Page 67 of The Time It Takes
I pinch my thigh hard enough to make me wince. I don’t like these questions. “Usually when I’m too busy to think about anything else.” I try to laugh, but it sounds weird.
“That doesn’t sound like happiness. It sounds like a lie.” His voice is so soft, almost nonexistent. I can already see him frowning down at me in my head.
I huff a quick breath. “I don’t know. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I’d rather not delve too deep into that subject.”
“Willow—”
“Please don’t,” I plead gently. There’s still so much to explain, but it’s late and I missed him. I just want a moment of not having to think about how depressing my life is.
“Fine.”
I roll over onto my side, laying the phone on my cheek to hold it there. “Thank you for taking up for me at dinner.”
“It was nothing,” he says too quickly.
I smile. “To you maybe, but it meant a lot to me. So, thank you.” He doesn’t respond, but I’m okay with that. A yawn escapes me. “Alright, I think I’m going to try and get some shut-eye now.”
“Wait.”
I pause.
“Don’t hang up,” he says quickly as if the words are forcefully taken from him. “I like knowing you’re there. Don’t hang up. Please.”
“Ok,” I tell him softly even as my heart lodges itself in my throat. “I won’t hang up.”
“Can you play something?”
My eyebrows pinch together. “What do you want me to play?”
“I want to hear you play something that isn’t a cover. Something written by you.”
I press my lips together and smile. Don’t have to ask me twice. “OK,” I say, crawling out of bed. I walk over to the dusty piano I have in the corner of my room. I set the phone down and put him on speaker.
“You should feel very special,” I say. “You’ll be the first person to hear this piece. So please leave all questions, comments, and concerns for after the performance.”
His only answer is a husky laugh I can feel in my bones.
Out of habit, I close my eyes as I begin to play a story about a girl and boy who fell in love. Something terribly tragic happens that tears them apart. The tragic thing never had anything to do with the love they shared. The tragedy itself is life. The boy’s love for the girl set the world aflame, until one day something happened that caused the girl to be doused in water so cold that it took the very air from her lungs. The girl stopped wanting to be touched, she stopped wanting to be loved. She felt no longer deserving of the boy. So, the girl left. She ran as far as her legs could carry her and she tried to forget all about him and what happened to her in that room. The girl exists, but she found she was no longer alive. The girl missed the boy with everything she had. The girl no longer had a heart to give, because a boy on fire still carried it in his pocket.
The girl comes back for him, only to find his flames still burning, but not for her.
When I finish, I’m breathing rapidly, and a tear falls down my cheek. I don’t wipe it away because I know he can’t see me. He remains quiet for a while, and I think he might have fallen asleep.
“Play it again,” he says, his voice cracking.
And I do. This time, for me.
A reminder that he isn’t mine to hold anymore, despite how desperately my arms ache to reach out.
Then something hits me—everything I’ve let myself lose and everything I had no control over. The pain is acidic in my veins, screaming as it searches for an exit I won’t let it find.
Sometimes the past comes back and tries to stick its claws in me. I tend to let it because deep down I believe I deserve this pain of remembering. My truth is kept secret because I can’t get myself to share it. How can some version of myself be so scary to confront? I mourn for her because she won’t let me stop. I let her mistakes slaughter me a thousand times because this version is too weak to let go. I’m made of everything she was, and I don’t know how to be anything other than dirt that’s been swept under the rug so no one sees. And like a house, it seeps into the cracks of this body I’ve long since recognized as a place to call home.
TRUE COLORS AREN’T ALWAYS PRETTY.
Ten years ago
We’dbeensurfingallmorning. After everything that had been on my mind lately with my brother and Oliver, I felt a brief moment of sanity. Everything was starting to feel complicated between Oliver and me, but deep down I was starting to believe I had a thing for complicated.
