Just Before You Go

We sat at the table, which seemed like the safest place to have it out. That way no one could easily slip away from the conversation, and there could be no pesky touching to get in the way of the topics at hand.
Jimmy was thumping his thumbs on the table, glancing all around—everywhere but at me. I was awkward and unsure how to begin. While I desperately wanted to start weeding through our problems, I wasn’t sure where Jimmy’s head was at…and I wanted to avoid a repeat of the previous day. The only thing I was sure of was that I loved him. And that I wasn’t ready to give up yet.
“So…” I finally sighed.
Jimmy’s crystal eyes found me, “So.”
“We should talk,” I said like it wasn’t obvious.
He nodded slowly, “I don’t even know what to say…”
“Okay,” I mimicked his speed of speech. “I’ll start.”
I had to look away from him. He was so beautiful that it made it difficult to remember why I was upset with him. If you didn’t know him, you’d almost think he was completely innocent at first glance. You’d never know there was a serious darkness swimming around beneath his otherwise relaxed surface.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about forgiveness,” I told him, running over it a million more times in my mind. “I know that I’d said I forgive you for everything that happened when we first got together…”
“But you don’t,” he finished for me impatiently.
“Well, I don’t know,” I breathed. “Because you’re right, you’ve done so much since then to try and earn my faith in you…And I guess in some ways, I must trust you or I wouldn’t be here. I trust that you love me…and I trust that you’ll take care of me. But…As far as women go—you know what, no. Not women. Just Blair.”
Jimmy rolled his eyes at me, letting his hands fall flat onto the table, “How many times do I have to tell you?”
“I believe you,” I said abruptly. “I spent last night with her and…I know now that nothing will happen between you two.”
“So you trust Blair,” Jimmy stated matter-of-factly.
Oops. I’d meant it to be a reassuring statement, but I’d somehow managed to further my damage. Why couldn’t I just be articulate for once?
“I trust that you would never hurt me,” I corrected. “Including with Blair.”
He didn’t look too pleased with that.
“You’ve lied to me, Jim,” I frowned. “A lot.”
“If I lie to you, it’s to protect you. Or us. Whatever. You don’t always need to know what I’m up to, Aria. It’s better that way. You worry so fucking much, I figured I’d just save you the headache.”
“That isn’t a relationship,” I argued softly. “I want to know when something is happening…I want to know if you’ve been on a bender for three days.”
He shook his head, “No, you don’t. You just want another reason to try and back out of this. You’ve been looking for one since we got together and it hasn’t phased out at all.”
“Back out?” I choked. “How do you figure that? I gave up—” I stopped myself. It wasn’t time to beat that dead horse.
“LA,” he said to me. “When you figured out that I didn’t want to get married—which I did fucking tell you, for the record. You tried to break up with me right then and there.”
“I wouldn’t say I was breaking up with you…” I answered weakly, cringing at the memory of my overactive brain.
“You had a fucking flip out,” he reminded me. “In the middle of the street.”
And he’d forgiven me.
But he was sweet enough not to bring up that little tid bit.
“Jimmy,” I exhaled deeply. “It felt like you dropped a huge bomb on me…You need to understand that I grew up in a family where my future marriage was talked about…a lot…in great detail. So, I just sort of assumed that one day I’d get married. I was under the impression that relationships are supposed to be working toward a goal, and I thought that goal was marriage. So…When you said that it wasn’t something that you would ever want…It’s a lot to process.”
“I get it,” he shrugged me off. “But fuck, Aria. It wasn’t the first time that I told you.”
“I didn’t want to hear it,” I told him honestly. “I know it’s stupid…but I thought that I could change your mind. I thought that if you loved me enough…”
“I would change what I believe in?” he asked flatly.
My heart sank, “In the way that you’re expecting me to change what I believe in…”
I watched as he went from frustrated to understanding. It was a different dynamic to fight without the yelling. I felt, for once, that he was actually listening to me—and that I was making at least a little bit of sense.
“I’m not asking you to do anything,” he finally said. “If you don’t want to be here, that’s fine. If you don’t want to be with me, that’s fine. If you still want to get married, that’s fine. You have choices…and I’m fucking sick to death of you acting like I’ve taken them all away from you. You’re not a damsel and I’m not a dragon. You can leave any time you want.”
“But I want to be with you,” I said sternly. “I love you.”
He was at a loss, shaking his head, “Like I said, sometimes that isn’t enough.”
“Do you still love me?” I asked, hopeful and depleted.
“Of course I do, Aria,” he sighed. “That’s never been our issue.”
I was trying to keep a tight grip on the reins of my emotions. As soon as I started welling up, I knew that all coherent conversation would be out the window. Jimmy would say whatever I needed to hear to make me stop crying, and I would start with the hysterics. I was terrified of losing him—but maybe I’d already lost him.
Maybe it was too late.
“Our issue has always been your addiction,” I said blatantly.
His face fell, “Oh?”
“Please don’t act coy,” I groaned. “We started out in a bad place—so why should we have ever expected to level out? Our whole relationship started out with lies, Jimmy. And it’s stayed that way from what I understand.”
“Stayed that way?” he repeated hostilely.
“Are you or are you not still using drugs every single day?” I demanded. “Tell me the truth.”
He couldn’t. But he couldn’t lie to me either. So, he said nothing. His eyes fell to his hands and a silence fell between us.
“So, to recap,” I started, feeling my stomach in my throat, “we’re never getting married and you’re never going to quit.”
“Is marriage really that important to you?” he asked me seriously. “What is it that makes it so important? Is it being a wife instead of a girlfriend? Is it having a piece of paper? Is it the party? I don’t fucking get it.”
Typical Jimmy, breezing right over his problems and onto mine.
Despite this, it was still a problem between us and I was willing to work away at them one at a time if it meant salvaging what was left of us.
“It’s all of it,” I shrugged. “It’s having a commitment…an eternal commitment that you can’t just bail on when the going gets rough.”
He rolled his eyes, “Subtle.”
“I guess I just wanted to know that the option was there,” I told him. “And to know that it isn’t…because it isn’t what you want. I just feel like our whole relationship is what you want.”
“Well, what do you want, Aria?” he asked pointedly.
“I want you,” I frowned. “And I want a stable life together. I want a partner who isn’t fucked out of their mind day in and day out…I want someone I can depend on always.”
He growled lowly, “That isn’t me.”
“What?” I barely managed.
“You want someone like that?” he asked angrily. “You should date someone like Matt. You should date someone like fucking Zach…Literally anyone but me. I’m never going to be able to give you stability, Aria.”
I couldn’t cope. I started to break down.
He softened just a little, “It isn’t that I don’t want to…Believe me, I’d love to give you what you want…It just…It isn’t in the fucking cards for me.”
“You haven’t tried—”
“I haven’t tried?” he gawked at me. “You don’t understand me at all. I guess that isn’t your fault…So, let me explain some shit to you.”
“Please do,” I encouraged feebly.
He took a second to collect his thoughts, staring out the window and then back at me, “I…Fuck. You want to know what’s going on in here?” he asked, tapping at his skull. “It’s a scary fucking place, Aria. I am so full of questions and suspicions about the world…answers to questions I haven’t thought of asking yet. If I sit still for more than a minute, I start to lose my mind. I can’t give you stability because I’m not fucking stable. I’ve never been stable. Someone told me once that I was too intelligent to be normal.”
I sat back and let him tell me all of the reasons why he was a piece of work. Why I shouldn’t love him…Unfortunately for me, his honesty only made me love him more.
“I don’t want to fit in,” he continued. “I’ve found a few people who can accept me exactly as I am, no qualms, no bullshit…And I start to finally feel like I belong somewhere. Like I’m not just trapped in this existence with nowhere else to go…And then you come along and you just start pointing out the holes. It seemed like a good idea to try and patch them at first, but now I’m fucking tired and I’m sick of being prodded at. This is who I am, Aria. I like my life. I like to live my life the way I want—I didn’t let my parents tell me what to do and I sure as shit am not going to let my girlfriend boss me around.”
I was in total shock. What do you even say to that?
“I…I wasn’t trying to…” I wasn’t sure how to fix this anymore.
“You are the first person that I’ve loved,” he told me more gently. “I mean that. I’ve never loved anyone quite like I’ve loved you…And maybe that’s my problem. Maybe I’m just not ready for that. I’m not ready to admit what that means.”
I was bawling by this point. Like a baby. It was embarrassing.
He reached across the table and took my hands into his, his eyes soft now.
“You were right,” he said finally. “I did ask you to give up a lot…and I’m sorry that I can never just admit when I’m wrong…But…”
“But?”
He shrugged, “But I thought that I was ready…I don’t think that I am.”
“So now what?” I asked through my waterfall.
“I just need time,” he told me slowly. “I need to…figure out what I need. And you need to figure out what you want.”
I couldn’t process what was happening. It was too much. I thought I might faint. Or die. Dying would probably have been easier than enduring this conversation. I’d been sure we would work it out, if not all at once. But, no…here we were, having a continuation of the previous day’s conversation. Jimmy had spent the night stewing about reasons to break apart, while I’d spent the night working through the reasons we should stick together.
Isn’t that a bitch.
“Jimmy, I don’t—”
“I can’t, Aria,” he interrupted sadly. “I just can’t right now.”
I swallowed hard, “So, what then? I’m just supposed to go home?”
He shrugged, pulling his hands back, “You can do whatever you want. That’s the point. I invited you on the tour, so if you want to stay…I can’t stop you. But…you just can’t be here as…my…girlfriend.”
I tried to speak but I couldn’t. Nothing meaningful was coming to mind. There was nothing I could say to magically fix this. So, I ran for it. I abandoned Jimmy and his honesty, sure to slam the door behind me, and I ran.
Though, I didn’t make it far before I collapsed into the pavement. My body was shaking and convulsing faster than I could deal with. I was sure I was going to be sick.
“Aria?”
I couldn’t bring myself to look up.
“Aria, Jesus,” I heard Brian’s voice grumble as I felt strong arms lift me from the ground.
I looked at him for only a second, finding sympathy written all over him. I collapsed into him, sobbing into his chest like a dramatic teen. He was stunned for a second but soon had his arms wrapped around my waist, holding me tightly and for as long as I needed.
“Aria?” Blair’s voice cut through my melodramatics. “Are you okay?”
I couldn’t answer her. I felt Brian shrug, I assumed at Blair.
“Come on,” Blair’s voice sounded out again. “Let’s get her inside.”
But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything but cry…and cry…and cry some more.
Brian lifted me into his arms, my head remained buried in his chest. Just over his shoulder, I dared to take a peek. Blair was looking concerned as ever, following Brian as he carried me into the Haven bus once more—apparently the place for refugees seeking asylum.
She smiled sympathetically at me, and promised to be right back. Then she headed off in a rage toward the Avenged bus; toward Jimmy.
Brian sat me down on the couch and immediately began wiping at my tear-stained face.
“What the fuck happened?” he asked me sadly.
More tears.
“Okay,” Brian half-laughed, pulling me back into him and rubbing at my back. “Whenever you’re ready, I’m here.”
Brian was there, Jimmy was gone, and I was somewhere else.

Notes

Forgive me.

I promise things will level out. Have some faith in me.

xx