I knew he was scared. Knew he was haunted by so many things himself, for years I’d believed I was the only one in this, but I knew that wasn’t the truth anymore. Alex might not bear the psychical scars, but the mental ones… they’re all over him.”
I grab his shoulder and look into his eyes. “I’m coming home tonight.”
His nostrils flare, steel gray eyes slice into mine. “Don’t lie to me.”
Everything crashes down on me, all my bullshit, all of it. What I’d put him through for the last four years. I’ve never been anything but a dick with him, demanding everything and giving nothing in return.
“I’m sorry, Alex. For everything.”
His eyes grow huge. “Ah, fuck. No, hell no, you’re not going out by yourself, that’s the same shit people say right before they kill themselves, they apologize and they…”
Rolling my eyes, I shake him hard. “I’m sorry, okay. I am. And I love you too. There, I said it, first time in my life I’ve ever told a man that, but I’m doing this on my own tonight and you’re not stopping me.”
Clenching his fists, his entire frame shakes. “I hate you, you know that. You’ve been a thorn in my side since day one. It’s Valentine’s Day, you think I don’t know what happens? I’ve lived through three of them, I can’t… won’t just let you walk out that door.”
“You don’t have a choice.” I glare and then turn.
What I do tonight, he can’t see.
No one can, because tonight it’s going to be raw, and it’s going to be my last one. I’m tired of this, living with the pent up dread curling big, fat greasy fingers in my gut, telling me I’m worthless, nothing. He wanted me to fight, then I’d try.
But I’m not bringing anyone else into this. Not anymore.
Because the only one who can fight this battle is me. I know that now, Lily taught me that. Her leaving, it killed me, but she was right. If she’d taken me back then, nothing would have changed. My promises about telling her everything after we got married, just more lies. She was right not to take me back.
Grabbing my keys and wallet I walk to the front door. Ryan trails me like a little lost puppy.
“Think about Lili, man.”
I pause in the doorway, taking a deep breath. “I am thinking about her,” I finally admit, refusing to turn back, to even look at him, to acknowledge that I’d not cringed when he’d spoken her name.
Getting into the car, I head to a bar. Any bar. Doesn’t matter. Stopping at the first hole in the wall shit place I find, I get out and jog inside, tapping my finger on the bar top the moment I get there.
The bartender looks at me and the memories, they’re rushing in, threatening to swallow me-- to take me and drag me down. “Whatever’s on tap,” I murmur.
He comes back a moment later with a dark stout. Paying, I turn to find a seat. My fingers encircle the cold glass, watching as the sweat slides down its face, as the foam froths at the top, my throat working so hard, ready for the first cool taste, waiting for the numbness that follows soon after.
“Hey sexy,” a woman drops into the seat next to me. Blonde with huge tits, she smiles up at me. Her eyes are blue as the sky, her nose delicate and her lips a bloody ruby red. Dressed in a short black dress and fuck me heels, she looks wrong in this place. Like she’s trying too hard to fit in.
This bar is a biker hangout, with old, rusted out license plates stapled to plywood walls and scribbled over with graffiti.
She exudes strength, fire… but beneath that, there’s something fragile. Something that reminds me of Lily.
I swallow.
Her fingers walk up my bicep, and she squeezes it hard, nail dragging along the length of muscle. “Buy me a drink?” She licks her lips and her intentions are obvious.
This is easy. No thoughts, no hearts, no nothing, just sex and a quick release and I could do this and for a while forget about flowers, about the button nose and the tiny cleft jaw, the three freckles spanning her nose.
“What are you doing here?” I finally ask.
She jerks as if taken aback by my question, the forced sultriness vanishes, replaced by a deadly intensity of hard, calculating truth. Ugly, unvarnished, stripped down and naked, shivering in the cold winter rain… something broken, not quite right… she has no hope left.
She’s a stranger to me, but in that second I read the same harsh truths in her that live inside of me.
“What?” she asks, voice sharp.
Turning in my seat with my hand still gripping my glass, I ask again. “What are you doing here?”
Fidgeting, she crosses her legs, turns aside, and gives me a completely closed off posture. “Look, if you don’t want what I’m offering, whatever.”
Curling her lip, she hops off, moving down the line, to another guy, another face and in that instant I know an epiphany’s happening.
She is me.
I am her.
Two sides of the exact same coin, we live in the world, but we aren’t a part of it. Closing ourselves off, offering nothing but crumbs and expecting everyone to just clap and sing our praises for doing it.
Pushing away from the bar, I leave my glass and race back to the car.
I’m lost, floating in the middle of a sea, hanging on to nothing, just drifting. Closing my eyes, heart pounding, I don’t know what to do.
I know what I want, what I need, but I don’t know if I’m strong enough for this. Starting the car, I go to find out just what I’m made of.
Thirty minutes later, I’m parked, staring at the huge gray stone façade of a cathedral. Large wooden doors stare back at me, daring me to take that step closer, to walk up to it, open it and trust.
Jaw working, I squeeze the wheel, pulse thumping so damn hard it hurts.
I’m probably the only one here. I don’t know what I’m even doing.
I don’t go to church, hardly ever pray, not really sure I even believe in a God, but here I am, because this is where everyone says the answers are.
I touch the keys, talking myself out of it, ready to turn the ignition, pull out and head back to that bar, to the seat I’d vacated and drown out the voices warring inside me.
But I grab the door and I get out, the night is chilly, a soft sleet is starting to drift silently around me. I’m not doing this for Alex or even for Lili. This is for me.
Throwing the door wide, I walk in.
The interior is massive and ornate.
Golden, candelabras stand guard on either side of the door. A dozen lit candles flicker within each one. Wooden pews sit empty, down the long aisle several rows of votive candles are lit, their light dancing mysteriously along the cool gray stone and stain glass window.
For a second, I don’t think I’ll be able to move. My feet feel locked in place. A dark shadow pulls away from the wall, startled wide eyes behind a thick pair of wire framed glasses gaze at me.
“My son?” he says, closing the book in his hand with a sharp snap. “May I help you?”
Licking my lips, I’m still not sure I should even be here. What do I say? Where do I start?
He glides closer causing his black robes to swish around his ankles. “Are you okay?”
I must look crazy, standing with my arms plastered to the door, legs braced and tensed, ready to bolt at the slightest provocation.
How do you fight?
Alex always tells me, stand up and fight. Face the demons. How do you do it? I don’t know.
Approaching warily, the man doesn’t stop until he’s standing inches from me. “It’s all right,” he says, “my name is Father Michaelson. What’s your name son?”
His voice is steady, quiet and soothing. As if he were used to my kind, those down and out rejects lost in the blackness and darkness, unsure of how to ever come out.
Somehow I find my voice. “Ryan.”
His smile is strong. Nodding, he gestures for me to come. “Would you like to talk?”
Not quite so panicked, I ease slowly off the door and shake my head. “I’m not sure.”
“Then why are you here?” He kneels on a pew.
My words have returned full circle. The blonde, she’d left, walked away and never answered… I remembered I didn’t want to be her anymore. I wanted to be me. Free of the shackles.
Squeezing my fingers together, I force myself to fight. Because some battles aren’t fought with fists, some are fought by just standing up and facing it, facing the truth, learning that what others have done to you, they don’t have to make you who are you. Only you can do that, you have the power to say enough and walk away, truly walk away.
But it starts with the first step.
“I was raped. When I was ten. By my uncle.”
I’ve never spoken the words, never told another soul. The silence is heavy. Nothing moves, not me, not the priest, because the words, they’re still hanging there, a filthy, ugly parasite waiting to pounce back on me.
“Would you like to go to confession, son?”
“I’m not a believer, Father. I don’t come to church, I’m not sure why I’m even here.”
He rubs his chin between his fingers and stands. “But you’re here now. So let’s go talk.”
I follow him to a small cubicle with a heavy curtain draped in front of it. There are two chambers, separated by a thick panel of wood. Opening his side, he looks at me. “In there, you just talk. You don’t have to look at me, and I don’t have to look at you. This is a safe place, Ryan.”
Nodding, I go in and I tell him everything, every single gory detail. He listens, doesn’t utter a sound, doesn’t offer meaningless condolences and it’s amazing, because I realize it had all been a lie.
The lies I’d told myself, that talking wouldn’t help, that reliving didn’t make it better, only worse… but it did, because the truth has set me free. Like someone has grabbed the burden hanging around my neck, grabbed it and thrown it off.
I’m shaking by the time I finish.
Finally he speaks. “Unfortunately this crime is hardly ever reported, especially by men. I’m sorry for what you went through, Ryan. I truly am and I want to say something to you I’ve wanted to say to each and every boy this has ever happened to. It wasn’t your fault.”
I drop my head into my hands.
“Your girlfriend? Liliana was it?” The priest asks.
“Ex. She dumped me.”
He inhales. “From what you’ve said it’s because you refused to share with her what you just did me. Do you love her?”
“With everything that’s inside me.”
“Does she love you?”
I don’t know. Not anymore. “For a time, I thought so. But I’m not sure about anything anymore. I put her through hell. She probably wants nothing to do with me now.”
“You know, even priest’s know what love is. As the bible tells it in 1 Corinthians 13:4, it says ‘love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preservers.’ Do you understand what that means?”
My entire body trembles, I want to believe that so desperately. But they’re just words from a book. “Do you believe that?” I ask quietly.
“I really do. If she loves you, she’ll listen and she’ll accept you, no matter what.”
I stare at the edge of the fluttering curtain, counting my breaths, listening to the steady thwump of my heart in my ears.
“Thank you,” I whisper, and then yanking the curtain back head out to where I should have gone all along.
Chapter 28
Liliana
I call Alex. Only to find out that Ryan’s gone out on his own. Exhaustion leeches from my pores. There’s no more in me, the worry is all-consuming and I can’t, just can’t do this anymore.