JENNIE
I feel slightly less insane after the shower, or maybe the short nap in the greenhouse, or maybe the silence I was finally granted. I don't know, but I can see the world with more clarity, only slightly more, but it's helping me not feel so delusional and giving me a little hope that each day will bring more clarity, more peace.
"I'm coming in," Lisa says and opens the door before I can respond. I pull a clean T-shirt down over my stomach and sit on the bed. "I brought you more water." She places a full glass on the small nightstand and sits on the opposite side of the bed.
I came up with a speech in the shower, but now that she's here in front of me, I can't remember any of it. "Thank you" is all I can think to say.
"Are you feeling better?"
She's being cautious. I must look so frail, so weak to her. I feel it, too. I should feel defeated and angry and sad and confused and lost. The thing is, there's still nothing. There's the deep throb of nothing, though I'm growing used to it as each minute passes.
During each long minute in the shower while the water turned cold, I thought of things from a new perspective. I thought of the way my life has turned into this dark hole of absolutely nothing, and I thought about how much I hated feeling that way, and I thought of the perfect solution, but now I can't get the jumbled words into a proper sentence. This must be what it feels like to lose your mind.
"I hope you are."
She hopes I'm what . . . ?
"Feeling better," she adds, answering my thoughts. I hate the way she's so connected to me, the way she knows what I'm feeling and thinking even when I don't.
I shrug and focus on the wall again. "I am, sort of."
The wall is easier to focus on than her brilliant eyes, the beautiful eyes that I was always so terrified of losing. I remember that when we would lie in bed together, I was always hoping I would get another hour, another week, maybe even another month, with those eyes. I would pray that she would come around and want me permanently, the way I wanted her. I don't want to feel that anymore, I don't want that desperation rolling off me when it comes to her. I want to sit here with my nothing and be content and quiet, and maybe, one day, I can become someone else, someone I thought I would be before I started college. If I'm lucky, I could at least once again be the girl I was before I left home.
That girl is long gone, though. She took a ticket straight to hell, and here she sits, silently burning.
"I want you to know how sorry I am for everything, Jennie. I should have come back here with you. I shouldn't have ended things with you because of my own problems. I should have let you be there for me like I want to be for you. Now I know how you must feel, constantly trying to help me when I pushed and pushed you away."
"Lisa," I whisper, not sure what I will say next.
"No, Jennie, let me say this. I promise you, this time it will be different.
I'll never do that again. I'm sorry that it took your dad dying to make me realize how much I need you, but I won't run off again, won't neglect you again, won't disappear into myself again—I swear it." The desperation in her voice is all too familiar: I've heard this same tone and these same words many, many times from her.
"I can't," I say calmly. "I'm sorry, Lisa, but I really can't."
She moves to my side in a panic and drops to her knees in front of me, ruining the carpet there. "Can't what? I know it will take some time, but I'm prepared to wait for you to come out of this, this state of grief you're in. I'm willing to do everything; I mean everything."
"We can't, we never could." My voice is flat again. I guess robotic Jennie is here to stay. I don't have enough energy to push any emotion into my words.
"We can get married . . ." she rambles, then seems surprised by her own words, but she doesn't take them back. Her long fingers wrap around both of my wrists. "Jennie, we can get married. I'll marry you tomorrow, if you'll agree. I'll wear a tux and everything."
The words that I've been hysterically wishing and waiting for have finally fallen from her lips, but I can't feel them. I heard them clear as day, but I can't feel them.
"We can't." I shake my head.
She grows more desperate. "I have money, more than enough money to pay for a wedding, Jennie, and we could have it wherever you choose. You can get the most expensive dress and flowers, and I won't complain about any of it!" Her voice is loud now, echoing through the room.
"It's not about that—it's not right." I wish I could engrave into my heart her words and the way her voice sounds so frantic—excited even—and take them with me into the past. A past where I couldn't see how destructive our relationship really was, when I would have given anything to hear those words from her.
"What is it, then? I know you want this, Jennie; you've told me so many times." I can see the battle behind her eyes, and I wish I could do something to ease her pain, but I can't.
"I don't have anything left, Lisa. I don't have anything left to give you. You've already taken it all, and I'm sorry, but there's just nothing left."
The hollowness inside me grows, taking my entire being with it, and I've never been so thankful to feel nothing. If I could feel this, any of this, it would kill me.
It would surely kill me, and I decided only a little while ago that I want to live. I'm not proud of the dark thoughts that crossed my mind in that greenhouse, but I'm proud that they were brief and that I overcame them on my own, on the floor of a cold shower after the hot water ran out.
"I don't want to take anything from you. I want to give you exactly what you want!" She gasps for air, and the sound is so troubled that I almost agree with everything she's saying just so I won't ever have to hear that sound again.
"Marry me, Jen. Please just marry me, and I swear I'll never do anything like this again. We could be together forever—we would be husband and wife. I know you're too good for me, and I know you deserve better, but now I know that you and I, we aren't like anyone else. We aren't like your parents or mine; we are different and we can fucking make it, okay? Just listen to me one more time—"
"Look at us." I wave my hand weakly through the space between us.
"Look at who I've become. I don't want this life anymore."
"No, no, no." She stands up and paces across the floor. "You do! Let me make it up to you," she begs, tugging at her hair with one hand.
"Lisa, please calm down. I'm sorry for everything I've done to you, and most of all I'm sorry that I complicated your life, and I'm sorry for all the fighting and back-and-forth, but you have to know this wouldn't work. I thought"—I smile a pitiful smile—"I thought that we could make it. I thought ours was a love of the novels, a love that no matter how hard and fast and tough it was, I thought we would survive anything and everything and live to tell the story."
"We can, we can survive it!" she chokes out.
I can't look at her, because I know what I would see. "That's just it, Lisa, I don't want to have to survive. I want to live."
My words strike something in her, and she stops pacing, stops tugging at her hair. "I can't just let you go. You know that. I always come back to you—you had to know that I would. I would have come back from Thailand eventually and we—"
"I can't spend my life waiting for you to come back to me, and it would be selfish of me to want you to spend yours running from me, from us."
But I'm confused again. I'm confused because I don't remember ever having these thoughts; all of my thoughts have always been geared toward Lisa and what I could do to make her better, to make her stay. I don't know where these thoughts and words are coming from, but I can't ignore the resolve I feel when I say them.
"I can't be without you," she declares—another sentiment she's proclaimed a million times, yet she does everything in her power to keep me away, to shut me out.
"You can. You'll be happier and less conflicted. It would be easier, you said so yourself." I mean it. She will be happier without me, without our constant back-and-forth. She can focus on herself and her anger toward both of her fathers, and one day she could be happy. I love her enough to want her happiness, even if it's not with me.
She brings her hands in fists to her forehead and clenches her teeth.
"No!"
I love her, I'll always love this woman, but I've run out. I can't continue to be the fuel to her fire when she's constantly coming back with bucket upon bucket of water to extinguish it. "We've fought so hard but I think it's time to stop."
"No! No!" Her eyes search the room, and I know what she's going to do before she does it. That's why I'm not surprised when the small lamp goes flying across the room and shatters against the wall. I don't move. I don't even blink. It's all too familiar, and this is why I'm doing what I'm doing.
I can't comfort her, I can't. I can't even comfort myself, and I don't trust myself enough to wrap my arms around her shoulders and whisper promises into her ear.
"This is what you wanted, remember? Go back to that, Lisa. Just remember why you didn't want me. Remember why you sent me back to America alone."
"I can't be without you; I need you in my life. I need you in my life. I need. You. In my life," she chants.
"I can still be in your life. Just not like this."
"You're seriously suggesting we be friends?" she spits out venomously.
The brown of her eyes is almost gone now, replaced by black as her anger builds. Before I can respond, she continues: "We can't go back to being friends after everything. I could never be in the same room as you and not be with you. You are everything to me, and you're going insult me by suggesting we be friends? You don't mean that. You love me, Jennie." She looks into my eyes. "You have to. Don't you love me?"
The nothing begins to chip away, and I fight desperately to hold on to it.
If I begin to feel this, it will take me down. "Yes," I breathe.
She kneels down in front of me again.
"I love you, Lisa, but we can't keep doing this to each other."
I don't want to fight with her, and I don't want to hurt her, but the weight of this is on her back. I would have given her everything. Hell, I did give her everything, and she didn't want it. When times got hard, she didn't love me enough to fight her demons for me. She gave up, each and every time.
"How will I survive without you?" She's crying now, right in front of my face, and I blink back my own tears and swallow the heavy lump of guilt in my throat. "I can't. I won't. You can't just throw this away because you're going through some shit. Let me be here for you, don't push me away."
Once again, my mind detaches from my body and I laugh. It's not an amused laugh; it's a sad and broken laugh at the irony of what she's said.
She's asking of me what I've asked of her, and she doesn't even realize it.
"I've been begging for the same since I met you," I softly remind her. I love her and I don't want to hurt her, but I've got to end this cycle once and for all. If I don't, I won't make it out alive.
"I know." Her head falls onto my knees, and her body shakes against me.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"
She's hysterical, and the nothing is slipping too fast for me to stop it. I don't want to feel this, I don't want to feel her crying against me after promising and offering the things I've waited what feels like an eternity to hear.
"We will be okay. When you snap out of this, we will be okay," I think she says, but I'm not sure, and I can't ask her to repeat it, because I can't handle hearing it again. I hate this about us. I hate that no matter what she does to me, I somehow find a way to blame myself for her pain.
I catch a glimpse of movement at the door, and I nod at Kai, letting him know that I'm fine.
I'm not fine, but I haven't been for a while, and unlike before, I don't feel the need to be fine. Kai's eyes move to the broken lamp, and he looks worried, but I nod again, silently pleading with him to leave, to let me have this moment. This last moment to feel Lisa's body against mine, to feel her head on my lap, to memorize the black swirls of ink across her arms.
"I'm sorry that I couldn't fix you," I tell her while softly stroking her damp hair.
"Me, too," she cries against my legs.