Wearing My Smile | ✔

Tuesday, August 9th, 2005

Evening

Later, in the evening, I was sitting on the steps of my back porch, watching the sun came down when you opened the back door and sat beside me quietly. The sky was orange, red around the edges like it was bleeding. I'd known for a long time that you loved sunsets more than sunrises like you loved the endings in movies more than the beginnings while I loved everything in between. So we sat there in silence we were so familiar with, waiting for the day to end.

"You can't keep doing that," I murmured to you when the sky was dark. Your head was leaning onto my shoulder the way you did sometimes when it was just the two of us. I missed that, Sam. I still do. I remember the smell of your shampoo and the soft strands of your hair. I remember the way it glinted under the sun.

"It's like we're a pair of lone wolves."

"Are you even listening to me, Sam?"

"Have you ever thought about it, Roo? We've always loved silence a little bit too much. Maybe it's not so healthy, huh?" You pulled back and looked up to me then. Your expression was so vulnerable, so bare when you were with me. I found myself wishing so desperately someone else would see you this way, see you the way I always did, this side of you that you'd never allowed other people to see because you thought of it as a weakness to exploit. I wondered when that happened. When it was that you learned to completely block people out of your life when you'd never done that to me, not once.

"It's not a good enough reason to drive people away," I replied softly.

"But it's a reason."

"You can fight." It was a question veiled as a statement. I didn't notice it before in the first fight because I came out late and I was too surprised to process it.

"Of course," you replied dryly. "When you live with someone with temper as explosive as my father, you would, too, if just for self-defense. I'm usually good at it, except for that one time."

Your honesty struck me speechless. You'd never been so open talking about your family. "Then why didn't you ever—"

"What? Hit him back? Roo, he's my father."

"How could you ever stand it then?" I heard my voice rising. My blood was rushing in my ears and my pain came anew each time I recalled the time he'd stomped on you. I remembered the time he'd choked you over the railing and suddenly it was so hard to breathe. I wondered if this was what it felt like to be choked. "How could you stand all the blows and the painful words, coming back home to that every day? Do you think I didn't notice how exhausted you were on some days? How could you ever love them at all, Sam? Because I hate them. I hate them so much."

With a weary sigh, you told me, "I can't help it, Roo. They're all I have." Then came your cynical smile, one that was hard for me to recognize as yours. "It doesn't matter anymore though. He's gone now. And soon my mother. Then there will be no one else left."

I blinked away the blur in my eyes. "What about me then?"

You wrapped your arm around my shoulders and rested your temple on top of my head. "Silly Roo. You're always my home."

"I want to hurt them, Sam." I felt the tremble in my voice. How I shook. There was something building and blazing inside me and it took me a while to realize that it was rage. I didn't know what to do with it, so I tried to push it back down. "Because all they do is hurt you."

But you knew. Of course, you knew. "Oh, Roo, but you can never do that, can't you? You know why? Because you're the best person I've ever met. The most loyal, the kindest. It's not in you to hurt people. It's my job because I'm supposed to be the violent one. It's what I do."

When the moon was full and fat in the sky, I pulled you up from your seat to guide you back inside. You were giving me that soft smile, one you had only for me. I kissed the palm of your hand when you reached out to slide back a lock of my hair behind my ear. I asked you, "Have I ever told you how much I love you?"

Your blinding grin was everything I wanted to live for.

"Tell me again."