August 6, 1002
Fucked Up No More, Maybe
Leaving Emily's party, I am silent in the car. Ryan is babbling about some adventure he and Scott and Lindle engaged in, and I am thinking, "Why don't you date them?"
I am so jealous that it was they who kept him from me this week.
He can tell something is wrong. Danbarry predictably has nothing I care to see, and we end up sitting in the parking lot. He pulls his hat down over his eyes. I curl up as far away from him as I can.
"I don't want to see a movie." I say flatly, and he lifts the hat to look at me.
"What do you want to do?"
I shrug.
"Do you even want to be here? It seemed like you were avoiding me at the party, and now we're here and you're acting like it's a drag, like something you have to do."
"That's not how it is."
"How is it, then?"
I shrug again.
"Tell me."
A partial conversation insues, me speaking very little and he filling the silence with his own hypothesis, which sound remarkably like the paranoid worries I usually spout. We drive away. I am sniffling. He pulls into the Oak Hills parking lot.
"Look at me."
I don't.
Very softly, painfully, "Why won't you look at me?"
So I do.
And his eyes are heartbreaking. All of it comes pouring out of my mouth.
I told him how even when I am away from my parents their words echo in my head, that they compell me to distrust him, that this past week he failed to prove them wrong. I told him how I didn't really feel better about either of them.
"I have never lied to you. I have never done anything to make you distrust me." He clasps his hands in an almost pleading manner.
I hesitate.
"How do I know that?"
His jaw drops. And at that moment I realize that he must be an exception, the hurt that emanates from his person is unbearable. I have committed the ultimate betrayal. I have not believed him.
"What do you say to that?" He retorts, obviously angry. "We've only been going out for 8 months. I thought that counted for something."
"It does." I murmur.
"Does it?" He puts a hand on my cheek and turns my face toward him. I can't look at him.
"Don't look at me like that. I don't deserve to be looked at like that."
"Everybody deserves it."
He pulls me towards him and holds me. I am ugly-crying, as usual. I tell him I am sorry. I sit there thinking what a piece of shit I am, how can I do this to him over and over? Why does he stay with me?
"Am I still worth it?" I ask quietly, my face buried in his shoulder.
He leans back to look at me.
"You're always worth it."
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