Hey, Mister Marshall (St. Mary's Rebels 4)

Since that time, I’ve taken my place on the bed, pulled my knees up and wrapped my arms around them. While he’s been pacing the length of the room, plowing his fingers through his hair, his features angry and distressed.

But at my words, he halts and turns to stare at me.

His eyes narrow. “What?”

I inch my glasses up and tuck my wet hair behind my ears. “I want you to go.”

He stares at me for a few seconds before striding over to the foot of the bed. “Are you insane? Are you fucking insane, Poe?”

I know it’s a rhetorical question. An angry question. But I still respond, “No.”

He scoffs angrily. Harshly. “Do you realize what just happened? What —”

I dig my nails in my arms. “Nothing happened.”

“Yeah?” he bites out. “Is that what you think?”

“You didn’t come inside me.”

He looks at me with such anger that I have to force myself not to shiver under his wrath. “No, I didn’t.”

I have to force myself to keep my tone even and calm. “So then as I said —”

“But I could have,” he snaps then, cutting me off. “I fucking could have, Poe.”

“I’m —”

“I could’ve come inside you and fucking got you pregnant,” he says with clenched teeth, a vein beating on his temple. “I could’ve wrecked your future. I could’ve wrecked every single thing that I am trying to give you. Every single thing that you need to build a safe and secure life.”

“But it was me. I was the one who —”

“Yeah, and that’s the problem, isn’t it? That I’m so blinded by you, I can’t see straight. That I’m so wrapped around your finger, I don’t know what’s up and what’s down. And I hate that.” He plows his fingers through his hair again, tugging at them, pulling at them. “I fucking hate that, Poe. I fucking hate how you can mess with my control like this. How you can mess with my life, with my responsibilities, with what I believe is right and wrong. I fucking hate that.”

I fucking hate you.

He might as well have said that.

And it makes me want to crumble. It makes me want to curl up in a ball.

But I can’t blame him.

Because I hate myself too. For what I almost did.

For how desperate I became.

So yeah.

It’s time for him to go and for me to let him.

“So that’s why I want you to leave,” I tell him. “You should go back to California.”

His chest moves sharply under his unbuttoned shirt, his muscles flexing and bunching with the action. “Fuck California. We need to have a discussion about this. We need fucking boundaries. This can’t happen, Poe. Not ever.” He rakes his fingers through his hair again. “This was supposed to be fucking —”

“Goodbye, I know,” I cut him off, finishing the sentence for him.

He winces at my correct guess. As if he thought I didn’t know even when he made it quite clear.

He goes to say something but I don’t give him a chance. “Do you know what unloved is?”

He’s taken aback at my interruption, a thick frown emerging between his brows. “What?”

“It’s, uh, someone who’s not loved. I mean, it’s self-explanatory, but still.”

“Poe, what the —”

“I looked it up still. Since I got that other thing wrong, Renaissance man,” I tell him, my eyes on his irritated and confused face. “I looked that up too. It’s a man with many skills and talents. That’s what Renaissance man means. And turns out, it still fits you. You are a man of many skills and talents, so. Anyway.” I shake my head. “I’m rambling but,” I look into his eyes, “I’m that. I’m unloved.”

He freezes.

Irritation and impatience leaching off his features.

Maybe finally realizing that I’m not rambling for no reason. There is a reason for my rambles, and he is right.

There is.

I want to say this to him before he leaves for California tonight. I want him to carry this with him on the plane, and then into the meetings or whatever he still has left to do.

And hopefully he’ll carry the things I’m going to say to him for the rest of his life too.

“I mean, it’s not that hard to believe why,” I continue. “Why I’d think that. You know all about my mom and how I grew up. You know that she was never very present or loving or kind or any of the things that a mother should be, I guess. In fact, she hated me. You know, because she got pregnant with me so young and how she got burdened with a kid when she was a kid herself. It ruined her relationship with her parents. It initially ruined her dreams of being this great superstar. She wanted to be a movie star, did I tell you that? But being a single mother and a struggling actress is hard. So when she landed a TV role, she took it. She was very unhappy about it in the beginning because it wasn’t the big screen, but yeah. So you know all that. You know all about me being unloved. So that’s not the point.”