Gods & Monsters(84)
“Tell me what’s going on.”
It makes me so mad, I’m shaking. My breaths are uneven. Fuck not fighting in front of the whole world. I shove his chest with my free hand. I shove him hard, almost screaming, “Abel. Let me go.”
“Not until you tell me what the fuck is happening.”
“What’s happening is that you think a baby is a joke. You think knocking me up is revenge. What’s happening is that even after telling you no, a thousand times right now, you don’t stop. You’ve lost all control.”
“I’ve lost all control, huh, Pixie?” He scoffs, his grip flexing around my wrist.
“My name is not Pixie. It’s Evie.”
My voice is loud. Super loud, and when his face crumples and loses its harshness, I feel like someone is squeezing my heart and I can’t breathe. Stepping back, he lets go of my hand.
No, no, no. I don’t want him backing down. I don’t like him this way.
He spreads his arms open, as if he’s embracing the whole city and no one at all, at the same time. “Well, you’re right, Pixie,” he emphasizes my name and I’m back to being angry again. “Welcome to my fucking world. A world of no control. I gave it up the moment I saw you on that field. You took it from me. Stole it. I didn’t even know the meaning of it. Didn’t understand why the fuck my heart was beating like someone jacked it up. Why I couldn’t take my eyes off you. I understood nothing except this compulsive need to seek you out. To be near you.”
His arms fall to his sides and his fingers form a fist. “I didn’t care that your mom thought I was a piece of shit. I didn’t care that people wouldn’t look me in the eye, that hardly anyone talked to me. Because the only thing that mattered to me was you. I had no choice but to take the hatred. I had no choice but to die a little every time they took you away from me, grounded you, kept you locked up so I couldn’t see you. I had no control over my feelings. No choice but to burn in your love.
“So, if you wanna talk about control, Pixie? Let’s talk about how you took my control, back when I didn’t even know your name.” He barks out a laugh, and beats his chest with his fist. “If you think I don’t understand the meaning of no, then let’s talk about how all my nos vanished from my vocabulary the second I saw you. How for you, I took everything. I suffered everything. Everything I am went down the drain. Let’s talk about that.”
His voice echoes in the night, louder than any sound of the city downstairs, clearer than any sound I’ve ever heard. It shatters my heart into a million pieces, turns it into dust and ashes. I know I won’t forget the look on his face, the tone of his voice, until the day I die. Tortured, savage and angry. Hateful.
Can you love someone so much that you end up hating them? Such a paradoxical thought, isn’t it? It doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense right now.
I’m sobbing. My eyes are running streams and streams of tears down my cheeks and my legs are ready to give out. I’m so dizzy. I can’t see straight.
For weeks, I saw him get angry in front of the camera. I thought all of his anger was directed toward my parents, toward the town. I never thought that it could be directed toward me, too.
Abel looks distorted through my tears. He looks like a god with a million monsters trapped inside him. Or maybe he’s always been a monster who looks like a god. Because only monsters love this way: crazily, insanely, madly. Like there’s no tomorrow. Like the world is ending. Like their heart would burst with all the painful love they feel inside that tiny organ.
We’re both monsters, then.
I don’t know what to tell him, and it turns out I don’t have to, because there are people around me. Tons of people. But Abel doesn’t look away from me. Not even for a second.
Soft arms give me the support to stay upright; it’s Blu. And Abel snaps, “Let her go. Don’t touch her. I’ll take care of her.”
I shake my head. “I need to leave. I need some space.”
That gets him mad. That gets his chest heaving. “No, you don’t need space. You’re not leaving. I won’t let you leave.”
He takes a step toward me but someone stops him. It’s Nick. He tells Abel to let me go. But Abel is stubborn. “She can’t leave. She’s my wife, all right? I’ll take her home.”
I know I should say something. I should tell Abel to stop fighting and listen to me. But I let Blu pull me away. That’s easier. Running away is easier than staying and confronting him. She has already ushered me to the balcony door and now Abel is straining against Nick’s hold. “Pixie, stop it. Come back.” To Blu he says, “Don’t take her away from me. Don’t touch her. She’s mine.”
I’m crying silently, hating myself for being weak, hating Abel for looking so powerful and so vulnerable at the same time. This is too similar to prom night. We’re even wearing similar clothes: him a black t-shirt and white pants, and me a black dress. Guess this is another thing I didn’t notice. That night when my mom was dragging me away from him and he was shouting, screaming, I didn’t want to leave and now, I can’t stay.
Blu is silent by my side as she walks me through the crowd of bystanders. I don’t have the strength to look at them and see what they are thinking. My heart’s breaking too much. Abel’s still out on the balcony, but I can hear his outraged words.