But I Love Him Read online

  No.

  It didn’t happen.

  He is sobbing. I can’t make out his words anymore because they garble together into incoherent babble between his tears.

  Hitting me has broken him. What his father failed to do, he has done himself.

  All the times he has cried for himself, cried for the things he’d lived through, he’s never sobbed like this.

  But now he knows. Now he knows, just as I have known on some level, what is inside him. It lurks behind his eyes, growing and changing and waiting.

  And now it has happened. Now we both know who he is.

  We both know what he is.

  He cannot deny it anymore.

  And neither can I.

  April 25

  Seven Months, twenty-six days

  Connor is in the kind of mood I rarely see him in. The kind where he smiles and cracks jokes. The kind that give me hope that someday he’ll be whole again. I know if we can make a life for ourselves, away from all the drama of his old life, he could be like this all the time.

  People don’t understand us. They don’t understand me. They think it’s so black and white, that he makes me miserable and that I should be with someone else and that I deserve something else.

  But it’s not black and white at all. It’s gray. It’s a never-ending world of gray.

  They don’t understand that there is so much to him that they’ll never see. That he only shows to me. They don’t understand that late at night, he tells me how beautiful I am. He tells me all the things he will give me one day, when our problems are over. They don’t understand that he would die for me.

  We are going sailing today. After last week, when he missed our appointment, he used his own money to rent the boat again. Even though I know he can’t afford it. Even though I know it means he isn’t going to pay the light bill so that we can do this.

  I don’t care, because this moment is all I need to get through the darkness.

  He’s holding my hand and talking about sleeping on the boat. He wants to tie it to a buoy out in the bay and stay there overnight, listening to the water and forgetting about everything but the moment and the night.

  I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever heard.

  Connor knows exactly what to do and he shows me how to untie the boat from the dock and flip the bumpers over the edge of the little railing. He motors out of the marina and then I hold on to the little rudder and he starts tugging on nylon lines and whipping things around and in seconds the boat picks up speed and we are gliding, and he kills the engine.

  The silence is beautiful. All I hear is the water and the way it splashes the bow, and the sound of the sail as it slaps around if he turns the boat out of the wind.

  He’s concentrating, so I lean back on the bench and let the sun warm my face, and I relax. For the first time in weeks, I let the tension leave my body and let myself dream of life like this, when Connor is always happy and things are just … easy.

  We sail for nearly an hour before Connor speaks.

  “You look cute on this boat. It suits you.”

  I open my eyes and look at him, still in my dreamlike state. “You look cute sailing.”

  He grins at me, one of his genuine smiles. “I love you,” he says.

  “I know. I love you too.”

  He tilts his head and stares at me, his blue eyes sparkling with such genuine happiness it brings tears to my eyes, happy tears for once, and I have to slide over and get closer to him. He keeps one hand on the rudder and wraps his free one around me. The wind is whipping my hair around, making it dance, and it gets in his face but he doesn’t move away from me.

  “I’m so glad I found you. You’re everything to me. I couldn’t do this without you. I would have given up a long time ago.”

  I know that he doesn’t mean it figuratively; I know it’s literal. I know there were nights he wanted to find a bridge and jump right off. But he knew I would be there for him. He knew that together, we could do anything, and life could be good for him. For us.

  I try to get closer to him, though it’s not possible.

  “I wish we could do this every single day,” he says. “I wish this was our life.”

  I nod. “It will be, some day. We’ll get a boat and we’ll fill it with food and fishing poles and we’ll sail the world. And we won’t give anyone our phone number or anything, and no one will be able to touch us.”

  He sighs and rests his lips against my temple, and I close my eyes. There are no shooting stars or wishbones or magic dust, but I make a wish anyway.

  I wish that we both last long enough for it to happen.

  April 18

  Seven months, nineteen Days

  We were supposed to go sailing today. We were supposed to be alone together and have a day on the water and forget about the problems that plague us.

  But he’s not here. I sit on the dock next to our rented sailboat, listening to the seagulls and the lapping water, and I wait.

  And wait.

  But he doesn’t show and I do not know why. I try to imagine what he could be doing, what dragged him away from something he was so excited about.

  But it doesn’t matter, because even when he explains why, I will not understand. I will never know why he does the things he does because I have never lived his life. Because he has lived things I can’t even dream.

  I’m glad no one can see me right now. I think they might see my hopes dashed, like they are real things dancing on the water and someone might see them drown, just like that, gone forever. And then they would pity me, and I don’t want that. I don’t need that. I choose the things that happen in my life and I don’t need anyone feeling sorry for me.

  I lie back on the dock and listen to the sounds and give up on the idea of seeing him.

  It doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t have lived up to my hopes anyway.

  April 1

  Seven months, two days

  Today is his birthday, just two weeks after my own. He’s nineteen.

  His father has been gone for four days. We both hope he stays away. Everything takes on such a beautiful peace when he’s gone. The tension leaves Connor’s body. He doesn’t have to float around, constantly watching out for his mom. He can be himself.

  It’s just like those first few weeks after I met him, when Jack and Nancy were on one of their breaks. I hope it lasts longer this time. I hope it lasts forever.

  Connor is at work. The job is too new for him to take his birthday off, even though I know he wanted to.

  I’m baking a cake with his mom, her first time hanging out at his apartment. She seems happier today. The wrinkles seem lighter. Her hair doesn’t look so gray.

  Finally, I know what it is to live in a world without Jack. And I wish he would just fade away and disappear. None of us would miss him.

  It feels weird to hang out with his mom. She likes me, I know that. She knows I am there for Connor in a way she never could be, because I’m not forced to choose between him and Jack. She’s too busy bending over backward for Jack, too busy walking that razor-thin line of keeping Jack happy.

  Connor has always been alone. Even though she loves him, she could never protect him. Not when Connor has to work so hard to protect her. Connor doesn’t judge her for it, but I think I do. I want to ask her, I want to know why she would keep Connor around someone like Jack, especially when he was little and helpless. I want to ask her why she couldn’t just divorce him.

  Why she ruined Connor’s life by not just leaving Jack and finding somewhere else to be, someone else to be. I wonder who Connor would be if she had done that. I wonder if life would be as easy as I imagine it could be if he weren’t so scarred by it all.

  She’s assembling a big dish of tamales, his favorite, and I’m frosting the cake. There is country music playing on the beat-up stereo mounted under the kitchen cabinets.

  I feel as if there are so many things she wants to say to me. I think I can actually see her words hanging around
us, like a big cloud, and I wait for them to rain down.

  It feels weird. Uncomfortable but not. With my mom, there’s judgment. I know she just wants what’s best for me, but I hate that she thinks she knows what I need more than I know. She can’t just say her opinion once. It’s this nonstop battle with her, and she won’t give up until I leave him.

  And all it does is ensure that I avoid her. It’s making things so much worse. And I wish she’d just see it and stop bringing him up all the time. Why can’t she ask me about anything but him?

  But not with Nancy. With Nancy, there’s just quiet.

  Connor gets home from work just as dinner is finished. He’s covered in sawdust but he smiles at us and gives me a kiss on his way to the shower. “Be out in twenty.”

  But she doesn’t last that long. Jack calls and she is gone, saying nothing to me as she glances back just before the door shuts. When Connor leaves the bathroom he sees only me.

  And he doesn’t have to ask to know. He grabs a plate and smiles at me, but it’s not the same smile as twenty minutes ago.

  We each dish up too many tamales, more than we can eat, so the pan won’t be filled with the ones Nancy would have eaten. And then we sit across from each other at the table, but the only sounds are our forks and knives.

  “I baked you a cake,” I say.

  “Thanks,” he says, between bites.

  I wish she was still here. I wish she hadn’t ruined it. I wish, for one night, she had picked Connor over Jack.

  But I know the repercussions of doing that and I know why she didn’t.

  When we’re both full, I scrape our dishes into the trash. We didn’t eat it all. There is too much left. The pan sits on the stove like a neon sign.

  Connor joins me in the living room, on the couch he bought at the Salvation Army. He has no TV yet.

  I pull a small wrapped gift from under the couch and hand it to him.

  “You didn’t have to.”

  “Yes I did. Open it.”

  The box is tiny, wrapped with silver paper and invisible tape I’d carefully chosen. He rips it off and slides off the lid. A slip of paper is all the box contains, and he looks up at me, confused.

  “It’s a reservation. We’re going sailing.”

  His eyes light up. I’ve done well.

  “Oh, babe, thank you.” He wraps his arms around me and I close my eyes, reveling in this moment.

  His dad had a sailboat when he was a kid. It only lasted a year, but Connor was hooked. He talks about it constantly.

  I can’t wait for it. A whole day, just me and him and the water. I hope that on that day, we will have peace. Just for a day, away from everything.

  I wonder what would happen if we could just sail away and never come back.

  March 19

  Six months, nineteen days

  I’m in my room when she comes home. I had hoped I wouldn’t see her today.

  It’s my birthday. I’m eighteen, and today I plan to leave and never come back.

  I’m not going far. Just to Connor’s apartment across town. It’s his, not mine, but I will stay there. I just feel like an unwanted house guest here.

  I’m tired of my mom. I’m tired of the fights. Every time she sees me, she brings him up. He is all I am to her, and until he is gone, I am no one. She uses every second she can to poke at him, pick at our relationship, to find the cracks and exploit them.

  If she thinks that’s going to make me choose her over him, she’s wrong.

  I’m tired of having to defend him to her. She doesn’t understand that he’s going to be someone. She doesn’t get that he may seem like a bad person on the outside, he may be aloof or cold, but if you give him a chance, he’s so much more.

  Even though all his life people have put him down, he wants so much to get out of it. He got his GED when he was sixteen, after his dad made it hard to get to school every day. He started working right away, saving for the day he could move out and get his own place. He’ll triumph even after all his dad has done to keep him down. These are the things I see in him. The way he makes lemonade out of lemons.

  It’s not his fault his life is one big lemon. All he needs is for people to give him a chance. I think one day, when we have some money saved up, we will move away and get a place far from home. And we will start over, and he will leave everything behind and forget everyone who doubts him.

  Together we will find happiness again. We will take back everything that was robbed from him.

  From me.

  My mom proved exactly what he said: that people see him and judge him and don’t give him a chance.

  My stomach sinks when I hear the gentle hum of the garage door. I knew I should have left the rest of this stuff. I knew it. I could have gone back to Connor’s and forgotten all about it, and avoided seeing her.

  I could have written her a note, explaining it all. Maybe I could have said something nice, because I would have done it alone, not in the heat of the moment. Maybe it would have helped us.

  But I know now we’ll have to talk, and the words will run away from us and we’ll both say too much.

  Her footsteps creak on the stairway. I freeze. My door is open and she will see me on the way to her room. It’s too late to hide.

  I just keep stuffing things in the duffle bag like I don’t care if she sees me. Like it won’t shock her to realize I’m leaving.

  It’s not like she planned anything for my eighteenth birthday anyway. I’m not that girl anymore. The one who has cake and burgers and opens presents at the dining room table. She knows it, just like I know it. There’s no reason to pretend anymore.

  She passes the door before stopping. I know she’s just three feet down the hall, but she doesn’t make a sound.

  Several long seconds tick by as I keep shoving stuff into the bottom of the bag. Why isn’t she speaking? Why hasn’t she come back?

  And then she does. She stands in the doorway, filling it as she leans against one side of the jamb and crosses her arms. Her hair is lighter than it was last I saw her. But the bags under her eyes are bigger, thicker, puffier. She looks haunted.

  “Don’t,” she says, so quietly I’m not sure I heard it at all.

  It’s the only word she says. I just stare back at her, and then stuff a hooded sweatshirt into the bag. I’m afraid if I say anything, it’ll all come out. All the bitterness of all the years between us without a single I love you. The thought of all those wasted years, waiting for her to act like she used to, waiting for her to hug me and tuck me in at night, stabs into me like a jagged knife, and I try hard not to dwell on it. I try hard to pretend I don’t care, just like she does.

  Except I don’t think she’s pretending anymore. Maybe before Connor came along we could have fixed it. Back then there weren’t a bunch of harsh words between us. There were just three unspoken ones. I bet I could have gotten them out of her. I bet she would have meant them, too.

  But not now. Now everything’s ruined. I might as well just be with him all the time, because I’m pretty sure she hates me now. I’m pretty sure she thinks I hate her, too.

  I don’t, though. I love her so much it hurts. Something deep inside aches to drop the bags and rush to her and wrap my arms around her and wait for her to do the same to me, even though she never would. She’s the ice queen, and she’ll never thaw. And that’s why I have to get out of here.

  I walk up to her and we stand like that, neither of us looking at each other. I just look at the strap on my duffel bag as I twist it around in my hands.

  “He’s not good enough for you,” she says.

  “You don’t know him.”

  “Why do you have to be with him? I know you want to help him. Why can’t you do that as friends?”

  “I don’t want to be just friends with him. I love him,” I say, anger edging into my voice. I knew she would do this. This is why I didn’t want to see her. This is why I avoid her. She takes my one piece of happiness and twists it into something ugly.
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  “You think you love him. You’re seventeen.” She uncrosses and recrosses her arms, like she’s trying to look angry and serious and in charge, but I don’t care.

  “Eighteen,” I say. My anger is boiling now. I hate that she does this. Every single time I see her, she does this. I don’t want to be in the same room with her anymore if all we’re going to do is have the same argument over and over again. There are no winners, only losers, and I’m tired of being one of them.

  “You wanted to go to college, Ann.” She pushes away from the door jamb to stand at her full height, staring straight at me and daring me to disagree.

  “College has nothing to do with him!”

  She takes a step into the room, her sensible little pumps sinking into the carpet. “It’s not just a coincidence. It’s about him. You’ve had college plans for years, and then six months with him and it changes. You don’t know what you want anymore.”

  “Yes, I do! And I want to be with him. Not here. Not with you. All you ever do is put him down. You’re just like his dad.”

  I want to leave, right now, before I break my teeth from clenching them so hard. But I won’t touch her, and she’s in my way. I sling the duffel over my shoulder and walk up to her, staring at the space between her eyes instead of looking her in the eyes.

  “He’s the reason you’ve given everything up. He’s not worth it.”

  “Don’t, Mom,” I say, desperate for her to stop before I snap. “Please, just shut up.”

  The words bite. I see it in her face. But I have to stop her.

  “Please, just don’t,” I say, quieter this time.

  She steps aside and I rush past before I can apologize. Before I can break down.

  I hate that our relationship has boiled down to Connor and nothing else. I don’t know why she can’t see past him to be there for me.

  I want this to end. I want it all over. I want her to rush after me and tell me she loves me and just wants what’s best for me, and that she won’t judge me if I think that’s something different than she does.