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Her face contorts into anguish. “No. Ronan, I meant what I said. I don’t want your money. It was never about that.”
“Then what was it about?” My voice is a cold, emotionless void…exactly how I’m feeling inside.
“I just wanted to know who you were. She left your name on this account for me, but all I knew about you was that you spent time with her. I didn’t know you loved each other…until you told me. I had no idea why you left me so much money.”
Something in me cracks. A splinter in the shield around my heart.
Everything with Daisy has been…a lie.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why couldn’t you just ask me?”
“I don’t know. Ronan, you were all I had left of my mother. I think deep down I was afraid that if I asked you, and you didn’t remember her, it would hurt. Or that she meant nothing to you.”
“I loved her,” I snap, my hand slamming against the table.
Daisy flinches, more tears cascading over her cheeks.
And every memory of what I’ve done with Daisy, what I’ve done withShannon’sdaughter, comes flooding back to my mind and I keel over, my head in my hands.
“Please get out,” I mutter.
Daisy sobs again. “This changes nothing for me.” Her voice is so small and sad.
“It changeseverythingfor me,” I reply, leveling my gaze on her face. And I watch as those words hit her, their meaning heavy and harmful. The proposal. The promises. The way I felt for her…gone.
She sucks air into her shaking chest as she steps backward toward the door. Before disappearing, she pauses and wipes her face. “You promised you would never hurt me,” she says with a whimper. “This hurts, Ronan.”
I don’t respond. I don’t even look up. Staring down at the floor, my elbows on my knees and my body folded inward like I’ve been shot, I sit in silence as she leaves.
The sound of the front door slamming moments later rings through my ears, echoing with the same pain it inflicted nine years ago.
RULE #36: YOU CAN’T APPRECIATE HAPPINESS IF YOU DON’T KNOW PAIN
Daisy
What did I expect? A fairy tale? I wanted my life to be poetic, and I feel like an idiot now for ever dreaming that it could be anything more than cruel and lonely. Life isn’t poetic. It’s unfair, ruthless. Nothing more than a fight for survival in a bleak, brutal existence. It takes but never gives.
Life is nothing but a series of days in which you work, grieve, sleep, and eventually die. Alone.
I’m being dramatically morose, but considering I’m lying on my thin foam mattress, parked in the same city parking lot I was in when Ronan found me, I’m allowed to be morose right now.
I had my chance to come clean to Ronan, and maybe if I had done it early on like I was supposed to, then we’d still be together. We could have worked it out. Maybe.
Or maybe not. It’s obvious he’s still hung up on my mother. He clearly loved her for real. Not some short-lived fascination like it was with me. And now not only is he coming to terms with my lies, he’s also grieving her death.
I’ve fucked up. Iama fuckup.
But who cares? It’s better this way. With Ronan, I had something to lose. Happiness is dangerous. The more you have, the more that’s at stake. The higher you feel, the further you fall. I was happy before. I should know better. Just before my mother was diagnosed, I was happy. My future felt bright. An acceptance letter to the music school of my dreams. A beautiful, poetic life like I always dreamed.
But that was ripped away too, by a long, painful battle. There was nothing beautiful about that. Orange pill bottles and sterile hospital rooms and the incessant beeping of those machines. The blue vinyl chair she would sit in while they filled her blood stream with poison, in hopes that it would kill the thing killing her. Daytime talk shows droning on in the background with people smiling and winning cars and trips, plagued with happiness that we would never feel. My mother would never feel that sort of elation ever again.
Because life is unfair.
Her last days feel closer now than they did before. The way her body withered away as fast as her mind did. Watching her organs shut down slowly, drugging her to the point where she lived her last days in an inebriated haze of confusion.
Those final moments soaked my existence, turning even the sunshine gray and filtered with sadness, so every day that existed thereafter felt tainted—until him. Until Paris and pianos. Until private jets and pleasure so palpable, I choked on it. I was blinded by that happiness. I was blinded byhim.
But the sunshine is gray again, because I was a fool who fell into life’s little trap. I made the mistake of feeling an ounce of bliss, because what is joy if we don’t know the opposite? If I had never felt the overwhelming rush of anguish, joy would be flat and pointless.
