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“What does that,” I whisper then, “mean?”
He takes me in with those once-alert eyes that look tired now.
Tired and shiny.
He takes me in from the top of my head to the bottom of my sheet-covered feet.
Lingering on my bump again.
This time I don’t distract him though. I let him look.
I let him gather strength from it because that’s what it looks like he’s doing.
Then, in a raspy, vulnerable voice, he says, “All my life I thought the worst thing a person can do is leave someone behind. Like my father did. Like my mother did after him. I know it wasn’t in her hands or in her control but it still felt like abandonment. It still felt like being left behind, left alone, discarded. And somewhere along the way, I developed something called abandonment issues.” Then, shrugging, “At least that’s what my therapist calls it. Issues with being left behind, left alone. It’s all very complicated and scientific but… She says that’s where my anger comes from too. This need to always be on the edge, on the defense. My need to keep people away and… That’s what I did with you. In the beginning.”
He pauses and looks me in the eye. “The day you came to my game almost four years ago now, that wasn’t the first time I’d seen you. I’d seen you before. A year before. Sitting on the hood of your brother’s Mustang. You had a pink dress on. You were eating cotton candy, smiling at people, and of course, everyone there noticed you. Everyone on the street. They couldn’t help but notice you, and I was one of them. There was a group of guys there too. Just some annoying teenagers who were…” He clenches his jaw. “Who were checking you out, making crude jokes and all the other crap that guys do, that I’ve done. But for some reason, I wanted to pop their eyes out. For looking at you. I wanted to smash their teeth in for joking and laughing about you. And I… I felt something that I’d only ever felt for my family until then. This grave need to protect. This urgent need to keep you safe and away from all the dangers of the world, all the assholes. It was just instinct, see. I didn’t even know you and yet I wanted to protect you with every fiber of my being, like… Like it was in my blood. Like I was born with it. With this job to protect you, this constant need to look after you. I’m not really sure but I think that’s why I got so… spooked. Of you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, that you could make me feel this way. That you could have so much power over me. That you could make me want things that I didn’t want to want.” He ducks his head then, shaking it. “But of course, we both know how I dealt with that, don’t we? I refused to let you get close to me. I could see that I was hurting you but I refused to do anything about it. I denied that I wanted you. I kept saying to myself that it was revenge, or I was protecting you from myself or that I didn’t have time for anything but soccer or whatever the fuck came to my mind but… I think it was all me. It was my issues. Something that I hadn’t realized up until now. And… Jesus.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “It gets worse. It gets so much worse because when I got tired, fucking exhausted of wanting you and denying myself, I did something drastic. I did something so selfish. I… came to your dorm room. At the first opportunity that I could.”
“But I forgave you,” I cut him off, unable to keep my words in, unable to watch him torture himself for something that I’ve long since moved past. “For that night. I forgave you, Ledger, and I meant it. And I want you —”
“But you don’t know what you’re forgiving me for,” he says.
“What?”
He thrusts his hands inside his pockets, shifting on his feet.
Making me think that he’s preparing for the worst.
That he’s preparing to drop a bomb, not on me, but on himself.
As though he’s a suicide bomber who knows when he presses that button, not only his whole world will burn but he’ll burn with it.
“That night when I came to you,” he says, “revenge wasn’t the only thing on my mind. In fact, after thinking about it for so long and talking it out with my therapist, I don’t think revenge took up even half the real estate on my mind. I thought it did but… Yes, I was angry at what your brother did, but I guess by that point, I cared so little about him and so much about you that revenge might’ve gotten me there. It might’ve been my excuse, but I had a different purpose. A completely different agenda when I came to you, and it was…” A deep breath again followed by a muttered curse. “It was to breed you. For myself. Not your brother.”
