Chapter Twelve : Big Regret, Bigger Advances
Downstairs is full of mumbles and shuffles, dizzying patterns of noise and movement. Because they’re all down there.
Celebrating.
A grunting laugh full of sorrow blows past my dry lips.
Celebrating. Yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing too. Right there with them, toasting my endless glass of champagne into oblivion. Miserably cheering the announcement of Glen and Ashley’s engagement with a lopsided drunk smile on my face. Dying inside just a little more with every dreadfully slow passing second. Watching my mother so proud. My father so loving. Clay and Chelsea so understanding. Glen so...happy.
Feeling myself fade away. Feeling myself disappear into the background. Blending into the pasty walls like a bad painting. A painting dried and crumbling.
And I couldn’t breathe.
And I couldn’t hear.
And I couldn’t see.
I couldn’t anything anymore.
So I put myself to bed. Well, to be fair, mom put me to bed. I guess you could say I was heading toward an embarrassing place. I guess you could say I was about to regret that endless glass of bubbly.
I guess you could say my mother saved me from producing a lot more regret for the morning.
Both she and my dad have checked up on me. I think. Things are kind of blurry and smudgy at this point. Which is pretty pathetic, considering it's not even tomorrow yet. No, I think I might have been put up here just after sunset.
However, living through a regretful night like this would send any moron to bed.
I pull my anchor of an arm over my forehead, still finding the act of breathing beyond troubling. Even though I’m miles away from their unaffectionate display of nonexistent love, I can’t get the image of them forever together out of my bruised and battered heart.
“Spence?”
The door creaks open, shining the brightest light of my life into my heavy eyes.
“I’m fine, Mom, you can go back downstairs.” Pours from my pouty lips, and I swear I hear nervous laughter.
“No. I’m, uh, not your mom.”
“Well whoever you are, you can leave too, I’m...I’m fine.”
But I know who it is, I know full well who it is. And I mean it, she can leave too.
But really, I don’t mean it at all. Not in the slightest. She could stay forever, and I’d never make a move to make her move. No, I’d stay absolutely still, praying she’d never leave me.
“I thought you might want some cake?”
She’s tentative, she’s so nervous, like she knows there’s an overflowing river of a mess before her. Like she's never seen something clearer.
“Yeah. I think...I think I’ll pass.” My words are slurring, feebly painting the biting thoughts I have buried inside my mind, “I don’t want any of your cake.”
“You sure? Cause I hear it brings all the boys to the yard.”
Oh how she tries, and oh how I’m not going to let her get to me. Not that easily. No matter how much I want to let that dribbling laughter rumble outside of my chest. No matter how much I want to let it go. And oh how I want to let it all go.
Oh, how I just want to be with her.
“Wrong dessert, and no...no, I don’t want anything that brings boys to the yard.”
It would be funny if it wasn’t so heartbreaking.
She deeply sighs and slowly walks toward me with such heavy steps. Heavy steps from her saddened feet, or maybe they’re only heavy steps made up in my saddened heart.
But I keep my eyes closeds. I keep myself hidden from everything she’s so easily offering.
“Ok, you got me, the cake was just an excuse to check on you.”
I don’t say anything. I don’t want to. I actually don’t want her here anymore. I feel too exposed. Fully dressed in tonights clothes, all I feel is naked. Too naked. Displaying things inside me that she can’t see.
So I roll away. Curling myself into a safe ball, pushing my back toward her now open and exposed body.
“You should just go downstairs. I’m fine.”
Whispered and choked, tears clutching my throat. Tears I’m desperately swallowing. The tears flooding between my baited breaths, drowning everything inside me. Flooding so fast that I have to try extra hard to keep shutting her out. I have to keep pushing her away, so I can feel the safety in the familiarity of that situation. So I can feel strong for shutting her out when I feel so alone.
When actually and honestly, I don’t feel strong or safe or ok. When I’ve never felt those things. When I actually and honestly feel so far from anything remotely good. When all I feel is awful. So awful. Because now the bed's dipping and now she’s laying behind me, wrapping herself right around my crumpled and crinkled body.
Because she’d never give up on me as easily as I’ve always given up on her.
And the tears tip over with that thought. The tears silently stain themselves inside my hot cheeks. I sniffle loudly, wishing I could call these tears rolling over my chin and down my neck beer tears. But I can’t. These are real, harsh, bitter and buried tears.
And she hears them.
“I love you, Spencer.”
And she feels them too.
“I know.”
I clumsily wipe my nose with my knuckles, like a little baby girl, only making the mess of my face messier.
“Do you?”
It sounds like she may have tears inside her voice too, and like a knee jerk reaction, I have to make her better. I have to take them away as I whisper with every ounce of sincerity inside me, “Of course I know.”
”No. Not do you know.” She pushes further across the bed, further into me, and I have to squeeze my eyes -- and my thighs -- tighter, wishing I could shut out everything she’s giving me that I could have always had if I weren’t so damn stupid. “But do you...” Her mouth somehow crawls right over my ear and, as if in slow motion, she whispers a shaky stream of clear insecurity right inside my breaking heart, “Do you love me too, Spence?”
I don’t even wait to answer with a voice smothered in strangulation, “So much, Ash.” A voice that keeps puttering out between my quivering lips, “Just, so much.”
She’s crying harsh and bitter tears now. So hard that not only do I hear them -- these horribly thick and suffocating sobs -- I feel them too. Exhausted exhaltations vibrating through my every bone, pushing past my pale skin, rumbling against my breaking back. Dissolving my weak little spine. And now I'm weeping like a little baby girl.
“If only...” She pants against my neck, arm wrapped so tightly around my waist, holding my hand inside hers against my heaving chest. “If only you loved me in the same way I love you.”
I think I’ve stopped breathing. I think she just floored me into sobriety. I think I just felt a bucket of something cold and bitter slam into me.
“If only.”
She breathes once more, leaving her lips in a wheeze, a gasp for air -- maybe even the truth -- and somehow it's louder than anything I’ve ever heard. Paralyzing me into nothing. Letting this moment fog over me. This moment where I already regret my endless glass of faux celebration.
This moment clouding over could stop my tears. This blurring moment could lift my heart. Because, once again, I don’t think she’s giving up on me. I think she’s wanting to give in. And I think she only needs me to let her.
“Please, Spence...”
She pleads in a voice I’ve never heard before. Because it’s not her voice she's pleading with. She's breathing it, desperately, like it were her last breath. And she uses that last breath to breathe nothing more than her desperation straight through the hair matted to my shivering damp neck.
“Please say you love me that way.”
And I can’t breathe.
“Please, Spence...”
And I can’t hear.
“Please, just...”
And I can’t speak.
“Do something.”
And I can’t move.
“Please.”
And she begs and begs, exposing me more and more. Hand fully wrapped beneath my stomach, pulling my body so close, as if she feels like she might lose me if she don’t hold me.
And all I want to do is “something”. All I want to say is “something”. I want to tell her how freaking much I love her. Tell her I want to have her in the way I’ve never had anyone. I want to give her what I’ve never given anyone.
I want so bad and so much.
But I still can’t move. I still can’t breathe. I still can’t speak.
And all I hear is that clock ticking. All I hear is her heart racing, right beside mine. Maybe even breaking with mine, pooling all our empty pieces together.
Because now I feel her moving away. I hear her sighing, rolling back from my bare and frozen body. Leaving me to drown all by my drunk and lonely self in this over sized bed.
Leaving me to fade away. Sinking further and further into my thick duvet, drowning farther and farther away from her.
And then she gives up, shutting the door so softly behind her.
Leaving me in the stillness of my terrifying childhood bedroom.
Leaving me to flail inside my haunting past.
Leaving me to fall asleep with nothing but my regret from this very moment.
The same regret wrapped around my body tighter than the clothes on my back.
The same regret I’ll never remember in the morning.
All thanks to my endless glass of misery.
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“Ok.” Madison throws herself over my lap, snagging the remote control from my grubby hands. "If I have to sit through one more rerun of Seinfeld I might actually kill myself.” She quickly glares my way, “Well, after I kill you first.”
“Gee, thanks, I love you too.” I mumble, grumpy, eyes glazed over, watching the tv across the room. The light blinking rhythmically, painting the room in mellow blue. Neither one of us moving to turn on a light. Neither one of us motivated to do anything on this dreadful Saturday night.
“Spencer, really, what’s going on?”
I sigh. Deeply troubled. Giving it some concrete thought, for once, actually considering unloading all my burdens onto Madison. Knowing it’d do nothing more than release one percent of the weight that weighs me down, but at least it’d be something. At least I’d know I kind of tried.
“Come on, I know something’s wrong. You’ve been moping all week and it’s really starting to worry me.”
For a split second, I think I might give it all up.
“Don’t worry Maddy.”
For a split second I close it all up again.
“I’m fine, I promise. Just really tired and...” I hate being so closed off, I hate needing to build these walls, but most of all I hate her eyes seeing straight through them, making me realize it’s pointless to completely lie. “And I don’t know what’s bothering me.” I sigh, “I really don’t.”
Oh how I lie.
“But there is something?”
She’s so gentle in her prodding. So understanding and accepting. So unbelievable as a best friend that I’d be a fool to not lean on her.
“Yeah, but I’m really not sure what it is. Maybe work.”
But I am that fool. I’ve always been that fool.
I stare down at my fingers, picking at my not even there nails, and I know she’s debating how much more she should push. Debating how far she wants to stretch me, afraid of how far I might go. Knowing I might not snap back.
“Is it Ashley?"
Before I can stop myself, my neck swivels so fast her way. “What?”
“I didn’t mean it offensively, Spence, just...” She’s reaching so far for my drifting body, desperate to reel me back in so she can pull everything out of me. “She hasn’t called or been around since last Sunday night and that’s really weird for you guys. I didn’t know if something happened between you two.” She’s quick, too quick, to correct herself, “I mean, if you had a fight or something.”
I look at her, wearily. I look at her as if she’s betrayed my trust just by knowing me too well. For knowing every single thing that’s bothering me and only wanting to help.
“No. No we’re perfect.” I stand from the couch, not doing a very good job of convincing anyone, even myself -- especially myself -- of what I’ve just said. “I’m gonna go lay down.”
“Spence-“
“Maddy, really, please just leave it. I’m fine. Ashley’s fine. We’re fine.” Walking to my room, I shout over my shutting door, “Everyone’s fine!”
Falling back against my closed door, I breathe out so much pain and trouble, I’m surprised I can acutally inhale it all back inside me again.
My heart just keeps on racing. My pants keep on panting. So loud. So jaded.
And seconds crawl by.
Minutes roll by and Madison hasn’t knocked on my door yet. Madison hasn’t come to apologize or fight me on it. Like she always does. No. Madison just slammed the front door. And I think I can actually hear her hurried steps down the hall of our building. Her angered steps away from me. Stomping across my weak little heart.
I’m such a fool.
My head falls back against the wood with a thump. Lulling with eyes closed. I don’t know how much longer I can do this. How much more I can take. Ashley and I haven’t seen each other since that night at O’Neill’s [five days ago] and we haven’t spoken since then, either. And Madison was right -- she was so right about so many things -- but mostly, Madison was right when she said that’s weird for us.
That’s noticeably weird to even a stranger.
I just don’t know what to do anymore. She threw me for a loop that night. She threw me like I’ve thrown her so many times, and while it should make me feel guilty for understanding what it’s like to be in her shoes now, it doesn’t. It only makes me more confused.
So damn confused.
Why would she pull away from me?
Why would she run?
Why would she still reach for me after pulling and running?
I sigh, defeated. Dejeceted. For once, I don’t just wonder if Ashley will come back, if Ashley will forgive me. No, for once, I wonder if I even want her to. This is just too much to bear. This is just too much for one person to take. There are just too many reasons for this to end. For us to end.
Ending before we ever began.
Suddenly, I think I hear the front door open and close, softer than soft, and a breath of relief I never knew as there, leaves me. Madison is back. And whether it’s to yell or apologize or forgive, I don’t care. I’ll take all of it, or none of it, if it means I can have her again.
If it means I’m no longer alone.
There’s the knock on my door, with tentative force, and I don’t waste a second in turning around and answering it.
I don’t waste a second in losing my breath.
“Ashley?” Barely squeaks out from my strangely dry lips, completely forgetting she has a key to my apartment. Solely because she’s never used it before.
She doesn’t look amused. She looks angry as hell, as she breezes past me, making sure to have no contact with my body what-so-ever. Making sure I know she’s here strictly on business.
“I just need my jacket. The one I - it’s...” She fumbles in her lies as she fumbles through my room, “I left it here last week.”
“Oh. I haven’t seen it.” I lie, needing to buy time, because I know exactly where her jacket is. Because I want her to forgive me.
Beause I’ll forgive her in a heartbeat.
If she’d only let me.
“Fuck.” Blows past her burdened lips, throwing so much misguided emotion into her words. “I can’t lose that jacket.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll keep an eye out for it.” Quivering hands cover her eyes, her paper thin disguise rapidly crumbling to little pieces, and I’m testing -- oh I’m testing -- those dark dark waters. “So, how are you?”
Her fingers dribble away from her face like an avalanche. Displaying all her pain and sadness like the water beneath a frozen lake.
“How do you think I am?”
There’s just a small thread of anger weaved into her hopeless words. And I kind of know how it feels. “Why haven’t you called?”
It’s a stupid question, one which I was fully aware of even as I asked. But I had to do it because I’m dying inside. Because I need to know.
Because I am that fool.
“Why haven’t you?”
She throws it right back, somewhat incredulously. And I know it’s time to get this show on the road.
It’s time to get the words out.
“Because you ignored me all night, Ashley.” I’m already shaking on this unstable terrain, “Because you held his hand instead of mine. Because you didn’t want me. Because you ran away.”
“Is that what you think?” There’s no anger this time, only hurt.
“What else should I think? What would you think?” I shake my head, eyes widening. “What were you thinking? Please tell me. Tell me so I’m not so fucking confused anymore.”
Her features soften, just the tiniest bit, and I know, more than I want to know, she’s choosing her words wisely.
“I was thinking,” One deep breath, and it kind of scares me, the way she sucks in the air as if she needs more strength. As if she needs to break me and she can’t do it all on her own. Drawing help from wherever she can get it. “I was terrified, Spencer. I was fucking terrified.”
“Of what?”
I dumbly ask for the obvious. I dumbly ask for her to explain why I was terrified too. And she knows it.
“Of you. I was scared of you, Spencer! You were running away, just like always. Once we take a step forward, you throw us nine steps back. And when Glen showed up, when he came home early,” She’s spitting over her words, one coming faster than the next. “I saw your face. I saw the fear. You were going to run. I could feel it, and it devastated me. It scared the shit out of me because I didn’t know how to stop you from doing it. For the first time I saw so clearly how you’d run, and I just didn’t know what I could do this time to stop you. So I decided to play it cool. I decided to not put any pressure on you, because God...” Tears are already filling her eyes, spilling over into her words,“I just couldn’t take it if you ran from me again, I just couldn’t handle you pushing me away again. It was killing me to think you might run away from...” Her hands gesture wildly between us, cutting the thick air slice for slice, “From this. From us.”
She exhales with everything inside her. “...And look how it turned out. You ran. You ran so far from me, I think it might have killed me this time, because we haven’t talked since. Because I haven’t seen you since. And I was starting to think I never would again.”
Barely getting the words out between salty tears, she shakily stands in the middle of my room, back of her hand stifling her sobs. And I need to make this right.
“Ashley, I never wanted to do that. I-I never wanted to run!”
“But you did Spencer! You did!”
“Because you were closing yourself off, you pushed me away!”
“ONCE!” She shouts it, screams it. The anger in one word somehow bellowing and echoeing for miles, rippling across every wall inside this apartment.
And then it’s so silent. The silence is crystal clear like ice, and her words slice right through it like the sharpest pick.
“I pushed you away once, Spencer. Once. Once for the fifty times you’ve pushed me away. And I know what you’re probably thinking, that I did it to test you, that I did it to make you feel how I feel. And, honestly, maybe it is why I did it, maybe I just don’t realize it. I really don’t know why I did it, all I know is I’ve always been patient with you, Spence. I’ve always been there for you, even when you’ve put your walls up, I’ve waited for you. I’ve been waiting, for two years now.” Her voice is nothing but strong now, saying words she’s needed to say for an eternity. “But you couldn’t even wait five minutes for me, Spencer. You hardly waited when I needed you to. You couldn’t even give me support when I was terrified. You left me when I needed you more than anything. And, then, you never came back.”
There’s nothing out there anymore. Her words have sawed their way between us. Her words have sawed a dividing line. A line that, once again, someone has to cross. A line that one of us is going to have to break for us to come together again.
“Ashley...” I trail off so troubled and so far pained, I don’t even know what to say, because all I know is how right she is. All I know is it’s my turn. I need to do something. Her glassy eyes searing into mine tell me that. Her eyes tell me that once again she’s waiting. She’s still waiting.
And I’m still doing nothing.
But, now the air's changing. The air pops and cracks like a bonfire; a bonfire flaming with all our secrets and desires piled between the logs of our regret. The thick logs of my mistakes. And as she stumbles closer to me, afraid of the fire, fearful of the burn, I realize this could be my biggest mistake. If I don’t play this right, if I don’t walk out on the coals with her, I could lose her forever.
“Please, Spencer...” She pleads in a voice that I’ve never heard before. But it is a voice I've heard before. I’ve heard those exact words, in that exact voice, some other time. “Please just say it.”
She keeps moving and the memory rams into me. The drunken memory of what I’ve always believed never happened. The burning regret that I never remembered.
“Please Spencer...”
One breath away, I can almost feel her tears dropping down to my shaky hands between us. Nothing but a thin layer of empty space between us. Between our shuddering bodies.
“Just do something...”
She is looking me straight in the eyes. Whispering, begging, between clenched teeth, as if she’d lose herself if she unclenched them.
“Please, do something. Please be the one to do it. I’m so tired. I’m so tired of always being the one.”
I’m crying so hard as she stands crying so hard before me. I’m crying for her bravery. For her honesty. For her vulnerablity. For putting all of her out there. For her putting everything she keeps safe and hidden inside of her, right in front of me.
“This is it, Spence, this is it because,” She can’t look at me now, whispering down to the ground, whispering within herself, “Because if you turn me down now, I don’t think I can take it. I don’t think I can do it anymore.” Finally her eyes come back to mine. Biting back harsh tears.
“I don’t have any more second chances in me.”
Croaks with every shred of sadness a person could have and she waits for me, once again, like she always does. She waits and waits, and I stand frozen. Like so many other times. Like I always do. But she keeps waiting and waiting. Silently pleading with her eyes. With her wet lips. With her beautifully broken smile.
And she sighs. And I can’t breathe.
And she whimpers. And I can’t hear.
And she’s done waiting. Walking straight for the door.
But I’m not done waiting. I’m breathing now. I’m hearing my life slipping away. I’m hearing my life walking out of my life louder than I’ve ever heard anything.
And I’m not waiting anymore.
No, for once, I’m doing something.
Before I realize it, my hand clumsily grabs hers, snapping her back to me as my lips collide with hers. Falling on the side of her mouth as if I’ve never done this before. As if I’ve never kissed someone. And even though it’s clumsy, and messy, and sloppy, it’s beautiful. It’s so painfully beautiful that it makes me realize I really haven’t kissed anyone before.
Not like this.
Her lips freeze against mine, wetly pushed against my cheek and mouth. We’re not really kissing. It’s so much more than kissing, it’s so much more than anything I’ve ever experienced. It’s intense and intimate. It’s life and death. It’s fucking everything. Everything I've never known. It’s us. It’s me and her. Ashley and me. Sharing every space between us.
I’m leaning so far into her, she’s leaning so far into me. Foreheads strongly resting together, as if we’re just too weak to hold them up ourselves. As if we’ve always needed each other to keep each other from falling. We stay there, just like that, lips panting heavy breaths into each others mouths. It’s all hitting us. This moment. This moment that was never supposed to be perfect. This moment that was never supposed to be simple or easy.
And for that reason, alone, it’s more perfect than ever.
I can feel her sobs before I see them. I can feel something sad raining down on us, and it frightens me. It worries me. It pulls me from the one place I never ever want to leave. Leaning back from her lips, looking through my weepy eyes to see if I’ve done something wrong.
But before I can see anything, her hands are already clasped around my neck, roughly. Aggressively. Hungrily and desperately chasing my lips between hers. Sucking them between her mouth. Quickly nodding her head as a small, pleading “no” whimpers from somewhere deep in her body.
And just like that, we’re kissing. A real lip to lip, tongue to tongue kiss. More intense, more passionate, more real than anything I’ve ever experienced.
Because up until this night, I’ve never experienced anything like it.
Because up until this moment, I’ve never kissed anyone before.
No, not like this.
Because right now, for the first time, I’m finally kissing her.
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Chapter Thirteen :: Toeing the Line