Page 60 of Damnation
“Do you know what I think? I think that, despite everything, she still loves you with her whole heart. A terrible thing happened to all of you, but I bet that she’s been thinking about you all this time,” I say, drawing on the information that Leila entrusted to me.
He answers with a derisive snort, staring down at the bandanna on his wrist. Still, despite all the resentment he clearly feels, I can detect a little bit of agony in him as well.
“What made you decide to start over?” I asked, trying to step back a bit.
“This one night…” He stops. “One night, I almost OD’d.” He turns to look at me with shame in his eyes. “Leila found me passed out in my room. When I woke up in the hospital, she was there and she was terrified. She was crying, and she begged me to stop because she couldn’t stand the thought of losing another brother. Three days later, I decided to check myself into a facility.”
It takes me a second to digest this information. “You went to rehab?”
He nods. “I was there for six months. It was hard, but I wouldn’t have done it otherwise. As soon as I got clean, I left Portland. But the temptation is always there. I still drink—I just can’t help it—and I smoke lots and lots of cigarettes. They help curb the impulse to get high. A cigarette for every bump of coke I’d like to do.”
I stay silent and motionless as I stare at him. And then a memory pops into my head:“Nicotine keeps a lot of my impulses at bay. Things I wouldn’t be able to control otherwise.”He told me that the first night we talked outside the gym on campus. At the time, I didn’t know what he was talking about. I couldn’t have imagined.
“But the night you came to the Marsy, you were drunk on Jack Daniels…and you spent the next morning drinking and smoking pot…”
Thomas lets out a sigh. “That was the anniversary of my brother’s death. That night I…I wasn’t thinking straight. I’d brought you here in the afternoon, away from everyone and everything, because I wanted you to be with me. To be justforme. And I don’t even know how you did it, but you somehow managed to ease some of that sadness thatwas fucking with my head. You were good for me, Ness. So good that I didn’t want to be without you. You turned out to be the perfect antidote to all the poisons my body craved. But then I went to the Marsy and saw you with Logan, and I don’t know what happened. I wanted you to be with me, and you were with him instead. I was feeling so many different things, this frustration mixed with anger, and all I wanted to do was drown myself in alcohol and loneliness. The next day, I saw you slipping through my fingers with so much disappointment in your eyes, and I realized that I was fucking everything up again.”
I’m overwhelmed by these revelations, by a power over him that I never knew I had.
“I…I didn’t want to make you feel bad…” I say regretfully. If only I’d known that night…
“You weren’t the problem. I was angry at myself. For everything I’d done and what I was continuing to do. You showed up at my dorm that morning, and damn it if you weren’t the last person who should have been there. Because I knew that I was going to say or do something to hurt you. But despite all that, you were also the only person I actually wanted to see.”
I stare into his eyes, and all my stupid drama with my mother seems so trifling. I feel like an idiot for complaining to him about it. I lower my head, but he puts a finger under my chin and lifts it up. “I was right, wasn’t I?” he asks, with a hint of sadness in his voice.
I blink confusedly. “About what?”
“About how you’d never look at me the same again. I don’t blame you if all you see now is a guy who doesn’t deserve your respect. I know I don’t deserve it, I know I’m a bad person, but…”
“You have my respect, Thomas. Because, despite all the ugliness that surrounded you, you found the strength to pull yourself out of it.” I take his face in my hands and bring my lips to his. I brush them with my own, close my eyes, and kiss him. When our mouths pull apart, I rest my forehead against his. “The first time we talked, that night outside the rec center, I told you something. I said you’re human and humans all make mistakes. What matters is that you find the strengthto overcome them. And that’s what you’re doing. You should be proud of yourself.”
I kiss him again, harder this time, and I feel a tear run down my face, which he quickly wipes away. Now that I know about everything he went through, everything that happened to him and how much it cost him, I’m amazed he found the strength to tell me about it. And I know that, despite everything, my heart belongs to him, and I will do everything in my power to help him find the peace he deserves.
Fifteen
“‘I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan…’”
Leaving the bad memories behind us, Thomas and I are watching the starry sky, taking advantage of the new moon to look for constellations. I know this wasn’t a casual suggestion on his part. A few nights ago, when I told him about my father and how much he’d hurt me when he left, I’d also told him about how much I’d loved sky-watching with my dad when I was a child.
Now, I lie on top of Thomas, my legs stretched out between his andPersuasionresting on my belly. He has one hand tucked under his head, and he rubs the back of my neck with the other, while I use my phone’s flashlight to read aloud all about Anne and Frederick’s heart-wrenching love. One he immediately makes fun of, naturally.
“Is this your idea of a romantic love story, Ness?” he teases.
I pull my eyes from the page and back to him. “Jane Austen does much more than just tell a banal romantic love story. She delves deeply into the psyche of the characters, exposes all their hypocrisies, and describes how love can triumph over resentment.”
“I still think these books do you more harm than good,” he needles me.
I roll my eyes, surrendering myself to the idea that I will clearly never be able to make him care about books. I close the book and set it aside, changing the subject to tomorrow’s basketball game. “Have you ever thought about having a plan B, other than basketball? I mean, you say you don’t like studying, but you’re not doing badly at all.”
“Nah, why should I? I’m a basketball star,” he answers, cocky as ever, making me laugh and shake my head at the same time.
“So that’s your secret dream? To be a basketball star?”
“I don’t have any secret dreams. I’ve never had any, didn’t have the chance to cultivate them. College was never in my plans. For a while, I thought about working for my uncle in his tattoo shop, but then life took me in a different direction.”
I raise myself up slightly to look at him, intrigued. “But you came to Corvallis with a basketball scholarship, so you must have had something in mind?”
He rolls his eyes but tolerates my third degree. “Not really. I’ve always been good at basketball. Even in high school with all the bullshit, I managed to perform pretty well. I quit the team after the accident, and I only started playing again in my last year of community service because my coach encouraged me. For some reason, he’d decided to take me under his wing. During that time, a talent scout noticed me, and my name started to get around. But obviously I fucked that all up with my second relapse. Coach knew I wanted to get away from Portland, so when I finally got clean, he put in a good word for me with the athletics department at OSU. He had some old friends there, and they brought me here. Basketball was my one-way ticket out of Portland,” he concludes.
