Part III
Chapter Forty-Six
Good-bye My Almost Lover
The doctor eyes gave Alyssa a silent ok to go and see Sam. He nodded gently and Alyssa slipped into his room without a sound. Sam looked dead and she couldn't breathe for a second.
For that span of time between when she dialed 911 and when the paramedics came she believed he was going to die. He had stopped breathing, she remembered. His heart beat had become so feather light, so faint that she was absolutely sure he was going to die. And at that moment she wished she had agreed to try for another baby, because if he died, at least she'd always have that part of him with her.
She didn't need to worry about that anymore. At least not until he tried to kill himself again.
Alyssa sat in the chair by his bedside and took his hand in hers, kissing the pale white knuckles. Against her own control warm tears wet his hand. She flattened his palm against her cheek. "How could you do this to me?"
"What is it gonna take for you to be happy? I'll do anything. What do you want?"
She was talking to air. She laid her head over his chest, the streams from her eyes soaking the faded fabric of the hospital garment. Alyssa was saddened, but the scent of him, his warmth, the steady pulse against her ear brought her some comfort. "I love you."
After a few moments of stillness she felt his body shift underneath hers. His arms closed around her and she heard him groan softly.
"Alyssa." He said sleepily.
She raised her head and covered his mouth with hers forcefully. He kissed her back softly. When she pulled her face away and looked at him with tears in her eyes he could only whisper a subdued "Hi." He smiled feebly.
She furrowed her brows. Her eyes looked so distant. He took her hand in his. "I'm sorry."
"No you're not. If you had actually felt bad about it you wouldn't have done it."
He reached forward to touch her face. She pulled away. "Do you realize how much you mean to me? You probably do. But it's such a guy thing to not care. To do whatever you feel like doing even when it affects more than just you. "
"Alyssa…"
"I know you'll try it again. I don't know if I wanna be around for that. This time I do the leaving. NO ONE is leaving me."
Sam wrapped his arms around her. She was still. "I'm not leaving you."
"You know sometimes I wonder what my life would've been like if I'd stayed with Josh." She knew it was a stab in the heart for Sam to hear her say that, but his lack of consideration for her made her feel less guilty.
He pulled away and looked into her eyes with that rejected gaze she was slowly growing tired of. His words surprised her, though.
"Your life would be much easier. Your friends would still like you. You'd still be popular and none of the things that have happened in the past few months would've happened. You'd be perfectly innocent. The way I love seeing you. The reason I fell in love with in the first place. You were so different than me. So much the same, but so different. We both felt abandoned by our dads. But you moved on. You became stronger. You never let that little emptiness inside you take away your energy, your happiness. I was weak. I let it haunt me. But no matter what, your innocence could make me forget how fucked up I was. I'm sorry I took that away from you."
Her lip quivered and she bit it in an attempt to suppress her urge to sob. "Just because a person chooses not to let bad things bring them down doesn't mean they're innocent. I was jaded the moment you met me all those years ago. I chose not to let it destroy me." She couldn't look at him so instead she focused on her hands. "You didn't take my innocence from me. You gave it back to me. But you're dying, Sam. Slowly. It's going to take one more time, one more attempt and you'll be dead. I don't wanna be there when it happens. When you're good, you're really good. You're sweet and funny. You're everything a girl could want." She paused. "When you told me last year that your feelings would be too much for me to handle, that they would scare me…you were right. You go into these deep depressions and I feel like you're hanging by a thread and it'll snap any second. I should've listened to you. When you told me to leave you alone. When you were mean to me when I tried to approach I should've listened to you."
He laid his palm over the top of her hand. "Don't regret us. Your life would be easy if you chose Josh. But it'd be empty. Because deep down you know and you knew that he didn't even remotely love you. You were an accessory to him, just like his nice car. Another girl would catch his stare. Someone prettier. He'd find some pretty little slut and he'd drop you in a second, Alyssa."
"Don't act like I was some naïve defenseless little girl. I was using him just as much as he was using me."
He raised her hand to his face, running his mouth over her knuckles in that knee weakening way of his. She tried to tune out the fact that every nerve in her body was on fire for him, tried to distract herself from the fact that she could feel her heart beat in her ears, and that she felt that hum, that aching need in the base of her belly that begged to be full of him.
He had been so adorably sexually inexperienced when she started flirting with him. If she wasn't so sad she would've laughed at the fact that he came after they'd only been kissing for a few seconds. He had pretended to be so tough. It was really just a cover up for how awkward he was, how shy he was. But as soon as he gained a little confidence he used that newfound ability to make her lose herself with him. He kissed her, touched her in just the right places to make her throw out her vows of abstinence. Every girl lied to themselves and said they wouldn't let a guy screw them until they were sure that that guy was committed to them. Alyssa wanted to get laid by him even before they'd kissed. So naturally any last dregs of free will, of chastity flew right out the window as soon as soon as he had touched her.
She cupped his face and locked her eyes with his. "You're like a fallen angel. You're so beautiful. But you're so broken. I was stupid to think I could save you."
He dropped his gaze, his lashes fanned out, a few lines between his brows. "You're breaking up with me." He stated it as fact because he knew beyond a doubt she was calling it quits. Even after all they'd been through together.
She nodded wordlessly. "I'll never love anybody the way I love you, as much as I loved you. But I have to start thinking about myself. I deserve better." The rational part of her told her this. But her bruised heart wanted him still.
He saw that. "You still want me. Stay with me."
'What I want is very different from what I need, what's good for me."
'Alyssa." He pleaded silently.
"Accept it. Don't make this any harder for me than it already is."
He covered her mouth with his and kissed her deeply, burying his hand in her soft hair. When the lightheadedness made him dizzy and his heart hammered against his ribs she broke the kiss. He rested his head in the hollow of her neck, feathering kisses over her collarbone. "I love you."
She rested her cheek over the tousled black hair on the top of his head, her eyes closed. "I love you too." The tears fell so easily.
He looked at her dejectedly. "Please don't do this."
She stroked his hair and pressed her lips against his forehead, breathing him in. Then she walked out of the room.
Sam stared speechlessly at the door for a few moments. Then he raised his knees, his head cradled by them and wept.
