Page 90 of Intoxicated
Grandma’s barely regained her bearings when she looks at me again. Magically, the girls in their pen have stopped screaming. My grandmother has that effect on living creatures. “You don’t want to know what I said to her. But one moment everything’s hunky-dory, and the next… she slaps me and runs off. Blocked me on every device and won’t answer her door.” I only tried once, but I tried. “We’ve had some ups and downs since we met. I think it’s for real this time.”
She looks askance at me. “Real what? Real breakup, or real love?”
I hesitantly meet her gaze.
“I always knew that the only woman who could steal your heart was one who saw straight through your bullcrap. How many girls have you been with? No, don’t tell me. All I need to know is their caliber of character. Ain’t great, I bet.”
“If you want to go that route, I can easily say that Cher has the worst character of them all.” I’m not lying, depending on your parameters.
“Bad enough character that you felt the need to insult her?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Then what the hell was it?”
For being the easiest person for me to talk to about this, my grandmother is also the roughest. She’s a lot like Cher. See’s straight through my shit and clocks me for who I really am. We can say the same thing about me toward her, though. I see through her shit. I see enough, yet somehow it only makes me love her more.
But just because she knows you so well, doesn’t mean you can easily subject yourself to her hard truths and harsh criticisms.
Gradually, as we watch the sun hide behind a few fluffy white clouds, I open up what I dare to my grandma.
I still don’t tell her about my line of work, but I do tell her that I met Cher under false pretenses. Actually, the same went for her toward me. We were playing games with one another. We built a shaky foundation on a bed of lies. She tried to grift me, and I tried to use her. Somehow, we came to a mutual understanding of what we were doing and how we felt about it. We still had chemistry, though. Crazy enough chemistry that turned into a toxic adhesive. The more I inhaled her, though, the move I fell in love. I guess it didn’t go the other way around.
“If I hadn’t insulted her then, it would’ve been something else,” I say. “Something would have made us implode. Guess it’s for the best that it happened as early as it did.”
My grandmother shakes her head. “You’re giving up that easily? You really are your father’s line. Bunch of cowards, you Bentons.”
“I know when it’s hopeless, Gram. Why would I subject myself to more misery?”
“Sometimes you have to know true misery before you know true happiness.”
I mull over those words. Still not convinced she’s right.
“Maybe you do go after her again. Not right now, though,” Grandma continues. “You’ve gotta prove to her that you’re not the man she thinks you are. You have to be better than the best she’s seen in you yet. You have to make amends for what you said to her, and you’ve gotta keep groveling, if you want her back.”
That’s the thing, isn’t it? I’m not sure I want Cherback.I tell my grandmother as much, and she laughs like she’s seen the future already.
“You want her back,” she says. “You wouldn’t be here moping on my back porch for the first time ever if you didn’t want her back.”
She’s right, huh? I wouldn’t have come running to my grandmother if I didn’t know she’d say exactly what I needed to hear. It’s probably not the best time to decide what I’m going to do. Cher was hurt enough she’ll need a little time to cool off. In the meantime, I’ll figure out what I’m doing. With my life. Withours.
No, I won’t back down. Not from the only woman who is my true match. At the very least, I won’t die wonderingwhat if.Perhaps that will finally be the thing to break me from my old, toxic habits.
That’s a lot of pressure to put on one woman. Or myself.
But I’ll do it.
