We Told Six Lies(51)

But you were holding me back.

Holding yourself back.

Getting up from the bed took a Herculean effort. My body wanted you more than it had ever wanted anything. More than it ever wanted food, or sleep, or sunlight. More than it wanted to grow and protect the raw, fragile interior parts of me.

But my brain wanted you. It wanted to know I was safe here. And right then, I wasn’t.

You sat up and pulled a blanket over yourself. You must have felt exposed. But you couldn’t possibly have felt as exposed as I did. I think my organs were showing.

“Cobain, wait,” you said. “Wait, don’t go. Don’t be upset.”

I turned to pull on my clothes.

I heard you rising from the bed. You were angry now. I could feel it radiating from your body. It warmed the room. Scorched the walls. Singed the hair on my arms.

“Don’t walk out on me,” you said, but I was already halfway to the door. You’d broken the bones of my rib cage to get at what lay inside. But you wouldn’t do the same for me.

“I’m in pieces, Cobain,” you said, your voice becoming hysterical. “You’ve ripped me to pieces. You think I wanted that? You think I wanted to come undone? I was barely holding on as it was.”

I opened the door and turned back.

You were crying. I wanted to hold you in my arms and protect you from anything or anyone that would hurt you this way again. But I was hurting, too.

“I want all of you, Molly,” I said.

Your face changed from sadness and fear to anger. You were furious that I was doing this to you. That I was opening you up.

You ran toward me with that anger contorting your features. I opened my arms to you. Ready to still your turmoil or to push you away. I wasn’t sure which. I just knew you were running and I was anticipating and the world was holding its breath because we were about to—

Crash.





NOW


Our garage smells like mold, but it’s my only refuge from the world, so I can’t complain.

My dad is gone, repairing a ride at a carnival that will start touring come spring. My mother is still here, but she’ll be on her way out soon, and I certainly don’t want to rehash what happened between Holt and me. So I’m in hiding, with the garage door closed because it’s too damn cold outside, using the bench press I carried home from a neighbor’s house three blocks down. They’d thrown it by the curb—their trash, my sanctuary.

I slide a forty-five on one side, and a thirty-five and a ten on the other, because those are the only weights I have. With the bar, it’s 135 pounds. I can do more, but this is enough to take the edge off.

I clamp the weights in place, remove my shirt, and throw it in the corner. The chill hits me, but I’ll warm up soon enough. I lie down on the bench, and instantly, my brain settles on this task. It focuses on my hands gripping that cold bar. The feel of lifting the weights off the rack. The satisfying pressure on my chest and triceps.

I bring the bar down to my pecs and breathe my way back up, keeping my wrists locked, controlling my head so it doesn’t press into the bench.

I bring the bar down again. And again.

In between reps, my mind betrays me. It’s supposed to remain quiet. That’s our arrangement. I provide the body fuel, and it repays me with blessed silence. But each time I get that bar back up, my mind asks a question.

Did Molly break up with me that afternoon we almost slept together?

Bar down.

Bar up.

Did I misread that last kiss before I left?

Bar down.

Bar up.

She never mentioned a breakup after that, did she?

Bar down.

Bar up.

What was it she said the next morning at school?

Bar down.

Bar up.

She said she belonged to me.

The stress of it all pushes down, down, down on my chest and throat until I feel like I can’t breathe, until my vision grows blurry. I sit up, gasping, my lungs burning from the cold winter air. Clenching my eyes shut like I did that day with Molly in the forest, I slow my breaths.

Then I shoot to my feet and go back inside for a drink of water, trying to erase the sensation from my mind.

Trying to get ahold of myself, for fuck’s sake.





MOLLY


Blue took to sleeping outside her room.

He did it on accident the first time, Molly decided, after she’d sung longer than she normally did. At first, she thought she was imagining the gentle sound of him breathing deeply. She kept singing, softer, as she crossed the room, her footsteps trepid, until she was able to see him through the slot he’d left open.

He slept on his side, his arms folded across his chest, his head resting on a stair. The mask he wore slipped up a fraction, and she spotted the stubble on his jawline. Her heart leaped at the color—black.

She knew the color of his hair now.

It was such a simple thing, but these pieces, they were everything. Especially those she discovered without his awareness.

The color of his hair didn’t answer that ultimate question, but it got her closer.

She feared she knew what she would ultimately find beneath that mask.

Was she certain she wanted to know?

Yes. Yes, of course she was.

When he fell asleep outside her door a second time, she was certain it wasn’t accidental. Blue hadn’t seemed to hate her when he took her from that convenience store, she thought. The kidnapping didn’t even seem to be about her, regardless of what the dusty dresses and wilting flowers suggested.