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I stare over at him. “What?”
He presses his hands into his eyes and then looks up at me.
“I don’t trust you, Magnolia.” He shrugs. “It’s not just about you and you being able to trust me —which you don’t, by the way. Obviously. It’s about me and how I don’t trust you either.”
I blink a few times and I feel a tiny bit like he slapped me.
“You left,” he says with his chin. “You said you loved me, you said you forgave me, we said that was it — that was it for me, I was all in, done. Game over. Done fucking around, done playing the games, all the bullshit with the girls and the parties and the drugs, I was done with it and then you left—” He stares over at me with sore eyes.
I cross my arms over my chest, feeling attacked. “Because I couldn’t look at you when I found out the whole truth.”
“I know, Parks.” He shakes his head. “I get it. I get why you left, but when I said that it was it for me, I meant it. And I thought you meant it too.” He shrugs — his eyes look wet and I wish I could reach out for him, but I don’t know what we are. “But you left.”
He looks so sad. So sad. The kind where it crushes me to think that I caused it, and it occurs to me for the first time ever that there are two betrayed people in this room.
He bites down on his bottom lip. “You’re not the only one here whose trust has been broken, Magnolia.”
My feeling sad for him is overtaken by the indignation in my chest that he thinks what he did and what I did are comparable, and so even though I want to hold his face in my hands and kiss it, I don’t. I stare at him instead.
“It’s not the same.”
“No, you know what—” He gives me a look I don’t like. “It’s not the same, Parks. I reckon what you did is worse. Because I fucked Paili once. And you’ve dated my best friend, you dated my favourite skater, dated my fucking childhood hero, and then, to round it out, you dated my nemesis.”
“He’s not your nemesis,” I tell him. I don’t know why.
His eyes pinch at me. “You’re the worst, Parks.” My face falls. “And I love you — and I will always love you — but fuck you for that.” He shakes his head at me. “And I don’t trust you for shit.”
I think he regrets saying it the second it’s out of his mouth. It flashes over him, this realisation that the shot he took made contact. I feel myself breathing. That’s never a good sign. I don’t feel it because I’m mindful, I feel it because I’m losing control of it.
“Parks—” He reaches for me, frowning.
I push past him. “Don’t touch me.”
He grabs me by the wrist and I shove him off.
“I said don’t touch me—” I glare over at him.
His eyes are raw and I pray to god that these are just the teething issues of learning to trust each other again.
He lets out this breath that’s too sad and too heavy for me not to sniff at.
I wipe my own eyes because there’s no way in hell I’m letting him touch me.
He doesn’t look away from me and I can see in the sky of his eyes a little plane fly by with a banner trailing behind it that reads, “I’M SORRY, FORGIVE ME.”
I write in the sand of the desert between us that I am too and I miss him already. As I step towards the door, I wonder how far we’ll get this time before we feel our way back around the darkness of everything back to each other.
It’s further than I thought, because I turn to leave and he lets me.
