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My father turned me into a monster and now she knows exactly what kind of monster I am.
I didn’t realize just how desperately I needed to get that off my chest. All this time I thought I was protecting her when in reality, she was the one protecting me by knowing exactly what I needed. She’s always known and I wasted years of my life not letting her in.
I’ve been such a fucking fool. I’ve always listened to every word she’s said, but when it came to my past, I never actually heard her. Her questions fell on deaf ears and I was determined to avoid it at all costs. Sometimes; I went as far as being an ass about it, but she always stood right by my side, always standing tall.
We make our way up to her apartment and it seems as though it takes forever for Tully to get the door unlocked. The bag of take out is dropped on the coffee table as Tully walks straight through to her kitchen and digs the tub of ice cream out of her freezer.
Without another word, she slinks down the hallway to her bedroom and I follow behind, leaving the already cold food to sit on the coffee table, completely forgotten and disregarded.
We must have been sitting in the car longer than I had thought because the massive clock up on her wall is telling me that it’s nearly seven in the evening. There’s still daylight coming in through the windows, but over the next hour or so, it’s going to drain away and something tells me that she wants nothing more than to close the book on today.
Tully pushes into her room and walks straight over to her bed before pulling off her work clothes replacing them with a pair of tiny sleep shorts and a tank. She’s never been uncomfortable stripping off before me and I can’t help but roam my eyes over her body. It’s still the perfection it was four years ago, only now she’s grown into more of a woman, and fuck me, it’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.
She slips under the blankets and sits up against the headboard and without hesitation, I step out of my shoes and climb in right beside her, just as we’ve done a million times before.
I pull her into my arms and scoot down in her bed getting comfortable. Her body relaxes against mine and her head falls against my shoulder as she works on opening the tub of ice cream. The second it’s opened; she can’t resist scooping a mouthful into her mouth and holding the spoon between her lips as she reaches for her Netflix remote. Clearly, she has this all down to a fine art.
The TV is put on, but it’s as though she doesn’t have it within her to go searching for what to watch as her hand falls back to the bed with the screen remaining on the Netflix home page.
She stares at it as a deep sigh pulls from within her and I squeeze her waist. “Are you ok?”
She shrugs her shoulders and it’s clear her mind is still plagued by what I told her. “Can you just…stay until I fall asleep?”
My head dips and I press a kiss to her temple. “There isn’t anywhere I’d rather be.”
Tully relaxes just that bit more and we fall into silence, her still staring at the television screen while I stare down at her, re-learning all the lines of her face and taking in all the subtle changes.
She has a few more freckles over her shoulders and a hint of a tattoo peeking out from behind her tank on her back that has me desperate to peel back the material and see what she’s got going on back there. But now’s really not the time…
Fuck it.
My curiosity gets the best of me and I can’t stop myself from reaching across and brushing my fingers down her skin until they’re pushing back the fabric of her tank to expose the words tattooed on her skin.
Tully sucks in a sharp gasp as I read over the words and it’s almost as though she’d forgotten all about the ink on her back.
This isn’t goodbye.
My heart races as my fingers still on her skin. They’re the final words in the letter I sent to Tully four years ago, forever on her skin, tattooed in my shitty handwriting. I did everything that I could to make her feel better about our situation. I told her to move on, I told her to find someone else and to be happy. But then I went and told her ‘this isn’t goodbye’ in my selfish need for her to hold onto me. Hold onto us.
I gave her hope when I knew I wasn’t coming home and that’s something I’ve always regretted. Maybe if I let her know straight up that I wasn’t coming home, she would have found happiness without me. I can’t even begin to imagine the amount of pain and confusion that letter must have caused and I hate myself for doing that to her.
