Sweet Ache

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Do I want to talk to her about it? Fuck no. How do I explain to her that the rug’s been yanked so fucking hard out from under my feet that I don’t even know where to land? Between punching Hunter and now this, the goddamn ground has shifted so much I think it’s going to take a long fucking time for it to feel steady again.

But at the same time, I bite back all of the words on my tongue that want to come tumbling out because for the first time in forever, someone besides Hunter was there, someone knows what I go through to an extent. And as fucking cruel as it was for me to throw her into my fucked-up situation, I feel a tinge of relief for having her there.

“I don’t even know what to say.” I shake my head back and forth as I pick up my shirt beside me and scrub it over my face to buy myself time. When I lower my shirt, I raise my eyes to meet hers, and I don’t know what I expected when I look at her but what I see causes my throat to burn. I see compassion instead of disgust, acceptance in lieu of judgment, pride not shame, and the combination of them all is more than I can process in my already overloaded system.

Her quiet empathy makes me feel things that are wrong to feel right now in the midst of me questioning everything about myself. And yet it’s still there. That need to pull her against me and just cling to her, to have someone be there when before I would have probably pushed her so goddamn hard the other way.

“You don’t have to say anything.”

“I know, it’s just … fuck …” I run my hand back through my hair again and don’t know how to explain the emotions inside me. Almost like a cargo truck has turned on its side and all of this has come spilling out all over the place. “The only way I can explain it is like this. What if my dad told me that day that the sky was green? That no matter what anyone said, he was right and they were wrong. So I’ve spent my whole life believing that the sky is green. Fighting against the tide to prove otherwise, wearing blinders to the obvious. Would stake my life on the claim. And then one day someone ripped the blinders off for me to find that this whole time, my entire life, I’ve lived fighting to believe something, love a certain way, and it’s fucking wrong. The sky is really fucking blue.”

Tears well in her eyes as she nods solemnly to tell me she understands what I’m saying although I know she has no fucking clue. No one does.

“I don’t know which way is up right now, what to believe anymore.” I don’t want to talk about anything and yet I keep doing just that.

“Well, everyone’s version of which way is up is different so don’t try to figure that out just yet. Who cares if you’re sideways for a bit? That’s allowed, Hawke, and perfectly understandable.”

I squeeze my eyes shut momentarily. Memories flicker and flame through my mind. The four of us happy. That horrible day, the sound of the gunshot, the blood, the smell, the scream that never came frozen in my throat forever. The three of us mourning. Hunter and me trying to survive as our mom held on to the thin thread holding her to reality. Losing my twin bit by bit. Fighting like hell to keep it all together, protect them, provide for them. The times I’d start to feel that twinge of something in my gut for a woman only to shove her away because she just might make me love her. How hard I fought against so many things, how alone I’ve felt … and it was all a lie.

Every fucking thing.

“When my dad … that day,” I start to say, focusing on the wear patterns of the mid-tom because I can’t look her in the eyes while I explain how stupid I was to believe my dad blindly. “He made me promise that I’d take care of my family at all costs. He told me that when you let someone in, you lower your guard for love, you open yourself up to the worst hurt of all. You prove you’re weak … and when you are weak, you end up like him.”

The sharp inhale of her breath at my comment followed by my name on her lips sends chills over my body. And I don’t need pity for being a stupid, goddamn lemming jumping without thought, following without questioning. And I’m ready to bend over and pick up Giz’s sticks again, deal with how that just made me feel, the fucking acid eating holes in my gut and worming its way into my heart.

“Hawke,” she calls my name again but I can’t meet her eyes. “You were only nine; do you really think it’s fair to judge yourself when what happened probably scared the shit out of you? What normal kid wouldn’t have tried to make him proud by living according to the promises he made you make? You can’t fault yourself for that!”

I know she’s right but it does nothing to abate the years of self-deprecation, the nights spent reliving every moment, the doubt that has ingrained itself into my psyche. “Yeah, but the problem is today just proved my dad right. I let the two people I love the most blindside me.”

“Anyone who loves lets their guard down—whether it be for a pet, for music, for their parent, or for a lover—letting your guard down means that you feel, that you care. And hell yes, you open yourself up to being hurt but my dad used to always say, ‘Hurting is feeling, and feeling is living, and isn’t it good to be alive?’”

I snort aloud, immediately writing off what she’s just said because it hits a little too close to home. I feel alive and numb all at once but the feeling part is so intense I feel like I could sit down and write a thousand songs to get it all out and it still wouldn’t be enough.

And she’s up off her feet in an instant of my nonverbal rebuff and approaches me for the first time since we’ve been in the studio for who knows how the fuck long. She stands in front of me, her face pulled tight with anger, and her hands on my shoulders force me to turn away from the kit to face her. “When you write a song, when you play it on stage, can’t you feel it? Doesn’t it make you feel alive?” She’s not backing down and I’m a little shocked that she’s so in my head she’s confronting me with what I was just thinking myself. “Sure you lose yourself in your music, but you also find yourself, right? It makes you feel so that—”