He takes advantage of that. He takes advantage of my confusion and puts his hands on my cheeks. I grab his wrists and try to push him away again but he doesn’t let go.
“I can’t write poetry for you, Violet,” he rasps and my struggles come to a halt.
“What?” I say again but really, I don’t understand what he’s getting at.
His rough thumbs swipe off my tears slowly, gently as he says, “I don’t write poetry. I don’t do hearts and flowers and all that stuff, do you understand? I can’t. I’m not capable of those things.”
I frown up at him, breathing brokenly. “Okay…? So?”
“I don’t do them but you deserve them.”
“I deserve what?”
At this, he really gets frustrated with me. He grabs my face with an increased force like he wants to stamp it on my brain, whatever he’s going to say, and all I can do is hold onto his wrists and watch his impatient, anguished, pained features.
“You deserve someone who gives you his heart out of his chest. Someone who can reach into his own body with his hands and pull it out for you. Pull out that thing that beats only for you.”
My eyes pop wide and my own heart causes a ruckus in my chest, more than it already was causing. “I-I do?”
He breathes out angrily. He’s angry at me for asking that question.
“Yes,” he says sternly. “You deserve that. You deserve someone who takes you out on dates and to movies and someone who holds your hand and walks on the goddamn beach with you or whatever the fuck you want him to do. Paint your toenails and chat with you all night on the couch while eating cheap pizza. You deserve someone who wakes up every morning and gets down on his knees to thank God that you belong to him. And then he does it all over again before he goes to sleep. You deserve someone who lives in awe of you, understand?”
He presses my face and almost shakes me, and I’m left wondering how he does that.
This is the beautiful thing again, isn’t it?
This is where he turns all my beliefs upside down.
He thinks I deserve things. I deserve hand-holding and walking on the beach. Although I never really liked the beach; too crowded.
But I’d like it if he was the one holding my hand.
The man I love.
The man who’s looking at me with so much impatience right now.
“Violet, tell me you understand or I’m going to fucking lose it.”
His growl makes me jerk out a nod. “Yeah. Yes. I do.”
Breathing out noisily, he nods. He goes so far as to almost close his eyes. “Good. Fantastic. Now, I want you to listen to me and promise me something.”
I walk my knees closer to him then. I go to him and touch his heaving chest with mine because touching him with just my hands on his wrists isn’t enough.
I want our bodies to touch and keep touching forever and ever.
“Okay,” I whisper as I look at him with wonder.
He goes back to wiping my tears off. “I can’t do that for you. I’m not going to do that for you.”
“You’re not?”
“No.” He shakes his head and nails me with his gaze. “I’m not going to hold your hand and take you out to the beach. I’m not going to take you out for a movie or dinner, either. I don’t even believe in god, let alone going down on my knees for him. I’m not a believer, okay? I never have been and I’m not going to learn now. Not when I’m practically pushing forty. You deserve everything that I can’t give you. Everything I’m incapable of giving you. So I want you to promise me something.”
“Promise you what?”
“That you’ll find someone, some dumb college kid, who can give this to you.”
“A college kid?”
“Yeah. When you go back to your college, you’ll find someone who’ll give this all to you. But more than that, you’ll find someone who doesn’t make you cry.”
“Why not?”
“Because it fucks with my head when you cry,” he snaps with clenched teeth. “It makes me want to destroy something. I can take anyone’s tears but I can’t take yours. So promise me you’ll find someone who won’t make you cry.”
“Like you did?”
His features bunch up for a second before he rasps, “Yeah. Someone who doesn’t leave you shitty notes like an asshole. Someone who’ll give you everything and more.”
My chest is shuddering against him. Shuddering and rattling with the furious beats of my heart.
I want him to stop talking. I want him to stop saying these things.
These things that are breaking my heart.
I get what’s happening here. I get what he’s saying to me as he sounds like a concerned guardian of mine and he’s making sure I know what my worth is.