Exits and Entrances

I never wanted you to get hurt, you know.

I was drunk, I was sixteen, I was stupid, I was young, I was bored, I didn’t think it’d be a big deal. The list goes on and on with excuses I never dared to say and words I wish I had said, playing back inside my head constantly like a song on repeat.

And that was just the first time.

I know our relationship wasn’t perfect, Cady. What relationship is? Especially in a hellhole like high school is. But you always expected so much out of me, like I was supposed to be this perfect person, but I’m not, Cady, I’m not.

I know I’m drunk, you don’t have to tell me.

I saw you at the party tonight. You looked so pretty tonight, Cady. Your eyes were glowing like they did the first time we really talked, and you were wearing the same goddamn shoes. You were in shorts tonight, with the unseasonable warm fall we’ve been having this year. Something about you was off though, and after almost two years of feeding off of your aura, I could feel you were breaking down.

You were dancing with the jock, Michael. He’s a dick, you know, and he only thinks with his. Caroline, in all her drunken glory, reckons that I’m just jealous that you’re moving on. And maybe she’s right. But Mike really is a dick, Cady, and I hope to God you don’t date him.

He isn’t like me. He doesn’t have a better side, a part of him that will treat you the way you deserved to be treated (which I didn’t do either), but still, Cady. He will always try to get in your pants and get out, and goddammit Cady you deserve so much better. I hate seeing you with these people, treating yourself like you don’t matter.

Did I do that to you?

There goes my ego again. Sometimes, especially when it comes to you, Cady Grisham, I think that I’m better than I really am. Maybe it’s the drugs numbing my brain cells, or maybe it’s the alcohol pulsating through my blood vessels. I wasn’t sure, I didn’t have to be. I just knew was ran through my head faster and more insane than ever, and that whatever I did was working.

I was remembering the truth, things I had blocked out because they were so horrid, or that I couldn’t believe I had done. Looking back, I believe that I had done them now. Something changed in me when you and I broke apart, Cady, and you hold both the key and the location to this missing piece of me.

I wonder what you would think if you saw these letters. Would you think I was crazy? Creepy? Or would you understand how alone and lost I’m feeling without you to help me find the light? You always were good at that, helping me through things when I was lost without nowhere else to go but into your arms.

Why am I writing these at all, Cady? Because I love you, because I miss you, or because I want to feel some connection to the good Tommy, the Tommy that I wish I could have back.

The blank walls of my room stare me down, as if they know the answer I’m too afraid to say aloud but fearless to say in theory. That no matter who I meet, and no matter who kisses me and tells me they love me, that it will always be you. It was that way from the beginning, simply because you were the first girl I ever truly gave my heart away to.

Bet you didn’t know that, did you, Cady? You had me wrapped around your finger like a baby girl and her daddy. You held my beating heart in your hands and you kept it safe, kept it sheltered, and you loved me just as much as I loved you. I held your heart equally in my hands, and yet I chose to crush it into a mess of tears and broken souls and most of all, distrust and doubt. And yes, you hurt me, but that gives me no reason to be a jerk to you.

A drunken tongue says sober thoughts.