Half a World Away (Chapter 6)
Title: Half a World Away
Summary: the blood stains on his memories will never fade away; not even by the passage of time, or the reek of his regrets. He will never come back. He will never love him again.
Rating: R
Disclaimer: the title comes from a song by Secret Garden; and I assume everyone already knows that none of these ever happened.
Warning: stream of consciousness (or what I tried to write), pure angst…don’t expect anything happy coming out of this one. Sorry.
A/N: this chapter is by 1000 words longer; I hope I haven’t let you down with this one. For some reason, it was a much harder chapter to write. Con-crit is very much welcomed.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
December 25, 2005
He walked pass me, in long strides, careful not to touch me, his indication of being pissed-off. I watched him disappear behind the door; he didn’t slam it, like I would have if I were him; he had passed that stage in life a long time ago, even before I came into the picture. His anger was always of a silent kind; a long, tedious series of lazy afternoons, chain-smoking and black coffee. He would take his eyes away from me, staring off into distant, looking pensive but later on he would tell me he wasn’t really thinking of anything. Just passiveness; a blank canvas through and through. Perhaps with a little dot in the middle; that would be after his tenth cigarette when he would silently ask me to light his eleventh because he couldn’t do that anymore; monotony got to him even more violently than it got to me. Yet, he would wait for me. I had to be the first to speak. It was easier for him to remember why I deserved his scolding when I talked; I always started with defending myself. He hated it. He wanted me to admit that I had done something wrong and I would never do that. Not to spite him, no. I never really wanted to purposefully hurt him. I just couldn’t say it out loud. In words. That wasn’t my territory. It was his. I’d rather bend over and kiss his feet than admit to my mistake. He wouldn’t understand, though. Perhaps I didn’t understand. We two, in ways I had never felt brave enough to venture, had been always half a world apart.
When I walked into the room, careful not to make a sound as I shut the door behind me, already being suck into the delusional serenity of the moment, he was lying on the bed, legs crossed at the ankles, his black Converses still on, languidly sucking at his cigarette. I assumed that would be his third, given the time I had spent behind the door, struggling with myself when to go in and face the silent hurricane that resided inside. He didn’t turn his head to notice me in the doorway; he kept his eyes focused on the poster of Turbonegro hanging on the opposite wall. I cleared my throat, uncomfortable in his presence, and the only indication I got from him was a short-lived sigh emitting from his parted lips.
“I don’t even know what I have to apologize for.”
This got his attention. His green eyes slowly fell on me, his cigarette between his two fingers. I noticed in that short moment how pale he looked in the dim-lit room, how his eyes looked feverish, like two lit candles burning themselves to nothingness, and the way his shirt was sticking to his body, as if his whole torso was drenched in sweats…in such a cold time of the year; it probably was, but I didn’t get to comment on that.
“Then perhaps you should go back and join the party.”
His tone was emotionless, like his face. But I knew better. He cared about this so much that it hurt. That was why he was trying to hide it. The only thing Ville was ever so good at hiding was his pain. But I just didn’t know what he was hurting so much for. Or perhaps, I didn’t want it to be what I thought it was.
“Listen, Vil, I know you’re upset about something. So why don’t you just tell me and we can figure it out and then we can both join the party?”
My exasperated tone made a little frown appear on his high forehead. I thought I knew what was going on in that pretty head of his; that how dare you act like it’s you who has a problem here? Slowly he sat up, sitting on the edge of the bed, feet effortlessly touching the ground, hands balanced on either side of his slightly hunched body, head tilted downward. He looked defeated, like a warrior who had rushed into a battlefield without his arms; his silence got under my skin more than any time before, and I felt a pang of anger wash over me. It was as if my anger was a physical thing, like a ball that rolled on the floor and hit his foot to grab his attention.
“That girl you introduced to me…” His voice was strained, like if he let go, it would break. “…the one you keep calling sweetheart, the one with the wide smile, the one who just told me she’s gonna be your wife...” here, he looked up, green eyes shining in the silvery glow of the moonlight, resembling melting jades. “Who is she, Bam?”
I laughed, because something about the way he looked at me, the way he spoke, seemed very comic. The way he liked to dramatize even the simplest concept, the way he liked to victimize himself, the way he got that look in his eyes like I had just pushed the barrel of a gun down his throat and he was all ‘kill me, Bam, kill me and get it over with’…there was just something about him that forced the worst kind of reaction out of me.
I laughed and he kept looking at me like that, with those damnable green eyes of his that pierced through the toughest wall around my heart and made it crumble around my feet.
“She’s Missy.” I sobered up, now unsure why I had been laughing in the first place. The air felt so heavy around me I was amazed how Ville could still breathe in it. “I thought I told you that.”
He bit his lower lip, as if suppressing some kind of emotion from coming to the surface and I wondered we couldn’t have been any more different.
“You forgot to tell me about the wife-part.”
True, but I was somehow hoping he wouldn’t try to ruin our Christmas party for it.
The problem with Valo was he had a tendency to believe the whole world revolved around him. If I was angry, that was because of what he had done wrong. If I had drunk myself into oblivion, again it had something to do with him. If I had suddenly decided to get married, that of course was because of him. It could have been even true, to some extent, but that didn’t mean I had to go over every step with him. It wasn’t like he did that with me anyway.
“Well, about that…”
It suddenly occurred to me that if I was going to save our relationship, I had to lie. There were things that Ville would never understand in the same way that I did. He would never understand the risks I had to take every time I was with him. My career, my circle of friends, my family, my so-called dignity…they were all in danger because of my reckless rendezvous with him. He didn’t know how stupid I looked every time I turned down an offer of a wild, sexual night with a gorgeous chick. He didn’t know how frustrated I became every time I couldn’t make up enough excuses for my friends as to why I couldn’t join them in their drunken orgies. And he certainly didn’t know how Missy and I used to be together back in high school. How much fun we two had together; how naturally it came to us to talk, to laugh, to touch and to be in love. Unlike the times I spent with Ville, which were full of confusions, misunderstandings, sexual frustrations and an utter awkwardness.
“It’s not really what you think it is.” I hadn’t begun yet, and he already looked like he would give up his world to believe me. Why was our relationship, in all its imperfections and lies, of so much importance to him? Why was it to me? Hanging so desperately to a lie…would it prolong our freefall? Would it make the final impact less painful? Or was it that he knew it was either the lies or nothing at all?
“Then what is it, Bam?”
He didn’t sound outright hopeful, or desperate. It seemed to me as if he was somehow coaxing the lies out of me. Ville, why are you doing this?
“I figured if we were going to keep our relationship away from the media, we needed to use some sort of cover. You know how annoying they can get with all their probing and shit. Plus, she is a nice girl; she won’t make any trouble for us.”
Or so I hoped; I thought I had become so good at this lying thing. The problem was that I wanted them both, but knowing how possessive Ville was, knowing his ideal version of true love, I knew he wouldn’t like the idea of sharing me with someone else. I had to make him believe that he was the only one I wanted, and that Missy was only a convenient tool in our love scenario.
Ville threw his arms in the air; he was so animated when he talked. “So this is your genius plan, ha? Let’s get married to keep the media off of my back? What about us, then?”
In the dark room I noticed a slight change come over Ville’s features. It was hard to put my finger on it, but it was there nonetheless; something akin to confusion which soon turned into a momentary fear before he managed to mask it with nonchalance. His hand rubbed at his nose, a gesture junkies like Novak did all the time, and then put it back on the bed, where it was moments ago.
“Nothing’s gonna change between us.” I assured him, my tone sounding hollow even to my own ears.
After a moment of silence, he finally asked, “does she know?”
It suddenly occurred to me how wrong everything was. So goddamn wrong that I couldn’t even comprehend it. I was lying to Ville, Ville was buying it. Ville thought it was Missy I was lying to, and I knew he didn’t want me to. It was all so wrong. Fucking hell.
“Yes, she does. She’s ok with it.” Lies, more lies. But they were necessary lies. Surely Ville would forgive me after a while. I was doing all this to save our relationship, after all. Wasn’t that what he wanted?
He looked at me hard, those eyes piercing through my lies, and I felt like he knew; behind that curtain of velvety green something rose to the surface and shone like a brilliant gem. I opened my mouth to save face, but he brought his hand up and stopped me.
“Save it, Bam. It only hurts when you say it.”
With that cryptic remark, he got up and left the room. I had half a mind to follow him but my conscience suddenly stirred and I was left alone with the weight of all my lies closing around my heart, choking it. Heavily I sat on the bed, where Ville was sitting seconds ago, and tried to gain my composure and make sense of the world around me. I felt something wet under my hand that was resting on the bed. Confused, I brought it up for inspection and noticed a dark liquid was covering my finger. Alarmed, I sprung to my feet and turned on the lampshade. There on the bed, where Ville had been sitting, a small patch of blood had stained the white sheet. I remembered the way he had wiped at his nose. Could it be that he had nosebleed?
I didn’t know why, but I was suddenly very concerned about Ville’s wellbeing. It was only a simple nosebleed; even I got it sometimes, but still, I spent a long while searching the whole castle for him, but to no avail. At the end, I was dragged into the party by Ryan, as everyone had started the countdown to midnight. Missy soon spotted me and offered me her glass of wine. In her carefree presence I forgot everything about a missing Finnish singer and kissed her full on the mouth when the clock struck 12 and the whole castle was filled with laughter and the sound of breaking glass.
When things finally calmed down and drunken people sprawled on the couches everywhere, Ville appeared before my blurry vision. He was looking at me with a plaintive expression shadowing his features; standing before me, shoulders hunched, a heavy halo of mystery enveloping his slender figure, and a thousand unspoken words on lips whose peaceful trembling dissolved into my drunken gaze and faded away; distorted figures that stretched in the darkness of my thoughts, and extended, intoxicating my mind like the last drops of the purest alcohol of the last bottle in the cabinet that poured on my ever thirsty lips. And I saw pain in his eyes; a kind of pain that oozed from the corner of his eyes and got stuck in the fluttery net of his dark lashes; a kind of pain that reflected the light around us and shone it upon my dazed face; a kind of pain that moistened his pale cheeks and dripped alongside his neck like a trickle of water and pooled in the dimples of his shoulders; a little lake of pain he carried around at all times- like an intolerant Catholic whose Bible was an inseparable part of his. And I, in that sultry drunkenness of mine, absorbed in the shadows that were dancing around me to a fast beat, was thinking to myself how long would it take for that small lake to turn into a stormy sea with high waves that would crash against the edge of his existence and wash away the sands on his shore and ever so slowly, drown everything in…
“I’m leaving for Finland tomorrow.”
His voice, much sharper than his presence, grabbed hold of my shoulders like two powerful hands and hauled me out of my stupor.
“Finland? But why? You’ve just arrived!” I exclaimed in a loud voice and Ville winced. I had always been too loud for him; too calloused and crass next to his delicacy and divinity. He told me that was why he loved me. He wasn’t lying, but he put more emphasis on the love part with a passionate kiss to distract me from the fact that he actually loved me for all the wrong reasons that were responsible for the mess we were in now.
“I got a phone call from Mamma. She wants me there for the holidays.”
And just like that, he let go of my shoulders and sent me tumbling down into the swamp I once came from. He left. He left as soundlessly as he came invading my heart and I remember I didn’t even try to stop him. That night, he slept in the guestroom and the next morning he was gone. For a while I thought it had all happened in my restless nightmares and that I could find him sitting on the kitchen island, long legs dangling in the midair, sipping at his coffee while his first cigarette of the day burnt between his fingers; the monotonous routine that was the security wall around our relationship. But he was nowhere to be found. His suitcase was gone, but most of his stuff had been left behind. His clothes, for the most part, and then some of his books. It looked as if the only things he had taken with him were his asthma medications and his cigarettes; I took that as the sign that he would be back soon; much sooner before I would even start to feel his absence in the house.
I didn’t have any news of him for three months, though; enough time for me to get to know Missy even better, to realize how easier life seemed to be with her, how more comfortable and confident I felt around her, how easier it came to me to smile…but more than anything, in those three months, I realized how much I missed the presence of a certain someone who probably didn’t give a damn about me anymore. Who called me one night, voice sounding less strong than I remembered it to be, telling me that perhaps we would be better off like this, half a world apart; telling me that he had found someone else to love and perhaps when things went back to how they used to be, we could start anew. In those three months I realized how much I wanted to come back to that night when he was standing before me, saying he was leaving and then I could pay more attention to him, ask him about that blood he had left on the bed sheets, trying to break through all his secrets and solve him. At nights when I lied restlessly next to Missy, I would wonder what if he never came back. Then I would realize how much I wanted him back in my life again and as I rolled over to embrace Missy instead of the darkness stretched over on the left side of the bed, the darkness that smelled of winter nights and asthma medication, I would pretend that I didn’t.
_TBC_