The Comeback(86)
“I don’t want to be found?” I ask, my voice tight. “You think I don’t want to be found.”
Dylan tenses, sensing something different about my tone. I lean toward him and speak quietly.
“Do you want to know why I left you? I left because you never wanted to see who I really was. You had this image of me as this little lost girl who you could rescue with your love, and you panicked when it turned out not to be as simple as that. Your love suffocated me because it was a love for somebody else. You never took the time to get to know who I really was, and the one night I tried to tell you, you didn’t want to know. That’s why I fucking left.”
Dylan listens to me, a weird expression I don’t recognize on his face.
“You do know that everyone feels like that? That it’s actually really hard to feel worthy of anyone’s love because we all know how shitty and selfish and fucked up we are on the inside, but we still work at it. You did the exact same thing to me. You always think I’m this honest, hardworking, genuine good guy, just the total opposite of everyone else in LA. You know that person doesn’t exist, right? But it never mattered to me, it just made me want to work harder to be the person you thought I was. People can change if they want to, Grace. I thought that’s how it worked.”
The server brings over a sizzling plate of enchiladas dripping in green sauce and melted cheese, with a sour cream heart dripping over it all. We both stare at the food in front of us but neither of us moves. I can feel the Percocet throbbing in my bag next to me, and I have to fight the urge to take one out and shove it down my throat at the table. I just need to wait for Dylan to go to the bathroom or look away for a couple of seconds, then I can at least try to blur the edges of this awful fucking day.
“What night was it?” he quietly asks instead.
“What?”
“You said you tried to talk to me. What night was it?”
“The night before I left. On the balcony.”
For a second I think that Dylan is actually going to laugh, but then he closes his eyes briefly, and when he opens them, he looks sadder than I’ve ever seen him.
“Do you want to know what was running through my mind that night?” he asks.
“That I’d fucked up, yet again? And you didn’t want to hear it?”
Dylan shakes his head.
“That I cheated on you, Grace. The night before. And I could say that I did it because I knew I’d already lost you, and it might even be the truth, but mainly I was lonely and I just wanted to be with someone and it not be so fucking complicated and sad all the time.”
After he’s finished talking, he slumps a little. I sit perfectly still and we’re something out of an Edward Hopper painting, the two of us sitting in front of a table of untouched food, trying our hardest to prove we were never good enough for each other.
“Was it with Wren?” I ask when I trust that I can speak without a shake in my voice.
“With a waitress at the Good Life. I thought you found out,” he says, realizing exactly as I do that we are always having a different conversation from the one we think we are having. “But you really did just leave.”
“Oh, please. Are you going to tell me how you cheating on me shows how much you love me?” I say. “So you win?”
“It’s never been a game. Neither of us is winning.”
Dylan is staring down at the table. I look at him for so long that the lights start to flare around him. I realize now that I have no idea who the person in front of me actually is.
“I know I shouldn’t have done it, but don’t pretend that you were perfect,” Dylan says quietly, and I know he’s referring to the nights I came home late and couldn’t remember where I’d been.
“You were never supposed to hurt me, Dylan. That’s the whole point of you.”
“People don’t have points. It doesn’t work like that.”
“Are you even sorry?” I ask, my voice searing.
“I don’t know right now, Grace,” he says after a moment, and it infuriates me even more because now that I know he’s not actually incapable of lying, why can’t he do it now, when I need him to?
I push myself out of the booth and stand up.
“That night, I was trying to tell you that Able sexually assaulted me,” I say. “Repeatedly.”
I leave before I have to watch the horror spread across his face.
* * *
? ? ?
I never texted Mario, so when I walk out the back of the restaurant, I don’t expect to find him there, hidden in the darkness, waiting for me. He raises his camera and takes over a thousand photos of me standing alone, tears streaming down my face. I scream at him to stop but it turns out I never really controlled any of it.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
I take three pills as soon as I’m home, then I sit on the sofa in the living room, waiting for the morning to come. When it finally does, the sun casting streaks of white gold across the blue sky, I have to close the blinds because everything seems too hopeful with them open. It’s Christmas Eve and this is a city for people who wake up every morning believing that today could be the day their life is transformed, not for people like me. I should have known that everything I touch eventually gets destroyed, like a curse Able handed down to me.