I know some of you are sick of the sad, but Sara finally has someone she can let herself lean on, and that's a good thing. :)

Part IV: Chapter 9 - I Feel The Burn

Emy talked me into going out for a late brunch, at the place we used to go to practically every Sunday back when I still thought it was possible for me to be normal. I could hardly bear the thought of going out and sitting at a table in a room where other people were sitting at tables and chatting and smiling and consuming things. I wanted to lie down in a dark room and forget about everything. But she wouldn't take no for an answer, insisting that living people did things like go outdoors and eat things and participate in life. So I managed to put on clean clothes and go out.

After brunch, we walked down to the small park by the lake where we used to often go and sit and watch people play with dogs, and we would talk about art and make plans. This time, there was no talk of art, and the only plans I had included whiskey. But Emy wouldn't allow it. She was my intervention. I would have resented her for it a lot more if it weren't somehow a fact that I wanted her around and was, actually, pretty scared of being alone. I was scared of myself and what I might do.

We found our favourite bench happily vacant and sat there, next to the lake. It was cold and clear. A wholesome looking couple were playing with a Jack Russell terrier and we both idly watched them as we huddled there on the bench. I didn't feel like talking about anything, but I could feel Emy's questions coming, and I dreaded them.

"Marco had his gallery opening," Emy said conversationally after a few minutes of silence.

"Oh, yeah?" I replied, trying to sound interested. "Good for him."

"Yeah, he did an awesome job," she said, and there were a few more moments of silence. I was wondering what awful, awkward question she would ask me first when she spoke at last. "Sara, have you spoken to your mom?" Just the thought of that sent chills through me.

"No," I admitted, ashamed of it, because she'd called me a dozen times and I just kept dodging.

"She must be so worried. You know she's almost certainly seen the video," Emy pointed out, and I shuddered, but that might have just been the cold.

"Yeah," I sighed. "I don't know what to say. . ." That was such an understatement it nearly made me laugh.

"Well, you'll have to lie to her. What else can you do?" Having her lay it out like that gave me a jolt.

"We'll have to tell her it's Casey in the video but. . ." That thick, suffocating dread engulfed me again. I could picture that video in my mind, and although there was no frontal shot of my face, I don't imagine my mother could possibly be fooled.

"But?"

"Well, you've seen it," I almost snap. "Who does it fucking look like?" God, I'm tired of myself. Tired of my words and my voice and my face. Tired of how I feel. Tired of this mess, this gnawing and pulsating ache, tired tired tired.

"Yeah, it's pretty obvious that it's you," Emy admitted placidly. It irritated me and it was Emy so I didn't have to pretend otherwise.

"Thanks for the reassurance," I said back at her heavily.

"I don't think I'll be much help to you if I bullshit you, Sara. Hopefully your mom will want to believe it's someone else enough for her to be convinced." I sighed, tired at the truthfulness of her words. She'd always been like that - practical and sensible and right in all the ways that I wasn't. It was so comforting at times, but not when the last fucking thing I wanted to do was face reality. Reality was corroding my soul. I sighed deeply and closed my eyes, blocking out that wholesome couple who had never been and never would be in a mess as shocking and sick as mine was because they were healthy and balanced and knew where the boundaries were in their relationships with their siblings. And then I thought of Tegan careening past me on the stairs and then throwing up and collapsing and I hoped that my asthma would just finish me off once and for all.

"You don't have to stay with me," I said to her coldly. "I'm just. . . sick and fucked up and you aren't. I was sick and fucked up when you were with me. When you loved me." Why not just destroy everything good that remained in my life? Trash the place before I broke the lease.

"You know I love you, Sara. I always will."

"You've always been too good for me," I say to her because it had really just occurred to me, for the first time, in a way.

"Sara, that's not true. It just isn't."

"I'm a pervert. If you'd known what a fucking sick fucking pervert I was, you would never have been with me." She's turned towards me a little; my eyes are fixed, straight ahead, down the slope and out across the lake. I don't want to look at her, her mouth so ready to smile, her eyes so truthful, so thoughtful.

"Don't talk like that, Sara."

"It's true though."

"It isn't."

"It is."

"I know you," she said. "I didn't spend four years with a pervert."

"It turns out that you did, though," I said, argumentative and bitter. I was trying to provoke her but that rarely ever worked. "The first time I fucked her, we were sixteen. Do you want to hear about that?"

"Is that really how you want to describe it?" she asked me so calmly.

"So you don't want to hear about it?" I asked. She took a moment.

"I am happy to listen to whatever you want to talk about but I think you're just trying to shock me. You feel disgusted with yourself so you're trying to disgust me as well. Maybe you think you can push me away and then you'll be free to drink yourself to death." It rankled me a little that she was right again; I hunched my shoulders against the cold and said nothing.

"Aren't you disgusted?" I asked her and tried to sound defiant but I sounded weak and small and I hated it.

"Sara, you know, I don't think I really understand it. I think I need time to get used to the idea. But, I mean. . . in the past, people used to think that gay people were perverts. . . some people still do. . . but we know that isn't true. So I don't think you're a pervert and I love you exactly how you are. Even the parts I don't understand."

I pulled my scarf up over my mouth and nose and couldn't say anything for a while because she really was too good for me and for the four years I was with her, I was lying. I wasn't cheating because I'd moved to Montreal to avoid that possibility. But I was lying about who I was and I was cheating with my heart. To be really truthful, I was cheating on Tegan for those four years with Emy.

"You know, now. . . knowing this makes a lot of other things fall into place. I really always felt that you weren't mine," Emy said. It was awful that she thought it, even though it was true. It wasn't fair to her and I wanted to make it not true, somehow.

"Emy, I didn't. . . I was. . ." Damn.

"You were wonderful. You are. But you were never a hundred percent there, Sara. Your heart was never totally available to me and I felt it. Why do you think I had to leave?" I'd cried so much over those last few days and I didn't want to do it again. The wholesome couple were gone. It was starting to get dark.

"I'm sorry," I said, being honest for a change. God, I hated myself. "I wanted to be with you. I wanted to be. . . to have a relationship and be normal and, like. . . healthy but I'm not." Okay, and there came the tears. Again. Quietly, though. Maybe I'd be able to fend off the hysterical sobbing this time. "I moved to Montreal so that there would be. . . Tegan and I would be apart and then maybe we could just get over this. . . fucking sickness and just live and be okay but we couldn't." I didn't know whether explaining it all to her would make me feel more or less ashamed, but I felt compelled to do it anyway. At least it would make me feel like less of a liar.

"How long did you. . . I mean. . . you were. . . together. . . when you were sixteen and then. . .?" She was hesitant, cautious; she wanted to know but was afraid to ask. I was afraid to answer. But I owed it to her. That and so many other things I'd never be able to pay back.

"It happened once when we were sixteen. It was like we. . . were crazy. We couldn't help ourselves, I felt like, it was like. . . we were starving or something. I couldn't like. . . we were so. . . we wanted each other so badly and I. . . touched her and then we were both so scared and I. . . fuck, I started really hating myself then. . ." I continued to wipe the tears away, but each time, more came. Her face was concerned, intent, a trace of shock that she couldn't yet hide. What must it be like to hear all of this from someone you thought you knew so well? I tried not to look for too long. I'd lose my nerve. ". . . and after that we just couldn't get along and I think, like, it was just because we were fighting it and. . . it didn't happen again. I promise, it didn't, until after you. . . left. . . and I was. . . I went to Tegan's house and we. . . and it happened again and then. . . since then it's been. . . we've been really struggling and like. . ."

"Hey, Sara," she said softly, laying a hand on my knee. "Don't cry." I couldn't stop, though.

"There were moments where we almost. . . convinced ourselves. . . that we could really be together but mostly we would just be. . . like, insanely. . . filled with this, like. . . need. And then after I would just feel like a. . . a fucking monster. Like, all I want is to exist in a different universe where it's okay for us to be in love with each other and be together and not. . . not fuck up our lives and hurt people and be. . ." I didn't know how to finish.

"Sara, did you say 'in love with each other'?" she asked me, and I didn't know what she meant at first.

"What?" I asked, sniffling and looking up at her, a little bewildered.

"'In love,' you said. I've never heard you say that before." I wiped my face with my sleeve. Tears kept coming. "Sara, are you in love with Tegan?"

God, my guts. I took a deep breath because I thought I might get it under control that way. I tried to shrug but instead, a sob slipped out before I could stop it. I leaned forward so that I could put my elbows on my knees and my face in my hands and she wouldn't see me, and how intensely red my face must have been, judging by how hot it was, streaming with tears. But that question, of all questions, needed an answer. I nodded into my hands.

"I. . . since before I even knew what that meant," I admitted, trembling from the cold, my nose running.

"And is she in love with you, too?" Emy asked gently, and I nodded again because those were the only two things I had ever been sure of and then my unkind memory showed me her face again, that night in our bunk when I was a little drunk and her tenderness made me forget to push her away and when she touched me I covered my face with my arm and I came with her lips pressed against my ear. And then I saw her face as I walked away from her on our bus just a few days ago and I moaned into my sleeve and my sobs were starting to hurt my stomach. Emy's hand was on my back, rubbing gently.

"Awww, honey," she said.

"I need her," I said. "I need her with me. I'm going to die."

"I know it feels like that, but you won't die," she said in a soothing voice but she was wrong, so wrong.

"I broke her heart and she. . . needs me too but we. . . can't, it's. . . fucking. . . wrong but . . .how. . . are we going to live without each other?" The words kept getting stuck and she put her arms around my shoulders.

"You don't have to live without each other," Emy murmured, close to my ear. "Maybe you need to work out a way to be together. . . secretly?"

"We were trying to do that and now there's a video of us on YouTube!" I sobbed.

"Shhh, okay," she said.

"I don't know what to do," I cried, and in that moment, it struck me that things were like this, that it wasn't just a temporary problem with a solution coming along any day now. This was our life and it was fucked and that was it. I wept then for the death of all my hopes. Emy, who somehow still loved me, put her arms around me and kept me upright, again, until it was dark.