Dreams of 18

“Why did you call her? Why w-would you…”

He faces me, his hair all messy and stuck up on the sides. He hasn’t slept, I realize. Or at least, he’s been awake for a while. It shows on his haggard face now.

He probably read my journals as soon as I set them out and he probably called my mom as soon as he finished reading them.

“Because you need to go home.”

“I don’t… understand. Is this… Is this your way of punishing me? For lying about everything? For lying about college and all those things?”

He studies me a beat, his shoulders rigid and massive.

Actually, everything about him looks massive, more massive than ever. More angular and sharper and more daunting.

Everything about him and his size that would make me feel secure, intimidates me now.

“I called her because she’s right.”

“About what?”

“About everything. About the fact that I’m taking advantage of you. I’m having my fun when I’m not going to give you anything.”

I take a painful step toward him. “But you’re not. You’re not taking advantage of me. I know. I already know that you won’t give me anything. I know that. You told me that.”

That starts up a pulse on his cheek. “But you didn’t listen. You didn’t heed all the warnings I’ve been laying out for you. I’m not going to love you, Violet. I can’t. I don’t know how. So you need to go home now.”

I clutch his t-shirt again. I clutch it and pull at it and shake it because I want him to understand.

I want him to get that I don’t need those things.

“I don’t need your love, Graham. I don’t need it. I can live without it, okay? I can. I promise. I won’t need your love. I won’t even ask for it. I just want you. All I need is you. You make me feel safe, don’t you get it? You make me feel protected and warm and special and that’s enough for me. I can live with you not loving me. But I can’t live without you. I can’t. Please.”

By the end of it, I’m crying. I’m sobbing and I want him, I need him to hear me. I beg him to understand.

When he steps closer to me, I think he does.

His hands reach out and he wipes off my tears and I tighten my fists in his t-shirt. I try to hold onto him, keep him here so he doesn’t go anywhere.

So he doesn’t leave me.

I watch him through watery eyes as he leans down and kisses me on the forehead.

God.

God.

He gets it, doesn’t he?

“Maybe you don’t need those things, but you deserve them,” he rasps against my hair. “You deserve them more than anyone in this fucked up, shitty world. Go home, baby.”

He moves away then.

My hold on him is so tiny and so unaffecting that he breaks it easily. And by the time I realize what’s happened, he’s already opening the door of his truck and climbing inside.

“I can’t go home,” I blurt out to his back. “This is my home. This. Here.”

His hand rests on the door as he faces me.

He takes one sweep of my body, my bare feet, the shirt of his that I’m wearing. My splotchy face and rumpled hair, before he comes back to my eyes.

“This is no one’s home. Never has been.”

That hits me so much and so hard that I don’t recover from it until he’s already in the truck, backing out of the driveway.

He does it so fast that all I can see for a few seconds is a cloud of dust.

Once it settles though and he’s disappeared down that winding trail that cuts through the woods and ends at that rusty mailbox on the side of the road, I take off after him.

I run and run along that dirt path, hoping to chase him down. I call out his name over and over because how can he say that this cabin isn’t a home?

How can he say that?

How can he say that when we’ve been building it together over the past few weeks?

I run and run after him so I can tell him, it’s ours.

This is our home.

But he’s gone and I don’t see him, not even the tail-end of his black truck, and that just takes away all my fight, and I crumple to the ground and fall on the pieces of my broken heart and my dreams.

The cabin feels dead.

It feels like it did the first day I moved back in after years and years of being away. During those initial days, everything was covered in a thick film of dust and old memories.

I cleaned it up the best I could before letting it go and drowning in alcohol.

Until she showed up.

Until she fixed everything. Fixed me. Saved me.

I walk in further, my legs taking me to the kitchen without my volition. As if they can’t believe she’s gone and they need to check it for themselves. The kitchen is usually where she’d be when I came home from work, always baking something, smelling so sweet and looking so soft.