Leo's Chance(61)

"Take off your shirt, Jake," she says, expressionless. For a minute I just look at her, not comprehending. What does my shirt have to do with this?

"What? Baby, I don't understand."

"Let me see your back, Jake," she says, gazing into my eyes now, fear, stark and vivid washing over her expression.

I gaze at her for long moments, understanding slipping down my spine, panic gripping me. Someone has told her about my tattoo. Who? What else have they told her? I need to be the one to explain this. I need to be the one to make her understand. This is not how I wanted to start. I close my eyes, willing time to stop. When I open my eyes, I gaze into hers, full of pain and confusion. The look on her face guts me. "Evie, who did you talk to? Baby, let me explain first."

"No!" she screams, voice shaking. "Show me your back, Jake!"

Please don’t let this be happening. I close my eyes again, resigned now, and drop my head and then lift it to look her in her eyes. It doesn’t matter who told her. I wanted to do it gently but fate has stepped in and this is the way it’s going to happen now. I reach down and lift the hem of my shirt, raising it over my head. I stand in front of her, bare chested, as I’ve been many times before. I stare into her eyes again, imploring her to understand. Her large, panicked eyes stare back at me, waiting for me to explain in some way.

Slowly, I turn around and give her my full, naked back. I hang my head as her stare burns into me from behind. Blood pumps through my brain, the sound of my own heartbeat echoing loudly in my head.

I hear her gasp but I don’t move. Several long seconds stretch out, and I still don’t move when I hear a strangled cry and her feet stumbling backwards.

My mind blanks and suddenly I’m back in San Diego, months before Evie’s eighteenth birthday. That date had beckoned painfully to me on the calendar, the thought of the date alone causing a heartache like I’d never known before, even that first week when I knew that what happened with Lauren meant that she was lost to me forever. I felt like I had already died inside, like I was a shell of a person walking around, empty, gutted. I didn’t admit it to myself at the time, but looking back, I know that, more than ever, I needed the pain to end. I was done. It was excruciating. I couldn’t hang on. Life felt like a burning building and the only thing I could think to do was jump. I was suffocating from where I was, the flames licking at me from every side. Death felt like it would provide the sweet, clean air that I couldn’t access from the hell of the inferno in which I was trapped. It didn’t feel like an option – it felt like survival.

I wanted to die, but I wanted her to be with me when I went. I needed to hold on to her, to take a part of her with me. Something inside of me longed to tell my own story, the story of us, the story of how I destroyed everything beautiful that I ever had, and then destroyed myself.

And so I sought out a tattoo artist. He helped me design the artwork I described to him, remaining silent as he sketched out the first basic concept, looking at me finally when it was all done and saying quietly, "This your story, man?"

I had studied it for long minutes, finally looking up at him and replying simply, "Yes."

Willow was there, walking a tightrope, the likelihood of falling always present – no safety net beneath her, just the ever-present harshness of the empty ground below. It was Willow, but she represented so many. Always living with fear and loneliness, nowhere soft to land.

And then the clowns. All of those heartless people who were supposed to protect us, to make us laugh – to be an escape from the harshness of life. But instead had turned out to be anything but, the worst of the worst, cruel jokes in and of themselves.

And myself, half lion, half boy, just like Evie had believed me to be. And I thought she was probably right, because half the time I felt rageful, wild, untamed, and the other half I felt overly soft, too sensitive for this f*cked up world. I didn’t know how to merge the two into one capable person – I didn’t know how to be both and not one or the other.

She had tried to show me, my Evie, my lion tamer, but I wasn’t enough. Even for her, the person I loved most in this world, I wasn’t enough. I’d never be enough.

In the background, the master of ceremonies. Overseeing it all, orchestrating the show. He had put the clowns in the act, so many of them. He had put Willow on a tightrope with no net beneath her. He had made me half damaged and half wild. But… but, he had given me a beautiful lion tamer with eyes as deep as forever, and Willow friends who wanted to catch her if she fell, and he had made me brave enough to love them both once upon a time. How did I make sense of that? How could I understand him when I couldn’t understand any of the show he had cast me in? Was he kind or was he cruel? I didn’t know. It seemed an impossible question to answer.

I paid the tattoo artist extra to do my tattoo all in one day, and when he said it would hurt too much to do a piece of art that large all in one sitting, I told him I didn't care. And as the needle plunged in and out of my skin, I relished the pain. I deserved the pain. The physical pain made the emotional agony take a backseat, and I finally felt a peace that day that I hadn’t felt in a long time.

Later that night, alone and drinking myself into a stupor, I stared at the picture of that artwork on the piece of paper that had been used as a template for the story now etched into my skin. I had stared into the depiction of Evie’s eyes, and even the copy of a copy of the large, dark windows to her soul, I had felt my heart flutter back to life and start beating in my chest. Staring into her beautiful face, something in me decided it wanted to live. I didn’t know what it was, but something whispered in my ear to hold on. And so I had. For a little while.