Page 85 of Glitterland
But didn’t I, too, have a right to try?
I could tell him I had spoken out of selfishness and cowardice. I could tell him I was sorry. I could tell him he was the only thing in the world I wanted. I could cast myself at his feet, like the spoils of love and war, and ask nothing in return. And give him, at last, the choice I’d denied him in Cambridge: to have me, worthless as I was, or to reject me.
It was what he deserved, and I would have to find the strength to bear the answer.
Ignorance was a fool’s shield. Living without knowing was almost as miserable as living without Darian.
Tomorrow, then, tomorrow I would go to Essex. And find the man who had not turned from the worst of me until I had cast him aside.
***
Tomorrow
I did not go to Essex.
***
Evening
I picked up my graduation photo, the one Darian had thought so unlike me.
Looking into the unmoving, unblinking eyes of a boy with everything, and everything to lose, I realised I had become a stranger to myself. I had envied that boy, with all his hopes and dreams, his pride, his self-respect, and his glowing future. I had wanted to be him again and thought myself less than he was.
Perhaps I am.
But, though he was admirable and admired, nobody had ever looked at him with wide grey-green-blue eyes and said he was amazin’.
I could not be that scarless, fearless boy again. But, for a little while at least, I had been someone I could almost stand. Pieces of a better self, reflected in someone else’s eyes.
The photograph crashed against the wall, shards of glass strewing the floor in malicious, twinkling diamonds.
***
Night
Sleepless, of course, infinite scenarios scrolling behind my eyes like a cinema of self-destruction.
The problem with admitting the value of anything was the pain that followed its loss.
And I was still lying, the strata of my self-deceptions so deep and intricate, even I sometimes lacked the power to see through them.
The truth then, stark in the bleak hours after midnight. It would have been noble to cast myself at Darian’s feet and ask for nothing in return. But I wanted everything.
Everything. Whether I deserved it or not.
Once, I’d lived a life full of wanting and, like anyone else, I’d taken it for granted.
But, in time, depression had flayed it from me, the wanting, the everyday hopes and dreams, and all the little desires. They became too dangerous to keep, too fragile to survive, and my bitter, barren soul could nurture no new ones. I’d kept only compromises, the shadows of old passions, things I just about learned to preserve.
Today is a day in which I will not want to die.
Today is a day in which I will want to get out of bed.
My writing, my few remaining friends, the harsh, meaningless sex I sought with strangers: these were safe to want, and I knew they would not be taken from me.
But a lover? I was so very afraid of Darian—the unsought miracle—and almost relieved to have driven him away. Yet the wanting remained, like the memory of his hands on my skin.
I wanted Darian. With a pure, deep certainty, the first I had known for a very long time.
