The distraught way she was wiping came to an abrupt stop as she narrowed her gaze at me. “Do you think I’m unstable?”
No, Skye. I think you’ve had a lot to deal with and this is a reaction to it.
“Of course not.” I replied. “I just want you talk to someone instead of trying to carry all this guilt around with you.”
“I deserve to.”
“No, you don’t!” I closed my eyes, lowered my voice. “It wasn’t your fault, Skye and you can’t change what happened by going on this…crusade.”
“Crusade?” she repeated. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“This is ridiculous,” I said, trying to calm her. “Come on, let’s go back to bed.”
Get lost in each other. Heal you.
“No, I want to know what you mean by crusade.”
We were hurtling towards no-going-back town. In fact, I’d been fired out a cannon without a crash helmet and landed headfirst into a brick wall there. I caught my reflection in the glass cabinet behind her head and my expression could only be described as terrified. I took a deep breath. Dug deep.
“The volunteering and handing out condoms and sex advice like the safety of the whole LGBTQ+ community is down to you and only you. Like you couldn’t exist if one of those kids took their own life because you’d add that guilt alongside what you already struggle with every fucking day of your life.”
A large tear dropped onto her crossed arms; the ones she’d wrapped around herself. She brushed it away quickly and pressed her lips together. All this time I’d waited for us to reach a crossroads, a decisive point in our friendship, the critical stage…the climax. And I knew…this was it.
“Something good needs to come out of this,” she said softly. “I have to make his life mean something.”
“Not to the detriment of you.”
“It’s doing the opposite.”
“No, it isn’t!” I shouted, shocking us both. “You’re hurting, Skye. I can see it and, Christ, I can feel it for you.” I stepped towards her, softened my hard edges that had formed out of frustration. “Skye, I want to take care of you. Let me take care of you.”
“Oh,” she said, pointing the spoon at me. “I get it. You think I need someone to take all this shit away. To tell me I don’t need to carry this anymore, that I don’t need to hold the guilt by myself.” She scraped her eggs into the bin. “I’ve given you some kind of superhero complex.”
“Skye–”
“You’re not saving me, Will. I don’t need you to.”
“You don’t need saving, but you fucking want it. You just can’t admit it to yourself.”
She laughed from deep within her throat, but the tapping of her knuckles against her mouth told me she was holding more in. Emotion. She wasn’t doing this willingly. She’d been pushed to her limit and was overthinking everything. How I wished she’d let it all out and cleanse herself. Let the tears wash away her guilt. The guilt that ravished her body. The guilt she didn’t need to bear.
She breezed past me, her dressing gown billowing behind her.
“I’m going to say this now and all I want is for you to listen,” I said, reaching her bedroom where she started picking up my clothes I’d discarded in a haze of lust no less than a few hours ago. I really wanted to be back in that place.
“We haven’t talked about us yet,” she said, barely looking up. “Shall we start on that next or do I really want your warts and all opinion like the one you’ve given me about my mental health?”
“Just listen to me,” I pleaded.
“If that’s what this all about, Will, some kind of mission to save me, you can go.”
“I won’t walk away from you even when you’re fucking pushing me!” I finally caught her eyes. Fuck, she was beautiful, but she was fighting a war and I wasn’t sure how long she could carry on fighting.
“You don’t have to say that.”
“I know,” I replied. “I’m telling you the truth.”
I watched her grip her lips together to stop herself from crying. She clamped her hand over her mouth and shook her head as more guilt weighed her down. “Shit, Will, I’m so sorry.” She threw her hands to her head and started pacing. “God, I’m an idiot. An ungrateful cow. I don’t know what’s happening to me.” She twisted and twirled in front of me, a wrestle between needing comfort and the fear that I might reject her. “Ignore me. That was totally uncalled for. I don’t even know where that came from.”
“There’s been a lot going on,” I replied, “and like you said, emotions can take you by surprise.”
And you haven’t worked out what we are yet and that’s frightening you too.
“Why?” she whispered, wrapping her arms around herself. “Why are you staying after the way I’ve behaved and what I’ve said?”
“Because I love you,” I replied simply. She didn’t say anything for a beat. Didn’t react. Didn’t move. Just hugged herself and tried to calm her breaths. She wiped her tears away and looked to the floor, and it took everything in me not to go to her.
“After all that?” she gasped, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth. It killed me that she didn’t know. It blew me away that she still questioned it.
“You can throw me some banter, roll your eyes, not believe that you’re worthy of it but, Jesus, Skye, I’m allowed to feel what I’ve fucking felt for the last five years despite the fact that you can’t see just how incredible you are.”
She blew out a breath, shook out her hands and smiled a little, but the threat of a sob was still lingering. “It scares me, OK? To give myself to someone…to you. Completely. Honestly. It makes me vulnerable and I
