letting loneliness go

assignment: What scares you? Why?

It only takes one unhealthy relationship to scare a girl so much that she avoids relationships in general for years. Since then, boys who show interest in her must only like her for the fit body she’s acquired from being an athlete or because she has more piercings than the average person; not because she’s funnily sarcastic or a good person. Boys who show interest must only see her as a body, not a person who, almost three years later, still has flashbacks to the year she let that boy scream at her and call her names.

Good-hearted men have tried to get close to her, tried to show her that men can be lovers and not screamers. She doesn’t let them see the cracks in her façade, this toughened image that scares off those who wish her harm because it’s too much of a hassle to even try to get to her. With this cold shoulder to the world she is safe and protected.

But she is lonely.

 

He has light blue eyes, the same shade as the boy she thought would hold her hand for the rest of their lives. She is drawn to him despite the matching eye color, despite everything in her telling her to stay away, he’s only going to hurt her. That’s what boys do, they control and take what they want and leave her crumpled on the floor of her room, begging him not to leave because she loves him.

The man is kind; he looks at her in the eyes when they talk, even when his sixth beer is in his hand at a party. He opens doors for her, brushes the hair from her face. When she says his name his lips curl in a gentle, one-sided smile that spreads to her face too.

 When he asks her to go to dinner with him and some friends for his birthday she automatically starts shaking. Direct confrontation like this is what got her in trouble the first time even though now it’s just a simple question with a yes or no answer, not a challenge about why she sat next to a boy she didn’t know at lunch when there were no other seats open.

 She keeps her hands from his sight as she says yes, because this is only a group dinner, it’s not a date. She finds herself saying yes again moments later when he asks for a real date too, just the two of them. Her heart pounds and her hands are shaking so badly she thinks he can see it too. But then she realizes that his hands shake too, nervous trembles of a soon-to-be nineteen-year-old man.

One of those hands takes hers at the dinner later that week, startling her. She’s gotten so used to walking with empty spaces between her fingers that it takes her a second to reassemble herself, trying to match her walk to his so she feels less ungainly. She can feel the stares of their friends who are almost as shocked as she is at his openness.

Later that night, after watching a movie with their friends, the others suddenly vanish from the room. He slides his hand into her hair and kisses her. She feels safe with him and doesn’t even flinch, thinking that maybe this time she’ll be hit; she tries to keep from gasping as his lips touch hers and her body feels like it’s full of static electricity, every touch jolting and her skin feeling like it’s buzzing. Thank you for making this the best birthday I’ve had, he says. He puts his arm around her, kissing her again. Inside her neon sneakers her toes curled as she smiles wider than she has in years.

This isn’t real, she tells herself when she leaves. She is too happy, too unguarded. She is in that place where she can be hurt.

 

The next morning she wakes up, groggy. It took her hours longer to fall asleep last night, unused to trying to sleep when her lips were constantly parted in a smile. It was just a kiss, she tells herself. It meant nothing. Thinking otherwise will only hurt you.

Regardless, the loneliness is gone. She stops fearing that the sadness that hit her late hours of the night would come back. She knows that while she chastises herself she hopes more than anything that the kiss meant something. She realizes that while caring about him is one type of fear, the idea of trusting him sends her into a panic. He’s just a freshman, a year where mistakes are meant to be made to learn who he is and who he isn’t.

 

They go out to dinner, just the two of them, and he sneaks more kisses from her and makes her laugh. He makes her forget the bad things that return to her mind every few nights until they stop happening all together. A few days later she goes to his apartment, the inside dim from the blacklights he installed. She walks inside and he greets her with a kiss and nods to something over her shoulder. She looks, smiles, and kisses him again.

 

“Will you be my girlfriend?” is written on the wall with highlighter, vibrant yellow against the purple light. Yes, she says. Yes.