Page 140 of Bad at Love
I keep that to myself, though. I need to try and keep everything to myself. He’s always so good at hiding his feelings, for once I need to be good at hiding mine.
The rest of the car ride, though, is made in silence. Laz actually sleeps for some of it, or at least appears to be sleeping. I guess it’s easier than small talk. There can be no small talk between us. Everything is large right now. Everything between us has weight.
I love you,I want to say.
I love you and I want you to love me.
I need you to love me.
I need every single one of those words you wrote to be real.
I want you to fight for me like you’d fight for your family.
I keep it inside until it’s choking me, a hand at my throat, a vice at my heart. But when I head down FultonAve. toward his apartment, he sits up and says, “Can we go to your place?”
I swallow, surprised. “Why?”
What is this?
What are we?
What happens next?
“I need to talk to you,” he says. “I’d rather do it there. Privacy.”
I could tell him no. I could tell him that I just came because he was a friend—an ex friend?—in need and that we’re broken up and I’m still hurting and it’s best we go our separate ways.
But I don’t.
Because I want him.
I miss him.
I need him with every vein in my body.
“Okay,” I tell him.
I park the car in front of Barbara’s and I am not at all surprised to see a shadow moving behind the blinds. I know that I left my suite locked and that Laz would have had to have a key to access it. I knew that Barbara let him in. Shifty dame that she is.
We head through the gate and I unlock the door.
The poems are scattered everywhere, dropped when I left in a hurry.
“So you got them,” he says, looking around.
“I did,” I tell him. “Laz…”
He moves so fast.
One minute he’s staring at the poems, the next he’s grabbing my waist, my face, kissing me.
I gasp, completely caught off-guard, ready to push him away, even as his tongue causes my heart to ignite.
But then he stops, pulls back, cups my face between two large hands.
“Marina,” he whispers to me, eyes pained and wild as they search my face. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to tell you how sorry I am for what I did. I’ve tried and…I know it’s not enough. I know it will never be enough. I know that it pales in comparison to how I made you feel. I wish I could go back and take it all away from you, that pain I gave you, but I can’t. I can’t.” He closes his eyes and leans his forehead against mine. “The only thing I can do, that I can try to do, is tell you the truth. Give you my soul. Show you my heart. These poems, Marina, they are all for you. You’re my inspiration, my true muse. You’re the one who makes my heart beat and my heart, my heart is all yours.”
I close my eyes, trying not to cry.
