Page 12 of Carver
It would kill me if she left, but trying to keep her and watching her light grow darker and darker until it fades out completely—how could I do that?
I encouraged her to leave once. To go to college in Seattle. She’s so smart she’d be wasted in a small town.
Bronte went, but she called me every single day. She drove home to see her family whenever she could, and she included me in that. I spent holidays over there with them. Summers were ours alone before she went back to Seattle. Four years later, she was back with a business degree, vowing she’d never leave again.
I caved. We talked about marriage.
I bought her a ring.
And then, everything changed.
“No.” Her eyes burn and her thumb digs into my chin. “You’re listening to the shit in your head. I’ve always been honest with you. You know that’s true.”
“Yes,” I admit, that one word harder than anything else I’ve had to say.
“I like being out here.”Herewill always be Avandale. “My family is here. I’d rather have my parents and my siblings, and all our memories, than any amount of money or grandeur in the entire fucking world.” Her hand trails over the left side of my face and spans my undamaged cheek and jaw. She holds me fast, forcing me to be here with her, to see her, and hear her. “You think I’m sweet and pure and unselfish, but I’m not. Not when it comes to you. I want all your moments, Dominic. Your goodones and your worst ones. You’ve always tried to protect me, but I’m tough. I’m strong.I love you.”
Is love enough?
I’ve asked myself that so many times now that I’ve lost count. Is it enough to combat the world I was raised in? Is it enough to pull me out of myself now? Is it strong enough to defeat the black hatred I feel for myself?
“You should give all that you are, because all that you are iseverything, Bronte. Give it to someone worthy.”
I’ve been begging her to do that, verbally or not, since the day we met. As she always has, she digs in harder. “I won’t.”
That makes me so fucking sad that I wish we’d never met. At the same time, it stirs elation in me. It makes me feel like I could do anything. Be anything. I used to think that way, but after the accident, I had to stamp it out.Anythingwas no longer a possibility.
“Stop changing our history,” she pleads. Her begging doesn’t make her weak. Not at all. “Stop shaping it to serve whatever purpose you’re trying to find right now. Justlet me in. Make space for me. Just a fraction. I know I own your heart. Mine belongs to you. But your head is different. You’ve pushed me out. Let me live there again.”
She might as well ask me for the universe, but fuck if I don’t want to rip down the very stars and hand them to her.
I’ll never take her for granted. I know that someone from the outside looking in would say that’s exactly what I’ve done. That I’ve abused her trust and been an asshole. The latter would be correct. I was an asshole, but I’ve never lied to her. I told her straight right after I got back home from the hospital after myaccident. I didn’t see a future. I knew she deserved better, and life had just shoved irrevocable proof in my face.
That’s honestly how I felt. It’s how I thought. It’s how I saw everything. It was black and white.
Bronte’s like a river, though.
She’s worn me down with her steadily flowing waters, worn away at my doubts, my protests, even my self-hatred.
Her hand slips to the back of my neck and clasps tight around my nape. “We could go anywhere. You don’t have to live with all those ghosts.” You could come live with us. We could build a house on my parents’ land. Buy some of it for ourselves.”
“Sell my ancestor’s land?” I choke, the mere idea sacrilegious. It doesn’t matter that I hate living there. It’s not about the fallow fields or the junk lying around in piles or scattered like broken thoughts. It doesn’t matter what kind of memories remain there to haunt it. Ghosts. Yeah, it’s filled with those. “It’s a part of me. It’s who I am, even if I hate it.”
“Then we’ll live there, and I’ll spend every single day fighting your demons for you.” There’s no doubt that Bronte, with her constancy, her spirit, her resoluteness and single minded devotion, would do just that.
The problem has always been, how can I ask her to?
That’s what I can’t just get over.
It’s been eating at me since I was fourteen. I stopped asking why me? When Bronte could have picked anyone. I just accepted that she wanted me, but it was me I couldn’t give acceptance to. It wasmyselfwho I couldn’t love the way she did. Bronte is so special. My greatest fear is that I’ll drag her down.I’ll diminish her light. I’ll take the vital parts of her and won’t be able to love her enough and she’ll disappear right in front of me. I’m damaged goods, I was always damaged goods, but the accident brought it home that pretending to be otherwise was pointless.
“Until you wear yourself out, and tear yourself apart? Until you regret wasting the best years of your life on me and a place where nothing happy or good can last?” My throat is all thorns. I push the words past, scrape them over my tongue, and bleed them out anyway. “That’s like planting flowers in shit.”
“Plants grow well in shit, dumbass,” she fires back.
“You have no idea what it’s like. The constant…noisein my head. No flowers grow in shit there. It’s all just blindingly bright white.”
I can’t call it darkness. That’s so token. I don’t see it that way. I’ve never been scared of the night. What I’ve been afraid of is trying to live with the unforgiving light of day blasting down on me, highlighting all my faults and all the giant fissures in my life.
