While She Breathes

I woke up with a crook in my neck, and my face plastered onto the open page of the account book. I stretched, feeling my muscles ache terribly. The crook in my neck wasn’t going away, so I tried to crack my neck and failed miserably because it just made the skin that was bruised there hurt a lot more.

I wiped my eyes and there was a sinking feeling in me. The kind of feeling that ate me up and made me feel completely hopeless.

We had never fought like that before. It was always Jason that had to leave to cool off, but yesterday- it was me. I didn’t want to remember what we fought about, but I did. He wanted me to quit music, stop busking all together and I had snapped.

I had given up almost everything for Jason, and for a moment it seemed like it was worth it. To be in love, to know that you had someone. But I couldn’t give up music, especially not because he wanted me to do so for him to feel more secure. He argued that he didn’t know “what I would be doing” everytime I disappeared to perform.

He would if he actually bothered to come watch me.

I admitted that I was more mad than afraid yesterday when I shouted at him. I had never shouted at anyone that way before. And when I told him to stop, he hit me. He also did something else, but thinking about it made me feel even more empty.

How would I go back from this? I couldn’t stay in the book shop forever, I wasn’t even supposed to be working today.

Then I thought of Luke and I wanted to cringe. He was latching on, taking more than he should. He wasn’t supposed to express any interest in me, yet alone get me alone in his car. But I was glad that he didn’t ask any questions like I had asked, just one. Plus, he kept quiet the whole ride to the book store. He had a funny way of breathing though, stopping sometimes like he really wanted to ask me something, and then breathing again.

It didn’t really help that I thought that he was good looking.

There was a moment when I really wanted to tell him, tell him how much I hated it that I had to keep Jason’s violence a secret. It wasn’t a secret when people started finding out, it just became gossip- it became taboo.

My phone buzzed, and I hadn’t realized that it had been vibrating the whole night. My battery was almost flat, and it was probably what had woken me up. I checked it, and there were five missed calls from Jason.

The current one also belonged to him.

There was a growing pit of fear, mixed with the post-vulnerability of a fight that I always had. It wasn’t my fault this time though, and I desperately didn’t want to think that it was my fault.

The thing about Jason was that he meant too much to me, and to me, he had always been my saving grace. He made me feel like I was worth someone’s time. In high school, I was invisible, border-line loser. And when Jason asked me out, it made me feel like I could be pretty too. I knew I loved him, for all his flaws- but him loving me back almost broke me. No one ever loved me like I felt Jason did, and as a teenager, it was all that mattered.

So now seeing his name pop up on my phone made me shiver inside. How long did I make him worry? I disappeared for a night and I didn’t return his calls. I could only imagine him, raging with his phone pressed tightly to his face, waiting for me to pick up, waiting to see if I were alright.

I picked up.

There was silence for a moment, like both of us were testing the waters. He broke first.

“Riles? Where are you?”

He sounded angry, but not the kind that I saw yesterday. Now he seemed mad, at himself, or at me. I didn’t know, so I didn’t offer a reply- just heard him breathe over the phone.

“Riles, I’m so sorry.”

Sorry, it was the only word that he knew how to say after stupid fights. But I relented, because there was nothing else I wanted to hear.

“Riley, please come home. I need to know if you’re alright.”

“I picked up the phone, I’m fine,” I finally said, my throat scratchy. I didn’t cry, so the tepidness that exuded from my throat irritated me.

“Riley, I know you’re mad. I just, I’m sorry I hit you- I know it means a lot to you-“

His voice cracked, and I felt my anger evaporate too. I couldn’t take it, hurting him. He didn’t know how much he meant to me, and my lack of response wasn’t helping. I just wanted things to be normal, for me to feel okay again. And there was no one else for me but him, there was literally no one else I could run too.

I had burnt too many bridges to stay with him, and hearing his voice over the phone seemed to knock the senses back into me.

“I’m at the book store,” this time my voice came out as barely a whisper, and I could feel it coming. The insatiable need to break down and crumble. They never say how hard it is to pretend that everything’s okay when it wasn’t. Last night was horrible on my part. Every song and every note sounded wrong, and every sentence just reminded me of Jason, and my mum, and my family. And everything I left behind.

From start to end, I just felt like bawling, like a rubber band stretched to its limit was in my chest. I almost started crying when Luke looked at me because he felt like the only one who still treated me like a human. Geraldine knew I was a lost cause, I couldn’t get her to look at me like she used to anymore.

She called me a number of shitty things yesterday, including words like ‘coward’, ‘needy’, ‘weak’ and ‘afraid’. It hurt, because even though I loved Jason- I knew the basis of most of my love had crumbled into the phrases she had hurled at me.

It was halfway through yesterday’s set that I got mad. Mad at everything that turned sour, mad that problems in my relationship always had to feel so fucking painful.

“The bookstore? Oh, oh Riles, I’m coming-“

He sighed my name like I was cute, but it didn’t matter because I was close to letting loose all that I had kept inside since yesterday evening.

“No, don’t. I’ll come home right now-“

Then my phone died and I swore. There was that frustration that was building, and I took it out on my phone, slamming it down on the table. Just when I needed to hear him- not the angry Jason who spit fire out from his mouth and limbs, but the one whom I fell in love with.

Sweeping the account booklet that I had drawn out to keep me busy for half the night off the table, I leapt off the counter. I wanted to get to him as soon as possible, run away into our little hideout like I always did.

Plus I was sure I was going to start crying or screaming my fucking head off.

I grabbed the keys, locked up and left- feeling the cold bite into me. The sun was bright out and all at once I didn’t feel okay. I needed to be alone, and I needed Jason- so I wasn’t sure what I needed. I also needed tea, some cake and there was a small part of me that really wanted to talk to Luke to apologise for how I treated him yesterday.

The breath I released was shaky, and my chest hammered deep in me. I didn’t want to meet Jason, not yet. So I settled for the fire escape at the back of the shop house.

I sat there for a long time, not knowing what to do. Not knowing what I wanted.

The bruise on my neck reminded me who I was and what I had become, and I started crying.

*

“Riley?”

I snapped out of it, realising how cold my thighs were- pressed up against the metal of the fire-escape. I looked up, my mouth dry and like sandpaper.

There he was, hair tousled and shining under the sun. He shut his mouth when I looked at him and I saw his jaw working under his skin, like there were a million and one things he wanted to say.

“Where’s your guitar?”

I patted the area behind me and stood up. He stood at the distance, not sure if he wanted to approach me. It took a long moment for me to realise that he was staring at me, but not really making eye contact.

“Riley, come here,” he said, his voice like antiseptic, swabbing against my wounds- making it hurt, but making me feel better. I opened my mouth to say something, and I broke again. The tears blurring the raw parts of my face where they had ached so much when I pressed my stubby nails against my cheeks to relieve some of the pain inside. I couldn’t see him, and it was okay because he came to me.

“Fuck,” he muttered into my hair and I crashed into him. Hands in front of my face, pressing against his shirt, feeling the zipper of his jacket cut into my skin gently. His hands were around my head, tangled in my hair, then settled on the small of my back.

“I’m sorry, I love you,” he repeated like a mantra. It was a pairing of words that I had grown to know. He said it when he was calm, when he knew he was wrong- and he wouldn’t get angry for a long time afterwards.

He smelt like soap and home, and it was wrong that I was crying because of him, to him. I knew that you should never hit someone you loved, but Jason was just Jason. When he was angry, he was fire- when he wasn’t, he loved me and I loved him back.

We stood there for a moment, me seeking solace in the pillars of his arms as he buried the side of his face into my hair.

And I forgot about everything that happened.