So, I had to plan and wait for the right time. Well, me being the awful hero that I am, waited seven years to do anything. By this point, she had just rescued herself. When I met her again she wasn’t a little girl anymore. Now she is this gorgeous woman who has had to go through so much pain, and the kicker is I don’t even actually know her.” He pauses again and I let his words crush against me before he clarifies, “but I want to know her. I want her to be a part of every day of my life. I just have this feeling we are supposed to be together.” A smile falls across my face until he says, “But-”
I cut him off and say, “Oh can’t you just let us enjoy this moment before the ‘but’.”
He laughs and pushes forward, “But I also know how much it would kill me if I let us get even closer, and then she’s taken away from me. I’m afraid to let myself admit to loving her because once I do, there’s no going back, and right now I’m not in a place where I’m secure enough to let myself truly love her.”
We both fall silent after he says this because it’s true. As much as I hate it, I know Alexander’s right. I can’t let myself care anymore for Alexander when I have to live a life not knowing if he’ll even be here tomorrow. Instead, I’ll just enjoy what we have while he is here. We stay silent, just enjoying being able to sit here together, but in the silence, my mind wanders. I start to analyze our relationship and how I feel about the cards life has dealt me.
If I had never left my cell that night, I never would have even known I had an older brother. I never would have gotten to see Zavy again. I never would get to have this connection with my father. Before, he was just someone who had left me, but now, even though he is still gone, this journey was something he planned for me. So I feel this connection to him that I didn’t have before. This doesn’t mean I’m not still mad at him for leaving me. I still blame him for my mother and Titus dying, but at least now I know why. At least now I can connect to him and know what he was thinking when he made that decision, and I think knowing that will help me be able to let him go.
And Alexander. If I never left my cell that night I never would have met Alexander. His memories would never have returned. So many good and bad things have happened to me from meeting him. It’s odd to think I can’t even picture my life without him now. It’s hard to believe that our relationship all originated from lies my mother had planted in our heads. We were given these false memories to allow us to trust one another, but what I’m sure no one expected was that we would still feel the same about each other after the false memories were gone and we got to create new, real ones together.
Some would say we’re lucky. We get to fall in love with each other twice. I don’t know if I’d say we were lucky. I think we got dealt with these cards and a lot of things could have gone wrong. Like incredibly and awfully wrong. I think each of us on our own walks through life with a tragic story. We are both broken and lost, but also hopeful and strong. And I think that’s what it means to be in a twisted love. A love where you can be broken and strong at the same time. Where you can be lost in life, but hopeful that at the end of the day you will find your way. I don’t think we are lucky. I think we are dangerous to each other because somehow we are both able to look at the other person, see their twisted life, see the warning signs, but still go hand in hand over the edge.
We aren’t lucky. We’re idiots. You go through this life destined for death. Smart people try to prolong that inevitable end. But idiots, see idiots can’t understand the difference whether they die today or ten years from now. We are these idiots because we are so twisted in our broken, strong, lost, and hopeful mess that we can’t see or comprehend the difference of dying today or years from now. So we look at each other and walk into the battlefield together with no protection and no weapons, but death will catch up to us. I would rather fall in love once and live out a long, happy, and simple life. Trust me. I think people who can accomplish that are truly the ones who are lucky.
People don’t ask to be broken. We don’t ask to be given the cards that will send us into a twisted life where we don’t care if we die today or tomorrow. It’s a tragic and dramatic life that is destined to have some highs but also to have some really low lows. So when you live this twisted life, you have to learn how to let the few highs balance out all the lows. It’s tragic, sad, and dramatic, but it’s mine. And it’s Alexander’s. With all the lows that come from loving someone as twisted as yourself, there are some beautiful highs that will keep you going.
So every time he breaks my heart when he tells me he has feelings for me, but the timing is wrong, I have the high of the comfort I feel when my
