Let Love Heal

Huffing, he stares at me confusedly. “What text?”

“Courtney sent me a picture of you two kissing and I just figured you got back with her. And then you told me not to visit you and you were so distant … I just thought … well, I just thought you were done with me. “

“Done with you?” he seethes quietly, but his flippant sarcasm shines through. “I thought I’d never be done with you,” he adds sadly.

A beat later, his anger returns as he recalls the rest of my words. “Why the fuck would I get back with her? Especially after everything I told you about her! Hell, even if she wasn’t a stuck-up bitch, the fact that I have told you over and over again that I don’t want her … that I want you. I don’t fucking understand why you never believe me.”

“I don’t either, Bryan. I hate that part of me … that part that questions everything. That can only see me as worthless. I …” Crying sounds emerge as my words trail off.

“You are not worthless,” he says as he sits back down next to me. His words are a little softer than they were a few minutes ago, but he’s still distant and cold. “And I told you not to visit because my parents were splitting up. None of that had anything to do with you and me.”

“I know. I know. I wish I knew that then, but I know it now. Please believe me that I’m so sorry. I would do anything to take it back, but I can’t.”

“This isn’t just about the cheating, Melanie.” His words shock me to silence.

“What do you mean?” I manage to croak.

“You don’t trust me, Melanie. You never have, but what’s even more difficult to get past is that you don’t trust us. You don’t trust that what we have is enough for me. My God, it was enough. But no matter how many times I told you that, you never believed me.”

“No … I do believe in us. Please, Bryan. Give me a chance to prove it to you. Please, please, please.” I reach for his hand again and when he pulls away from me it’s like I’ve been punched in the gut.

“I can’t, Melanie. I can’t move past this.” He turns his face away from mine, but I grab his stubbled jaw and pull it back to me.

“Please. I’ll do anything. Please don’t leave me. Bryan, believe me. I’m sorry.” I’ve never been sorrier for anything in my entire life.

Bryan reaches up and pulls my hand from his face. When he looks in my eyes, I can see tears shimmering in his, just beneath the anger and pain that hover at the surface. “I can’t, Melanie. I need to be with a girl who loves herself as much as I do. I deserve to be with a girl who is secure enough with who she is that she doesn’t need my constant reassurances.” His hands clench into fists and his knuckles turn white under the pressure. “I can’t be with someone who doesn’t have enough faith in us and in herself to get through a rough patch. I’m sorry, Melanie, but I just can’t.”

And on his last words, he stands from the couch and picks my jacket up from the chair that he tossed it on when I walked in over an hour ago. As I turn to step into it, I realize that his small dining room table is romantically set for two. The take-out menu for Bella’s restaurant is out next to the phone and there are unlit candles everywhere. Bryan tracks my stare and shrugs his shoulders and mumbles, “I was going to surprise you with an early Valentine’s Day dinner.”

Any last hope I had of leaving here without being completely and utterly broken, have now been annihilated.

I reach for the knob and feel an icy blast slap me in the face as I open the door. I hear the jangle of Bryan’s car keys, but the thought of being next to him as he drives me home is more than I can bear.

I reach for the hand in which he’s holding his keys and stare up into his eyes. “No. I’ll walk.” He nods and drops his keys onto the small side table.

Stepping over the threshold, I look at him one last time as the words, “I’m sorry” get stuck in my throat.

Bryan looks at me with pain in his eyes as he says, “Goodbye, Melanie.”

I do nothing but stare numbly as he closes the door on me. My heart splinters into a million tiny fragments when I hear the lock click. He’s gone from my life forever and I know that I’ve been irrevocably changed by what just happened.

They say that when one door closes, another one opens, but I think they’re lying.

Part Two Bandaged

11

“Melanie! Wake up, girl. You’re going to miss your midterm. Come on.” Peyton’s not-so-gentle wake-up call includes yelling in my ear and shaking me somewhat violently. “Let’s go, Melanie. If you don’t get your ass out of bed right now, I’m going to get the ice water … again.”

I lamely roll to my side and face her. Glaring at her from under my forearm,which is draped across my face, I give her the side-eye. “You wouldn’t.”

Her face lights up playfully. “Oh, but I would. Let’s go.”

Instead of getting out of bed, I roll back over and face the wall. Grumbling incoherent nonsense at Peyton’s craziness, I don’t even hear her leave the room.

But when the freezing cold water comes splashing down on me, I know that she’s returned. “What the freak! I can’t believe you just did that!” I screech as I jump out of my now drenched bed.

“Well, I did.” She stands with her hands on her hips sticking her tongue out at me. “I’ve had enough of this moping around and not-doing-shit business. You haven’t done much of anything these last six weeks and I can pretty much guarantee you that if I didn’t wake you up, you’d be missing another midterm.” She rolls her eyes at me as I stand before her wringing out my soaked pajama shirt.

“Fine. I’m up. Are you happy now?” I snap sarcastically.

“Thrilled, actually. Now get your ass out of here in the next ten minutes and I’ll be ecstatic,” she bites back as she starts tapping the face of her watch. When she stalks out of the room and closes the door behind her, I flip her off.

As I get ready for my last midterm before spring break, I think back over the last six weeks and realize that Peyton is not entirely wrong. I have been in a funk. Well, actually to call it a funk is quite an understatement. My grades have slipped. My attitude sucks. I’m angry most of the time, and when I’m not angry, I’m depressed. The real kicker is that the only person to be blamed for all of this is me.

Bryan’s words about not being able to love myself and of not having enough faith in who I am as a person repeat on a continuous loop in my head. And, in these last six weeks, I have replayed the last eighteen years of my life through the lens of those words.

Did I not have many friends in middle school because the kids were mean? Or was it because I was just too insecure to meet new people? Was the reason I didn’t date in high school because no one was interested? Or was it because I would never let anyone close enough because I was so afraid to show them the real me? Is my complete inability to receive a compliment a result of me not feeling that way about myself in the first place?

I’ve been so open and loving to all of the important people in my life – my mom, Maddy and even Reid in a weird brother-sister kind of way. I’m always there whenever anyone else needs me, but it’s possible that I’ve left out one very important person – me.

Why can’t I love myself the way I love my friends and family? Why can’t I see myself the way that they see me?

Why can’t I see me the way Bryan saw me?

Lost in my world of what-ifs, I don’t realize that my ten minutes to get ready is coming to a close. When