“I…” I search for my words. “I didn’t want it. You…you made me get it.”
“That’s bullshit. Why did you throw it away?”
“Because I didn’t want it!” I say again. “It’s just candy. What the hell? What does it matter?”
“You threw it away, because it did matter,” he barks.
I start to walk away.
But he grabs my arm. “Don’t you see? That’s what happened.” He turns me around, but I turn my head away, refusing to look at him. “At some point, you started denying yourself anything that made you happy. Out of spite, maybe? Or pride? Candy? Toys? Pets? Affection? Love? Friends?”
I flex my jaw, but I’m breathing hard as he shakes me.
“And I know that, because I did it, too,” he tells me. “You don’t want to smile, because if you do, it means everything they did to you didn’t matter. And it has to matter or else they’re off the hook, right? And you can’t have that.”
I shake my head, but I still can’t meet his eyes.
“They need to know what they did to you,” Jake says, acting like he knows me. “Showing them how they hurt you will hurt them, right? They need to see how they ruined your life. You can’t just let it go like it was nothing, because you’re angry. You need them to know. You need someone to know.”
No. That’s not…
I have hobbies. I have things I like. I…
“So you’ll waste your life,” he continues, “blow off your future, going through the motions, and diving into anything that makes you feel good for even a moment…”
I shake my head, the tears pooling more and more.
No. I have interests. I let myself enjoy things. I…
“And then someday after the fights and the job you hate and the divorces and the kids that can’t stand you…”
I just keep shaking my head. I don’t care what they did or didn’t do. I don’t need this.
But the memory of our vacation to Fiji when I was eleven pops into my head and how they only took me, because the press had caught on that I was rarely ever with my parents.
And how one morning I woke up in the suite alone and waited for them for two days, because they took an overnight trip around all the islands and forgot about me.
I was so scared.
“You’re going to look in the mirror at the seventeen-year-old girl in a fifty-year-old body and realize you wasted so much time being devastated at how those fuckers didn’t love you that you forgot there’s an entire world of people who will.”
I crack. My eyes close, my body shakes, and I just sob, letting it go. The anger, the pain, the exhaustion of them taking up nearly every ounce of my brain, because for so long, there was nothing else I lived for, than for them to notice me.
He’s right.
I look up at him, tears spilling down my face. “They didn’t leave me a note,” I say, “Why did they do that?”
He picks me up, sets me on the countertop, and wraps his arms around me again, one hand gripping my hair as I bury my face in his neck.
I cry so hard it’s silent, and I can’t keep it back even if I try.
“Because they were fuckers, baby,” he says, his voice thick. “They were fucking fuckers.”
“I don’t know who I am,” I sob.
“Shhhh…”
He soothes me, rubbing his fingers in my hair and holding me tight. My arms hang limply at my side as every speck of energy drains, everything I’ve been holding in over the years and didn’t want to feel. It hurts.
“Shhhh…” he whispers in my ear. “It’s okay.”
He keeps me there, and I don’t know how long I cry, but when the tears start to slow, embarrassment warms my cheeks.
I try to lift up, but his hold stays firm, not letting me escape.
And just like that. I let it everything go. The worry, the doubt, the shame… I’m a fucking basket case, but he’s not going anywhere.
Slowly, I circle his waist with my arms, locking my hands behind his back as I breathe in the scent of his neck.
Warm. He’s so warm and they’re so warm. Everything is warm here. And even if we’re not finishing what we started, this feels just as good. I think Mirai was the last one to hug me. I let her do it on my last birthday, but I don’t think I let her give me a real one in years.
I calm after a while, the pain fading, because I know the truth. My parents didn’t love me.
And that wasn’t my fault.