Page 68 of The Last Kind of Kiss
Bristol nods sympathetically. “But you were…you mentioned that feeling at the gala too.”
Oh, great. Now we’rereallygoing to unpack everything. I don’t want to talk about this right now. I want to eat dinner with my non-boyfriend, talk about stupid, trivial things, then go to bed unplagued by the impossibly high standard I’ve set for myself because of myhyper fixation on not being good enough.
“Bristol, I don’t want to talk about this right now…”
He pushes off the counter and comes closer to me, bracketing either side of my legs with his arms. “I just…I want to understand you. Please, Lila. Please talk to me. I shouldn’t have waited this long to ask you about it. I should’ve pushed for the truth that night on the boat, but we were both too unstable to have that conversation.”
I want to fight him on this—I want to shove him away and disappear off the face of the planet. But fighting hurts more than accepting the truth, and there’s only so much more hurt that my body can take before it atrophies.
“I hate myself sometimes, okay? I don’t think I look good enough to model. I don’t think I look good enough for people to like me. I know for a fact that there are plenty of people online who don’t like me, and all I do is desperately search for validation that I’m not entitled to. I chase after people who want nothing to do with me. I’m too loud and too emotional, and that scares people away. I prioritize random strangers’ opinions of me over my own. So, when you left me, all you did was reinforce every preconceived notion I had about myself.”
I try not to shout or raise my voice. All I have the energy to do is crumble into a sobbing mess, tears meandering down my cheeks in tributaries, smearing through my spotty foundation. I bury my face in my arms out of instinct, so mortified by the snot and the spit and the tears that I don’t want Bristol to look at me.
The world goes dark, and the only noise I can hear is my pitiful sniveling. I don’t know how long I cry, but in my moment of blindness, I feel the warmth and steadiness of two arms wrap around my curled frame. Bristol’s holding me, stroking my back with his hand, and whispering mumbled gibberish into my neck. I unball myself and fully give him the extent of my pain, flinging my arms around him and letting him see the disastrous state of my mascara-ruined face.
“Shh, Lila. It’s okay. I’ve got you. I’m right here,” he coos.
“I’m never enough. I’m never…anybody’s first choice.”
Bristol gently breaks from our embrace, tipping my chin up so that I’m forced to look him in the eyes. “That’s not true,alright? You are enough. You’re more than enough. And I’m so fucking sorry Ievermade you think that you weren’t. You’re…”
“I’m your s-second choice,” I finish for him, pulling away from his hand and wiping the incoming deluge bubbling over my waterlines. My vision mists, pinching in around the edges, and a feverish heat steamrolls through my body, making it harder and harder for me to focus on anything aside from the—frankly inevitable—structural collapse of my heart.
Bristol tries to console me with another touch, and I lose it on him. I push him squarely in the chest, having to keep him away from me because I can’t bear the pity burnished in his equally tearful gaze.
A crackly cry rips from his throat, so harsh and grating that his voice loses its healthy, rich timbre. “You’re not. That’s not how I think about you at all. You’re my first now. You’re my first choicenow, Lila.” He’s scrambling to reassure me, or maybe he’s lying to me in some last-ditch attempt to keep me from leaving.
Tears soak into my cheeks like Rorschach inkblots suffusing through paper, and thin trickles beeline for the seam of my lips, demanding entry so that salt can cling to the underside of my tongue. I drop down from the counter, and I stagger as far as my legs will carry me, blocking out the desperate pleas being lobbed over my shoulder. I don’t know where I’m going. I just—I want to leave. I want to run away. I want to disappear. But the closer I get to the exit, the faster my strength diminishes, and I fall to my knees just a few feet from the front door, bawling so loudly that the harrowing cries ricochet off the walls.
I’m not good enough for Bristol. I’m not good enough for anyone.
You’re fucking stupid, Lila. Of course you wouldn’t be the first choice of a man who keeps secrets from you and ghosts you. Stop trying so hard. It’s embarrassing. No wonder people want to get as faraway from you as possible. Your dad was lucky he never got to know you growing up.
Sadness and anger clash inside of me—sapping my body of energy with hurtful, quick-settling words—and they feed the monster that lurks in the rafters of my mind. It preys on grey matter, turns my own thoughts against me, whispers hard truths in my ears when I’m surrounded by nothing but barefaced deceit. I should have listened. I knew this was too good to be true.
Bristol’s next to me in an instant, and channels of tears disappear into the outcrop of stubble on his jaw. “Lila, please. Please breathe.”
And then he traps me in a hug. I strain against those tree-trunk arms, thrashing against his chest, yelling cruel words at him to get him to release me. But in spite of all the screaming and the elbowing, he bears the brunt of the pain until I’m too tired to fight him.
“It doesn’t matter that you weren’t my first love,” he whispers against my head, his grip loosening the slightest bit now that my body’s been stripped of its defenses. “I’m falling for you, angel. So much that it fucking scares me. I never thought that I’d be ready for a relationship after Summit, and then you came along with your quick wit and those beautiful blue eyes, and you gave me a reason to keep living. You showed me that life doesn’t end when you lose someone. You were there for me when I came to you broken, and without realizing it, you just…youfixedme.”
My wails are still on a deafening rampage, but that urge to destroy is gone now—that overcritical voice in my head is silent. He clutches my body to his chest as his heart propels with uncountable beats, going so impossibly fast that he forgets to breathe. His fingers are steel clamps on my back, and he’s holding me like he’s afraid I’ll fade into the blurry landscape of a quickly forgotten dream.
“I wish you were my first choice, but I didn’t know you back then. I know younow. Summit will always have a small place in my heart, but you don’t just live in my heart, okay? You infect every living part of me—my heart, my head, my lungs, my stomach. I breathe easier when I’m with you. My heart’s lighter when I hear you laugh or see you smile. You occupy every thought I have. You give me butterflies on a regular basis. You’re everywhere; you’re all around me; you’re at the forefront of my entire being. Summit is a memory.Youare my present—you are my ass-whopping, hard-headed, strong, independent, selfless, caring present. I feel everything for you. I feel it so greatly that you burn me, Lila. You burn me so badly that the only way I can stop thinking about you, even for a second, is to carve you from my goddamn body.”
Bristol’s voice breaks as moisture continues to assail his skin, and he cradles the back of my head, soothing me with ministrative strokes. “I’m so sorry I made you feel this way.”
Silence cloaks us like an impenetrable haze, and an orchestra of stuttering whines desecrates the stillness of the house, curtailed by sniffles. I let my tears waterfall onto his shirt and my fingers delve into his back, and I knock down all those reservations standing between me and happiness—between me andhim.
“I’m so s-sorry,” I apologize through fractured syllables. “I’m s-so s-sorry.”
“Shh. None of that, angel. You have nothing to be sorry for. Thank you for telling me the truth. I’m sorry that you’ve been carrying all this pain by yourself. If I wasn’t such a fucking idiot, I would’ve made sure to carry it for you from the very beginning.”
“You couldn’t have known. I was horrible to you. You gave me a chance to tell you the truth on the yacht, but I didn’t. All Idid was punish you for something that you’d already apologized for.”
“You weren’t horrible. I deserved it. You didn’t trust me, and I don’t blame you. All that matters now is that you trust me. I…I want to help you heal, if you’ll let me.”
The eye of the storm passes, leaving behind a few teardrops. My vocal cords are raw but finally still, and the full-body tremors no longer control me anymore. It’s the aftermath of a natural disaster, where light torrents of rain welcome a new beginning, saturating the pulverized earth to nurture broken roots that, in a few weeks, will sprout anew with life once again. A rebirth.
