Salt

I was fully aware I wasn't thinking straight when I headed for the loft. That blinding daffodil colored window was closed, the drapes covering the inside. But I knew I had to get in there, regardless, I was done with being helpless and waiting around for a man to say when he was ready.

The matter of fact was that Jesse may never be ready, but I couldn't be stationary while he tip-toed around me for the rest of his life. This wasn't just about him, or me, anymore. Other people we loved were involved too.

Everyone else was just collateral damage in this fight. It wasn't right.

I stood in the street for a few minutes. The breeze nipped and killed. It ruffled my hair and messed up more than just the forgotten litter on the sidewalk. Trees bent but didn't break, cars rattled on their spaces, and the water from the puddles shot up my legs and soiled my clothes. Yet, I didn't stay to be submerged in their unrivaled acrimonious agony, I just had to think of a better way to go through with this. Every second thought was a gamble that never alleviated my qualms.

Doubts that had easily inserted themselves into my mind, ones that had to go. I'd overcome this. Mason believed in me.

I believed in me.

I had to do this. If not for me, then Zoey was counting on me finding out the truth. She didn't lie to me, she wouldn't do that – would she?

Using the spare key Jesse had issued me months into our relationship, I ascended the landing stairs. My footsteps echoed loud and clear, ready and prepared. There was no turning back now, I reasoned with myself. It was all or nothing, I couldn't back down.

Catching my breath, I didn't knock before I threw open his door and strolled in.

As predicted, he was by his desk again, working on that same charcoal drawing. It was smeared right across his tanned cheek, with some leftover dust on his bottom lip. The denim jacket he wore was a duplicate for the same one he'd worn the day I woke up in the lake.

The swirls of color surrounding us wasn't enough to calm the red in my eyes.

"I don't care if you don't want me here. Or if you're not ready. I am. I'm not leaving this time. I deserve answers. All of them."

What I expected was far from what I got. Instead of fury and screams for me to leave, or a two-hundred-pounds body pushing me out the door, I received a look that was nothing short of upset.

He lay down his utensils and pushed back his chair. He stood up, only to lean on the back of it.

"I need to say, I never wanted this for you. Any of it. I'd thought you'd leave, go back to college, mess around and have fun with your mates, and fall in love," Inhaling deeply, I also just stood there. His eyes buried into mine, soft yet demanding. We wanted so much from each other, but it would just begin a reckless train of hurt. "To be around you, to smell you when I come home and your shampoo has soaked into my pillows, to hear that you nearly died... I don't want that. I want you to be happy, it's all I ever did. I thought it was best to cut it off before I couldn't anymore."

I crossed my arms, resting against the door as it clanged shut behind me. The vibration tickled my feet, but there was no giggles to be heard.

So, he ended things with me because he wanted me to be happy? That's so fucking stupid. I mean, how blind could you possibly be?

"That doesn't make sense."

"I know that! But it did to me. Ashley," He breathed my name, left the chair and crossed to me. He was close enough I could taste the banana on his tongue. "There's so much about me you don't know."

"Then let me. I'm here, Jesse, I always am."

"No, stop."

I shut up, only for a moment. He was right there, staring at me, expectantly, guiltily. Did he think it never occurred to me that he hated seeing my face every day while remembering what he did?

The air was thick, constricting, and I felt like I couldn't breathe. It was suffocating to see him like this. I yearned to touch him, kiss him. Tell him it didn't matter to me anymore, I was never angry.

But I didn't, I froze.

The ice had rendered me motionless. A speculation to be witnessed but voiced no opinion. It wouldn't thaw, not right now. I had no clue if I'd break free.

"When I was a teen, I didn't have the best friends," About to cut in and say I knew all this, the look on his face hindered me. "My sister would wait up all day and night for me, worried I'd wake up in a ditch somewhere, or sleeping the night in a jail cell, whatever. The point is, she bailed me out of trouble and never hounded me with questions. She didn't enable me, or try to fix me. She knew I'd thank her someday. I finally got round to it last June."

My arms dropped, as it dawned on me. He nodded, but his eyes were still glistening.

"I was still like that eight months ago, Ashley. You only saw what you wanted to see. And I simply couldn't risk you either becoming a part of that world, or watch me slowly die in it."

I swallowed.

Moving to his bedside, I shivered in the wake of the cold he abandoned to me. It haunted on its own.

"This. This is all I have to show for all that shit," He projected, before he stood by me again. He was even closer now. That banana was enveloping around me, an odor so innocent I wished I could cry. He held the '6' chip in my face, glittering in the faint light. "I saw her for the first time in over five years because I finally could. I promised I was going to do better, I'd be better. No more police informing her I was rotting away, no more fights at five in the morning, no fear that I'd never come back to her. I wanted you to know that too, so I did it. I enrolled in a program and they helped and I'm him now. I'm that guy. I'm him."

The plea in his eye didn't go unnoticed. I shirked away, as I refused to drop.

But while the pieces were forming together in my mind, like a million piece jigsaw, my blood never received the memo. It run bitter and cold, creating what could be an enteral winter in my veins. There was no preventing this. It was poisoning me, and I permitted it.

He itched his nose.

I got there first though, finally, holding up a hand so he wouldn't continue, but he did.

"It was so bad that your folks found out. Your mom caught me in a bar bathroom stall with sick on my chest, on my shirt, unconscious. I asked her not to tell you, that I'd get around to it one day, but she... knew I didn't deserve that chance and–"

I was going to vomit.

"Jesse, stop."

"No! You were right, you're entitled to an explanation. I was a loser, and you deserve someone who puts all their energy into you and doesn't need around-the-clock supervision. Someone who doesn't find ecstasy and solace in what amounts to a half-hour escape. Somebody who became so consumed by the darkness that was the only relief."

Clouds over-encompassed my vision, until I could barely stand. The ground was flying, but I was plummeting.

His hands found my shoulders and then my hair. Losing themselves in the mess, trading one heap for another. His cool hands failed to extinguish the ravaging flames.

He inclined my head up and through the dizziness, I saw everything clearly.

"I know I should have told you and I'm sorry. I just... I couldn't. How dare I rope this amazing, thoughtful girl who lit up my entire world into such a problem? My problem. That's selfish, and I can't be selfish with you."

"Jesse."

The entire universe was on the tip of my tongue, prepared to be devoured. I faltered, because each and every time I looked at his beautiful face, my only wish was to kiss it until smiles were the only available option.

Because he was wrong. He wasn't selfish. And the love I had been keeping alive all this time for him? I'd shush it if it tried to be.

Everything was wrong here, though. This conversation. My world outside of it.

Destructive, callously so.

"I'm sorry for whatever damage I caused. I hurt you, but that wasn't my intention, you were – you are the reason I made it out." His voice whispered over my skin like smoke and his expression balanced on a remorseful smile, the grand delusion that we'd somehow come out of this conflict unscathed. "You make me–"

"Jesse, stop."

I backtracked, shaking him off as I tried concentrating past the oceans gathering in my eyes. Oddly, I was thankful for that, since now I couldn't focus on the look on his face.

"You're an addict," I couldn't believe it. I'd dated him all that time and I had no idea what was going on right under my nose. I swallowed, even though my throat was already dry as fuck. "What... I mean, what..."

"Heroin."

The cry begged to be released, but I covered it with a hand. I could still taste the bananas, except now they were molding and decaying.

I racked my brains for instances I should've been a little more perceptive. Like the fact he never agreed with our friends when they'd labelled him the perfect boyfriend, and ex. The time we'd gone for breakfast and he told me my parents were only looking out for me when it came to him. Or on the day he broke up with me. He'd come back here, gazed at me all dazed and confused, as if he didn't know I'd spent all day waiting for him. I was in the middle of deciding what to eat for dinner, as he'd stumbled about the place. He'd said he couldn't do it, and as the idiot I was I thought he meant food and started going on about a cuddle or two first, but then his words started tumbling out. He was truly breaking up with me, telling me I deserved better than a circus.

I thought he'd meant us, that we were the circus, not him. As much as I'd like to say it made sense, I also really fucking didn't want to.

"Since I was about seventeen."

So, for nearly a decade he'd spent it high on opioids? All that time with me, for fifteen months, he was off his rocket?

"Do you... remember it?"

He chewed his thumbnail, until I rose my head and I was penetrating daggers into his entirety.

"Are you seriously telling me that you don't remember the night we met in full detail? Did you know it was white paint you spilled on me? Do you even..." Rethinking every word, I trailed off, biting the inside of my cheek. It was all that I could do to postpone the waterworks. I was on the verge of bursting. "When did you first tell me you loved me?"

This time, he swallowed.

And that was how I came undone, I tried quelling it, but it was a losing game, even as he reached over and sought to be of comfort.

I recoiled sharply, the defeated look he sent me crippled me more, even though I didn't think I could possibly get any worse.

"Don't touch me! You lied to me. How could you?"

"I'm sorry, I truly am, but I did it for you. You–"

"Deserve better, is that the story you're going to feed to me? How could you possibly know what's good for me? Did you think I wouldn't understand? As if I could ever judge you like that."

Our raised voices, as well as my static cries, prompted other tenants in the building to bang on their walls. I'd forgotten they existed. I was here so often, but I barely saw anybody else that I wouldn't have been surprised if he were the only person in the building.

My pulse was throbbing, aching for something stable to cling to. Right now, I was the worst thing for it.

Jesse, shortly after shaking his head, unbuttoned his denim jacket. It draped neatly over the back of the couch, as he took time taking his shirt off over his head.

Then, he just stood there, exposed tanned chest glistening with sweat and unfiltered moisture. In the ominous daylight, they'd embedded themselves into his flesh so fiercely like diamonds, each one pleading to be mined and cut into something rare and beautiful. They especially clung to his sagittal hair and Adonis Belt, painting him the exact opposite of a stereotype.

Or former.

He lifted an arm, effortlessly, giving me a front row seat to the show. His whole underarm, behind the fully-grown hair, I could distinguish marks. Some pink, purple and white, it was clear which were older than others. I closed the space between us to catch a better glimpse.

I was entranced and didn't pick up on the clang of his belt buckle until it was over. He tugged down the hem of his jeans and boxers, to show me the groove of his crotch.

If this were any other day, I'd be salivating by now.

Again, my attention was completely drawn, as he wished. I swallowed again to escape the bile that was bubbling at the back of my throat.

His groin was massacred by these scars, these stories I'd been so ignorant of. They were all a mess, but they were there, and that made it for me.

"This is who I am."

I sighed, before realizing I wanted to caress those scars. Every one of them. I'd trace their outlines and make patterns of my own.

It took more than just sheer will not to.

"I... I..." Sniffling behind a hand, my attention was glued, betraying my retreating steps. My next words were no more than a rasp. "I can't do this, I'm sorry. I have to go."

Knowing that if I gazed upon his stupidly stupendous face I'd breakdown all over again, I just left. I twisted that doorknob and bolted right of there. A place that once used to feel so much like my home, now harbored a stranger.

And I refused to dance.