BARE - by Wildes

“Why didn’t you tell me you loved me?” The heavy rain pounded down all around us, and for a moment I thought I misheard him. But there was a fierceness in his eyes and the grip around my shoulders tightened ever so slightly. I couldn’t help but scoff. It wasn’t his fault, it never was. But for a split second, I forgot what I had told myself over and over again during the past couple of years, trying to alleviate the pain.

“Let me go Lay. You shouldn’t have come for me.” My voice was firm, unyielding, cold. I knew that the longer he kept staring so intently at me, the harder it would be for me to pull myself together once I got home to my lonely apartment. My body was already preparing for the mental exhaustion it would have to endure.

“Innah… don’t say that. I spent so long looking for you. You just disappeared one day.” His eyes were just as dark as I remembered them, and that hard look that always followed him was ever so present. But a pleading tone had crept into his voice. “Why did you just leave me alone like that?”

I sighed now and forced my way out of his arms. “You were never alone Lay.” I took a deep breath and prepared my lie. “You were with her. And I never told you I loved you because I never did.” I spun around to walk away but he grabbed my arm forcefully.

“Lay…” I started, not sure how much longer I could keep this cold demeanor up. It had been three years after all. But he shook his head.

“That’s a lie.” His grip around my arm tightened but he kept his eyes glued to the concrete below. “Why did you leave me Innah? It wasn’t fair. You just left without a word. It took me three months just to get the boys to tell me something.” The grip on my shoulders didn’t loosen.

“Lay please-“

“You never once called or texted or gave any clue as to where you were.” His eyes continued to trace the outline of our feet, but his hand grew tighter and tighter. “How could you not care at all?”

“Lay, let me go. You’re hurting me.”

“Didn’t our friendship mean anything to you?! Was I just a nuisance all those years?” His chest heaved up and down with every heavy breath as he yelled infuriatedly at the ground. “Didn’t it once occur to you that you could have told me you loved me?!”

I couldn’t help it. The words made me snap. “NO! You know what!? It didn’t.”

His eyes shot up to my face, clear surprise written on him at my sudden outburst. I’d never truly raised my voice at him before. Sure, we’d argued, but never we’d screamed at each other.

“Why would I have told my best friend that I was in love with him? That the girl he was with, the one who lit up his entire face whenever she came into the room, was the wrong one. How could I ever tell him that I didn’t like the way he smiled so blissfully around her? That the celestial beauty he saw obliterated all thoughts of impartial judgement, or how the love of his life made his best friend’s vein twist in agony?”

The roles reversed; now he was the one begging. “Innah… what do you-“

But I’d had enough. I had opened the sealed off tap to my emotions. The one I´d taped, glued, screwed and closed completely shut with whatever self-mechanisms I could find. And now there was no stopping the immense flood of feelings that roared through me. It all came crashing down.

“I spent weeks trying to distance myself. It was so obvious she didn’t like me, and I couldn’t exactly blame her. Although we both knew who would make you happy in the end, there was always the possibility of confessing. But where would that have gotten us? She was the one you would spend your life with, not me. So I did everything to make it all go away.” My tears joined the forming puddles on the ground from the rain. “But it didn’t work. Not a damn second went by that I didn’t wish I was her or that she’d one day be gone, out of your life forever. I hated that I thought like that, but I couldn’t help it. And I couldn’t put you through the burden of choosing between us. So I chose for you.”

He kept staring at me. And for every word I threw at him, I told myself we grew further and further apart. Soon he would turn away and wish he never called out my name. Just as much as I wished that.

“I ran. Away from her. Away from this life. Away from you. I couldn’t breathe Lay. You polluted the air I was trying to live in. Instead of understanding what I went through, you fueled every fiber in my body by being so deliriously happy. And I couldn’t take it. It made me devastated and weak. I was suffocated and without realizing it, you were forcing the grip around my neck to tighten.”

A lightning soared through the sky in the thick silence that followed. On the opposite side of the road, a woman hurried through the rain in order to catch a bus. And we stood there under the shelter of a balcony, him and I. Our breaths were heavy and furious, as I prayed to be taken away from his mesmerizing, impeccable eyes. But no amount of willpower could force my body to move.

We must have stood there for quite some time because eventually the rained stopped beating down as hard and settled on a gentle trickle. We stayed still.

He opened his mouth as if to speak a few times, but no words ever left his lips. We stayed still.

Another bus drove by. A thousand moments passed. Then another. My tears kept falling. We stayed still.

After an eternity, he sighed and bent down to pick up his bag from the ground. I shut my eyes closed. Now that he was leaving, I suddenly realized I was about to be alone again. The empty apartment that once called so longingly after me now seemed cold and nefarious. There, nothing would hold me together. No one would tell me everything would be fine or that it all worked out in the end. I was reminded what my life looked like. How I got through each day with bare margin and how I barely kept the darkness, that so often clouded my dreams, at bay.

It took a while for me to register the sudden warmth I was surrounded with and additionally another long moment to interpret what the source was. It had been so long since someone hugged me that I yelped in surprise once I opened my eyes and was met with his chest close to my face.

“I’m sorry.”

I couldn’t fathom what was happening. My brain worked at full speed, but it didn’t seem to grasp what was going on. “Lay, what are you doin-“

“I’m sorry.” He said it quietly, almost a whisper.

“Lay, why are you-“

He pulled me even tighter against him. And I broke. As if no time had passed at all, I crumbled inside his arms and let the shattered pieces of my body fall to the ground. The strength to stand tall vanished along with my sanity and I fell. It was too much. I hadn’t realized how badly I had yearned for his warmth. His firm body that never swayed and the eyes that always showed his exact emotion. The eyes that lit up like the burning sun when he smiled. It was too much. So I shut down. Right there, on the street with a name I didn’t know, in a city I had learn to hate, I let go of that little amount of strength left in my body, and fell heavily in the arms of the man that would never be mine. And for a split second, before the world turned black and I braced myself for the demons to come, a voice sang faintly in the back of my head, reminding me what I would miss once it was gone.

“Why didn’t you give me a chance to answer your feelings?”