Asher opened his mouth to protest. I put my finger over his lips.
“Don’t tell me you’ll never leave or any of that romance novel stuff,” I requested softly. “This is real life. Shit happens. Stuff you have no control over. You can’t make promises about that kind of stuff….” I paused, thinking of my best friend lying in a hospital bed, of her injecting herself with poison to escape the world I hadn’t even known was wearing her down. “Even if it is some kind of fairytale ending and we ride off into the sunset together, what’s beyond that? What happens after that? I can’t attach everything I am to you because I have to know who I am in order to be with you. I have to be whole myself.”
It was the truth. The inevitable truth that I had to acknowledge. The fact my responsibility to Bex made it pertinent for this truth to come out now was of little consequence. It needed to happen. I needed to be real.
Asher’s beautiful rugged face searched mine, his jaw turning hard. “You’re not going to change your mind,” he declared flatly.
I shook my head slowly, battling the tears that came with it.
Asher sighed, his entire frame tightening. “You’re so fuckin’ convinced shit’s gonna turn this sour you can’t see what’s right in front of you.” His hand tightened on my neck. “That I’d do everything in my power to make sure what’s beyond that horizon is just as beautiful as you deserve, and that I’ll be there as long as my body is taking breaths,” he murmured. “You’re so convinced that you’re some stranger to yourself, you don’t know how you’d see yourself if you just opened your eyes. Looked at yourself through my eyes. Through the eyes of your friend who’d die for you. Maybe then you’d see that you can’t search for anyone better than who you are, ‘cause that person doesn’t exist.” He didn’t wait for the sounds of my heart breaking at his words, he pressed his mouth firmly to mine. Then he was gone.
It was that best friend that would die for me that stopped me from chasing him. From stopping him. Instead, I sank down against the floor and surrendered to the big sad that engulfed me as soon as Asher’s presence stopped chasing it away.
I sat a steaming mug in front of Bex. She stared at it vacantly and silently. She’d been silent the entire ride back from the hospital, the silence saying everything and nothing at once. She didn’t look like herself. Her face was pale, the sprinkling of freckles on her small nose usually covered by makeup were even more prominent on her naked face, making her look like a child. Vulnerable. The vibrancy, the presence she usually brought wherever she went, seemed extinguished.
I sat across from her, cradling my own cup. “When did it start?” I asked, my words seeming to echo in the quiet room.
She contemplated the cup for a second before her empty eyes moved to mine.”
“Six months ago,” she replied quietly, shame in her usually boisterous voice. “First, it was pills, to help keep me energized. Keep me up. Then….” she trailed off.
I sank back. Six months. I’d been blind for six months. “Why?” I choked out.
A spark seemed to flicker in those lifeless eyes. “Why?” she repeated.
“Why did you do that to yourself?” I asked.
The spark that seemed to only flicker before fully ignited. “Why do I do it to myself, Lily? Why I didn’t do it a fuck of a lot sooner is the better question,” she snapped. “My life is a steaming pile of shit. Since I was born, I’ve been covered with filth. Parents that abandoned me like trash. Foster parents that in the best case, ignored me for a paycheck and worst case, came into my room late at night until I was old enough to fight them off.” Her voice was broken. “Living a life where no one cares, no one gives a shit about you apart from what they can take from you. Your childhood for a paycheck, your innocence for some fucked up perversion. I would lie in bed and promise myself that there’d be a better tomorrow. That I’d be better than the filth that clung to me, that was me.”
Her tearstained eyes met mine. “And somehow I did it. Tricked the world into thinking that filth was gone, even though it still seeped into my bones. I got myself out with a scholarship. Somehow a fucked up childhood may have invariably damaged my soul, but it didn’t hinder my ability to do well in tests.”
She laughed without humor and it was an ugly sound. “Then it came back, the filth. The truth of who I was. I realized it would never leave, that I’d never live the life I dreamed of.” She shrugged. “Why delay the inevitable. I traded textbooks for the pole, sold my body. The inside was so damaged I’d never get anything out of it, but my outside was worth something.”