Falling for you is slow and fast.
It’s running and catching my breath.
It’s losing and winning.
It’s quiet and cacophony.
You are the sweetest contradiction.
Day 100
Something about sitting outside in the dark makes me feel more alive. It could very well be the present company.
Something makes me want to tell Gavin all of my secret wants.
So, I start to.
“I’ve always wanted to be a writer,” I announce during a moment of silence between us. I hadn’t felt the need to fill it; it just felt like it was something I’ve always wanted to say out loud. “I’ve written some things already.”
“Tell me about some of the things you’ve written.”
I’m wanting to hide my face and take back my stupid wistfulness, but I don’t. Not from him. Not when he’s the only person in the world to not only know about my fruitless ambition, but to care.
“I once wrote something about knowledge being powerful. About this woman being in love with a man who was in a relationship with someone else. She’d ask him questions that no one else would know the answer to. And in that moment, she felt she had pieces of him that even his significant other couldn’t touch.”
“Does she end up with him?” Gavin’s tone is not only inquisitive but pensive. The silence while I reflect doesn’t feel as awkward as it probably should.
“I hope not.”
“Why’s that?”
Because you can’t build a home from the rubble of someone else’s life.
“If your happiness means destroying someone else’s . . .”
I can feel him nod better than I can see him, my eyes on the stars.
“I always wanted to write about complicated women. Because I felt I had more in common with them than the simple Mary Jane’s.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Fuck yes. Once I was introduced to Hermione Granger, I was never the same.”
“Harry Potter, right?”
The fact that I can hear his smile isn’t what makes my heart flip.
It is the fact that he understood my reference when most men I met would’ve just nodded and kept pushing the conversation forward.
Could you be any fucking cuter?
“Tell me something no one else in the world knows,” I whisper in the dark.
I wasn’t sure if it was the fact that I had so much weighing on me, or if the idea of knowing Gavin intimately appealed to me, but I was ready to tell someone some of the darkest parts of me. I only hoped he followed with the same question.
“Uh . . .” I can hear him swallow and pause for a breath before he speaks again. “My parents want me to marry a Pakistani woman.”
“Doesn’t count,” I say quickly.
“I haven’t finished,” he tells me, his voice a little quiet, a little stern.
Fingers slide between mine and squeeze for a moment. It soothes in a strange way. Gavin doesn’t know that’s something Sabrina grew up doing.
“I didn’t think anything of it. I always figured I’d have no problem. I’d meet a nice girl, I’d marry her . . . no problem.”I’m holding my breath and my eyes are a little closed, like I’m making a makeshift wish.
“But I met you and . . . I wasn’t expecting this. At all.”
Even though it’s dark, I turn my head toward him. The stars illuminate his profile.
“I don’t know what I’d do if my future were already decided for me.”
He sighs at my words.
“I’ve met some beautiful and accomplished Pakistani women. And before you, I could see myself with any one of them. It was never that important to me.”
Something spreads, from my chest, out toward my fingers and toes.
“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with them. Nothing wrong with my culture and that way of life. In fact, I’m so in love with my culture but . . .” He sighs again. “I can’t see you in that life, in my future, and it truly bothers me.”
It’s a mixture of happiness at his desire for me and the knowledge that, although I’d loved before, something about what was happening between he and I was . . . so unlike the rest.
“You like me,” I whisper, still facing him, still able to make out his profile.
“As inconvenient as it is, yes. Yes, I do.”
Secrets told in the dark are fast becoming one of my favorite things.
I turn my head to face the sky and smile up at it.
No questions need to be asked. We’re two souls walking side by side, letting the universe lead us.
“Tell me something no one in the world knows,” he finally whispers.
My turn.
The words are there but the worry is there, too.
If I tell him, will he look at me the same? Will he still think I’m worth questioning his future over?
“I didn’t take my mother seriously. I was too angry to. No one knows that.”
He shifts a little beside me and I think to myself that it’s because he knows what I’m about to tell him isn’t something to be taken lightly.
He doesn’t prod; doesn’t ask me what I mean.
His silence is like a soothing voice, beckoning me sweetly to come out, to trust him with my worst.
“My mother was always suicidal.” I swallow past my fear and continue. “She’d attempted a few times but always made it. It was like . . . a child crying wolf.”
Gavin’s hand squeezes mine and it keeps me here, right here with him.
Saying this out loud would make me feel like a monster, regardless of the many therapy sessions I’d had to attend to make some sort of sense of my emotions.
“She’d called a few times and I was busy, but I answered. And we argued . . . over stupid shit. Over her annoyance at my lack of attention to her, over my annoyance at her wanting so much damn attention from me. From Sabrina. From everyone.”
It should be easy enough to recount, even if I’d avoided thinking about it for the last few years.
“She started crying and I brushed her off, told her to get it together and then . . . she stopped crying.”
Silence. So loud.
“It was almost like she’d calmed down but . . . I couldn’t get her to respond.”
A tear slips down my face.
So much happens in silence. Suffering, loss, even sometimes joy.
My silence is a choice. I’d screamed and cried on the phone, texting Sabrina, trying to get to my mother as quickly as I could.
Lying here, I marvel at the silence Gavin gifts me.
“I didn’t get to her in time. And the last conversation we had was an argument.”
“What was she like?” Gavin asks, his tone patient.
How do I tell the man I’m falling for that the woman who created me was a monster?
“She wasn’t well . . .”
“No shit. I could’ve guessed that.”
“She was . . . she had so many issues with her mental health, it was hard to keep track of.”
He turns to look at me.
“And your father?”
I shake my head.
“All I know is he’s some Irish guy that my mother loved with all her heart. But she was crazy, so he left.”
We’re both watching the stars now. Or maybe they’re watching us.
“And Sabrina’s dad?”
“No one knows. But there are rumors that he died.”
He shifts his body on the blanket so he’s closer to me.
“So, you both grew up with a mentally ill mother. And her family didn’t step in?”
I shake my head.
“Why not?”
“I ask myself that same question every day.”
He pulls me close, so my body is halfway on top of his.
“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what that was like.”
“No one should have to know,” I mumble. He rubs my back and doesn’t let me go, picking me up when I’ve fallen asleep and taking me to his car.
Only once I’m with him in his bed, do I feel completely at home.