by Trisky
'This is not for real.'
That's what I keep telling myself. I tell myself so many lies, so many half-truths, so many illogical explanations and stories to try and explain the inexplicable. I make so many fucking excuses and find so many ways to forgive the unforgivable. I do all of it so that I don't have to face reality. None of this has been real. I've imagined all of it, the good and the bad. If I didn't feel my flesh sting when I pinch myself, I'd be sure I was imagining how much it all hurts.
Everything just hurts.
There's not an inch of my body that doesn't feel wrong and unreal. My bones no longer fit under the patchwork of my skin and I can feel them clenching against my flesh begging to be released. It's an unnatural sting. So unnatural it can't possibly be real.
Because this is not for real. This... is not happening.
If I tell myself that enough times, maybe it'll all go away.
My lungs fill with this rancid air that hasn't changed once in the two hours I've been sitting here. I'm somehow sure this is what a rotting dead corpse must smell like, hot, oppressive air that weighs on your lungs. It's so still. He's right, I never would have survived the summer with just a fan to swirl this musty heat around and around in circles. I was just fooling myself. Because that's what I do. I fool myself.
He's not usually wrong. It's a pound of my flesh, never his own, for every time he has been. As of this moment there's nothing left of me to barter away. He was so very, very wrong this time.
"Are you trying to recreate the baths? It stinks in here!" The door slams in rhythm with the rattle of the clutter trapped in my brain.
Flesh and bone, flesh and bone, that's all we are is flesh and bone. There will be no floating out of my skin and out of this room, because that's all that's left of me now is flesh and bone. I don't feel a thing. I'm numb.
"No wonder it's so hot in here. Why do you have the air conditioner unplugged?"
He must have brought a draft with him when he walked in, because every nerve jangles on a jagged edge and causes a staccato vibration all along my skin.
"Justin?... Justin? What's wrong with you?"
You can't see me, couldn't see me then, can't see me now. You never have.
"Leave it alone." My mouth is parched. The words form on my lips with a pained effort. It hurts. All over.
"Is something wrong with it? Does it need to be repaired?"
"I said leave it alone." I don't move. If I move, I might break.
"You're the one who called me over, remember? So, what's with the attitude?"
You did this.
"I don't want to love you anymore." It's very simple. He can just leave and I'll open the window and let some air in. When I wake up tomorrow, it'll all be over.
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
I count my toes one at a time and ignore the Puma's that nearly graze the tips of the big toes. The longer I don't look up, the closer they seem to get. "You know how there are things that you can't or won't do for me? Well, it's sort of like that. I decided that I just don't want to do it anymore. So, thank you for the air conditioner, but you can go now. You can take it with you."
"What did you take?" He crouches down to meet me at eye level and inspect my pupils, but I don't let him, because I can't look. Not yet.
"Nothing."
"I can't help you if you lie to me." The pads of his fingertips sear the flesh on my chin and try to angle my face towards him. It burns. My eyes water from the intense inflamed feeling his touch creates and the sound of his voice carrying through the army of shrillness that defends my brain from just breaking down entirely. A chorus of "liar, liar, liar, liar" sounds throughout my body. "Could someone have slipped you something? Where were you before? You have to help me out here."
I lift my chin from his hand and look him directly in the eye. "I went to see my father."
His face floods with relief and almost immediately tenses again. "What did he do to you?"
"We just talked. Actually, it was more like I talked and he... didn't. He mostly looked confused." Or disgusted, maybe it was disgusted and confused. Come to think of it, he probably looked kind of how I feel right now.
"Obviously he must have gotten to you. You're practically jumping out of your skin. What did he say?"
"Believe it or not," I think I might be smiling, but maybe that's my other self, the real self, because this is still not really real, "he's the only one who had the guts to tell me the truth." It's kind of funny when you think about it. That he would wind up being the only honest one, out of all of us. "Even my mother tried to deny it at first. I'm sure you will too, but don't bother. Just go."
He pulls his head back a few inches and fixates on a spot right below my eyes. Fuck it, fuck him, he's not allowed in anymore.
My knees crack as I pull myself up and off the couch and away from him.
"I don't have the box, but the warranty is on the counter. I'd really appreciate it if you could take it tonight. I have packing I have to do and it'll just get in the way. I have something else for you too." I look around aimlessly. I have no idea where I put the envelope. I know I made it home... that's a laugh... with it still stuck to my sweaty hand. I almost wore a hole right through it from holding onto it so tightly.
"I'm not..."
I spin around instinctively and cut him off. I can't hear this. I have enough noise in my head. "You're not what? Not taking it? Yes... yes, you are. Not sorry? What the fuck else is new? Not going to explain? Don't worry, I don't expect an explanation."
The wood panels of the floor scorch the fleshy bottoms of my feet. The longer I stand still, the more it hurts. The more it hurts me, the wider his eyes seem to get.
"You need to calm down." His cloth covered feet cross the distance between us. Nothing ever touches him.
My head bobs back and forth. I can't control my neck long enough to stop it. "You need to stop telling me what the fuck I'm supposed to feel. I'm not you." He reaches a hand out to me and I pull back an inch so that he can't touch me any longer.
"No, you're not. So how is that you know what I was about to say?"
"You might think you're original but you're really not. You're so predictable. I can't believe I didn't figure this out before, it's so obvious when I think about it now. It's right up your alley. You have all the answers. The rest of us just fall in line behind you." Not only do I deceive myself, but I let him do it too and that makes it even worse.
"That's not what happened." The arid heat of the room must be getting to him, because his voice is a hoarse whisper.
"You're absolutely right, my mistake. I'm the only one who's supposed to fall in line. No one else has to, you don't expect them to." The walls seem to warp from the heat and swirl around the room. It's making me dizzy. Maybe I should walk it off. "I worked it all out, and it actually makes a lot of sense. So it's okay. It is. It was my fault."
"Please go on, I'm dying to hear just how it is that you managed to 'work it all out' all by yourself." Liar, liar, liar, liar. He seems to shadow my movements.
"There's no room for me. I keep trying to squeeze myself into some place that you tell me over and over is off limits. I should have listened. All the positions have been filled. So the only place that's left for me is to forever be behind everyone else, especially you." I busy myself by pulling the drawers open and searching the counter.
"That's what you think I do?" It comes out in a mumbled half sigh. I refuse to recognize hurt that's not my own at the moment. It's all false.
"It's what I know you do." I dump the contents of the drawer all over the counter, no envelope. I don't know what the hell I did with it. "I'll always come last and that's okay. That's how it should be. Everybody earned their rank over me. I guess I just forgot my place." I look up and find him staring at my frenzied hands making even more of a mess. "I was stupid enough to expect you to treat me the way you'd treat them. You were just being you. I can't blame you for that." My other self, the real self that actually exists in reality and not this surreal moment, is probably wrapped tightly in a cocoon of ignorant bliss. It's so much easier there.
"Was I supposed to come consult you? Maybe I should have knocked on Ethan's door and asked for your opinion. Or better yet stopped by your mother's house and asked if it was okay with you, if I lent you a hand, even though you just walked out on me? Would that have made you feel important?" Yes.
"Like it would have mattered. You just know me so much better than I know myself. Don't you ever get tired of having to think for two people?" I shove the emptied drawer back into the counter frame. I hear a loud splinter as something cracks. I don't care.
"I won't apologize for giving you what you wanted," he threatens. "Because if you stand there and try to tell me that you didn't want to believe that your asshole of a father gave a shit about you, then you're just as much of a liar as you think I am."
I stop moving. He stops moving. Everything just stops moving. "Why do you think it hurts so much right now?" His posture slouches slightly. "Do you know how fucking humiliating it is to see someone you love look at you like you're a joke to them or like they regret ever knowing you?"
"Yeah. I do."
I feel a wallop straight to my gut. I want to sit back down, because I don't think I can stand much longer.
"Why would you do this? Was it Ethan? Is this payback?" I can feel my voice on the verge of blubbering. I will not give him the satisfaction. "Maybe I just ruined the plan when I found out before I was supposed to. I was supposed to really believe you loved me and then you would make sure I knew you didn't as painfully as you possibly could."
"Do you know how insane that sounds? I won't even dignify that with an answer."
"Of course you won't, because then you'd have to explain. You don't do that either. You don't apologize. You don't explain and you know what else you don't do? You definitely don't love me." It's all very clear to me now, how little I mattered. All those ways that I made myself believe I knew the real him, the one cloaked in mystery that no one else understood. The one that loved me back. What an absolute joke that was. There was never any mystery, there was just me being blind.
"Now who's assuming they know someone better than they know themselves?"
"You don't treat somebody that you're supposed to love the way that you treat me. Like I'm not even here." I feel one stray tear trickle out of my eye. I rub my cheek raw until it's gone. That's all I'll ever allow him to see again. That's more than I should have ever shown him to begin with.
"This is the part where I'm supposed to fall down on my knees and beg for forgiveness. 'I'm so sorry Justin. I love you so much. How can you ever forgive me for trying to do what was best for you.'" He mocks me. He fucking mocks me! Every word brands my flesh, leaving a permanent mark. I don't see the regret the minute it leaves his mouth. I refuse to see anything at the moment.
"That's great, make a joke out of it. Do you feel better now that you've put me in my place?"
"I didn't mean..."
"Anything by it. I know. Totally predictable, remember?"
"What is it you want me to say? Because I have the distinct feeling nothing I have to say matches the script you want to hear."
"There's nothing left to say." This is where everything falls apart. "I won't love you anymore and you can go on not loving me. No one loses."
It seems appropriate that it would all come undone in this place. I look around at a snapshot of a moment in my life that I'll look back on and vaguely remember one day. It won't be important, it'll be a passing phase that was never really mine to begin with.
"That's not true." He's quiet, quiet is good. It's better than the disturbance clouding my thinking.
"It is. There's nothing left. I know that you know how to love someone. I've seen you with Gus and Lindsay, and..." I can't bring myself to say it. I just can't. "Just not with me." I feel a reflexive gagging sensation at the back of my throat. This is the piece that's been missing all along. It's not that he's incapable of loving someone, he's just incapable of loving me. Worse yet, he's incapable of letting me love him. He's right, he never lied about that.
"I can trust them to not walk out when everything doesn't go their way. Trust them to live by the rules that they agreed to." I feel weightless and free. I will not be touched.
"The rules you set up for them. You're satisfied just letting them hold on for something they're never going to get from you. They're more than happy to oblige."
"What is it they're not going to get from me? Why do you think I make it so fucking hard for you?" I dig my hand into my pocket and feel the edges of the envelope. It was there all along. "Look at me."
Liar, liar, liar, liar. I'm such a liar. This is really real and it's really happening and there is no other me. There's just this coward that doesn't want to hear anything but 'I'm so sorry Justin. I love you so much. How can you ever forgive me for trying to do what was best for you.' I want him to hurt even more than I am.
"I don't want just a piece of you. I don't care how important it is. That's not enough. I'm not going to sit back and wait for you to maybe decide that you feel like having me around for a little while."
"I can't give you what you want."
"Yes, you can! But you won't. You'll never let me have what I want. Not because you say you won't. That's not it. It's because you will never look at me and see a man who's worth your respect. I'll always be that kid who thought he was in love with you." I feel puddles forming in my tears ducts. I don't care. "Actions speak louder than words, right? Everything you've done, every time you've decided you know what I need more than I do. Every time you won't let me near you because you know better than I do what's best for me. I was listening. You know what I heard? You don't matter. 'You can't have me. You're too young for me.' Message received."
"And every time I let you stay? Every time I broke some fucking rule that I can't even remember ever living by anymore? Every time I forgave you? Every time I tried to do better by you than having you get stuck with whatever the hell is left in me? Did you go deaf?" I retrieve the soggy envelope from my pocket and throw it on the counter between us.
I hear an echo of laughter in my head. It's not a sound I can identify. It's two voices laughing. It sounds like it's in some kind of chamber, the sound bounces off the walls of my brain. It sounds like nothing I've ever heard, but I'm sure I know where it comes from. That box of memories I won't look at. That sealed off place my brain won't let me see. I hear beeping noises. The army reconvenes and stands guard, filling my head with jumbled up words and noise to prevent and distort the sound of any clear voices ringing in my mind. It's only safe to hear what I want to hear.
"I don't want you to love me anymore. Because it just hurts too much when you do."
"Since when have I ever listened to you?" he half smiles.
"Never." I hand him the gross sweat stained envelope. "Take this. I had to take some out because I need to move. I can't afford this place on my own. But I'll pay you back every cent."
"I don't want your money. I don't need it." He tries to stick it back in my palm, but I don't budge.
"You don't need anything from me."
"Don't be stupid. You can use this more than I can." He's left just holding onto it as I arrange all the junk on the counter into neat little piles of useless crap.
"I really have to start packing this stuff up. Please take that air conditioner with you, or it's just going to wind up in the trash. That would be a waste."
"Where are you going to go?" I see concern where I want to see indifference. I blink it away.
"I'll stay with Daphne until I can figure something out."
"Don't be ridiculous. You can't live on the floor of some dorm room. You can go home..."
"I don't have a home," I interrupt him. "You saw to that. I don't have anything."
"You have me." He rubs his thumb and index finger until he nearly rubs the fingerprint right off his own flesh. Maybe he can become someone else altogether, if he does that. Someone who doesn't exist right now.
"I don't want you."
"God, will you stop saying that!?" He covers his ears with the price of the pounds of my flesh in his hands, all $1,100 worth of it.
"Would you rather I lie to you?"
"I'd rather you stop lying to yourself. Give yourself a little perspective before you start making all these crazy decisions, will you please?"
"I can't do that with you... being here." I can feel my stomach curl into a rocking position, back and forth, back and forth. I need to sit, no I need to lay down, because the room is spinning again. I stumble towards my bed and slide onto the hot cotton sheets.
"I'm not leaving you like this. Let me sleep on the couch. I'll be gone before you wake up."
"You don't get a say." I stare at the cracks in the ceiling. Maybe if I close my eyes they'll stop looking like they're splintering open right in front of me. Yes, I'll just close my eyes.
I hear the familiar whirring sound of the air conditioner that hums me to sleep night after night. I feel a faint breeze of cold air greet my flesh. I give up. I give over. I give in to my exhaustion. It's cool here.