about me, there are things that I can’t even figure out how to say. I’m not eighteen years old anymore. My life story no longer consists of high school parties and dancing on rooftops.”
“I don’t think that was ever what your life consisted of, Hallie. You forget that we once had a life together. A real one.”
“And I had another life. Without you. A real one.”
A pained expression crosses his face and he turns away.
“I’m well aware of that, Hallie. I had another life, too. But it wasn’t a real one.”
“Well, mine was. Don’t try to…”
I bite my lip and look away.
“I didn’t mean to say that it wasn’t.” He reaches up to touch my hair softly. “I don’t think that.”
“This isn’t easy for me. My life hasn’t been easy, and I don’t want to talk about it right now, because I still can’t find the right words to make you even understand a tiny sliver of what it’s been like for me.”
“Try, Hallie. Please.”
I owe him that much. “When I saw you in New York, it broke my heart.” I shake my head, because it’s not the right thing to say. I try again. “Seeing you, looking the same as you always did, made me remember that I had once laughed and teased and loved something so much that it was possible to get my heart broken. I needed to do anything that might help me to be okay again. I needed to do anything that might help me feel again, period. I wasn’t trying to go back to the way we were, or back to the person I was, because that will never happen and I realize that. I know that. I was just trying to be someone who could make it through one day. The kind of person who could see a school bus without having a meltdown in the middle of the street. You have no idea how badly I was broken. Not partially broken, all the way broken. I think I wanted to forget all of that for a little while, to try out what it would feel like to be normal. I think I needed to forget, and you’ve always been able to do that for me. To make me forget that there’s a big bad world out there.”
My voice is wavering uncontrollably and I have to bite back the tears. I’m leaning on the edge of a precipice, and if he says the perfectly wrong words or the perfectly right ones, I will shatter.
He takes my hands and kisses them. “It won’t work, Hals. Forgetting about the big, bad world. I knew that’s what you were doing and I let you do it anyway. I was complicit in it. I can’t tell you how sorry I am about New York. It shouldn’t have happened, not like that. I never should have let it go that far.”
I turn to him with a ferocity that surprises even myself.
“I’m sorry that you wish it didn’t happen. Because I’m not sorry about it. I’m not sorry about this.”
“I’m not sorry about this, either. But I am sorry that I took advantage of you then.”
“I don’t think you’re remembering correctly. I’m pretty sure that I took advantage of you.”
“The onus was on me, and we both know it.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
His only response is a vehement shake of his head, and I know that he’s not hearing me. I want to make sure that he understands my next words very clearly, so I say them slowly, looking deeply into his face.
“I needed you. I needed to make love with you. Then and now. So please don’t tell me that you’re sorry. Be sorry if you have to be, but don’t say it to me, because I don’t want to hear it. You can at least do me that very small favor.”
He nods, but I can tell that he’s still torturing himself. I graze the side of his face with my fingers and take a long, shaky breath.
I’ve managed to pull myself back together. It seems like a small thing, to pull myself back from the edge of the cliff, but it isn’t, not when I know what it’s like to lose all control over what I say and think and feel, when I’ve had no way to figure out what my reaction to a particular piece of music or picture will be. A large part of regaining that control is due to him.
“Thank you, Chris.”
I don’t think he realizes