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“What do you mean, maybe?” Now she turns her head to face me, and I roll onto my side to face her. Her eyes look hopeful, but there’s also a hint of sadness.
“Just what I said. Get better, and we will see what happens,” I tell her.
“I am better.”
“No, darlin’. You’re not. Somethin’ made you do that, and until you face what that somethin’ is, you’re not gonna get better.”
“What if I can’t face it?”
“You have to. There’s no other way to heal.”
“You talk like you have experience.”
“I do, and I know it’s hard. It’s probably gonna be the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do, but in order to face yourself every day, you have to do it.”
“I don’t think I can,” she whispers. I reach over and brush the hair away from her face and smile at her.
“Yeah, you can. And I’m here to help you. You just have to ask, LaLa.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Of course it is. Whatever it is, you can get past it.”
“What if it’s a person?”
“No person should make you feel like death is the only way out. They don’t get to hold that kind of power over you.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve been there before,” I admit to her. I don’t want to, but maybe that’s what she needs to open up to me. Maybe she needs a little of my truth to see I’m not the bad guy here.
“You tried to kill yourself?”
“It’s a long story,” I tell her. She raises her hand, the chain hanging from her wrist.
“I’m not going anywhere.” There it is. The fire I see in her. She hasn’t let that fire burn out, which means there’s hope. There’s a chance she can get past this and live her life.
“There was a girl in my life once. She meant a lot to me. But things were hard back then. Life wasn’t as easy as it is now. Fuck I shouldn’t be tellin’ you this,” I say under my breath. I shouldn’t tell her my story or look at her like she’s my redemption, but I feel it. I can fucking feel it inside of me. She needs me.
“Why not?”
“It’s personal, and I haven’t told anyone about this. Not even my brothers,” I admit.
“Please.” That one word. I remember that word. I remember how she said it, the way she looked at me with pleading eyes. How did I end up there? At that place? How did I end up where I did?
“We were young. Stupid. Bethany was the girl I couldn’t have until I had her. Her parents hated me. They hated that she liked me. They hated our relationship and that Bethany would always run to me with her problems and not them. I got it, I understood, but what could I do, yeah? I couldn’t push her away. The girl had so many demons locked away inside her,” I say, shaking my head a little. I hate remembering this. I hate going back to that place. I haven’t been there in so long.
“You loved her,” LaLa murmurs.
“Yeah. I did. She made me feel special, whole. But her parents were relentless in tryin’ to keep us apart. They would do anything they could to make it happen. One night Bethany came to me with a plan for us to be together. She had two bottles of pills in her bag. One for me and one for her.”
“Oh, my God.”
“I wasn’t thinkin’ straight. I knew I couldn’t lose her. I knew I didn’t want to. She was everything to me. So when she said we could be together forever, I believed her. We took our bottles and swallowed the pills. It took a little while for them to kick in, and we just laid there, holdin’ each other as tightly as we could.”
“She died,” she says, tears falling down her cheeks.
“I woke up in the hospital. I was in a panic. They knew what we’d done. Someone had found us. They ruined our fuckin’ plans, but when I looked over, it wasn’t Bethany I saw. It was a cop. He told me she didn’t make it. That she overdosed, and they couldn’t bring her back.”
