Caleb

I stole her lips back from Sawyer, a breath at a time, a touch at a time, until I took her back. She slid her hands up my shirt, around my neck and pulled me to her till I couldn’t breathe. She kissed me so hard it hurt, like her lips and tongue were hungrier than they’d been before, desperate, angry, starved like I couldn’t give her enough.

She went from weak to wild in my hands, and forced herself against me like she was forcing herself to be someone she wasn’t anymore. I stopped her, and reached out and held her face in my hands so I could find her again. She was miles away.

            “Look at me,” I said.

She wouldn’t keep her eyes on mine for more than a few seconds, and the same pressure I’d fought so hard to keep in check all night boiled up to a breaking point.

            “Where are you, Hailey?”

She blinked black tears out of her eyelashes, and finally forced herself to look at me straight. I wish she hadn’t. God, I wish she hadn’t.

            “I don’t know. I’ve been wanting to talk to you I just—“

          “What do we need to talk about? Whatever happened with Sawyer doesn’t matter ‘cause it was a mistake, wasn’t it? He pushed you into doing something you didn’t want to, right?"

She stayed quiet and disappeared into her thoughts long enough for me to hold my breath waiting on her words.

        “It’s not really that simple, Caleb—

        “You made a mistake. Tell me it was a mistake and I’ll forget this happened. Just say something, Hailey!”

Her whole body shook when I shouted at her, just slightly, but enough for me to know that I’d scared her. She’d never been afraid of me before. I shouldn’t have opened my mouth.  

She took a second to steady herself, and trained her eyes on mine again, but the seriousness behind them cut apart whatever hope I had in hearing a better version of the truth.

         “I need you to listen to me,” she said.

She didn’t sound like herself—not at all. The Hailey I knew never needed to brace me for anything, ‘cause she never did anything worth worrying about. But the girl in front of me now was starting to feel like a stranger wearing her shell.

          “I’m listening.”

          “I’ve been talking to Dr. Greer about us. She doesn’t know who you are, but she knows I’m with someone and—she thinks that whatever we have isn’t healthy for me—”

That’s why I hated doctors like Greer. They’re licensed to spout bullshit.

             “Do you buy that, Hailey?”

             “I’m on twice the meds I used to be, Caleb. I’m worried about you and me all the time. I can’t even tell Dr. Greer about you, I can’t tell my mom about you, and we hardly see each other because of work these days—“

            “I’m home every night, Hailey. I’ve stayed up waiting for you to come back late the last couple weeks and you were with Sawyer? Did Dr. Greer tell you to cheat on me? Is that healthy?”

            “It’s not like that, Caleb.”

            “Then what is it? Do you like this guy? He sure as hell likes you.”

            “Stop.”

            “Do you?”

          “I don’t know—I don’t know what I want or what’s going on with me right now, I just need time to figure things out, okay?”

          “What did I do, Hailey? What part of us do you need to figure out?”

          “Look how we met. Look where we are. We can hardly go out together, I can’t tell anyone about you. I’m scared everyday that I’m going to slip up and put you at risk. I’m scared of my dad, I’m scared that someone will recognize us, and that things will blow up again.”

I took a couple steps away from her just so I could breathe. I needed to hit something, and punching out a couple cop car windows would’ve been a start.

She should’ve dropped that therapist when I told her to a few months ago. Every time she’d drive down to Charlottesville for one of their sessions she came back different, distant, like she’d lost herself and her common sense over the course of a couple hours.

It took days to get her back and even when she managed to get close to normal, the goddamn pills made things worse. That doctor was the problem, not us, and her crackpot advice clearly had Hailey out of her mind.

       “You knew all that when we started this, Hailey! I knew. I knew exactly what I was risking. We both knew the position your Dad put us in and I was ready to deal with all that for you—“

I stopped talking before I started crying. If there was one thing I wasn’t gonna do tonight, it was cry front of her.

        “I don’t want you to have to do that for me anymore, Caleb. I don’t want you putting yourself through anything else for me.  When you say things like that I don’t really see how I’m different from my Dad when it comes to you—“

She had no idea how different she was. I loved her because she wasn’t afraid to be.

        “—He took everything away from you, Caleb, and I forced you away from your family when I shouldn’t have. I don’t know why you’re okay living like none of that happened. You can’t be okay living like that. I’m not. I’ve thought about that everyday for the past year, and I can’t just pretend that I’m not part of the reason you don’t have a life to go back to.”

           “Why would you say something like that? Why would you even think that?"

          “Because it’s true. It’s always been true you just never wanted to hear it. You don’t know how hard it is for me to look at you lately because I see all of that. I see you hiding so much every time you smile at me and I need space—we need space so we can deal with what we went through.”

She didn’t know anything. Having her with me was my way of dealing with what we went through. She was the only reason I could. She was the only reason I wasn’t crazy. Why the hell couldn’t she see that?

            “I don’t want you to go anywhere,” I said.

         “You should, Caleb. You had a chance to start your whole life over away from me, and you stayed here—”

            “I wanted to stay here, ‘cause I wanted you. I still want you.”

She wasn’t hearing me. She wasn’t listening to anything I said and I needed her to. I needed her to understand how wrong she was. 

            “Maybe you don’t, you just haven’t realized it yet. You don't know how much time I spent wanting to believe that you could love me and that this could work—“

I did love her.

            “—But now I wake up wondering if we’re really different or if we’re just two people who only fell for each other because we had to survive."

            “It’s not like that for me, Hailey.”

          “It is for me, and I need to figure out where I am. Dr. Greer thinks I need to spend time with other people, and see other people so I can readjust to life outside of this. She thinks I need to find my way back to who I was before so I can get back to being normal.”

I walked over to her, took her face and my hands, and tried to pull her back down to earth.

            “Hailey, I don’t wanna go back to how I was before. I wasn’t in love with you before. My life was bullshit before. I don’t even have that life to go back to. I have you and that’s it. That’s all I want.”

She stared at me hard, like she was waiting on me to waver in what I’d said. But I’d meant it—every goddamn word.

            “I slept with Sawyer, Caleb.”

For a split second every single part of me hoped to God that I’d heard her wrong, that the gravity in her voice wasn’t there at all, and that the girl I fell in love with hadn’t opened her mouth and told me she wasn’t mine anymore. I waited for her to unsay what she’d said, to fix this before everything fell apart—before I fell apart.

But she didn’t, she just cried to herself, by herself, ‘cause she meant what she’d said—every goddamn word.