distance, and I physically couldn’t survive with more miles between us.
After the initial few weeks of mindless wandering, I didn’t even bother packing up the tent anymore.
I’d leave my belongings and hike all day, exhausting my body so I might find some reprieve in sleep from the never ceasing desires and mistakes in my head. I’d deplete every ounce of energy, so I didn’t turn my cell-phone on and climb the largest tree for reception. I’d barely hunt or eat, so I didn’t have the energy to message her things I should never say out loud.
I ate my secrets, and my unpermitted desires sustained me…barely.
Away from Della and free from the authoritative position I held in her life, I allowed myself to remember her in so many different ways.
I smiled when I recalled her as a baby, and her stubborn attempts to copy me.
I grimaced when I remembered her as an eight-year-old, desperate to know about sex and the terribly uncomfortable talk we’d shared.
I sighed when I relived the perfection of the long nights when she’d help me learn in the hay loft, and we’d sit so close, laughing by starlight, studying until she fell asleep against my side.
Innocent memories.
Memories I was permitted. Memories I was proud of because back then…I’d been true in my love for her. I’d been allowed to touch and kiss her because there was nothing more than the everlasting need to make her happy and keep her safe.
It was the years after that had me tossing in my sleep and dreaming things I wished I could stop.
The dream goddess who always opened her arms to me.
The blonde woman I wanted more than anything who always kissed me as deeply as I kissed her, who tumbled to the forest floor, who ripped off my clothes with the same gut-shredding passion I felt and cried out as I filled her violently.