Two months and one week is a long time to be on your own with no one to talk to. I’d started this assignment with a new lease of hope. I’d stupidly believed by writing about him, I could make him come back. Every day I gave you my secrets, I clung to a fantasy that he’d somehow feel me spilling our life story and come back to reprimand me.
But when the due date with Professor Baxter came and went, and I claimed the flu to write a hasty tale of a girl with two parents who weren’t monsters, I shut up all that pain again.
And I suppose you caught my lie, right?
I said I never cried.
And I didn’t.
Unless you count the times I cried while writing this stupid assignment.
Anyway, I don’t have the energy to type anymore today.
These memories are too painful. My tale too familiar.
I’m no longer part of a pair.
I’m singular.
Just Della.
And I have a life that I’m wasting.
A life that Ren gave me.
As much as I hate him for leaving, I can’t destroy what he gave me.
I’m going to move on.
For him.
Even if it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
CHAPTER FOUR
DELLA
* * * * * *
2018
IT’S BEEN ANOTHER three weeks.
Three months since he left, and it hasn’t gotten any easier.
But…I actually have something to write about other than Ren.
To be fair, my life has been pretty mundane since the night Ren walked out the door. I’ve crammed as much as I could into daylight and night-time hours, doing my best to delete Ren piece by piece.
I’ve stopped asking myself ridiculous questions as I fall to sleep in an empty apartment.
I’ve given up trying to find answers I’ll never earn and accept that what I did was unforgivable.
I shouldn’t have kissed him.
I shouldn’t have tried to change us.
I shouldn’t have demanded more.
I’m nothing but numb bones, dazed heart, and paralyzed soul.
Who knows…maybe I’ll always torture myself with that night. Maybe I’ll always feel wretched for hurting him.
I just had to push and push, and when he had nowhere else to go, he did the one thing he was best at. He’d run from the Mclary’s because they were monsters who tortured him; now he’d run from their daughter because she’d hurt him too much to repair.
I have nothing.
Nothing but regret and minutes upon minutes of time to contemplate the What Ifs. The What If I’d let him go to bed and given him a few days to analyse how he felt? The What If I’d just been honest and said, ‘Ren…you know I love you, but what you don’t know is I’m in love with you. Now, before you freak out, it’s nothing to be afraid of and I understand if you don’t feel the same way, but just in case you do…just in case some part of you that feels a tiny spark like I do, then let’s figure it out. We always figure things out—together.’
And he’d say…‘Okay, Della. You’re right. I do love you. Now, get naked.’
And we’d live happily ever after.
That’s the worst kind of torture, isn’t it? The horror where every outcome and scenario delivers a happier one than the life you’re currently living.
But it all comes down to choices.
I chose to sleep with David, and I chose to slug back a few glassfuls of wine to dull the ache of entering womanhood. I chose to embrace my recklessness, strip, and yell at Ren.
I was tipsy and hurt.
And I wish I could take it all back.
But you already know all this, so I’ll stop.
The real reason I wanted to write is…I needed someone.
Summer is well and truly here, and Ren is not, and that’s left me empty to the point where I’ll do anything to fill up the darkness inside me.
I’m ill-equipped for adulthood where I return to an empty apartment every night, the couch still smelling of him, the air still laced with his voice, and the night still warm with his hugs.
The memories nick my heart with their tiny, painful blades—giving me a thousand cuts until I bleed out slowly.
It’s so slow, I don’t even notice I’m dying.
I’ve run my immune system down. And the week after I handed in my assignment, I got sick.
Just a simple flu—karma for lying about being ill—but it knocked me on my butt. I could barely get out of bed from the body aches and fever. I had no food and no way of getting to a doctor without sneezing over some Uber driver.
I stayed in bed for two days, eating dried Ramen noodles because I couldn’t stand up to put the kettle on from shivering so bad, and sipping tepid tap water for my raging sore throat.
In the middle of the second day, I honestly thought I would die, and no one was left to care.