She shoved me again, and I reached up and grabbed her wrists, holding them between my fingers.
“Stop hitting me, you’re acting like you’re crazy,” I told her.
And now she was crumbling. “What happened to you, Dex? Yesterday we were fine, everything was fine. What happened? What changed?”
“You changed,” I said, turning it around. “You need to get over your issues.”
Another invisible blow. She nearly keeled over. I knew where I was hurting her because I was hurting there too.
“Issues?”
“Kiddo, we both have them in spades.”
“Don’t call me that.” Her voice went all steel, cold and sharp.
“What? Kiddo? Perry, I have a whole arsenal of names here I could call you, but I don’t think you’d like those either.”
Her eyes blazed as she leaned forward, getting in my face. “I’m not some kid, I’m your girlfriend, and I’m trying to talk to you.”
“You are just a kid!” I yelled back, surprised at how caught up I was getting. I just wanted to push her away, just a bit, just to give me the space and time and distance to think things through. But now I felt like everything was coming out, all the things I kept to myself. There was no stopping it.
I pushed off the bed and began fumbling in my pockets for the cigarettes. I brought them out, the bag shaking in my hands, until Perry came over and struck them out of my grasp. They scattered on the floor.
“You think I’m just a kid?” she screeched.
“You’re twenty-three.”
“So what?” she spat out. “I was twenty-two when we met. You knew that about me. What changed?”
“You’re not ready for this with me.”
“Ready for what? For you flirting blatantly with women right in front of me? For you turning off like a light switch, ignoring me, pulling out of this relationship before it even got started?”
The madness was taking over, the rush of rage saturating my veins. I whirled around and screamed at her, “You won’t even tell me you love me! Don’t you dare say I’m turning off like a light switch, because I have been the only one who’s been on since this thing began. You’re the one who has been holding back. You’re the one who lets me bleed out in front of you!”
Her lips snapped shut, her face going white. She stepped away from me, facing the wall, her head down. I was breathing hard, wishing I hadn’t gotten so deep, wishing that I could take her in my arms and make all of this go away. But that wouldn’t stop the hurt that would follow. The future that would crumble. We had no other choice.
“I need time,” she whispered, her words breaking.
I swallowed painfully, trying to keep my own tears at bay. I took in a deep breath, shaking out my arms, hoping my feelings would go out with it.
I put on a fake smile and said, “Well, guess what, baby, now you have all the time in the world.”
Her whole body shook from my words, as if they were metal knives I’d driven into her body. I realized I was holding my breath, my lungs screaming for air.
She slowly turned her head to look at me. She looked beyond devastated. Beyond hurt. Beyond everything I never dreamed of doing to her. I was so close to losing her and I was so close to keeping her.
“Fine,” she said hoarsely. “I understand. I’m going to go get another room for myself here.”
“Good idea,” I said. The words just came. I regretted each of them.
She walked toward the door, trying to keep her head up, trying to keep from collapsing. She was trying to be strong, to be proud, to know what was going on and to know what she was going to do next.
She paused near the door, and I swore if she decided to stay, I’d tell her everything. I’d burden her with my burden if only not to do this to each other, to not make each other bleed.
You’ve f**ked up again, Perry told herself, her thoughts coming through loud and clear. You have the only person you ever wanted and you f**ked it up again because you can never let yourself be happy. Dex will never take you back after this, and you’ll never know what it’s like to love him while he loves you.
Her self-loathing for herself hurt me down to the bones. She stared at me for a few moments, maybe hoping she could voice what she was thinking, maybe hoping that I would say something too. Two stubborn people clinging on to what they believed was right. She felt she never deserved me. I felt she didn’t deserve to suffer.
I’m doing this because I love you, I thought, hoping to God that maybe she could hear me.
But she just walked out the door and closed it behind her. I collapsed to the ground, a ruin in her wake.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I woke up again in the middle of night, feeling like Perry was shaking me awake, whispering my name in my ear. But when I came to and sat up slowly, I realized I was alone. Perry had gotten her stuff and moved down to a room on the first floor. I didn’t have her anymore. I had nobody.
I glanced at the radio alarm clock in the room. It was 3AM. I wasn’t surprised at all. The room was pitch black; even the light from the street wasn’t reaching through the curtains that hung there on the French doors like dead weight. All the furniture in the room sat there, hunched over like big black beasts, waiting for me to move, to say something.
The door to the bathroom slowly creaked open. I heard the shower curtain inside being moved along the bar, the metal rungs squeaking.
I sat up straighter and looked at the clock again. 3:01. Time was passing. I pinched the inside of my forearm to see if it hurt, to see if it was a dream or not. It did hurt. My heart hurt even more. The memories of the fight between Perry and I came flooding back. I did the thing I never thought I’d do—I hurt her on purpose. It didn’t matter that it was for her greater good or my greater good because there just couldn’t be any good in it. The pain was there, just below the threshold, threatening to bring me under. I pushed her away and I would continue to push her away until I knew she could be saved, until I knew she’d get the future she deserved, not the one that I couldn’t give her.
It was because I was so lost in my misery, in my chest-stabbing despair, that I knew I wasn’t dreaming. And I was so wrapped up in my own pain, my own horror, that the current one before me didn’t seem to matter that much.
That was until the bathroom door swung open fully and a giant motherfucking black python came slithering out of it, heading straight for my bed.