We decided on my facebook page that I needed to post a teaser--that it was EXTREMELY important that I did. I thought I'd share on here too.
Just as quickly as I found him again he’s walking out of my life. I watch him weave around the tables and then he’s out the door, leaving me. I need do to something. I need to make him understand that I understand him. I need to make him see that he deserves to be happy and that he doesn’t ruin me. I get up and hurry around the tables, not caring that everyone is looking at me like I’m crazy. I slam my hand against the glass door and throw myself out into the cold, completely vulnerable without my jacket on.
“I sometimes make myself throw up,” I stammer as I run up to the bike with my feet slipping against the snow.
He freezes with one foot on the ground on one foot off and turns his head. His eyes scroll across my body and I feel naked and exposed. “You what?”
I press my fingertips to my eyes and shake my head because I can’t look at him when I say it again. “I sometimes make myself throw up.” I give him a moment and then I drop my hands to my side. “And not because I think I’m fat. It’s because…” I take a step toward him and angle my head back, looking up into his emerald eyes. I can see the reflection of myself in them and I look as terrified as I feel. “It’s because I’m trying to get rid of all the vile foul feeling inside me. The ones I can’t deal with.”
He’s looking at me and I mean really looking at me and there’s this connection, this understanding that we are two people who have been fractured, not by ourselves, but by someone else and we’re doing everything we can not to shatter to pieces.
I wait for him to react and when he doesn’t move I decide to do it for him. I walk up to him, getting close enough that I can feel the heat emitting off his body. Then I throw my arms around his neck, and hug him, praying to God he’ll hug me back, because even though it’s a simple gesture in theory, sometimes hugging is complex.
His arms stay slack to his side as his chest rises and falls. I’m about to give up, back away, and allow myself to cry, when his arms wrap around my waist. He grips me tightly and it gives me hope that maybe there might be some hope left.
He holds me forever with his face nuzzled into my hair. Somewhere along the line it starts to snow, but we don’t move. We are frozen in a moment neither of us wants to leave.
“For how long?” he finally asks, his breath warm against my cheek.
I shut my eyes and bask in the feel of him. “Since it happened.”
His arms tighten around me and he presses my body against his. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” I run my fingertips up and down his back, working up the courage to ask. “Kayden?”
“Since I was twelve.” He reads my mind and trusts me enough to answer.
I constrict my arms around him, sealing us together in every way possible. Maybe if I try hard enough, we’ll fall into each other and become one single person and we can share our pain instead of caring it ourselves.
