Afraid of the Dark

My mother and my sister and I moved into our third house when I was fifteen. My sister and I had our own rooms for the first time. She was overjoyed, and I was, too, at first--at least until I discovered that the darkness is infinitely more scary alone.

I slept with the curtains open and multiple nightlights on once I had a whole room to myself. When I closed my eyes, the darkness was overpowering, and the stillness and the silence all around me was almost tangible in its intensity; it filled up the whole room with a sinister humming that put me on edge. I would lie there for what felt like hours, paralyzed with some diluted semblance of fear--as if, subconsciously, I thought that if I could just lay still enough, the darkness and the silence couldn't get me. Eventually, I would fall asleep and awake in the same rigid position the next morning, lying flat on my back with my arms and legs pressed into straight lines and folded in close to my body, like a corpse arranged neatly in a coffin.

I hated to sleep alone. As time passed, I learned new tricks to relaxing myself into sleep. I would hum or sing out loud to myself, just to fill up the silence. I would stare out the window at the moon that was almost always there, focusing on the bright, silvery light and not on the darkness it was polluting. Sometimes I would even close my eyes and wrap my arms around myself and pretend that I wasn't sleeping alone--that there was someone else there beside me, holding me and keeping me safe from the darkness.

At fifteen, I had wanted that more than anything: for someone to share a bed with me, to protect me from my fears. But as I got older, I began to purposely sabatoge that dream. I pushed away the few men who had tried to get close enough to share a bed with me, mostly because the idea that had once been a comfort to me was now terrifying. What if they found out how afraid of the dark I was? They would never take me seriously again. They would think I was a lunatic. They wouldn't want me anymore.

I had never told anyone that I was afraid of the dark before. Mama knew, and I guess my sister had to have known, but that was it; I had never confessed my intense phobia to any other friends, family, or--God forbid--boyfriends.

Except for Pete.

I had told him that I was afraid, and he still took me seriously. He didn't think I was a lunatic. And he definitely wanted me.

Standing before the marble sink in the hotel room bathroom, I turned and pressed my face against the doorframe. It felt cold and hard and sharp beneath my lips--not like Pete's mouth. Not soft and warm and inviting...

And bad, I reminded myself sternly. Very bad. Kissing him is very, very bad.

With a sigh, I pulled away from the doorframe and faced my reflection again. I reached up to touch my cheek lightly, trailing my fingers along the line of my jaw and wondering why there wasn't a huge red brand of "CHEATER" blazing across my forehead. In the mirror, I didn't look any different than usual, but I was sure that there was something in my face that would betray my guilt to the others. They would see the look on my face, and they would know what I had done.

...Wouldn't they? How could they not know? How could we do something so wrong and then just go about our business like it never happened, and never face the consequences? It just wasn't fair.

We should have been punished.

I stood in the doorway of the bathroom and stared out into the darkness of the bedroom. Moonlight shining in through the window cast a square of light on the floor near the foot of the bed and I remembered being fifteen, laying awake in bed and fixating on the few patches of light that persisted throughout the dark night. I remembered hating myself, hating my fear, hating the person I had become. I remembered reaching over to turn out the lamp on the bedside table, to plunge myself into absolute darkness for as long as I could stand it; I remembered counting in my head, trying to beat my own record from the night before, pushing myself to sit alone in the darkness of my room the way other kids held their breath under water.

The thrill of fear would come. It always came, and I hated it. But the fear brought with it a strange relief--an affirmation of my own self-loathing that comforted me somehow. As if all I had really wanted all along was a good reason to hate myself.

I think I said before that the reason I don't let anyone get close to me is because I'm afraid of what they'll think of me, that they'll see the same pathetic weakness that I see in myself every night after sunset and hate me for it, too. That's only part of the truth. The other part, the part I don't like to admit to even myself, is that I gain some sort of sick satisfaction from isolating myself completely. It's like plunging myself into the dark all over again--punishing myself.

For what? Whenever I asked myself this question, I shied away from it immediately, not because I couldn't find an answer, but because there were too many. I had done so many things wrong in my life. I always thought that if I just planned out the rest of my life step-by-step and stayed my course, I would be fine. And maybe I would've been.

But things didn't go according to plan. It would have been so easy to blame Pete for all of that, but none of it was his fault, really. Yes, he kissed me; but I kissed him back.

In that split-second, I made a decision that was not part of my plans. And so I made the jump from the hypothetical to reality, and suddenly what had started out as innocent daydreams and innuendo had turned into something real. Something I couldn't stop or take back. The moment I made my choice, I changed the course of my whole future, and I found myself stumbling down a path I had never intended to take.

-----

Pete was late to dinner that night.

This was our last night in New York, and so the five of us--the four members of Fall Out Boy and myself, as per usual--had decided to have dinner together in the hotel's five-star restaurant as a sort of going-away party for ourselves. We had agreed to meet downstairs at seven o'clock sharp. Stump was on time; Hurley, Trohman, and I were about five minutes late. We waited another twenty minutes for Pete to arrive before we finally allowed the hostess to seat us.

Just after eight o'clock, Pete stumbled into the restaurant, weaving precariously between tables in our general direction. He obviously saw us, but never looked right at us; instead, his dark eyes roved all around the room, taking in the curtains, the wallpaper, the elegant chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. He wasn't watching where he was going at all--he nearly collided with an older lady in a fur coat and a busy waiter balancing a pile of dishes on one hand, but didn't apologize for either incident. In fact, he didn't seem to even notice.

Distracted didn't do him justice.

"Hey," he mumbled faintly, not at all in the grandiose Pete Wentz fashion I was so accustomed to. He cast a furtive glance around the room as he ducked into the only open seat at the table, as if by sitting down he was committing some heinous crime and he was worried about being caught in the act.

"What's up, man?" said Stump. His voice was friendly enough, but there was also a hard edge to it underneath its amicable disguise. I was sure that I woudn't have noticed a week ago, but I knew him well enough now to recognize the difference.

Pete heard it, too. He looked up at Stump for the most fleeting of moments, and then looked down at his lap. "Hey," he said again.

"You're late," said Stump, not unkindly--just in a matter-of-fact sort of way.

"Yeah, um..." Pete shifted in his seat, lifting his hips in order to slide his cell phone into his pocket. I stared. "Sorry. I was...distracted."

"Was?" snorted Trohman from my left. No one else seemed to have heard.

I don't remember what we talked about over dinner, though I'm sure we must have talked about something. Mostly I just remember struggling to find things to look at--the menu, the centerpiece, the tablecloth, the pretentious too-classy decor of the whole damn place--other than Pete, just because I wasn't sure how to look at him. Should I be angry? Offended? Friendly? Understanding?

When he kissed me on the balcony in the dead of winter, he made us something more...more than professional acquaintances, more than friends. When I kissed him back and then slunk out of his hotel room without a word, I cemented the bond.

And now, sitting across from each other in a dimly lit room, avoiding each other's eyes and not speaking, we were co-conspirators.

I don't know if the others caught on. I'm sure they did, but I didn't notice. I was too wrapped up in my own wild thoughts, too desperate to ignore the man who was fidgeting away in the seat across from me.

What we had done was wrong, there was no doubt about it. In my mind, I knew that I should feel guilty for kissing a married man, but I only felt guilty for kissing him and not regretting it. For wanting to kiss him again.

And again. And again. And again....

Halfway through dinner, Pete's cell phone rang--a cheerful default melody that I recognized instantly. He dropped his fork and knife onto his plate with an awful clattering of metal against porcelain, jumping up out of his seat like he had been tasered. He barely had time to mumble, "Sorry," to no one in particular before he had whipped his phone out of his pocket and pressed it to his ear.

"Hey, baby," I heard him blurt out in a desperate hiccup of messy syllables as he stumbled past all the empty white tables that filled the room. "I miss you, too," he was saying as he reached the door.

Then he walked out of the restaurant. He didn't come back.

We waited for him for a long time--at least half an hour after we had all finished eating. Eventually, it was apparent that he had no intentions of returning, and, thoroughly pissed off by his behavior tonight, Hurley and Trohman paid their bills and stalked up to their hotel rooms. Stump and I stayed put, though.

"He's on the phone," Stump muttered. He scraped his fork against his empty plate absently. "It's a long phone call. That's all."

We both knew that was bullshit, but we accepted it readily.

"Who is he talking to?" I asked, though I knew the answer.

"Ashlee."

Yes.

"Oh," I said.

We waited another ten minutes before we decided to give up on Pete. Stump pulled out his credit card and paid for both his and Pete's bills. "He can pay me back later," said Stump, though we both knew he wouldn't.

As we walked out of the hotel restaurant, Stump craned his neck to search the far-reaching corners of the lobby and squinted. I knew he was looking for Pete, because I was, too. But he wasn't there.

On the way up to our floor, we were the only ones in the elevator. I wondered why, until I checked my phone and saw that it was almost ten o'clock. No wonder it was so dark outside.

I remembered sitting in a restaurant much like the one we were just in, looking out the window and watching Pete pacing back and forth outside in the dark with his phone to one ear, talking and yelling and begging over the phone. I wondered if that was what he was doing right now. Or maybe they weren't fighting. Maybe he told her everything and she forgave him. Or maybe he didn't, and he just missed her, like he had said he did. Maybe they were in love.

Before I knew what was happening, I was crying. I was even more startled and confused by my behavior than Stump was; he was leaning against the far wall of the elevator, staring at me like he wasn't sure what to make of me, but in a resigned, accepting sort of way. He didn't seem very surprised.

All I wanted to do was explain myself, but I didn't know how to. I wished someone else could explain it instead, because I didn't understand. What had I done? What did I want? What was I going to do now?

"Patrick," I said. I don't know why I called him that. "I don't know what to do."

"I know," he said immediately, blinking his pretty baby blue eyes at me. He was so soft, so easy in the way he spoke and moved and lived; it calmed me down. "It's okay."

I don't remember him walking across the elevator to me, but then he was hugging me against him, and he felt almost as warm as Pete had earlier, on the balcony, and the memory just made me cry harder. "I'm sorry," I said, my voice cracked and ragged with the sobs that wracked my body. "I'm sorry."

"Shhhh..." he murmured. He rubbed my back in circles like my mother used to, before I blamed her for everything that wasn't her fault. "Don't apologize. It's okay."

"I don't know what to do. What should I do?"

Patrick sighed and pulled away from me. "I don't know, Sarah. I don't know." He paused to give me a long, solemn look. "Maybe you should just...do what feels right."

I was hesitant. "Should I do what is right...or what feels right?"

"Is there a difference?"

"Yes. A huge difference."

But Patrick was shaking his head, a knowing smile loosening up the gravity of his expression. "No," he whispered, "I don't think there is."

And then, as if on cue, the elevator doors slid open and I had a choice to make.

-----

I only had time to knock once before the door swung open, like Pete had been standing there waiting for me the whole time. His eyes looked red and glassy, as if he had just pulled an all-nighter or cried a little or both, and there was absolutely no trace of light or humor in his expression. I didn't say anything at first and he just stood there watching me with those dark eyes, but not in an expectant way--more like he didn't even need me to say anything.

Then I said, "I didn't know what to do," and my voice sounded so broken that finally his mouth twitched like he was about to smile, but he didn't smile. His previously blank expression flickered to life with some horrible deep emotion, something much worse than just sad.

Gutted, maybe.

"Me neither," he breathed heavily, and then he took me by the hand and pulled me inside, shutting the door behind me. And then we were all alone together in yet another New York City hotel room, left to sort through right and wrong somehow.