Gray - By Pete Wentz Page 0,11
anyway, so this is the right thing to do. I can tell right away that she doesn’t believe me, and that, for the first time in our relationship, she has doubts . . . about me, about us, about the future. She didn’t sign on to be the wife of a rock star, she didn’t contemplate that she’d be left behind while I went off on my adventures. Most important, she thinks this is silly, some foolish children’s crusade. She doesn’t actually say any of this, but I can tell just by looking at Her that it’s what she’s thinking.
“What’s wrong?” I ask Her, even though I already know the answer.
“No, nothing. I’m happy for you,” she says, adding emphasis to take all joy out of the word. “It’s just . . . I don’t know, you know? Couldn’t you just wait until you’re finished at Columbia? I mean, it’s only a couple of months, and maybe we could get a place together in the meantime, so when you come back, we can—”
“But I don’t want to come back,” I spit. “I don’t ever want to come back here again. This place has nothing for me anymore.”
It was probably the wrong thing to say. I didn’t believe it anyway, but I didn’t care. Something in the way Her voice sounded, something in Her tone, something in Her throat . . . I’m not sure what it was, but it signified doubt and had flipped a switch inside me. It made me want to hurt Her. So I swung for the fences, I let the uppercuts fly. I blew this entire issue out of proportion. Such is the way with these things.
“Oh, nothing, right, I forgot. I guess I’m nothing then, right?” Her voice wavered just a bit. “You think I want to just sit here and wait for you? You think I want to be your dutiful fucking girlfriend? You think I’m okay with doing that? That’s fucking unbelievable.”
This is going to be a disaster. The goddamn plane has crashed into the goddamn mountain.
“I thought you’d be happy for me,” I mumble. “I thought—”
“That’s right, you thought about you, not me. Not us,” she fires back. “I’m really fucking happy for you. Is that what you want me to say? Okay then. I’m really fucking happy for you. Leave school, leave me here. I’m fine with it.”
“You know, you can just come out and say you think this is a stupid idea,” I say, for reasons unclear to pretty much everyone. “You can say you don’t think I’m good enough to make it. Go ahead, I know it’s what you’re thinking anyway. And that’s fucking bullshit, and it’s not fair, because if this were you making this decision, I’d support it.”
“But it’s not me,” she says, her voice trailing off. “It’s you. And you wouldn’t.”
The air in Her bedroom is heavy with smoke, but the fireworks are over. We sit on opposite corners of Her bed, and she leans forward, burying Her face in Her hands. I watch Her shoulders rise and fall with each breath, first in slow, measured cycles, then building into more pronounced, irregular jerks. She begins sobbing, and there’s nothing I can do to pull Her back to me, into my arms. Her face is flushed and the tears are pouring out of Her eyes so fast that I can’t wipe them away, so I just sort of rock Her back and forth, kiss Her forehead. I want so badly to tell Her it’s going to be all right, that I’ll leave the band and forget this silly crusade. I want to tell Her that I am ready to settle for this life, that she is all I will ever need in the world, and that we’ll never be apart. I want to tell Her that I will protect Her forever. But none of that would be the truth. So I don’t say anything at all.
The silence is the worst part of any fight, because it’s made up of all the things we wish we could say, if we only had the guts. And the unspoken truths here are plain: For the first time, I am thinking of me instead of us. For the first time, she is worried about our relationship, about whether it can survive the tyranny of distance (and what does that say about our relationship anyway?). And, for the first time, we’re both wondering why we’re doing this. It was a bad