Fucking Gravity
Chapter 22
We leave Thursday after school. Since we're driving, we'll get there some time tomorrow and then have all day Saturday to tour the campus before we have to drive back. We both have permission to miss school on Friday, and I'm really looking forward to the long weekend, even if a lot of it is spent on the road.
I like driving. It's peaceful, and I like watching the landscape change.
Even with the stifling silence in the car, I'm enjoying myself- until Leah says the first words in the two hours we've been on the road for.
"I think we should break up."
I stiffen as the anxiety clumps in my throat, wishing that we could just go back to not talking. I didn't even know that we were back together- we still haven't really talked about it.
Leah continues, staring out the windshield. I wonder if this is why she wanted to drive first- so she had an excuse not to look at me. "I think we need to take a step back and start over. Find out how to be friends again."
I calm slightly, as I realize she's not wanting to cut off all contact. Not like the last time we broke up. It would have been a very awkward rest of the weekend. I wonder why she's doing this now, at the beginning of the trip, instead of at the end. Maybe so neither of us can run away from this. Maybe she just has bad timing.
I try to take deeper breaths to calm down and clear my throat. "Okay." My voice shakes. "What brought this on?"
Her eyes dart to me before immediately returning to the road. "You're sitting right next to me, and I still miss you," she says, and the stifling silence makes a return- but it has the additional feel of static like a physical manifestation of churning, whirling, thoughts.
"What we have, what we've turned into- it's soured. You should spend more time with Kim. Tell her what I did- talk it out- I don't know. I scared you. I know I did, and I'm sorry. I promise I won't do it again."
I bite my lip so hard that I taste blood. See, she says that, but how can I know for sure that it was a one-off?
"Up on the cliffs," she says suddenly, and her face twists with a flicker of anguish. "You didn't want to do that, did you?"
"Of course, I did," I deny. "I wanted to."
"But not… not for the reasons you should have."
I turn my head away to stare out the window, guilt churning in my stomach. "No," I admit quietly. The view continues as a rushing blur in my sights. "I shouldn't have done it. I'm sorry."
The steering wheel creeks ominously.
We spend another hour in silence.
"Seth…" she says slowly, just a murmur, and I turn my attention away from the world outside. "I was three when my parents brought him home. 'This is your baby brother,' they said. 'You're a big sister now, and it's your job to protect him.' I was thrilled. I really took it to heart. When we went to the beach and all the other kids ran to play in the water, I stayed with Seth and helped him build castles. When the other kids asked me to play, I said I couldn't- I had to stay with Seth. My parents thought it was adorable for years. They encouraged it. But then, I was 12, and they suddenly realized that I didn't have any friends. I didn't care- I didn't want them. They weren't important. I didn't care about anyone else until freshmen year and Sam took notice of me."
She chews on her bottom lip, and I watch the skin break and heal before my eyes a total of five times before she continues.
"And then I imprinted, and suddenly Seth wasn't the most important person in the world anymore." She glances over, and in that one look, I can see the deep unease and conflict in them. "And I… I hurt him. My only job, since I was three, was to protect him- and I'm the one who was the one to hurt him. Bad. I did it for you, the person who replaced him as the most important person- but I didn't end up protecting you, either. Instead, I scared you, and ran you away- so what was the point? I hurt the two most important people in my life. That's why I tried to kill myself. I wasn't thinking- or I guess I was think too much- but I won't do it again. I'd only hurt the two of you further, and that's the last thing I want.
"And… what we have now is still hurting you, I think. That's why I think we should break up. I don't want you out of my life; I just want you to be okay again."
I don't know what to say to this. I don't even get a chance to figure it out, because her eyes flicker down to the dash and she pulls off of the highway.
"We need gas. Can you drive for a bit?"
I pretend not to see the shaking of her hands. "Sure. Yeah, of course."
I fill up at the pump while Leah disappears into the gas station. I'm entirely unsurprised when she emerges with a bulging bag of snacks.
"If you see something you want, take it. I have plenty," she says digging through the bag.
"I'm okay." I have a distinct lack of apatite.
I pull back out onto the highway.
The returning quite feels different from before. I'm not sure how, or if it's better or worse than the last one. It feels like it's up to me to break it this time. The problem is, I have no idea what to say.
Anything I say now, will seem small in comparison to what she just shared. Reciprocity demands I share something just as fucked up, something about my past, but everything in me screams in protest when I think about telling one of those stories. Years of silence and hiding cements my jaw shut.
"When I was seven-" it comes rushing out of my mouth without my conscious thought, but once the first words escape, the tightness in my throat lessens. "I asked my dad if he could teach me to swim. Everyone else in class could swim. Kim could swim. So, I asked him to teach me.
"He took me to the wide part of the river- you know- the one that looks like a lake and people like to go camping at? Well, he said that the best way to learn is to jump in the deep end. He took me down to the end of the dock, tossed me in, and then walked away. Said I needed to learn to sink or swim."
I can see why Leah would choose to tell her story while driving. I stare sightlessly out at the road- broken lines blurring into one long one. I don't dare glance over to see Leah's expression.
"A fisherman saved me- pulled me out of the water. I didn't try to learn to swim again until I was… about 12? I taught myself. I'm not… so good at asking for help, now."
"Good thing you aren't asking for help, then." Leah's voice is gruff and deep, and I stiffen. "I'm offering it. I know Kim is offering it. All you have to do is let us help."
"No," my jaw locks again. This isn't the point of the story.
"Why not?" she presses, "Why don't you want to fight? Why are you just perfectly fine letting him get away with this?"
I sneer at her, and almost run off the road in the process. The grooves of the edges of the road roar at me, and I quickly yank the wheel straight again. I shouldn't be driving with this conversation. We shouldn't be having this conversation.
"I'm sorry," Leah says. "I didn't mean it like that. I just… I'm just trying to understand."
"Then understand that what he does, doesn't matter. I only have a few months left of dealing with his temper and ideas of who I should be- how I should act. I've been dealing with this my whole life. A few months is nothing. But if I fight back, if I rock the boat right now, I risk losing the thing that does matter. My college fund. The one sure thing that will get me away from him. So, no, I don't want your help- no, I don't need you to save me. I'm fine."
"If you're so fine, and it doesn't matter so much, why did Seth find you drunk off your ass in the middle of the woods while it was raining?"
"We all have our ways to cope," I grit out.
"Dinking yourself stupid is not a healthy coping mechanism," she argues.
"Neither is trying to off yourself when your girlfriend breaks up with you." I don't know whether to be furious with her, or impressed that she's not treating me like glass. But if she's not going to use tact, then neither am I.
At least we're talking now.
Leah relaxes into her seat, and something in the air lightens. Breathing becomes easier, and my gradually heavier foot lightens off the gas. The car slows back to a safer speed limit.
"That's fair," Leah says, not sounding like a girl who was so depressed she tried to kill herself a few weeks ago.
My hands relax around the steering wheel.
"That was my first time getting drunk like that. I just happened to have it on hand, and I happened to be in one of my low moods. No one was supposed to see me that way."
"What happened that night?" Leah asks softly. "You seemed okay while we were texting."
"And I was. It was after you left for patrol. I was packing up my bag for school the next day when my dad came barging in. He'd been drinking. He thought I was packing my bag because I was trying to run away, so he came after me. He threw the bottle at my head, which is how I got it, and then I ran when he tripped over my books. I was just going to stay outside all night, but Seth found me. You know the rest."
"Yeah. I know the rest," she murmurs. She reaches out and grabs one of my hands, prying it off the steering wheel to hold gently in hers. It's technically, something a 'friend' can do without stepping into the romance category.
"What if I robbed a bank for you?" Leah asks suddenly, and I can't stop the surprised snort that chokes me, and I cough.
"Leah. No."
"Fine," she sighs, sulking as she turns to look out her window. I bite back a smile as I squeeze her hand.
The rest of the long drives feels different from the past few weeks. It's feels closer to what it used to feel like being around Leah, and I'm relieved that we can still have this peace. Maybe brutal honesty is the way to go to get us back on the right track.
We talk about lighter things on the following 10 hours of driving. We talk about Berkeley, and other colleges we are thinking about applying to. I learn that we both seem to be in the same mind of going to one in or near the city.
We don't talk about maybe applying to the same schools or what we'll decide to do after graduation. Our newfound peace is tentative at best, momentary at worst. Friends don't plan their futures around each other.
We get to the hotel very early in the morning and fall into separate beds in exhaustion, sleeping away half the day.
I wake first, snapping upright and gasping for breath, trying to clear my lungs of water that's not there. It's unsurprising that I dreamed of that day, after sharing it earlier.
Leah gets up sometime after I close myself into the bathroom to wash the sweat from my body. She looks up from her suitcase as I open the door, letting the steam rush out.
I hesitate in the doorway, discomfort and years of hiding screaming sirens in my head, before shoving it all down. Then I hike my towel higher on my chest and stride stiffly into the room.
"You're turn," I say, ignoring her eyes as I heft my suitcase onto the bed.
I flinch when she reaches out and touches a greenish-yellow bruise on my upper arm, only a little bigger than a quarter. Most people would disregard a bruise that size, and I brush Leah's hand away, impatiently.
"Hurry up, I want to go look around the city."
She sighs, before finally turning away and collecting her things. Only after I hear the bathroom door shut, do I drop my towel. My hands tremble as I very carefully go about rewrapping my ribs. Sitting in the car so long yesterday has made them even more sore than normal.
I bite my lip as the deeply purple skin slowly disappears under the nude color ace wrap. There. That looks better. You'd think I'd learn how to protect my ribs better with how often they get bruised.
I can have weeks between catching my father's ire, so they usually have time to heal just before getting busted all over again.
I hurriedly pull a shirt over my head, wondering what Leah must have thought of me. In all of our make out sessions, no matter how hot they got, I never allowed clothes to come off. Maybe she thought I was shy, or had body image issues. Maybe she just thought I was hiding an ugly surgery scar. Or maybe she just thought I was a fucking tease.
She's probably put it together by now- my reluctance to show my body. With how she reacted to seeing that tiny bruise on my arm (that really could have just gotten there completely by accident), I hope she doesn't expect me to relax that habit now.
Well, I guess it doesn't even matter anymore. We're broken up. Again.
Whatever the fuck that means with her fucking heart-eyes, 'platonic' hand holding, and sharing of deep personal shit in a way that we haven't before. A way that I've never done before, even with Kim. Cause, you know, growth.
Fuck, I'm tired.
The bathroom door opening breaks me out of my blank staring, and I quickly pull on my shoes. Leah steps out wearing the bare minimum that makes her technically not naked, a towel draped over her shoulders.
I don't bother pretending not to watch her as she goes back to her open suitcase and pulls on enough clothes to be socially acceptable in public.
A/N: Next chapter might be a bit late. Not entirely sure how to get from here to the next thing I want to happen, but I'll figure it out eventually. For now, here's some insight into Leah.
Please review. Any side points you want me to hit before the end of this story?
~Silver~
