Can't Let Go
One-shot
I don’t even have time to cry. I don’t think I can. After he’s uttered those words, the bell rings and he runs off down the hall. His next class is at the other end of school. I know this. I know his entire schedule. For 7 months now, I’ve known his schedule better than my own, but I guess I’m not allowed to anymore.
It’s over, Gerard.
His words are ringing in my ears as I turn around and quickly walk into class. The usual paper balls and curses are thrown at me as I walk down the rows towards the back, and for the first time this year; they hurt.
I don’t pay attention. I don’t even pay attention to the teacher telling me to pay attention. I just let my head hang low. I accept every saliva-soaked piece of paper and let them stay in my hair that’s hanging in front of my face like a very dark, thick curtain.
Just understand.
He didn’t even give me an explanation. He didn’t answer the only question I had for him after he completely shattered my heart. He just told me to understand. But I don’t. I don’t understand anything. We were happy! We were the best couple on the face of the earth, and he chose to wreck that without any sort of reason. He just did – as if it’s something he does every day. But he doesn’t. At least he hasn’t done it for 7 months.
The bell rings and people start shuffling out. They’re all quick to do so, since it’s the last class of the day, but I’m reluctant to get out of my seat. If I could, I’d stay here all night, because if I leave I’ll only be reminded of how lonely I am. I usually drive Frank home. I pick him up and drop him off every day. Sometimes I even stay with him – sometimes he stays with me.
It’s so hard to do, but I have to.
The teacher tells me to get out so she can lock the classroom. As if anyone wants to steal the dusty old Shakespeare books in the corner. Only a sappy romantic would do that.
Frank stole one of them before they got used, broken and dusty. He still has it at home. He sometimes reads it out loud to me when we lie in bed. I always fall asleep to it. The fact that it’s his voice uttering the words always makes my sleep so sweet. Or maybe it’s him.
Was him.
We can’t see each other anymore.
I walk out of school and keep my head down. I get to my car, throw my bag in the back and get in behind the wheel. It feels wrong to sit in that rusty, old car, all of the sudden. Even though it’s filled with junk and garbage and old memories, it feels empty.
I start up the car and look up to check for traffic. Conveniently enough, that’s when Frank’s mom’s car passes by right in front of me. She doesn’t see me, but I see them both. Frank sees me, but only briefly. He snaps his head down when he notices me. He looks sad.
I’m breaking up with you.
When the Iero car pulls out onto the road, it’s gone in a flash. I stare at the wall their car disappeared behind. It isn’t until then that it all falls apart. I can feel my heart melt into liquid acid and burn its way down into my lungs, stomach and gut. It corrodes everything on its way, while my blood stops pumping and freezes in my veins. It hurts. It all hurts.
I look back at the thinning traffic in front of me. Each car that passes is like a reminder of the last time I saw my own personal heartbreaker, and as soon as there’s more than a foot of space between two cars, I pull out of the parking spot. I hear tires screeching and a horn honk, but I don’t care. I carefully follow the cue out of the parking lot and pull into the fast lane and speed off.
This isn’t working out, Gerard.
You’re right, Frank. This isn’t working out. This isn’t happening.
At least not without revenge.
-----
I rip open the pack of toilet paper and start stuffing the fresh rolls into my bag. When there’s barely any room left, I stuff two cans of shaving cream in there and grab the tray of eggs. I zip the bag up the best I can do and throw it over my shoulder.
I put on my shoes just as Mikey walks out of the kitchen with a bowl of popcorn. He takes one glance at me, my attire and bag and immediately knows what I'm doing. But not to whom.
“Who’re you harassing?” Mikey puts one popcorn in his and bites into it slow and carefully. It squeaks between his teeth.
“My so-called ex.” My voice is filled with venom, but the sadness overflows it. I know my vicious cover has been easily blown, so I don’t bother tying my other shoelace, and instead throw my bag onto my shoulder and open the door. When I’m about to step out, I’m suddenly pulled back.
I turn around.
“Let me go!” I yell, but I don’t even have to whisper it. Mikey isn’t holding onto me anymore. Still, I stand still to know why he stopped me in the first place.
“You can’t do this to Frank.”
“And Frank can do this to me?” I yell. My voice is slurred. I feel a tear slide down my left cheek and I swallow to rid my mouth of the slime that has been bothering me ever since I passed Frank’s street on my way home – ever since I started crying freely, openly and uncontrollably.
“Listen, Gerard. You don’t understand.”
“He hurt me!” I yell at the top of his lungs. I’m angry with sadness. The grief has made me furious.
“He broke up with me! There’s a reason why it’s called that, Mikey! He broke me!” The slime sticks to my lips and makes bars between them. They trap my words in my mouth, but not the tears inside my eyes.
“He had a good reason to.” I can’t believe he’s taking his side. It might be hard for him to pick sides when he loves us both, but the fact that I’m broken and falling apart in front of him because of something Frank did should only make it so much clearer to him which side he should support.
“It’s better this way, Gerard.” The fury sparks inside of me and lights up a fire. I feel my blood heat up in my dried, dead veins and I exhale a slow, heated breath.
“You’ll hurt less.” I slam the door shut. I trudge down the pathway, onto the street and follow it.
-----
I toss a roll as hard as I can, but it only makes it to the gutter in front of Frank’s egg-covered window. The long white line slowly settles and I reach into my bag to get another one. I toss it harder, but my aim is off and it lands on the roof next to his window.
I don’t go for a third try, and instead grab a can of shaving cream and starts decorating the lawn, the trees and the bushes with white, nauseating cream. It turns grey in the dark.
The front door opens.
“Hey!” Mr. Iero bellows out, before he comes storming towards me. I spray some more cream on Linda’s chrysanthemum bush, before Iero grabs my hoodie and throws me away from the bush. I only stumble backwards. He’s still got a firm grip on me.
“Gerard?” My hood has fallen down and I’m exposed to the chill air.
“What are you doing here? Why are you ruining our garden?” He doesn’t let go of me. He’s still holding on to a large chunk of my hoodie.
I don’t answer. I don’t think I have to either, because he suddenly releases his grip and looks sad. He’s always been supportive of our relationship.
“He did it, didn’t he?” A tear rolls down my left cheek and quickly falls off my chin. It leaves behind an itchy trail, but I can barely feel it – it’s not pain.
“I told him not to, but…” He told his dad. Frank told Mikey and his dad before he even got around to telling me?
What did I do? Was I such a horrible boyfriend?
“He said it’d hurt you less. I keep telling him he’ll be just fine, but he won’t hear it.” Iero wraps a hand around his waist, rests his elbow in his wrist and covers his forehead and eyes with his hand. He rubs his forehead while he stares at the grey ground.
“If I could take it for him, I would.” Iero pulls his hand away from his forehead and instead covers his mouth with it. He looks off to the side at the toilet paper hanging from the roof, before he looks over at me.
“What?” The word barely escapes my throat. The sadness is still lodged down there, but it never stopped my words from flooding out of my mouth. But now, fear has joined it. I can barely breathe.
Iero’s eyes widen and he looks more shocked than I think I did earlier today when my world crashed. He pulls his hand away from his face to reveal his o-shaped mouth.
“He didn’t tell you?” I can’t even shake my head. I’m frozen. My blood has finally dried enough to kill me and make me stiff as the corpse I am.
Iero tears his eyes away from mine and looks down at the ground with him mouth much wider than before. I can’t see his eyes.
“Frank,” he says under his breath and slowly shakes his head.
-----
Frank is standing by his window when I open his door. He stares at me as I stop in my tracks and look him in the eye. He stands rigid. His arms are hanging slack by his sides and his mouth his slightly agape. His eyes are filled with so many emotions, and I feel them all as I just stare into his eyes.
I don’t know how long we stand there. Perhaps an hour, perhaps a second. It feels like a lifetime, because each memory I have of us together flashes before me. Between each emotion we share, I try to make him remember the same memory as the one that flashes before me. I want to share everything with him.
He suddenly closes his eyes. I feel so cold that it hurts into my bones.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Frank whispers. His voice is raw and low. It scares me. It scars me.
“You can’t be here.” His voice is so pained. It only intensifies my own misery.
“I don’t want to do this to you.” I close my own eyes and instead see his in front of me in the dark. I need them.
“I can’t hurt you like that.” I mentally bite the pain in me, but physically open my mouth to speak.
“You already did.”
“No.” I open my eyes, but only see his eyelids. I stare at them anyway. It’s Frank.
“Not like this. I hurt you, but not like I will.” I swallow down the slime in my mouth and throat. I need to speak.
“Nothing can hurt more than this.”
“Yes,” Frank says quickly and determinately. He squeezes his eyes tightly together, before he opens them slowly. A warmth rushes over me when I see his eyes.
“I could leave you forever.” I lose my breath. He squeezes his eyes tightly together again, but opens them again right after.
“Can’t you see that I’m doing this for you? I’m doing this so you can get over me.” Tears start cascading down his cheeks and it tears me apart to be at the other end of the room from him.
“I refuse to hurt you like that. I can’t hurt you like that!” He doesn’t wipe his tears away. He knows it’s a lost battle, I can tell. He’s giving up. I need him to stay with me. I need to give him the strength to stay.
“Frankie-“
“I’m dying!” he screams, interrupting my begging. The look in his eyes tear me apart more than his words.
“Does it feel better to know? Huh? Is it better to lose me forever than to have me break up with you?” Even though Frank is yelling, his voice is barely existent. It’s so lost and weak that his yells sound like nothing but sobs.
And when I don’t react, he does just that; sobs.
He falls to the floor immediately and buries his beautiful face in his gorgeous hands. His back bounces up and down with each heartbreaking sob, and even though my entire being is begging my body to go and comfort him, I can’t move.
I want to comfort him and hold him close and never let go. I want to die for him, and if I can’t, then at least with him. I can’t live without him. I know we’re only in high school and that people consider young love to be a phase, but I can’t. He’s my everything. He’s my nothing. He’s anything meaningful to me. I would never have a dried up rose standing in a beer bottle on a shelf in my room if it wasn’t for him and our first date.
And then there’s that tiny part inside of me that seems to control my entire body. That tiny little part that screams for me to run and not get involved. That this situation is too hard and impossible to overcome. That a breakup is easier than a death.
But it’s not. Not when it’s Frank. My Frankie. The only reason I’m breathing. The only reason why I’m not six feet under.
And so I move. I will my body to move, and after the first step, I float. I float across the room and over to my broken Frankie. I scoop him up in my arms, walk over to his bed and sit with him in my lap. He cries against my shoulder and I hold him so close that I know I’ll never be able to let him go.
It’s over, Gerard.
His words are ringing in my ears as I turn around and quickly walk into class. The usual paper balls and curses are thrown at me as I walk down the rows towards the back, and for the first time this year; they hurt.
I don’t pay attention. I don’t even pay attention to the teacher telling me to pay attention. I just let my head hang low. I accept every saliva-soaked piece of paper and let them stay in my hair that’s hanging in front of my face like a very dark, thick curtain.
Just understand.
He didn’t even give me an explanation. He didn’t answer the only question I had for him after he completely shattered my heart. He just told me to understand. But I don’t. I don’t understand anything. We were happy! We were the best couple on the face of the earth, and he chose to wreck that without any sort of reason. He just did – as if it’s something he does every day. But he doesn’t. At least he hasn’t done it for 7 months.
The bell rings and people start shuffling out. They’re all quick to do so, since it’s the last class of the day, but I’m reluctant to get out of my seat. If I could, I’d stay here all night, because if I leave I’ll only be reminded of how lonely I am. I usually drive Frank home. I pick him up and drop him off every day. Sometimes I even stay with him – sometimes he stays with me.
It’s so hard to do, but I have to.
The teacher tells me to get out so she can lock the classroom. As if anyone wants to steal the dusty old Shakespeare books in the corner. Only a sappy romantic would do that.
Frank stole one of them before they got used, broken and dusty. He still has it at home. He sometimes reads it out loud to me when we lie in bed. I always fall asleep to it. The fact that it’s his voice uttering the words always makes my sleep so sweet. Or maybe it’s him.
Was him.
We can’t see each other anymore.
I walk out of school and keep my head down. I get to my car, throw my bag in the back and get in behind the wheel. It feels wrong to sit in that rusty, old car, all of the sudden. Even though it’s filled with junk and garbage and old memories, it feels empty.
I start up the car and look up to check for traffic. Conveniently enough, that’s when Frank’s mom’s car passes by right in front of me. She doesn’t see me, but I see them both. Frank sees me, but only briefly. He snaps his head down when he notices me. He looks sad.
I’m breaking up with you.
When the Iero car pulls out onto the road, it’s gone in a flash. I stare at the wall their car disappeared behind. It isn’t until then that it all falls apart. I can feel my heart melt into liquid acid and burn its way down into my lungs, stomach and gut. It corrodes everything on its way, while my blood stops pumping and freezes in my veins. It hurts. It all hurts.
I look back at the thinning traffic in front of me. Each car that passes is like a reminder of the last time I saw my own personal heartbreaker, and as soon as there’s more than a foot of space between two cars, I pull out of the parking spot. I hear tires screeching and a horn honk, but I don’t care. I carefully follow the cue out of the parking lot and pull into the fast lane and speed off.
This isn’t working out, Gerard.
You’re right, Frank. This isn’t working out. This isn’t happening.
At least not without revenge.
-----
I rip open the pack of toilet paper and start stuffing the fresh rolls into my bag. When there’s barely any room left, I stuff two cans of shaving cream in there and grab the tray of eggs. I zip the bag up the best I can do and throw it over my shoulder.
I put on my shoes just as Mikey walks out of the kitchen with a bowl of popcorn. He takes one glance at me, my attire and bag and immediately knows what I'm doing. But not to whom.
“Who’re you harassing?” Mikey puts one popcorn in his and bites into it slow and carefully. It squeaks between his teeth.
“My so-called ex.” My voice is filled with venom, but the sadness overflows it. I know my vicious cover has been easily blown, so I don’t bother tying my other shoelace, and instead throw my bag onto my shoulder and open the door. When I’m about to step out, I’m suddenly pulled back.
I turn around.
“Let me go!” I yell, but I don’t even have to whisper it. Mikey isn’t holding onto me anymore. Still, I stand still to know why he stopped me in the first place.
“You can’t do this to Frank.”
“And Frank can do this to me?” I yell. My voice is slurred. I feel a tear slide down my left cheek and I swallow to rid my mouth of the slime that has been bothering me ever since I passed Frank’s street on my way home – ever since I started crying freely, openly and uncontrollably.
“Listen, Gerard. You don’t understand.”
“He hurt me!” I yell at the top of his lungs. I’m angry with sadness. The grief has made me furious.
“He broke up with me! There’s a reason why it’s called that, Mikey! He broke me!” The slime sticks to my lips and makes bars between them. They trap my words in my mouth, but not the tears inside my eyes.
“He had a good reason to.” I can’t believe he’s taking his side. It might be hard for him to pick sides when he loves us both, but the fact that I’m broken and falling apart in front of him because of something Frank did should only make it so much clearer to him which side he should support.
“It’s better this way, Gerard.” The fury sparks inside of me and lights up a fire. I feel my blood heat up in my dried, dead veins and I exhale a slow, heated breath.
“You’ll hurt less.” I slam the door shut. I trudge down the pathway, onto the street and follow it.
-----
I toss a roll as hard as I can, but it only makes it to the gutter in front of Frank’s egg-covered window. The long white line slowly settles and I reach into my bag to get another one. I toss it harder, but my aim is off and it lands on the roof next to his window.
I don’t go for a third try, and instead grab a can of shaving cream and starts decorating the lawn, the trees and the bushes with white, nauseating cream. It turns grey in the dark.
The front door opens.
“Hey!” Mr. Iero bellows out, before he comes storming towards me. I spray some more cream on Linda’s chrysanthemum bush, before Iero grabs my hoodie and throws me away from the bush. I only stumble backwards. He’s still got a firm grip on me.
“Gerard?” My hood has fallen down and I’m exposed to the chill air.
“What are you doing here? Why are you ruining our garden?” He doesn’t let go of me. He’s still holding on to a large chunk of my hoodie.
I don’t answer. I don’t think I have to either, because he suddenly releases his grip and looks sad. He’s always been supportive of our relationship.
“He did it, didn’t he?” A tear rolls down my left cheek and quickly falls off my chin. It leaves behind an itchy trail, but I can barely feel it – it’s not pain.
“I told him not to, but…” He told his dad. Frank told Mikey and his dad before he even got around to telling me?
What did I do? Was I such a horrible boyfriend?
“He said it’d hurt you less. I keep telling him he’ll be just fine, but he won’t hear it.” Iero wraps a hand around his waist, rests his elbow in his wrist and covers his forehead and eyes with his hand. He rubs his forehead while he stares at the grey ground.
“If I could take it for him, I would.” Iero pulls his hand away from his forehead and instead covers his mouth with it. He looks off to the side at the toilet paper hanging from the roof, before he looks over at me.
“What?” The word barely escapes my throat. The sadness is still lodged down there, but it never stopped my words from flooding out of my mouth. But now, fear has joined it. I can barely breathe.
Iero’s eyes widen and he looks more shocked than I think I did earlier today when my world crashed. He pulls his hand away from his face to reveal his o-shaped mouth.
“He didn’t tell you?” I can’t even shake my head. I’m frozen. My blood has finally dried enough to kill me and make me stiff as the corpse I am.
Iero tears his eyes away from mine and looks down at the ground with him mouth much wider than before. I can’t see his eyes.
“Frank,” he says under his breath and slowly shakes his head.
-----
Frank is standing by his window when I open his door. He stares at me as I stop in my tracks and look him in the eye. He stands rigid. His arms are hanging slack by his sides and his mouth his slightly agape. His eyes are filled with so many emotions, and I feel them all as I just stare into his eyes.
I don’t know how long we stand there. Perhaps an hour, perhaps a second. It feels like a lifetime, because each memory I have of us together flashes before me. Between each emotion we share, I try to make him remember the same memory as the one that flashes before me. I want to share everything with him.
He suddenly closes his eyes. I feel so cold that it hurts into my bones.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Frank whispers. His voice is raw and low. It scares me. It scars me.
“You can’t be here.” His voice is so pained. It only intensifies my own misery.
“I don’t want to do this to you.” I close my own eyes and instead see his in front of me in the dark. I need them.
“I can’t hurt you like that.” I mentally bite the pain in me, but physically open my mouth to speak.
“You already did.”
“No.” I open my eyes, but only see his eyelids. I stare at them anyway. It’s Frank.
“Not like this. I hurt you, but not like I will.” I swallow down the slime in my mouth and throat. I need to speak.
“Nothing can hurt more than this.”
“Yes,” Frank says quickly and determinately. He squeezes his eyes tightly together, before he opens them slowly. A warmth rushes over me when I see his eyes.
“I could leave you forever.” I lose my breath. He squeezes his eyes tightly together again, but opens them again right after.
“Can’t you see that I’m doing this for you? I’m doing this so you can get over me.” Tears start cascading down his cheeks and it tears me apart to be at the other end of the room from him.
“I refuse to hurt you like that. I can’t hurt you like that!” He doesn’t wipe his tears away. He knows it’s a lost battle, I can tell. He’s giving up. I need him to stay with me. I need to give him the strength to stay.
“Frankie-“
“I’m dying!” he screams, interrupting my begging. The look in his eyes tear me apart more than his words.
“Does it feel better to know? Huh? Is it better to lose me forever than to have me break up with you?” Even though Frank is yelling, his voice is barely existent. It’s so lost and weak that his yells sound like nothing but sobs.
And when I don’t react, he does just that; sobs.
He falls to the floor immediately and buries his beautiful face in his gorgeous hands. His back bounces up and down with each heartbreaking sob, and even though my entire being is begging my body to go and comfort him, I can’t move.
I want to comfort him and hold him close and never let go. I want to die for him, and if I can’t, then at least with him. I can’t live without him. I know we’re only in high school and that people consider young love to be a phase, but I can’t. He’s my everything. He’s my nothing. He’s anything meaningful to me. I would never have a dried up rose standing in a beer bottle on a shelf in my room if it wasn’t for him and our first date.
And then there’s that tiny part inside of me that seems to control my entire body. That tiny little part that screams for me to run and not get involved. That this situation is too hard and impossible to overcome. That a breakup is easier than a death.
But it’s not. Not when it’s Frank. My Frankie. The only reason I’m breathing. The only reason why I’m not six feet under.
And so I move. I will my body to move, and after the first step, I float. I float across the room and over to my broken Frankie. I scoop him up in my arms, walk over to his bed and sit with him in my lap. He cries against my shoulder and I hold him so close that I know I’ll never be able to let him go.