He lied to me. Right to my face.
I’m not shocked that he did — I know he’s a criminal, I know he’s probably got a criminal record long enough to circle a full track — but I am disappointed in him; he needs my help, and yet he is so quick to denigrate who I am by immediately going out and stealing a car? What does that say about how much he thinks I’m worth? I have enough people in my life — myself included — willing to tell me I’m worthless; I don’t need to add him to the list.
I want a partner who respects me. Who makes me feel important. So that someday I’ll believe that about myself. Because right now, I don’t.
Desperate, discouraged, and doubting my self-worth, I hobble-run down the sidewalk.
He takes a second to recover. The car stays still at the stoplight behind me and I think maybe I’ll get away; I don’t have much to get back to — my life is fast turning to shambles and I’ll be in debt until the day I die — but at least I can try to put together an honest living. Maybe the Froyo place is hiring; would they even hire me?
Tears brim in the corners of my eyes. There’s a chorus of negativity in my head: worthless, helpless, hapless — Tiffany, just give up.
“Tiffany, wait,” he shouts.
I ignore him.
Keep going.
There’s a squeal of tires, a thunderous clamor of a decrepit, dirty muscle car responding to a depressed gas pedal, and then he screams by me, a furious blur that steers onto the curb just ten meters ahead.
“Go away, Blaze,” I shout. My voice is shaking. But then, my heart is shaking, too.
“Please don’t do this.”
“I asked you to do one thing, one little thing, just to make me more comfortable with what’s going on and you swore that you would. Instead, what do you do? The exact opposite of what I asked.”
“I’m sorry.”
“And that’s supposed to make it all better?”
He leaps out of the car, the engine still rumbling, the keys still in the ignition. His face is a mask I cannot read, lined with emotions I doubt he’s often felt in his life — fear, worry, uncertainty — a confident man staring down challenges he knows he can’t conquer alone.
“What more do you want from me?”
“Respect. Acknowledgment. Is that too much to ask?”
“I don’t know what to say, Tiffany.”
I stop, look at him. He looks so unsure.
“Think for a second, Declan,” I say, using his real name. The name of the cocky, charming, and too-handsome-for-his-own-good boy I remember from high school. The boy that I always took note of when he showed up to class because it was both a rare event and I couldn’t help but look at him and wonder — wish — I was the kind of girl he would pay attention to. “Think about how I feel. I have lost my job. I had to commit a crime — something that I am deeply against — just to get out of that hospital, because if I told them who I really was, I’d probably have the police asking me what I was doing there and it would put you and your mom in even more risk. I am so lost and I hate where I’m at right now. And the one thing that I felt might bring some value to my life — helping your mom — has me paired up with a partner who has so recklessly and callously demonstrated he doesn’t respect me.”
He comes closer. His approach is slow, careful, and his eyes shine bright with a compassion that stirs my emotions to crescendo.
“I’m sorry,” he says again.
But I can’t stop the pain flooding me, pain that’s been held back by a dam of denial — a fierce determination to avoid acknowledging that I hate my life, hate my job, hate that I had so much promise and gave it all up.
“Blaze, I hate myself,” I say, hitting my chest in grief. In anger at the futile failure I’ve become. “I hate where I’m at, I hate my job, I hate everything that I’ve become. Helping you was one thing I could’ve done to feel good about myself… but you’ve made me feel worse. Somehow. I don’t know how, but you did. You took something that could’ve made me feel proud for the first time in way too long and you ruined it.”
He’s right in front of me. Looking at me in a way he’s never looked at me before; looking at me in a way that would’ve made the Torreon High School version of myself so jealous. Now I’ve finally got his attention — his whole attention — and it’s when I feel the worst about myself.
Those big, powerful hands touch my arm in an impossibly gentle way.
“You’re right,” he says in a whisper. “You are so right.”
The sound of the world falls away; there’s no traffic, no barking dogs, no persistent beep from the crosswalk signal. It’s just us.
“What?” I say, stifling the quiver in my voice.
“I disrespected you. What I did was wrong,” he says, and he takes a deep breath. “Tiffany, I’m up against something that I don’t know how to handle, and it’s got my head all messed up. I’m on edge; I’m not thinking straight because my mom and her home are at risk. I want to be strong for her, but I feel powerless. But, when it comes to this situation, you are powerful. You’re fucking brilliant — I remember the way the teachers used to talk about you. Do you know how often you were brought up as an example to everyone in detention? A fucking lot. Hell, Mr. Dale — you remember him from chemistry class?
