“Liam, look at me.” I don’t know what he’s going through unless he looks at me. I need to gauge his state before I try to question him further or offer my two cents. “Don’t shut me out. I know it wasn’t easy for you to say that out loud, but all we have is this small window of escape, we can help each other work the past out of our heads, but you need to look at me and let me in.”
“Sara, you can’t help make her pain go away. It’s my job to keep hurting for her because she wasn’t strong enough to keep living with the pain.” He finally looks at me. His eyes are red-rimmed, making the blue in his irises even bluer. He suddenly seems like a hurt little boy and nothing like the carefree sexy man that has been driving my insides crazy. He needs a hug, he needs someone to understand him and love him. The reason I know what he needs is because I need the same thing.
He continues. “I didn’t fix her and she couldn’t fix herself, and now she’s gone. He and his friends had a hand in her downfall. I also had a hand in her suffering because I didn’t do enough to save her.” The guilt pours out of him and makes his anguish almost palpable.
“What could you have done? Murdered Louis? Slayed all his friends? If you could go back in time, what could you have changed so that she would stop hurting? Nothing, Liam! Absolutely nothing!”
His eyes close at my words, and there is a good possibility I’ve pushed him away and he’ll most likely leave. But I have to make him understand that his sister’s choices and actions had nothing to do with him. “You loved her, she made the decision to stop loving herself, not you. You can’t be held accountable for other people’s choices. Liam, she was sick.” I watch as tears run down his cheeks, and everything inside me starts to ache. I don’t even know this guy, but I just want him to stop hurting.
I let go of his hand and move closer to burrow my body into his side. I place my head on his chest and my hand on his heart. His hand covers mine as he looks down at me, and it’s weird but it feels like there is no one in the world but us right now. I have this unexplainable instinctual reaction to him that almost feels like this is where I belong, and I cannot be held accountable for what I know is inevitable…even if it’s wrong.
“I Melt With You” by Modern English
“I’ve changed my mind. No more talking,” I say as I lower my lips to give the broken ballerina at my side another kiss. I don’t want to talk, knowing that between the two of us loons we have enough problems to talk for years. I just need to be somewhere else, I want something to stop the pain that I feel from the guilt I can never escape. I want her and I want her now. No more words—they won’t help anyway.
She nods her head and pulls herself up to straddle me. She takes hold of my face and brings her lips down to lightly kiss my cheeks. She kisses the trail my tears left, and I’m aware that I promised to not close my eyes, but if I keep them open, I’m afraid the tears will start to fall again. I don’t feel as manly as I ought to.
“It’s okay to close your eyes, Liam, only for this one time… I will be whoever you want me to be. Maybe I can help make it hurt less,” she says into my ear on the verge of tears herself.
I love that she cares, but her words slice me open and this is not how this is going to go down. I flip us over to change positions and our depressing moods. Right now I want her, only her, and I won’t let her think she needs to be anybody else but Sara, my broken ballerina. “I don’t need to close my eyes because it’s you I fancy. I want us both to escape; we just need to drown out everything else around us. I, Liam, want to fuck you, Sara, so help me God.”
She smiles. Yes, yes, this is what I want! That bloody smile is glorious, it’s