The Air He Breathes
Page 20

How could I apologize? How could I fix it? How did one kiss make me remember?
She fell down the hill, because of me. She could’ve broken bones. She could’ve cracked her head open. She could’ve died…
Dead.
Jamie.
Charlie.
I’m so sorry.
That night I ran more. I ran through the woods. Fast. Faster. Hard. Harder.
Go, Tris. Run.
My feet bled.
My heart cried, slamming against my ribcage over and over again, rocking my mind, poisoning my thoughts as buried memories began to resurface. She could’ve died. It would’ve been my fault. I would’ve caused it.
Charlie.
Jamie.
No.
I pushed them down.
I fell into the pain racing through my chest. The pain was nice. It was welcomed. I deserved to hurt. No one else, only me.
I’m so sorry, Elizabeth.
My feet hurt. My heart hurt. It all hurt.
The pain felt scary, dangerous, real; it felt good. It felt so damn good in such an ugly way. God, I loved it. I loved it so much.
I fucking loved the hurt.
The night grew darker.
I sat in my shed, trying to figure out a way to apologize to her without her finding the need to be my friend. People like her didn’t need people like me complicating their lives.
People like me didn’t deserve friends.
Her kiss, though…
Her kiss made me remember. It had felt good to remember for a moment, but then I’d ruined it, because that’s what I did. I couldn’t get the image of Elizabeth falling down the hill out of my mind. What the hell was wrong with me?
Maybe I always ended up hurting people.
Maybe that was why I’d lost everything I cared about.
But I was only trying to get her to stop talking to me so I could avoid her getting hurt.
I shouldn’t have kissed her. But I wanted to kiss her. I needed to kiss her. I was selfish.
I didn’t leave my shed until the moon was high above me. As I stepped out, I paused and listened to the sound of…giggling?
It was coming from the woods.
I should’ve left it alone. I should’ve minded my own business. But instead, I followed the sound to find Elizabeth stumbling through the woods, laughing to herself with her fingers wrapped around a bottle of tequila.
She was pretty. And by pretty, I meant the beautiful kind of pretty. The kind of beautiful-pretty that was effortless and didn’t take much upkeep. Her blonde hair had loose waves, and she wore a yellow dress that looked almost as if it were made only for her body. I hated that I thought she was the beautiful kind of pretty, because my Jamie had been the same kind of beautiful-pretty, too.
Elizabeth kind of danced as she stumbled. A drunken waltz of sorts.
“What are you doing?” I asked, grabbing her attention.
She waltzed my way, on her tiptoes, and placed her hands on my chest. “Hi, stormy eyes.”
“Hi, brown eyes.”
She laughed again, snorting this time. She was wasted. “Brown eyes. I like that.” She bopped my nose. “Do you know how to be funny? You always seem so un-funny, but I bet you can be funny. Say something funny.”
“Something funny.”
She laughed, loud. Almost annoyingly so. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t annoying at all. “I like you. And I have no clue why, Mr. Scrooge. When you kissed me, it reminded me of my husband. Which is stupid because you’re nothing like him. Steven was sweet, almost sickeningly so. He always took care of me, and held me, and loved me. And when he kissed me, he meant it. When he pulled away from kisses, he always moved in for another. And another, like he always wanted me against him. But you, stormy eyes… When you pulled away from the kiss, you looked at me as if I was disgusting. You made me want to cry. Because you’re mean.” She stumbled backward, almost falling to the ground until my arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her to a standing position. “Hmph. Well at least you caught me this time.” She smirked.
My gut twitched when I saw the bruise against her cheek and the cut from her fall earlier. “You’re drunk.”
“No. I’m happy. Can’t you tell that I’m happy? I’m displaying all of the happy signals. I’m smiling. I’m laughing. I’m drinking and dancing merrily. Th-th-that’s what happy people do, Tristan,” she said, poking me in the chest. “Happy people dance.”
“Is that so?”
“Yyyes. I wouldn’t expect you to understand, but I’ll try to explain.” She kept slurring her words. She stepped back, took a swig from the tequila, and started to dance again. “Because when you’re drunk and dancing, nothing else matters. You’re twirling, twirling, twirling, and the air gets lighter, the sadness gets quieter, and you forget what it feels like to feel for a while.”
“What happens when you stop?”
“Oh, see, that’s the one tiny problem with dancing. Because when you stop moving”—her feet froze and she released the glass bottle from her hand, sending it crashing to the ground—“everything shatters.”
“You’re not as happy as you say you are,” I said.
“That’s only because I stopped dancing.”
Tears fell from her eyes as she started lowering herself to the broken glass. I stepped in, stopping her. “I’ll get it.”
“Your feet are bleeding,” she said. “Did the bottle cut you?”
I looked down at my feet, bruised and battered from my run. “No.”
“Well then, you just have really unfortunate, ugly feet.” I almost smiled. She definitely frowned. “I’m not feeling too good, stormy eyes.”
“Yeah, well. You drank enough tequila for a small army. Come on, I’ll get you some water.” She nodded once before bending over and vomiting all over my feet. “Or you know, just throw up on me.”
She giggled as she wiped her hand against her mouth. “I think that’s karma for you being rude to me. Now we’re even.”
Well, that seemed fair enough.
I carried her back to my house right after the vomit incident. After I washed my feet in the hottest water known to mankind, I found her sitting on my living room couch, staring around at my place. Her eyes were still heavily drunk. “Your house is boring. And dirty. And dark.”
“I’m glad you like what I’ve done with the place.”