raising it » david dobrik

14

you could see your whole life with me baby
now youve got me thinking that im crazy cause
youre out the door
just one mistake you say youre not in love no more

———

It was silent. For the first minutes after I entered David's house, it was dead silent. No one moved, no one said a thing, no one tried. Luke stayed at Corinna's, where I holed up the night before crying, so the house was utterly... silent.

I let David do the talking. Well, sort of.

"Are you going to say anything?" were the first words that left his mouth, like this was really the time to be sassy and rude to me.

"Sure, I'll go first," I sarcastically replied, sitting up in my seat in an attempt to tower over him, making myself seem more dominant and powerful. "It hurt my feelings when you left the prenup on the bed for me to discover. It makes me believe you don't trust me. I think that you think that I'm only in it for the money, and you have thought that since you found my fucking school assignment. I think it's ridiculous that you don't believe in me after all this time, and since you obviously still feel that way, I don't think we should get married."

David sighed, twirling his fingers. He was doing anything not to look at me. When it didn't seem like he was going to say anything, I added, "I'll pay for the deposit on the venue and the caterers. In fact, I'll pay for all of the cancellation fees for everything. We can do a week to week thing with Luke."

"You're crazy if you think we aren't getting married," David interjected. "I refuse to believe you want to throw away the whole marriage because I made one mistake."

"It's not... it's not even the mistake, David. It's that over and over again you prove to me that you don't trust me when all I've ever tried to do is prove that you should," I wiped the tears threatening to fall down my cheeks. I told myself on the way over that I was going to keep this talk civil and clean, but David had a way of getting under my skin. I felt like I had to explain everything to him, and if he didn't understand, I had to explain again. "You don't even know how many people have offered me thousands of dollars for stories about you, and how many people are offering me money to leak your nudes, and how many times I've been offered brand deals to use certain products in my everyday life so that you'll catch it on camera. I mean, if I wanted to make money off you, I could do that shit for forever. I'd probably be a millionaire by now just from all the people in my email asking me to do shit for them. I have so many chances, and I turn them all down, all because I want you to trust me. I delete the emails and act like they don't exist. And yet, you still don't get it."

"I get it," he denied my previous statement. "It's hard for me, Sloane. I understand that some things are hard for you, and I try to respect that. I get that your childhood fucked you up. This is hard for me. I wish you could understand that."

"Are you fucking serious?" I scoffed. "It's pretty fucking low of you to bring up my childhood trauma in this situation when all I've done is trust you. You cheated on me, and I trusted you. You kicked me out and called me an evil bitch, and I trusted you. Yes, I do have trust issues, but not with you. Never with you. I have given everything for this relationship. I don't sleep. I lost my old body and my old mind, and I'm home every second of the day while you do whatever it is you do, and I love it, but Jesus Christ. I can't believe you would bring up my trust issues that I've all but gotten over just to make your own issues look better."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it."

"It's what you said."

"Okay, well, what I meant was that I understand where you have issues, and I try to avoid those situations. Never in our time together have I asked you or pressured you or wanted you to do anything sexual, pregnant or not. I mean, it's been two years since we've had sex at this point, or done anything remotely close, and I've been not saying anything about it because I know you feel like people use you for sex."

"Now you're comparing us not having sex to—"

"Can you let me finish?" he interrupted my interruption, and with a soft sigh, I nodded. "I obviously see that they aren't the same caliber, but what I'm saying is that I work with you to make you feel more stable in our relationship. If signing the prenup makes me more stable, why can't you work with me?"

"The prenup is not the problem, David," I had to laugh at that. It was like I was speaking and he wasn't listening. "I would've signed the prenup on my own time. I would've signed it if you sat it in front of me and said can you please sign this i know it means nothing but it will help me feel better. I would've signed it, but the fact that you forced it on me a month before the wedding and basically hid from me at Jason's house is what made me upset. You knew it was going to hurt me if you left it and didn't explain, and you still did. I'll even give you the trust issues; sure, you're allowed to have some. I don't care about the concept of the prenup anymore. I care that you knew for a fact you were going to hurt me and you did it anyway, all so that we wouldn't have to have this exact conversation?"

"Sloane," David scooted closer to me on the couch and put his hand on my knee. My eyes found the floor, but he used his hand to lift my chin up. "I love you. I am so, so sorry that I hurt you. I should have thought about it before I did it, and you're completely right. I just wanted to avoid conflict, and that was stupid. There's no way to avoid conflict with you."

"Hey!" I laughed, slapping him on the shoulder.

"I love you," he replied, staring at me with his dumb sparkling brown eyes and his dumb pouty pink lips and his dumb messy hair and... ugh.

"I love you, too."

"Oh, thank God," David sighed in relief, placing a hand over his quickly beating heart. "You had me scared shitless."

"Gotta keep you on your toes," I joked, playing with a piece of hair to avoid looking at him. I explained that Luke was with Corinna for the day after David asked, and we sat together watching TV in silence for a few minutes.

"I picked up the wedding rings this morning," David fished around in his pocket and pulled out two, loose plain silver rings. "I got them engraved. I would've been fucking embarrassed if I had to take them back."

On the inside of the rings were the words not for riches, but for love. Nothing could more perfectly describe our relationship.

hi i saw those not for riches but for love rings on tumblrs and knew somehow they had to be used................ so here they are. please vote and comment and follow me if u enjoyed im kinda emo tonight so this may be the last update for a while. happy thanksgiving!!