Dreams of 18(109)

“Poetry?”

He nods; it’s a jerk of a movement. “I can learn to write poetry. How hard can it be? It’s a drunk man writing about his feelings, right? I read a poem once, Anesthesia by this guy. Abrams or something?”

“Thomas Abrams?”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

As choked up as I am right now, I get an urge to smile but I suppress it; Thomas Abrams is super famous for his poetry and stuff. “He’s a pretty big deal actually.”

“Who cares? If he can do it, I can do it too.” Before I can say anything else, he goes on. “I can paint your nails too. I’ve done it once, I can do it again. I can hold your hand and walk down the beach with you. Even though my hands are rough and scratched up and I fucking hate the beach – too many people. But I can do all of that. I can learn to do all of that and more, Violet.”

“You wanna learn all of that?”

At last, he takes those final steps and stands right where he can touch me. He reaches out and cups my cheek and I don’t have the strength to push him away or be this mad but calm girl.

I don’t have the strength not to fist his shirt and look up at him as he wipes my tears, which I didn’t know that I was shedding.

“Yes. For you. I’ll learn all of that. I’ll learn to be soft. I’ll learn to be gentle and tender. I’ll learn to dream when I’ve got my eyes closed. Because I don’t think I can live in my world anymore. I don’t like my world, Violet. I want to live in a different world.”

“A different world?”

I realize that I’m parroting his words but I don’t know what else to do when he’s looking at me with such emotions and intensity.

He’s stealing all my thoughts and words looking like he just stepped out of a dream.

My dream.

“Yeah. A world where colors are bright and gorgeous. Where you dance in the moonlight. Where you have a vegetable garden right next to a rose garden. A world where the air smells like strawberries and candies. A world where an eighteen-year-old girl sneaks into the backyard of a man she wants, a man she’s been watching, a man who’s been watching her as well, and steals his roses. A world where she steps on his shoes because she’s so tiny that she can’t get to his mouth and kisses him. A world where she follows him just because she thinks she’s wronged him. A world where she saves him from himself. I want to live in your world, Violet. A world of moon and magic, if you’ll let me.”

God, he wants to live in my world.

The world I created because I didn’t want to live in the world I was given. And he wants to live there, in my imaginary world.

He wants to live there with me.

Oh God, my heart is so full and I need him to stop talking so I can kiss him right now.

“Graham, I –"

“I fucked up, okay?” He cuts me off, instead. “I know that. And I probably succeeded too. You probably hate me.” His fingers flex and jerk on my cheek at the thought. “But you don’t have to love me, all right. It’s okay if you don’t.”

“But I –"

He cuts me off again, flicking his eyes back and forth between mine. “If you could put all your dreams in the palm of my hand like you did with your journals, if you could be that brave, then I could be too. I could be brave for you. Because you inspire me to be brave, baby.”

More tears fall down my cheeks and saturate the pad of his thumbs. “I inspire you to be brave?”

He nods. “Yeah. You do. You inspire me to live, Violet. You inspire me to live in a world where a brave girl saves a dangerous, old beast and shows him to be brave like her.”

A broken laugh escapes me.

But he doesn’t smile, no. He doesn’t break his focus or his intensity. He keeps looking at me, wanting me to understand.

“So you don’t have to love me, Violet,” he continues with a low tone. “Because I love you enough for the both of us. And I’m gonna learn to show that, all right? I promise you that. I’m going to learn to show my love to you. It might not happen overnight, but I’ll keep at it. All I want is for you to trust me. Just trust me.”

I dig my knuckles into his hard stomach and I can hear his heartbeats there, deep in his gut, banging against my fists.

Feeling those beats on my hands, I whisper, “I didn’t before. I didn’t trust you.”

Pain slashes through his features. “I know. But I’d never… I’d never think that –”

“I know.” I nod. “I know. I guess I always knew. I always knew that I could trust you. I think it was… my doomsday brain. It wouldn’t let me tell you. It kept saying that I’m not good enough and… yeah.”

He presses his hands on my cheeks. “You’re magnificent, Violet, you got that? You’re fucking perfect.”

More tears well up and river down. “I’m not fine, Graham. Everything is not fine. I have this thing inside of me and I’m so scared. I know I’m brave; I know that. But it scares me that I have to live with it for the rest of my life and –”

He puts his forehead over mine. “Hey, hey, look at me. Look at me. We’ll do this. We’ll do this together, okay? We’ll take it one day at a time. One step at a time. I’ve got you. I asked around, all right? There’s a bunch of doctors in Denver we can go to. I bought books and stuff. I’m –”