Page 78 of Colt
But he doesn’t listen, and he drives that long drive back.
“You know, I should make dinner.”
He’s made dinner a few times over these past months. But combined with what he said earlier, it makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. Still, he does it anyway, and I don’t stop him. Because even though there is a reservation inside of me, part of me is hungry for it. It’s honestly my whole experience with Colt. I know better, but I want it. I want it, so I let myself have it, I’m perilously close to the edge. Perilously close to falling off, falling to my death.
I know it, but I let him.
The best thing about today was that he got the all-clear to take his brace off for things like bathing. He’s still not supposed to put weight on it, or do anything else with the brace off, but he can do that.
“I think we should take a bath,” he whispers.
“What?”
“I can officially get in water now.” He grimaces. “I can’t say that I love the look of my leg when that brace came off, though.”
He’s lost muscle, that’s true. But it’s also to be expected. I can see why it bothers him, though. But it doesn’t bother me at all. It’s just part of this. That feeling of edging ever closer to a precipice grows more profound. It’s like when we had the picnic. He’s teasing me with romanticism, and that’s not supposed to be us.
I’m supposed to be able to sort all that out. I’m supposed to have gone into this with my eyes open. And yet I’m panicking.
I also still don’t tell him no.
Instead, I enjoy our grilled corn salad and pork chop, because he really is a great cook, and then I let him go and run a bath. I sit there and act like the one who needs to be pampered. I let him, because there’s been so little of this in my life, my choice.
I’ve dated men who let me baby them. I flung myself into this thing with Colt when he was in need of a caregiver. Because I know how to be a caregiver. I know how to make myself important.
And I always choose men that I… Can live without.
Always. Maybe I choose mediocre sex for that same reason. Nobody’s crying over it ending in that case.
I’m suddenly sitting there in the kitchen looking at a long view of so many decisions that I’ve made. Deciding not to go to school and live on campus, deciding to depend on myself, take it at my own pace, do it online rather than building a whole network of friends and experiences apart from this place. And even now, now that I’m moving away, it isn’t because I’m so excited to expand, it’s because I wanted an excuse to distance Colt. Because I used it at the very beginning of all of this to draw a line in the sand, so that…
I gave it a diagnosis. A prognosis.
I made it so that it was something I could manage. So that it was fatal. Because if it were fatal, then I could just accept.
Because I know how to do that. I didn’t want to be in a position where I was fighting. And fighting alone. To try and save this, to try and make it something it can never be.
He comes back into the room. “Ready.”
I get up, and I go to him. I let him undress me in the bathroom, his rough hands skimming over my skin, making me sigh. I try to push all my thoughts away. All my doubts. The heaviness. The heavy feeling that I can’t deny anymore.
It’s never been a crush.
I love this man. I love this broken, fucked up man.
I have for a very long time.
And I never wanted it to be central to my life. I never wanted him to be central to my life because… He’s made it so clear he doesn’t want this.
I don’t want this.
I don’t want to be railing at the sky. I don’t want to be begging for a miracle. One that I’m not going to get.
I just want to be able to live.
I’ve done this already. I’ve hoped for the impossible. I’ve prayed that I would be the exception. I don’t want to do it again.
I fixed it all. I can accept it. I lost my mom, and it was terrible. But I can accept that it happened. I can turn it into something good. But going through the work of all that, it’s a Herculean effort, and I just don’t want to do it again, and here I am with this crushing weight, this awful, terrible feeling bearing down on me, and I just don’t want to deal with it. I squeeze my eyes shut, and I let his hands take me away. I let this moment stand on its own.
