Page 66 of Glitterland
I took in a deep, slow breath, willing myself to calm, to honesty, to courage. In short, all the things I didn’t have. If he left now, it would be my choice. If he left later, it would be his, and I would be helpless. And hurt. “Darian, I tried to kill myself. Niall left me in the middle of a major depression, and I tried to kill myself.” He was silent, so I went on. “He felt guilty and came back to apologise and found me.”
“Must’ve been well ’ard for bof of you.”
“Yes, death is so very ugly. They don’t tell you that. But it is.”
I remembered little. I had already been sinking, sunk. And Niall’s departure had been inevitable. Even welcomed, because he’d taken with him the last reason to keep struggling. Finally, the freedom to do something for me, only for me. My last and greatest gift: I could make it stop. I had lacked the foresight for pills. Or the courage to leap in front of a train or off a building. But, clutching a knife from the kitchen, I had felt—for the briefest of brief moments—a shining, perfect euphoria. Lost, of course, in the undignified mess that followed. And how could I forgive Niall? I hated him for every day that’s hard to live.
I searched Darian’s eyes for horror and condemnation, and found none. But then, I’d seen his portfolio. He was a model, the master of his face.
“That may well be you someday,” I said.
He nodded slowly. “I guess I’ll ’ave to see abaht it then.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you? How can you care for me when I’ve always got one foot out the door?”
“I dunno. Look, babes, I know you fink I’m a bit shallow and I prob’ly am to be ’onest wif you, but I don’t fink it’s going to be easy, and I don’t fink it’s always gonna be awhight. But even if it ain’t always awhight, that’s awhight as well, cos sometimes fings just ain’t, and that’s ’ow they are. And I defo fink there ain’t no point worrying abaht stuff that might nevva ’appen.”
“Oh, God,” I groaned. “Yoda’s back.”
“Yeah.” His fingers whispered against the side of my face in the dark until I lifted my head. He tugged me into a kiss. The angle was awkward and his mouth tasted of sleep but I didn’t care. I could have fallen into it, a sailor abandoning himself to the waves, just like in Brighton, but Darian wasn’t a stranger anymore. I couldn’t use him like that again, not when his kisses were full of promises he couldn’t keep. Not with me.
I pulled away on a sigh of sheer physical need. “I’m a terrible risk to take with your happiness.”
“I dunno,” he said. “I mean, sadness is just a fing what ’appens. And sometimes people just ’ave to go, y’know.” He shrugged. “I’m sorry fings was so bad, babes. But there ain’t no point wishing you was different, cos then you wouldn’t be you.”
“No,” I whispered. “I’d be better. I wish I’d met you before it all went wrong.”
“I don’t fink you would’ve liked me back then.”
“Do you really believe I have to be the ruin of myself to like you?”
“Naw. I just fink it’s what’s now what matters. Anyway,” he added, before I could respond to that piece of Hallmark wisdom with the contempt it deserved, “you gonna show me or what?”
“Show you what?”
His upper arm nudged against mine. “What you done.”
There was a long silence. I was glaring at him, but he probably couldn’t see it. I wondered if this was the instinctive, prurient curiosity that made people stare at car crashes. But, perhaps, just perhaps, I wanted to believe him. That, even if it wasn’t all right, it would be all right. (What did that even mean? Was he some kind of idiot savant? Or just a man who genuinely didn’t fear the pain of liking me?) But maybe the stark truth, written on my skin, would change his mind.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Fine.”
I uncoiled myself, leaned over, and flicked on the bedside lamp. Darian winced in the dazzle, blinking and rubbing his eyes like a child in a picture book.
I thrust out my arms, hands turned palm up, so he could see the long, white fishbone of scar and stitching that ran from my right wrist almost to the elbow, and its shorter, jagged sibling on the left. “Ugly enough for you? Or do you want the rest as well?”
He took my hands in his, holding me outstretched. Shudderingly exposed. “I don’t fink it’s ugly. It’s just there.”
“I hate that it’s there.”
“Why, babes?”
“Well, not even managing to kill yourself properly is a bit of competence nadir, don’t you think?”
“I dunno, I reckon it’s pretty ’ard. I mean, being alive is like a…whatjamcallit…like blinking, y’know, just summin you do wifout ’aving to fink about it.”
I shook my head. “For most people, perhaps. For me it’s a daily commitment I sometimes don’t feel like making. But I hate that I tried. And I hate that I failed. This doesn’t represent some beautiful moment in which I chose life. It’s a fuckup, pure and simple. If it was up to me, I wouldn’t be here.”
His eyes held mine. In the circle of light from my lamp, they were greenish-blue, like looking at the sky when you’re swimming underwater. “That true, babes?”
