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The urge to explain doesn’t abate as we leave. It only steps aside to be addressed another time…a time that I can feel will be upon me very soon.
Angels don’t belong among festering things.
*
It’s getting worse.
The sorrow.
Twenty-four more hours have crept by and each one has pulled me further and further out of the fury and allowed the sorrow to descend on me, just like the storms that have set up camp around here.
I don’t want to face it. I don’t want to. But I can’t get away from it.
There was…there was somethingbeautifulin my and Rae’s life, and I tore it out. I tore it out because I was afraid of it and now there’s a gaping hole where it was.
So much of what Landon said to me that night has been ringing in my memory over these many days. Currently, it’s his words from dinner that won’t go away:‘People who aren’t able to love properly are the ones who do damage to those around them.’
That’s me.
In trying not to cause damage in one way, I caused it in another.
Rae has grown quieter and quieter. Duller and duller.
The sorrow is taking over her, too.
I’m damagingher.
My refusal to eventryto love Landon properly is damaging her.
And the stupid thing—the stupidest fucking part of this—is that I already sincerely wanted him. He was already right in front of me, even admitting he wanted me, too. It wasn’t one-sided, it wasn’t wrong, it wasn’t complicated. It was right, just like he said. And, actually, I wouldn’t have had totryto love him if I’d just stuck with him, because it would’ve come as naturally as everything else.
Yes, when Rae asked me if it was okay to love him, I didn’t know why it made me feel weird, but now I get it: part of me wondered that, wanted that, was headed for that in a very different way from how she meant it.
He would’ve loved me back.
He said all the little parts of love are what keep relationships standing and then he told me, again and again, thatwecould be in a relationship and stand tall, that we could be together and no one would get hurt.
Becausehe knewhe could love me properly.
Why didn’t I let myself see that, too, before I went and said things I can’t take back? Why didn’t I take a minute to really look at the grown-up, happy, safe part of me and see that man has been exactly what Rae and I need this entire time? Why did I let the dark part of me trample all over the trust I’d built up in him?
I know why.
The darkness was ruling me like cancer rules a healthy body. It didn’t matter that it didn’t take up as much space as the contentment in me because it was more poisonous than I could contain. It twisted its way right through the soft, warm, weightless happiness and through my muscles and out of my mouth and there was—there was justnothingI could do.
At least, I didn’t think there was.
Looking back, I should’ve fought harder. There was no fighting the darkness when I was a kid, but I’m not a kid anymore and Landon wants to be good to me, not take from me. I shouldn’t have loosened my hold on his shirt, shouldn’t have pulled out of his hold on me,shouldhave let him keep saying all those things even if they made the control freak in me feel vulnerable.
But I didn’t fight. I fled. And I didn’t let him help me through my vulnerability. I let it come between us. I freaked out and started setting fire to everything I could reach. The victim in me called the shots like she did after my first nightmare, when Landon tried to care for me and I withdrew—I could only feel fear even though he isn’t fearsome in the least.
I remember thinking on the night of our fight that I had to get away so I could regain my slipped control. And I want to slap myself.
If only I’d trusted his insistence that when it comes to us—usin particular, Liv-Andria and Landon—there would be no shame in letting myself go…. If I’d just trusted him one more time, things would be amazing right now instead of lying in splinters.
I nearly burst into tears right here at the dinner table.
It wouldn’t shock Rae much if I did. This morning when she was supposed to be getting dressed for school, I caught her crying with her fairy wings from Halloween in her little hands.
