The times before they had taken him out of the room.
That’s when I realized a cage isn’t protection.
I’m not safe here.
Not when they can come in and do those awful things that hurt me so badly.
Are the lions in cages at the zoo to protect them? Or to protect us?
Or are they just slaves, being used?
Things instead of beings.
I know one thing.
If I ever get out of here, I’ll never go to a zoo again.
Callie’s lips tremble. Her eyes glaze over with a transparent sheen.
I wait for her to say something. Anything.
But she stays silent.
“I love you,” I say.
She meets my gaze then, and a tear slides out of her right eye. “Then why do you want me to leave you?”
“Damn it, Callie, I don’t want you to leave. I’m giving you a choice. An out. My life has suddenly become an unbearable mess, and I don’t want to drag you into it.”
“What if I want to get dragged into it?”
“Then… I guess that’s your choice.”
“Is it? My choice? The fact that you even gave me this choice means that you don’t feel the way I do. You’re not willing to walk through fire for this.”
Fire. The fact that she chose that particular word isn’t lost on me. Fire destroyed her chance for law school, but I have no doubt she’d face the highest flames in the world for me, as I would for her.
“That’s not true. I want you more than anything. I’m giving you an—”
She stands then with such force that she knocks her margarita over, and it spills onto the table, leaving a lime-green splotch on the stark white fabric of the tablecloth. “I reject your choice. You want to get rid of me? You’re going to have to tell me to leave.”
“I…”
“Do it, Donny. If you want to get rid of me, then get rid of me.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too, damn it. And I don’t care that your life is in the toilet right now. I’ll do anything I can to help.”
“Callie…”
“Would it help,” she says, “if I tell you what’s going on with me?”
“I already said, if you don’t want to—”
“I do want to. And you know what? Once you hear what I did, you may no longer give me the choice. You may choose to end things.”
Already I know she’s wrong. Short of murder, I don’t think there’s anything she could have ever done that would get rid of me. That would make me feel any differently about her.