The tearsmith, p.34
The Tearsmith, page 34
I was full of him, inside. He had left his mark all over me.
All I wanted, all I desperately wanted was him, clasping me in his arms as if that would save the world. As if that would save him…
Him, who I had known all my life, that boy at The Grave with dull, black eyes – Rigel, every fibre of my being screamed, Rigel, and no one else.
It felt like he had always been within me, bringing meaning to my silences, holding my dreams when they were too frightening. I was living off his heartbeat, that unsteady, clashing rhythm that had imprinted directly on my heart.
I belonged to him with every glimmer of my soul.
With every thought.
And every breath.
We were the end and the beginning of a single story – eternal and inseparable, Rigel and I, a star and a sky, scratches and Band-Aids: together, a constellation of shivers.
Together…right from the start.
And as I fell apart, and sewed myself back together out of pieces that screamed nothing but his name, as everything disintegrated and he became a part of me, I understood that my heart would always and only ever belong to him.
25. Collision Course
My heart is full of bruises,
but my soul is full of stars,
because some galaxies of shivers
only shine under the skin.
Time stopped.
The world stopped turning.
There was just us.
Inside me, universes colliding had reshaped everything I thought I knew.
I couldn’t move. My eyes were fixed and staring. But inside…
Inside, I was no longer myself.
My soul shook. Emotions burst out of everywhere, I couldn’t stop them. My feelings spiralled down, with increasing speed, increasing momentum – No, no, wait, I wanted to shout at my heart, please, wait, not like this…not like this…
But there was no respite.
It was crazy to think that the world was oblivious to the explosion that had just taken place within me. It was like a special torture, just for me, silently digging deeper and burning with every breath.
Rigel’s fingers clutched at the dress at my hips. His hands slowly worked their way up my body, rumpling the fabric. I didn’t dare to breathe. I wanted to feel them every day.
Suddenly, his mouth landed on my stomach.
He kissed my skin through my dress.
I held my breath. I was in disarray. Hypersensitive and burning, I didn’t have the presence of mind to react. Another kiss, higher up this time, on a rib that would burn forever more. I shivered. His hands drew me closer to him.
‘R…Rigel,’ I stammered, as he left a long, burning kiss on my breastbone. He seemed lost, bewildered by my warmth, my scent, my body so close.
My heart pounded in my stomach, rising to meet the caress of his lips. I clutched his hair in my hands and his breath made my head spin.
He kissed the bare skin of my chest, slowly, in that way that was uniquely him, with teeth and lips. His hot tongue traced the contours of my breasts as they rose and fell with my gasping breaths. His fingers crept along my thigh and squeezed, drawing it to him. My heart couldn’t resist.
I tried to ignore the sweet tension that was rising in my stomach, but it was impossible. It felt like it was twisting my heart. I felt hot, wet, trembling. The situation was getting out of hand. I didn’t recognise any of these sensations, and yet they all belonged to me.
I let out a soft moan.
Unrestrained, he pulled me closer to him and possessively pressed my thigh against his side. He sunk his mouth into my throat, biting it, torturing it, taking that tension to the limit. My breathing accelerated.
His teeth probed the curve of my neck, savouring it like a forbidden fruit. My legs went weak, my heart took up all the space in my body.
I couldn’t think.
I felt my ankles shaking, the bones of his pelvis cutting into my thighs, my hands firm against his shoulders to keep him close to me. He had become the centre of my universe. He was all I could see, all I could feel, every inch of my body trembled at just the thought of him.
He kissed the artery in my throat where my pulse was pounding. I was hardly breathing, overwhelmed by violent sensations. He squeezed my breast. A powerful, frightening shiver gripped my stomach.
Suddenly, reality crashed over me like a bucket of freezing water. I jumped, the tension broke and the fear of how real and true my feelings were overcame me.
‘No!’
I detached myself from his body and moved away.
Rigel was staring at me, petrified, with dishevelled hair, and every step away from him I took was like a stab in the heart.
‘We can’t,’ I murmured disjointedly. ‘We can’t!’
I wrapped my arms around myself and he saw the flash of terror in my eyes.
‘What…’
‘It’s wrong!’
My voice echoed around the room. That one word broke something within both of us.
Something shifted in Rigel’s eyes. I had never seen them look as bright as they did in that moment.
‘It’s…wrong?’ he repeated quietly. It didn’t even sound like his voice. Incredulity morphed into hurt and his eyes dimmed as if his soul was shrivelling. ‘What? What’s wrong, Nica?’
He already knew the answer, but he wanted confirmation.
‘This…’ I replied, not brave enough to name what was inside of me, because defining it would have been equivalent to admitting it, and therefore accepting it. ‘We can’t! Rigel, we…we’re about to become brother and sister!’
Saying this caused me excruciating pain, but that’s what we would be in the eyes of the world. Brother and sister. The relationship I had always refused now seemed like eternal condemnation.
I remembered what I had read in Alan’s book. It burned like a scorch mark that would never go away.
It was a mistake, we shouldn’t, we couldn’t – my soul screamed, and the injustice of it took my breath away. Our fairy tale grew thickets of thorns, its pages rotted, and the more Rigel looked at me, the more I felt the childish desire to smash myself in two.
My heart hung in the balance of two shining globes.
On the one side, light, warmth, wonder and Anna’s eyes. The family I had always wanted. The only hope that enabled me to survive the matron hitting and hurting me.
On the other, dreams, shivers and universes of stars. Rigel. Everything he had painted within me. Rigel and his thorns. Rigel and his eyes that pierced my soul.
And me, there in the midst of that chaos, crushed between two conflicting desires.
‘You’re still lying to yourself…’
Rigel was still looking at me. But now…now he was light years away from me.
His eyes were no longer open wounds, but deep, distant chasms.
‘You’re deceiving yourself…you want to believe in the fairy tale, but we’re broken, Nica. We’re splintered. It’s in our nature to destroy things. We are Tearsmiths.’
‘You’ve destroyed me,’ Rigel’s eyes seemed to whisper. ‘Yes, you, so fragile and soft, you are destruction personified.’
I felt tears stinging my eyes.
We spoke a language that others couldn’t understand, because we came from a universe that was ours alone. Those words scratched me, they pierced my soul, like nothing else in the world.
‘I can’t lose all this,’ I whispered. ‘I can’t, Rigel…’
He knew it. He knew what it meant to me. He stared at me, his gaze burning with pain, fighting a battle he knew he couldn’t win.
I saw the light in his eyes fading.
I wanted to grasp it, but it was already too late.
* * *
‘Go then,’ he hissed.
Nica jumped, tears in her eyes. He felt like dying.
His mind was all black and screaming. Pain gnawed at his heart. He knew how important it was for her. He knew how much she yearned for a family. He couldn’t blame her.
But her promise to never leave him had given him a hope that he hadn’t even had time to hold on to before she snatched it away from him. His destructive thought patterns started tearing everything to shreds, ripping him to pieces.
‘Please…’ Nica shook her head. ‘Rigel, please, I don’t want this…’
‘And what do you want? What do you want, Nica?’
His frustration exploded. He got to his feet, towering over her, and burned under those eyes that he dreamt of every night.
‘What do you want from me?’ he asked, exasperated.
The writhing inside him rose up, urging him to touch her, to kiss her. He clenched his fists, powerlessly. For a moment, he wanted to rip his heart out and throw it away. He knew that he only had himself to blame. This, at the end of the day, was the painful punishment for his own mistake.
Playing the piano, that day at The Grave.
Making Anna and Norman choose him.
Staying with her.
It had been an act of pure selfishness, a desperate attempt not to lose her. And now he’d forever be paying the price.
‘I don’t fit into your perfect fairy tale,’ he whispered with a painful bitterness.
He wished he could hate her. He wished he could tear her away from his soul, free her from him, stop hoping.
But she was etched on his heart.
He had tried to give in to love, but he realised that he only knew how to love in that desperate, draining, fragile and twisted way.
Nica’s shining eyes looked at him, destroyed, and Rigel knew she would never be his.
He would never hold her.
He would never kiss her, feel her, breathe her in.
She would always be unreachable, but close enough to hurt him.
In that moment, he realised that there would never be a happy ending. Not for him. He realised, with a painful pang, that he had to hurt her, so she would go away, far away from the disaster that he was. He had to hurt her, because inside he hurt too much to admit to himself how much he wanted her to choose him.
He wanted her with all his being. But more than anything, he wanted to see her happy.
And so if it was a family that would make her happy, he would make that decision easier for her.
‘Go. Go back to your little friend. I’m sure he can’t wait to pick up from where you were interrupted.’
‘Don’t.’ Nica clenched her eyes shut. ‘Don’t try to make me hate you, you won’t succeed.’
Rigel burst into hateful laughter, trying to make it sound believable. Fuck, it hurt him to laugh like that. It was like being devoured by pain.
‘You think I want you around? You think I want your stupid kindness?’
He’d never be able to stand having her near him as a sister. Never.
‘I don’t know what to do with your promises,’ he snarled, injured.
Nica looked away, guilty and distraught. She couldn’t see the sickening sadness in his black eyes.
Rigel felt yet another scar when he saw tears rolling down her cheeks. He stood still, his fists trembling at his sides, and realised that standing firm before her was the bravest thing he had ever done.
And then she left. Again.
He went back to being the wolf.
They were retracing the same steps. Walking along the same path.
But hurting more, this time. Struggling more.
It would never be like before.
Nothing would ever be the same again.
* * *
‘I’ll never leave you alone again.’
I felt my promise infecting my soul as I ran away.
From him. From myself. From what we were.
It was all wrong.
Me. Rigel.
The reality that bound us together.
What I felt.
What I didn’t feel.
All of it.
I went downstairs, into the kitchen and out the back door into the garden. I always looked for nature, fresh air and green when I felt myself suffocating. It was the only way I could breathe.
The darkness of the night enveloped me. I leant against a wall, sliding slowly to the ground.
All I could see were his eyes. His dark eyes, the way he looked at me. My promise shattering in his gaze, that light going out…
And yet, I would say the same thing again. I would swear it, forever, because some part of me knew I would never be able to lie to those eyes.
How would I be able to look at him, from here on in?
How would I bear to be near him, without touching him?
Without dreaming of him, holding him, wanting him?
How would I be able to see love in others, when his crumpled heart was the only one I wanted?
How would I be able to think of him as a brother?
I felt split down the middle.
I was lost.
I buried my head between my knees, wretched. It felt like life was making fun of me.
Which piece of your heart will you choose? it seemed to whisper. You can only live with one, because the other will inevitably die. Which piece will you choose?
I felt confused, fragile, stricken.
I was past the point of no return. It was too late to turn back.
I hadn’t even realised that my phone was vibrating. I slipped it out of my pocket.
An extremely long message filled the illuminated screen. Through bleary eyes I just about managed to unlock it.
It was Lionel, apologising for what had happened, for having come to my house in the middle of the night.
The message was far, far too long. I couldn’t manage to grasp even a single word. I was exhausted.
I was staring at the screen when he called. I saw his name flash up on the screen, but didn’t have it in me to pick up.
I didn’t want to speak to him. Not then.
‘I know you’re there,’ he wrote, when he saw that I was online but not answering his call. ‘Please, Nica, pick up…’
He called me again. Once, twice. On his third try, I leant my head backwards and closed my eyes. I accepted the call with a sigh.
‘Lionel, it’s late,’ I whispered, worn out.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said immediately, maybe scared that I’d hang up.
He seemed desperate and sincere.
‘I’m sorry, Nica…I shouldn’t have behaved like that. I was thoughtless, and I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry…’
It wasn’t the right time to talk about it. I couldn’t think straight. There was a world in pieces whirling inside of me, and I couldn’t see beyond it.
‘I’m sorry, Lionel. I don’t feel up to talking about it now.’
‘I don’t regret what I did. It maybe wasn’t the right way to go about it, but…’
‘Lionel…’
He fell silent. He was upset, I could tell, but at that moment I was incapable of giving him my attention.
‘Tomorrow evening…my parents are away. I’m having a party and…I’d like you to be there. We could talk about it.’
I swallowed. I had never been to a party in my life, but I was doubtful that I was in high enough spirits to participate. I stared hazily at the garden.
‘I’m…not sure I’m in the right mood.’
‘Please come,’ he begged. Then he seemed to regret the outburst and moderated his tone. ‘I want us to talk about it. And then…it’ll make you feel better, won’t it?’
He didn’t even know why I sounded so tearful. He hadn’t even asked.
Did he think it was because of him?
‘Promise you’ll come,’ he insisted.
Suddenly, I realised how much simpler things could be with Lionel.
It could be normal.
It could be as simple as possible.
If it weren’t for my soul.
And my mind.
And my heart.
If it wasn’t for the starry sky inside of me…
I clenched my eyes shut.
I’ll be good, the little girl inside reminded me. I pushed her away. I didn’t want to listen.
I was protecting my dream. Feeling loved by a family. That was what I had always wanted.
So why did it hurt so much?
* * *
—
The next day I was woken up by my phone ringing.
I had slept terribly.
‘Nica!’ a voice trilled. ‘Hi!’
‘Billie?’ I murmured, covering my eyes with my hand.
‘Oh, Nica, you won’t believe it! Something incredible has happened!’
‘Mm…’ I mumbled drowsily.
My heart was heavy. My cooled emotions and memories from the previous night were like smouldering ruins.
‘I swear, I thought it was going to be a morning like any other…who would have thought? When Grandma told me I had three lucky stars on my horoscope, I never thought I would be that lucky!’
I tried to sit up as Billie kept jabbering on.
‘Why don’t we hang out tonight? Then I can tell you everything! Do you want to come to mine…We can order chicken wings and do those rhubarb face masks I got in the cereal…’
‘This evening?’ I murmured evasively.
‘Yeah, are you busy?’ she asked, a little disappointed.
‘Well…there’s that party…’
‘A party? At whose?’
‘Lionel’s,’ I replied after a moment. ‘Last night…he asked me to go.’
There was a moment of silence. I glanced down at my phone screen to check that Billie was still there.
Her voice exploded in my ear.
‘Oh my God! Are you joking? He invited you officially?’
I moved the phone away from my ear, dazed.
‘I don’t believe it! So you like him? Oh wait, has he told you that he’s interested?’
