Page 95 of Your Fault

Nick was there sitting at the foot of the bed. He had taken off his T-shirt and was resting his forearms on his knees. He had a cigarette in his right hand. He looked up from the floor, meeting my eyes when he heard me walk in.

I observed him; he did the same to me. We were just a few feet apart, but to me, it felt like an abyss. I was so scared, so alone, that I couldn’t keep myself from walking over between his legs and lifting his face to look him in the eyes.

“Don’t let this pull us apart.” That was all I could think to say. I hadn’t understood how bad things were with us until I heard Nick’s words a half hour before.

Nick looked down to my stomach and took another drag off his cigarette. With one hand, I grabbed his wrist; with the other, I took the cigarette away. He looked at me perplexed as I crushed it in the ashtray right beside him. Then I straddled his lap and cupped his face in my hand.

“I need you to leave me alone, Noah,” he said in a voice so soft, I thought I’d heard him wrong. I wrapped my hands around the back of his neck, tried to toy with his hair, but he reached up and stopped me. “Don’t play with me. Not right now.”

His words were hard, cold, and that coldness only grew worse as he got up from the bed and walked past me. I stood.

“I hurt you when I left, and you’re scared I’ll leave you for good. I get it, but you can’t just ignore me like this. You can’t!”

Shooting fire from his eyes, he said, “I’m ignoring you because I’m trying to keep control of myself!”

I was startled, hearing him scream at me like that. But then he took a deep breath and spoke again in a normal tone.

“I can help you with your tuition.”

I closed my eyes. I knew he’d say that, but I couldn’t accept it. “You know I can’t let you do that.”

“I’m offering you a solution that will make us both happy.Why do you not understand that your decisions affect both of us, not just you?” he said, his voice rising again.

“Because I wouldn’t be happy, Nicholas!” I had hoped to keep calm, but I couldn’t. “If living with you means going to war with my mother and your father plus depending on you for money, I’ll end up hating it. Can’t you see that?”

“Of course I can’t! Not when the alternative is you being surrounded by a bunch of people who aren’t me! That’s the thing I have trouble imagining!”

“I’ve never given you reason to be jealous, and jealousy’s your real problem right now.”

“Don’t give me that. You’re no different.”

I wanted to try to explain to him that jealousy was all right, but only to a point.

“I’ve got more reason to be jealous than you do. You’ve been with more women than I can count. I’ve given you everything. You know I’m yours in every sense of the word. And even still you don’t trust me.”

“You knew what you were doing when you decided to go out with me. I can’t change my past.”

The distance between the two of us was killing me. Of course, I’d known what I was getting into with him, but I hadn’t chosen it; it had just happened. I had fallen crazily in love with him, but that didn’t mean that the things he did or had done would affect me any less.

“A relationship with no trust is a dead-end street, you know that.”

His eyes darkened. “I don’t need to trust anyone. I need you by my side.”

Despite his anger, I knew what he was trying to say. “I’m here now, right?”

He shook his head. “You’re halfway here and halfwaysomewhere else. It’s always halfway with you, Noah.” He turned to walk out of the room.

“Nicholas, I said I’m right here!” I felt my eyes go damp.

I didn’t know what he wanted from me. I’d given him everything I had, everything I knew how to give.

“No you aren’t!” he shouted.

“This is all I can do.”

“Well, maybe that’s not enough.”

A horrible fear seeped through me. There it was, the thing I had always feared: not being good enough for him.