Page 93 of Glitterland
“Um. What? I’ve sort of finished.”
“Babes, you ’aven’t finished, and I’ve been waiting for this all my life.”
I coughed. “You’ve been waiting all your life for a bipolar depressive to completely fuck up his relationship with you, and then take the best part of half a year to tell you he’s sorry?”
“I could’ve done wifout that bit, fanks. But I do wanna know I wasn’t just being stupid all that time for finking you was into me.”
Oh God. I finally understood what he wanted. He wanted to actually hear the words. And, until he did, all my apologies and explanations weren’t worth a damn to him. It was an absurd situation, as usual, but I shouldn’t have been surprised to find myself in it. Pirates only really belonged in fairy tales anyway.
“Darian,” I said, “Roland Barthes argued that a phrase as commonly used as the one I think we’re discussing is essentially a meaningless signifier.”
He blinked. “Right?”
“A linguistic feint, a formula stripped of ritual, neither a thing uttered nor an utterance itself. In short, as a statement, it’s without value, and as a promise, it’s without depth.”
“Babes?”
“Yes?”
“I know you really like this Barfs geeza, but I’m telling you, as like a favour from me to you, this really ain’t the time.”
“But—”
“It don’t have to be foreva or nuffin. It just ’as to be like possible, janarwhatamean?”
I twisted my fingers together, my nails pressing rictus grins into my flesh. “Why? Why does it even matter?”
Darian stepped back across the space between us. He reached out and gently caught up my hands, holding them between us as though in prayer. I certainly felt enough like a supplicant. His palms glided across my skin until they pushed back my cuffs and encircled my wrists, my twin scars.
There was no reason why it should have, but it calmed me, like the weight of his body covering mine. Mindless, I made a soft noise into the silence, and I heard Darian’s breath catch in his throat. Somehow, all the distance was gone, our bodies pressing together on either side of my trapped hands. “Cos it does. It matters to me. If you really fink you feel somefing like that for me, even after everyfing what’s ’appened, then I wanna hear it.”
“Fine.” I tried to sound grudging, but it was impossible. Darian believed me. He was close to me. He was touching me.
“But only if you mean it.”
I closed my eyes, thinking of nothing but the warmth of his hands. The glitter on his nails danced in my darkness like dust motes. “How can I know if I mean it?”
“Cos you’ll know.”
“I do know,” I whispered, “that you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” I opened my eyes again and there was Darian, waiting for me, through my evasions and hesitations, just as he’d waited one long night in Cambridge. Except, this time, I would not fail him. I would deserve him, somehow. “Whatever you decide, I need you to know that.”
He nodded. “Ahwight.”
His hands were so warm. I never wanted him to take them away, but there was nothing I could do to hold him there, except hope and trust he would stay. “And I need you to know that if you send me away, I’ll go, and I’ll be fine. I’ll be sad, but I’ll be fine. I’ll live and I’ll write and I’ll miss you and think about you, and, truthfully, I’ll probably wank over you, and I’ll be depressed sometimes and mad sometimes, but you won’t have to worry because I’ll be fine. I never used to believe it, but I know it now.”
He dipped his head to kiss my trembling fingers, and the scent of his hair gel rushed over me, so familiar I might have cried had I not done enough of it today to last me the rest of my life. “I know you will, babes.”
“But I don’t want to be alone anymore. I want to be with you, if you still want to be with me. If you can still find something worth wanting.” I fought to sound normal but my every breath felt like a shudder. I could have stopped there, perhaps I should have, but I’d promised him everything. Even the ugliness. Even the truth. “Darian, I’m still mentally ill. I’ll always be mentally ill. I have bad days and good days and very very bad days. Maybe you won’t be able handle it—”
He silenced me with the lightest of kisses. “That’s up to me, babes.”
I shuddered on the sweetness of it, yet still afraid. “Okay.”
“We can figure it aht.”
“Okay.”
His thumbs were tucked against my palms and I wrapped my fingers over them, squeezing tightly, knowing at last how to say what I had to say. “I’m not here because I’m broken. I’m here because I’m whole. Difficult, potentially undeserving, but whole. And I don’t need you, I just want you. I want you”—my voice had gone embarrassingly husky—“so fucking much. And—” Another breath, another breath. “—maybe I love you. Or could love you. Or might love you. Or may come to love you.” There was a dizzy rushing in my brain, as though I was about to faint or have a nosebleed. “Or whatever.”
