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Chapter Sixteen
Amelia followed him into the large stall and they cleaned up in silence. Getting out first, Leo wrapped a towel around his waist and raked his fingers through his hair. He leaned against the counter and handed Amelia two towels when she was done.
She smiled sadly. “You remembered.”
“I’ve never forgotten a single thing about you, Amelia. It’s a blessing and a curse.”
Returning to his bedroom, he sat on the edge of the bed. She lowered to the mattress beside him. Leo took her hand and held it between both of his.
“You never should have left, Amelia. We would have helped each other heal from every part of that nightmare. I needed you as much as you needed me.” He shook his head. “You left me in limbo for eight years. As if all that we shared, all that we knew about one another didn’t matter. It mattered. It was everything to me...and you just walked away.”
“I can’t take it back, Leo.”
“Would you?” he asked softly. “Would you take it back if you could?”
“Knowing what I know now? Perhaps. If I landed back in that time again - those first three months of trauma, loss, and shock - without the benefit of hindsight, I would do it again. I’d leave you because I was certain at the time that you’d be better off without me.” She met his eyes. “Or I would have made sure I killed myself during my first attempt.”
“Amelia…”
“It’s hard to explain. Almost impossible to verbalize what was happening in my mind.” She stared at the back of his hand as tears fell to her lap. “I was so fucked up.”
The silence drew out and he watched her profile. “I want to understand. I didn’t then or all the time since but I want to.”
She sighed heavily. “At eighteen years old, I was unnaturally shoved into menopause overnight. I-I didn’t know that for a long time. It didn’t register, you know? What teenager thinks about something that usually happens in your fifties? I was in a lot of physical pain, dealing with symptoms I couldn’t handle, that wouldn’t stop, and all over the damn place emotionally. I felt completely out of control.”
Swallowing hard, she moved the towel aside and showed him her upper thigh. About a dozen or so pale lines were stacked in a perfect pattern. Each was the same thickness, the same length, precisely the same distance apart. They looked like they’d been reopened several times.
Realizing what they were, he lifted his eyes to hers. Speaking past a painful lump in his throat, he asked, “You cut yourself?”
“I found something that gave me control. I’m not telling you to make you feel bad or get some sort of pass, Leo. I’m telling you because I was not in my right mind for the first few years I was gone. I ended up in psych wards...and rehab.” Taking a deep breath, she added, “I got your first email when I got out of rehab the second time. Seeing your name filled me with so much shame. I-I swore to myself that I’d get my shit together.”
Amelia stared across the room at nothing.
“I was doing better. I thought I had it handled. I went out to get groceries and...there was a woman coming out of the store with her baby. She kind of looked like me but really put together. Probably a professional with a husband at home, pretty house, maybe a dog. I had trouble regulating my emotions and...I slid right back to the bottom.”
“I’m sorry, Amelia.”
“My third time in rehab was the charm. That’s when one of the doctors realized I was self-medicating partially to balance a massive hormone problem I didn’t know I had.” She shrugged. “I’d been out for six months when you contacted me about Dad. I was still a mess. Hyper-emotional, barely sleeping. The first hormone therapy made me gain a lot of weight, fucked up my skin, and my hair was falling out. I felt better in many ways but not myself. I wanted to see you but...I didn’t want you to see me.”
“I wouldn’t have cared, Amelia.”
“I cared. When you spend the majority of your life being told that beauty is all that matters, it affects you.” After a pause, she told him. “I saw a couple of people we went to high school with.” With a half-smile, she said, “Everyone thought I’d been back a few months before when they saw you with someone who could have been my twin.” She laughed. “From high school...not the way I looked then.”
“Fuck…”
“Your mom told me about Delilah. She sounds amazing.”
“She is. I was at her wedding when Mom called.”
“I didn’t expect you to be celibate and I wasn’t either. I hate that I wasn’t now but at the time, I was looking for anything that would stop the screaming in my brain.”
Staring into his eyes, she told him softly, “I knew I messed up when I got off the plane in Seattle. I knew I messed up over and over again but I didn’t come back because I meant it when I said I was a cancer in your life, Leo. The chaos in my life spread and spread through yours...”
“That’s not…”
“Don’t fool yourself. The day my mother all but demanded you tutor me, you agreed because she humiliated me with her behavior.”
“I agreed because I’d had a crush on you for two years.” Her laughter made him smile. “I was fourteen. Not like other fourteen-year-olds in many ways but...still a boy.”
