Harder (Caroline & West #2)(43)

She just watches me.

It’s more than I can take. The way she looks on my couch. The way she engages with me like I’m important, like everything I say is interesting, like I deserve to be talking to her after what I did when I don’t.

I f*cking don’t.

There’s my reason why I can’t kiss her. Whether it’s adequate—I haven’t got a clue.

“I was just surprised,” she says, “by how much more complicated it was than I expected.”

“How so?”

She looks at the beer in her hands. Looks at my face.

“It’s supposed to be about sacrifice,” she says. “The beauty of sacrifice, because he makes this sacrifice for her, and she makes it for him, and it’s a disaster, like you said. It’s depressing. But look what they were willing to do for each other.”

“They already knew what they were willing to do, though—that’s my point. They were trying to feel different for one day, just one day, get away from being starving pathetic losers, and they ended up looking like *s. You know who really made out? The guy who sold her the watch, and the guy who sold him the combs. I bet those two had a happy f*cking Christmas. I bet those two think it’s a fantastic story.”

She’s smiling at me. Drinking me up with her eyes.

She’s eating away at me, making the black ache inside me bigger and louder.

I wish I had a cigarette.

I wish I could smack myself over the head with a bottle of booze, put an end to this pressure I feel around her, this longing I can’t get rid of.

“It was just one Christmas,” she says. “I mean, you have to figure he could go out the next day, sell the watch chain to buy her a nice warm hat to cover her bald head. She could sell the combs and buy him a sweater. It’s not over.”

“Yeah, but how’s he gonna feel next time he goes to buy her a present? Not good. He’ll remember that f*ckup with the combs and say to himself, Shit, I’ll just buy her a gift certificate, and she can get what she wants with it. They blew all the romance on that one big gesture, and they’re not getting it back.”

“None of that is in the story.”

“No?”

“No. It’s in your head.”

She puts her beer down and pulls her feet up to tuck them underneath herself. Rests her arm on the back of the couch, her cheek on her arm, and looks at me with her eyes all gentle.

I just wish she’d quit f*cking looking at me that way, like I’m the baby Moses in a basket, some precious discovery she can’t ever get enough of.

“I wouldn’t cut off my hair to buy you a watch chain,” she says.

I break out in a sweat.

“I really wouldn’t. I think my dad thinks I would, and Bridget and Krishna, too. They think I’m like that woman in the story but worse, because I wouldn’t stop at my hair. I’d sell the furniture, my clothes, my dignity, all to have something to give you. But it’s not true. I mean, it’s just hair, and I’d probably give you my hair if you wanted it, because whatever. But her hair in the story is her pride. It’s the thing that makes her feel beautiful and worthy, and you can’t have that. I won’t give it to you. I would never give it to you.”

I try to say, I know that, but the words come out raspy and impossible.

“I think what you don’t know,” she says, “is that you can’t take it from me, either. Even if you sell your watch.”

I can’t ruin her. That’s what she means.

I can f*ck up, but I can’t ruin her.

My hands are trembling. I forgot that she does this. Sees right into me and picks me right the f*ck apart.

Maybe this is what I’ve been afraid of. That she’d pick me into pieces, and there won’t be anything left of me when she does.

“And you know,” she says, “the other thing about the story is that her hair will grow back, and she can keep the combs. He can get another watch. They’re really good gifts. Like, if you gave me some pearl combs, I’d probably think, ‘Wow, these are gorgeous. West must have saved up for a long time to pay for them.’ I wouldn’t even think about my hair—not right away.”

“Jesus, I would.”

“I know you would.” She rises to her knees and moves to my side. Takes my chin in her fingers until we’re so close together, closer than we’ve been since that moment by the grave when I shut myself off from her and told myself it needed to end. That I would have to be the one to end it.

“You’d sell your watch for me, West,” she says. “You’d give me those combs and see my bald head and it would break your heart. But what I’m trying to tell you is that it doesn’t have to be like that. The world isn’t like that.”

“Like what?”

I’m staring at her lips. Drinking in her face. It all feels so important, but I can’t get a grip on it. I’m too tired, my eyes stinging like I could f*cking cry.

I wish I could. What a relief that would be.

I’m not someone who can do that, but I can’t remember why. If I was made like this, or if I chose it.

“The world’s not black and white,” she tells me. “Life doesn’t have good guys and bad guys or a beginning, middle, and end. Not while you’re living it. It’s just people doing stuff that’s beautiful or stupid or somewhere in the middle.”