EVOL Read online

  Anger is exhausting. With each flare of it, I just want to sit back and give up. This is the man that I love.

  Why do I feel like I’m at war with him?

  “I’m trying. I’m . . .” my words falter because I don’t believe them. I don’t believe that anyone should put a time limit on my suffering.

  I’ll move forward when I’m ready to,” I say. His eyes settle on mine, as if he can will me to be the person he wants me to be.

  But even he isn’t capable of moving the clouds so I can feel the sun on my skin again.

  The waitress comes by with our food and Gavin starts eating immediately, chewing quickly and looking around here and there.

  I’m picking at my own food, too deep in my own feelings to really participate in this lunch of ours. It was feeling more and more like a waste of time.

  Gavin was right. There should be smoke coming from my ears for the amount of work my brain was putting in right now, thinking about forgiveness and remembering it all. The good, the bad, the beautiful.

  Gavin, halfway done with his salmon, grabs my plate and swaps it out with his.

  And any anger I have melts away at the simple act.

  He stabs at the salad and I take a good look at him, not looking away when he notices. He pauses, and I sit back.

  “Are we not doing that anymore?”

  His mouth is full of salad and I laugh, genuinely, like I’ve been trying not to for a long time.

  “I’m shocked you remember.”

  He shakes his head and swallows his food.

  “You act like I’ve forgotten you or something.”

  I want to tell him that it felt like he had but the moment feels so good. Too good to continue to fight.

  I take a bite of his salmon and he asks me what I think of it.

  “It’s delicious.”

  There’s a pause, a moment where his fork doesn’t move, and he is just staring at me.

  “What?”

  He lifts his chin a little, sets his fork down, and draws his hands together in front of him.

  “I’ve missed you, Denise.”

  We’re no longer at war. And maybe there are no white flags in sight, but he’s definitely laid down his arms.

  “I’ve missed you.” The words come out like a sigh. Like they’d been trapped in my body and are so relieved to finally be free.

  “The hardest part of all of this is . . . knowing I will never find someone else like you.”

  Elbow on the table, palm hiding my smile, I’m not sure that I can make sense of all that I feel.

  In this moment, I remind myself of the woman I was before. Full of hope, carefree.

  “How’s everything?” The waitress asks but Gavin and I are still staring at each other.

  “Can we have the check?”

  “Sure thing,” she tells Gavin.

  “Not hungry anymore?” I slide my palm down to my chin, so he hears me.

  “Not particularly.”

  I hear Sabrina in my ear telling me not to fuck him, but the fight is futile. If Gavin is willing, it will happen.

  The longer he stares at me, the likelier it becomes.

  He pulls out his card to pay, pushing my hands away when I fumble with my wallet, and when I stand to put my coat on, he asks me what I have planned for the day.

  “Nothing much.”

  He nods, putting his own coat on. The waitress returns, and he signs the slip. When I move to walk past him, he places his hand on the small my of back. It’s the first contact we’ve had in months and even through my layers of clothing, it shocks me.

  He’s so casual, so comfortable in his touch.

  Like no time has passed.

  “I’ll drop you off,” he offers. And I acquiesce.

  Once Gavin lost my anger, I was his.

  He unlocks the doors to his car and nostalgia creeps up on me.

  The places we went in this car, the conversations we’d had . . .

  I get in the passenger side and start putting my seatbelt on.

  He gets in beside me and interrupts me, grabbing me close by my arms, eyes looking into mine.

  Mine, they say back to me.

  He’s slow to move but then his lips are against mine.

  This is all the white flag I need. My hands are at my sides. I don’t trust myself to feel him and not let it carry me away.

  I don’t want that in this parking lot, in his car, like we’re something cheaper than we are.

  He pulls away and whispers, “I’ve been thinking about doing that since I saw you sitting there, pretending not to see me.”

  Without another word, he turns the car on, puts on his seatbelt and heads to my place. The radio plays and he hums along, shooting glances my way here and there.

  I face forward, my lips tingling, my heart pounding, the space between my thighs aching for him.

  He parks smoothly as I admire the skin on his neck, loving that I’m surrounded by his scent.

  His presence makes me forget, makes me forgive what I thought was unforgiveable. When he turns the car off, he turns to me, a question in his eyes.

  Ready?

  I take my seatbelt off and get out of the car. When I hear his car door shut behind me, I make my way inside.

  All while we wait in the elevator, there’s a silence between us. The back of his hand brushes against mine and I close my eyes for a second.

  I hadn’t been touched in so long, it felt like a part of me I’d long forgotten was coming alive.

  We get inside my apartment and Carlos rushes to Gavin. I pull my boots off and watch their interaction.

  He pats him on top of his head and pushes him away a bit and Carlos ambles back to his doggy bed.

  “I just need a second,” I tell Gavin as I head to my bathroom.

  Truthfully, I just needed to breathe and think without him in my space. I owed it to myself and to the person I’d been these past few weeks.

  Because Gavin was here. But he’d leave again.

  And then what?

  I turn on the sink and while the water runs, the sound of it soothing me, I stare at my reflection.

  Rosy cheeks and excited eyes are what I see.

  The sound of the bathroom door opening has me turning the water off.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  “I was until you walked in here,” I answer honestly.

  “Why’s that?” His hip is against the counter and he’s too close. He crowds me, and it does nothing for my common sense.

  “Because I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “You don’t have to do anything, Denise. That’s not what this is about.”

  “But I want to,” I confess with a groan. “And why shouldn’t I?”

  He places a hand on my cheek.

  “Because you can’t handle what comes next; no matter what it is.”

  He’s right. He’s so right but I find myself balancing my weight on my tiptoes to kiss him anyway.

  Sweet little presses that make me yearn for him to take the lead. But he lets me, only his lips moving with encouragement.

  “Tell me what you want,” I whisper.

  “Whatever you’re okay with giving,” he says between kisses.

  No.

  No.

  I step away and my hands brush against my shower curtain.

  “What?” There’s an edge of irritation in his voice.

  “Only what I’m okay with giving?”

  “Yes, Denise. I’m not going to insist on you giving me more because I can’t do the same.”

  “I’m such an idiot,” I say, more to myself than to him. When he touches my wrists, I pull them away. “Did I think fucking you would fix anything?”

  “Stop thinking, damn it. Just do whatever feels right.” It sounds like a beg from his soft lips.

  “I’m not like you! I can’t just fuck you and forget you.”

  “You think that’s who I am?” His arms are spread out and I miss his touch already.


  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”

  “Denise,” he says, and his hands are on my shoulders, then my jaw, “you know me.”

  “Do I?”

  He makes a sound of frustration and then he’s like a tornado coming toward me. I welcome him, and he backs us into the shower as he presses firm kisses on my lips, ravenously. He turns it on and even though it’s cold at first, I don’t notice. Though my clothes are sticking to my skin in that irritating way, I latch onto him hard.

  When I yank at his shirt, he tugs mine down to free my breasts. I pause my efforts to get him naked when his mouth lands on my nipple and I gasp.

  We struggle and it’s some sort of twisted foreplay, ripping clothes and not giving a single fuck.

  We’re both finally naked and I can feel his anger as he thrusts into me, stroke after stroke, his body quieting the questions in my mind.

  He is a momentary salve on the wounds inflicted by the world. And by him.

  I once heard that what can heal you, can kill you. But could the same be said, in reverse?

  “I love you,” I whisper in his ear once we’re finished, my legs still wrapped around his waist. He buries his face in my neck before letting me slide down and leaving me in the running shower alone.

  And the arms laid to rest feel as though they’d only been hidden behind his back.

  Who is this stranger I’ve become?Why does she look like me . . .

  Sound like me?

  I can tell she’s someone else.

  With her halfway smiles,

  And her silent steps.

  Day 374

  “You’re being really fucking unreasonable, Denise.”

  Surprise, surprise.

  I’m the problem; always the problem.

  “You got here yesterday, and I haven’t seen you. Why?”

  Expectations, he’ll say. That’s why.

  “Because I was with my sister! I wasn’t with friends, I wasn’t with other women. I was with my family,” he shouts, and I can just imagine what he looks like on the other end of the line. Eyes wide, lips parted, neck corded from his want to be heard.

  There’s this part of me, watching myself from the corner of the room, telling me that I’m being unreasonable; that I want too much from him and that there’s no way he’s set up to succeed in whatever is left between us.

  But that part of me will always be trampled by the much larger part of me that selfishly wants to have her feelings validated.

  You’re going to push him even further away, that small part whispers.

  He needs to understand how I feel, the larger part yells back.

  They bicker inside of me while Gavin tells me that I’m starting to piss him off.

  “Oh, yeah? Well, be pissed, Gavin. I’ve been pissed for a while now. Get a little angry; it’s good for you.”

  I hang up the phone and pace the room, tossing my phone on the bed before I do something crazy like chuck it across the room.

  Carlos’s eyes follow me as I walk back and forth, ignoring the phone that’s now vibrating.

  I liked to think I fought against him because I was never the type to be subjected to this careless treatment. But what did it matter if I fought, if I always stayed?

  What the fuck did it matter? We’d go round for round, hurting each other, only for me to apologize and . . . stay.

  I was driving the both of us half crazy.

  I grab my phone and send Gavin to voicemail before typing out a text.

  Me: I need you.

  Not ten minutes later of me pacing and regretting my outburst, there’s a knock on my front door.

  Her hair is piled on top of her head in a messy bun and she’s wearing leggings and a sports bra with a light jacket open on top. Her skin looks a little damp and pink and she’s breathing heavy.

  Immediately, her hands are on my face.

  “You okay?”

  “I don’t know,” I mumble before my face crumples.

  Sabrina pulls me into a hug and I let myself cry into her.

  “Why are you so sticky?” I ask after a few minutes, trying to peel my face from her chest.

  “I ran over from the gym.”

  “You’re a psycho,” I mutter as I wipe my nose on her jacket.

  “You just used my jacket as a Kleenex, dickhead. And I’m the psycho?” She takes her jacket off and throws it on my counter. “I’m here. Talk to me.”

  “I kind of feel like I’m losing my goddamn mind,” I confess as I open my fridge and reach for the bottle of Roscato. Sabrina walks over and opens the cupboard, forgoing wine glasses for mugs.

  When I snort some kind of laugh, my face still feeling hot from my tears, she smiles.

  “We’re not fancy bitches,” she says and takes the bottle from me, pouring generous amounts of wine in each mug.

  “One of these things is not like the otha.” I grab a mug, and chuckle at my dragging out our Boston accent. The one that Sabrina only lets loose in my presence.

  “Shut up.”

  We sit on my purple sofa, Sabrina being wise enough to have brought the entire bottle with her. She sets it on my reclaimed wood coffee table and turns to face me. Her bare midriff has not even a pinch of fat and I sit up straight, so my little rolls aren’t on display in my crop top and boyfriend jeans. I tuck my bare feet under my knees.

  “Why are you losing your mind?”

  “All Gavin and I do is argue.”

  All I do is say how I feel and all he does is pick at everything I say and find fault in me, and all we do is not love each other the way we used to.

  “We both know you two don’t want the same things anymore, Denise.” She sips her wine and I gulp mine, thinking over what she’s saying.

  “Let me clarify: you want to heal together, and he wants to move forward and pretend it never happened. For him, it didn’t really happen.”

  “So, what? In order to make this work, I have to pretend it never happened?”

  “Well, no. He needs to understand you if anything is going to work between the two of you. And understanding you means understanding all of you. Not just how cute you are and all of the great things you have done and will continue to do for him.”

  She sets her mug down.

  “You’ve been good to that man. Some of it he didn’t even deserve. And now that you need help, now that you’re a little difficult, now he’s had enough.” She runs her hands through her hair. “See, you think I dislike him because he knocked you up and wasn’t here for you when everything happened. No. I’m pissed because he broke my little sister when she put him back together. And that’s not what you do when you care about someone.”

  My mug is empty, and I feel a little warm inside.

  “I don’t think either of us were expecting any of this,” I say, my voice low and my eyes focused on something far off, in another world.

  “You two met the day you broke up with someone else,” she tells me with a laugh. “Of course you weren’t expecting this.”

  The sound of wine being poured into my mug is only background noise to my inner workings. She sets the bottle down and sits back into the sofa.

  “But isn’t that life? Or some shitty part of it, anyway. Being given these weird pieces that don’t fit together and making them fit. All the things that happen to us or that we end up with, we make it all work.”

  “Some more gracefully than others.” I tap my mug against hers and swallow some down, ignoring the scowly face she makes.

  “So, what are we doing?” Her hands are wrapped around her mug as she looks at me expectantly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that I’m not going to sit in this frickin’ apartment, feeling bad for you.”

  “Definitely not the saddest person here right now.” I push my foot under her butt and wiggle my toes. “I can smell your stinky ass from here.”

  “Fuck you,” she says with a grin. “I came running for your dramatic ass.”

 
; “This is true.” I finish the wine in my mug and she shoots me a curious look.

  “You maybe wanna slow down? We both know you’re a lightweight.”

  Sabrina might be the only person in the world who knows all about my antics. She knows my alcohol threshold. And she knows what I look like with my heart broken at my feet.

  “Ever worry about who you might become?” I pause and try to think my next words through. “I guess I worry that if I don’t heal the right way, I’ll always have this one fucked-up part of myself . . . like when you broke your arm playing Ghouls and now your elbow clicks.”

  “Because Mom didn’t want to bring me to the doctor since we didn’t have health insurance.” Sabrina nods to herself, her eyes faraway from here, living the moments of our adolescence that sometimes forced us to understand just how good we have it now.

  Mom wasn’t around to forget to feed us anymore.

  “You ever wonder what life would’ve been like if Mom hadn’t been sick?” I whisper and though Sabrina’s eyes show that she’s still somewhere other than right here, she answers.

  “I used to. Not anymore.” It’s her turn to finish her wine and she does so with a flourish, setting the mug down on the coffee table hard enough to make Carlos pick his head up from his doggy bed. He sniffs the air for a second and lies his head back down, sensing no danger.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  I snort.

  “You want to leave this house looking and smelling like that?” She pushes my foot from under her butt and I laugh.

  “You have a perfectly good shower and I’m sure I can find something here to change into.”

  I eye her long legs.

  “If you’re into capris, sure.”

  She grimaces and takes her hair out from its bun. I rarely ever get to see this version of her; no makeup and hair a mess, her dark roots peeking out a little.

  “I’m not going home.”

  “Why not? I don’t have much here that would suit you.”

  She snatches up the mugs and bottle and carries them to the kitchen.

  “Hello?” When she closes the refrigerator door, she turns to answer me, her hands on her hips.

  “Because then you’ll lock yourself in here. And wallow or whatever the hell it is you’ve been doing while waiting for him to make time for you.”