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“Why the fuck not, Stella? That’s how relationships work. You try to make it work, and if something isn’t working, you fix it. You don’t go into expecting to have problems.”
“Except I’m not going into this blind this time, Riggins. Neither of us are. You broke me, Riggins. You broke me in a way that I try and convince myself every single day that I’m better. That I’ll be okay again, knowing full well it’s full of bullshit. But us? You and me? We won’t work long term. We can’t. This should have never happened.”
I look up at him again, feeling the tears well and feeling silly and childish for my next words. “I was drowning once before, Riggins, and you got to go live out your dreams while I suffocated. You forgot that I even existed. I was no one to you the day I left.”
His face goes dark and confused.
“You’re not allowed to be mad at me for living my life, Stella! You left me! You left me, and I fell apart.”
“I left you, yes, but you never came after me. I spent years doing everything for you, giving up everything because I loved you more than anything, and I left, and you just… accepted it. You never even tried, Riggins. That’s what hurt the most. Not once. Not a call, not a text. You never tried to come to me.” Silence fills the porch, and it's almost tangible.
“What are you talking about, Stella?”
41 GLUE MYSELF SHUT
NOW
RIGGINS
The world stops spinning, and I repeat my question while she looks at me blankly.
“What are you talking about?” I ask, my voice calm and cool, calculated even.
The world shifts with that sentence, something she’s hinted at multiple times before, but I never understood. Suddenly, I start to wonder if there’s more to it.
“It wasn’t your job to chase me, of course,” she says, continuing. “I realize that was partly on me, too, but I tried. I tried to let you back in, and I sat there like an idiot for hours, so I wasn’t going to come for you after that. But that first day on tour, you realized I was gone; you didn’t come for me. You never bothered to even try! You didn’t even try to fight for me! You went out partying!” she says, pain in the words.
“I was giving you space, Stella?—”
“Space! I didn’t need space, Riggins. I neededyou. I needed to know I mattered, that I was more than the booze and the liquor and the music. Just one—one time, I wanted to come first. Foranyone. I never came first for my mom or my dad, but I thought I came first for you. When I left, I realized that I didn’t even make the top ten after I didn’t hear from you for a whole fucking year.”
The words spin, and I’m so fucking lost, so confused. She didn’t hear from me? What the fuck is she talking about?
“I wrote to you! I wrote to you the entire rest of the tour, a postcard for every stop just like I did in the beginning, and you sent them back! Each and every one, you sent back, return to sender.”
“What?” She says, confusion and shock in her face but I’m lost now, irritation in my bones.
This is it.
Somehow, I know this is it.
This is the make or break moment, where I lay it all out on the line, give her everything and see if we’re going to work.
Whether she’s going to understand or we’re going to be done, at least we won’t leave with any questions between us.
“You sent them all back. I knew I fucked up, darkened the brightest star I’d ever known, and I figured you sending them back was your way of telling me to leave you alone. I wanted to respect that. Then you come to my dad’s funeral a year later, hold my fucking hand, finally,finally agree totalk to me, and I find out you’re seeing some fucker, and I’ll admit, I lost it.”
“Riggs—”
“I hit rock bottom that night, and I spiraled so deep I couldn’t find the surface. I called you, and you said you were done with me.I’m done, move on, Riggins.” My throat is aching with unshed tears, and my chest is ringing and falling with heavy breaths, but what does it matter anymore. Might as well put it all on the line now.
“What are you talking about?” she asks, and suddenly, cold starts to creep over me, which has nothing to do with the night air.
“What am I talking about?. God, Stell, even now, you can’t fucking admit it. I can admit—Ihaveadmitted what a fuck up I was, Iam.But you weren’t fucking innocent either.”
“Riggins, I don’t… I really don’t know what you’re talking about.
I look down at my feet, ashamed to meet her eyes. “I was young, drunk, and I wasalone, Stella. My dad had just died, my mom was gone, I had no one left. I called you, and you picked up, and you told me you couldn’t do it anymore. Then, you hung up.”
