Drown In Your Love
Something always brings me back to you.
It never takes too long.
No matter what I say or do I’ll still feel you here ’til the moment I’m gone.You hold me without touch.
You keep me without chains.
I never wanted anything so much than to drown in your love and not feel your rain.
eightyeight88: i hate hospitals, lady
blue x skye: you’re still in the hospital?
eightyeight88: they call it a treatment center, but we all know it’s really a hospital
blue x skye: do they have any idea how much longer you’ll be there?
eightyeight88: oh i’m just being observed now. that’s why it’s so frustrating to still be caged up.
blue x skye: so the treatment is over?
eightyeight88: basically. whether it worked or not… we’ll just have to wait and see
blue x skye: whenever you’re out, i would still like to see you, you know
eightyeight88: i know
blue x skye: in the interest of full disclosure, i do have a boyfriend now
eightyeight88: when don’t you?
blue x skye: plenty of times, just only a few you’ve been around for
eightyeight88: fair enough, sweetheart. anyone i know?
blue x skye: maybe. eric polley?
eightyeight88: musician?
blue x skye: yeah, he’s been in a couple different bands. he thinks this new one is going somewhere.
eightyeight88: haven’t you learned your lesson about dating musicians?
blue x skye: you would think so, but apparently not 😉
eightyeight88: i’m serious though. you don’t want to date a touring musician, if that’s where his band is headed. and if he’s who i’m thinking of, it won’t be long.
blue x skye: i’m not sure i trust your advice when it comes to my love life. no offense.
eightyeight88: maybe you shouldn’t, but it’s something to think about. can you trust him? can you go months without seeing him or go along and see girls throw themselves at him? you have to be strong. but you are, lady.
blue x skye: sometimes i’m not so sure that i am
eightyeight88: you are. i don’t know many people stronger than you, if any.
blue x skye: it doesn’t seem to have done much good
eightyeight88: if it hasn’t yet, it will. we’re still young, lady. still plenty of time for us to take over the world.
blue x skye: maybe there is, maybe there isn’t
Taylor’s comments about Eric made me so mad that I could barely see straight. Hot, angry tears fell down my cheeks even as I tried to keep my comments as nice as I could. Who was he to judge who I was with? I was beginning to wonder if Taylor would only ever want me when he couldn’t have me. That seemed to be the way things went. We had called ourselves nothing more than bad timing, but what if he engineered things so that would be the case? What if he only came around when he knew he could flirt but never really get close?
It made me sick to even consider that possibility.
It also made me really want to stay with Eric, in spite of the reasons I was starting to see that it just wouldn’t work out. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t been upfront about how busy he was with the band, and I thought I was fine with that. For all I knew, I would find a job and leave Tulsa in the near future. I didn’t have anything but him to tie me there, and that was a very new, very tenuous bond.
Barely a month into our relationship, we were already fighting all the time. When he wasn’t busy, he was flaking out on our plans. I didn’t think he was cheating, because I was reasonably certain we had enough mutual friends that I would have heard about that. But I still didn’t like being so close yet so far away from him.
We had made plans that night, but I knew he was supposed to be practicing with the band before our date. When the time he’d promised to pick me up came and went, I got antsy and began calling his cell phone. It rang and rang, but with no answer. I called back again and again, even though I hated myself for it. It wouldn’t make him answer; it would only make me look like a crazy, possessive person.
Finally, the phone clicked over, but all I could hear were muffled voices. He must have somehow answered the phone accidentally, not even realizing he’d done it. No matter how many times I said “hello,” there was no reply. I strained to listen to the voices, and I could just barely make out Eric’s. There might have been a girl’s voice, but I couldn’t be sure.
It didn’t matter, though. Whether he was cheating or not, he had neglected me entirely.
I hated to prove Taylor right, but I knew what I had to do. I hung up, then dialed his number again, hoping that once again it would go to voicemail. It did.
“Eric, umm… hey. I don’t know if you’re just busy or what, but I’ve been calling. I hate to do this over the phone, but I don’t know what choice you’ve given me when it seems like I can’t see you in person at all. I just… I don’t want to give you an ultimatum, because those suck, but what else can I do? If you want this to work, I really need to see more effort on your part, because right now, I don’t see it. At all. So the ball is in your court. If you want it to work, make it work. If not, then… I guess it’s over.”
blue x skye: i broke up with eric
eightyeight88: not because of what i said, i hope?
blue x skye: no. it got me thinking, yes. but the relationship wasn’t exactly working out… and i know it had only been a month, but…
eightyeight88: you can’t hang on forever and wait for him to be as good to you as you deserve. if he isn’t from the start, he never will be.
blue x skye: that was basically the conclusion i came to. how did you know?
eightyeight88: i know you, lady. you know i do.
blue x skye: but i didn’t tell you what was going wrong with eric.
eightyeight88: so tell me now
blue x skye: he was just so flaky. and i knew he wasn’t ready for a big commitment, so maybe it wasn’t fair for me to expect that much from him
eightyeight88: fair enough
blue x skye: but i just feel like… if you want to be with me, act like it, you know? you don’t have to promise me forever, but if you want to date me at all, fucking act like it. and he didn’t.
eightyeight88: you deserve better than that
blue x skye: well i don’t know if i’ll ever find it, but i know it wasn’t him
eightyeight88: don’t take this the wrong way lady, but you need to know this. whatever there is or was between us, i love you.
blue x skye: please don’t tell me that
eightyeight88: i know you probably don’t want to hear it right now or at all, but it’s true. whether it’s romantic love or platonic love or whatever, it’s true now, it’s been true, and it will always be true.
blue x skye: i just don’t know what you think you’re accomplishing by telling me that when i’ve just gotten out of a relationship
eightyeight88: i just thought you needed to know. i know i haven’t said it before.
blue x skye: yes you have
blue x skye: but then you said you weren’t IN love with me
eightyeight88: oh god. did i really say that?
blue x skye: you don’t remember?
eightyeight88: lady you know i was on pain pills and sleeping pills then. if that was in bed at night after i took my ambien… then i neither remember it, nor did i have much control over it at the time
blue x skye: oh
blue x skye: well i’m not saying it back
eightyeight88: you don’t have to
blue x skye: not because i don’t feel it too. but if i say that to you, for the first time, i don’t want it to just be online
eightyeight88: that’s fair. maybe i should have waited too.
blue x skye: waited until when? i mean, when am i even going to see you again?
eightyeight88: i don’t know. when i’m out of the hospital?
blue x skye: when will that be?
eightyeight88: maybe two, three weeks
blue x skye: i know in the grand scheme of things, that isn’t very long. but i don’t think i can wait even a minute more than absolutely necessary.
eightyeight88: if you don’t mind seeing me in a hospital bed, then come on. whenever you’re ready… i’ll be here.
If I was completely honest with myself, I was terrified to see Taylor again. It wasn’t because of how he might look. I wasn’t scared of hospitals or sick people. I was scared of Taylor. Even though I had tried to keep up a friendship with him, because I didn’t want to lose him entirely, I knew how much he could hurt me. He had the power to completely break me, and I was fairly certain he knew that. Whether he would or not remained to be seen.
Knowing how sick he was, though, I didn’t want to take the chance of not seeing him again. I didn’t want that last night we spent together to be my last real memory of him. The thought that Taylor might actually die, at any moment, scared me more than anything else. That fear forced me to get over all my other fears and just go see him.
The treatment center where Taylor was staying for time being really was more than just a hospital. There were seemingly dozens of different departments and it took me a long time to locate the actual patient rooms. That particular wing looked more like a hotel than any hospital I had ever seen. The only difference was that I had to check in at a nurse’s desk where I received a visitor’s badge that clipped onto my shirt.
It took only a little more searching to find Taylor’s room. Inside, it looked even more like a hotel, with soft pastel décor, a comfy chair and a small table by the window. In the large bed, there was Taylor, looking just as pale and sickly as I remembered him looking two years ago.
“You cut your hair,” he said.
I nodded. “Yeah, I did.”
“I lost mine. Again.” He smirked a little and tapped himself on the skull when he said it, as though he thought it might have passed me by. It hadn’t, but it didn’t matter. He was still Taylor to me, no matter what he looked like; it was cliché, but true.
I stood awkwardly in the doorway. Even if it did look like a hotel, it was still a hospital room, and I felt out of place.
“Come on,” Taylor said, motioning toward the chair next to his bed. “Zac says this chair is pretty comfy. And Dad’s passed out in it a dozen or so times, so it’s got his seal of approval, too.”
With somewhat of a forced laugh, I stepped into the room and sat down in the overstuffed chair. It was pretty comfortable, but it didn’t do anything to clear the tension in the air around us.
After a moment of flipping through the television channels, Taylor finally turned the volume down and glanced at me. “You graduated, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “Somehow. By the skin of my teeth, I think.”
“So what are you still doing in Tulsa?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. It’s not like a college degree is a ticket out. I wish it was. It hasn’t even been a ticket to a job for me yet.”
“So what’s the plan? Don’t you always have a plan?”
“I used to,” I replied. “But then better options started coming along. Less reliable options, but better ones. And I stopped planning. Maybe I shouldn’t have, because now I don’t… I don’t have anything, really.”
“That’s not true,” Taylor said.
“Well, it feels that way.”
An awkward silence descended upon us again. I hated myself for nearly arguing with him, for letting my words be so biting. After what felt like minutes but was probably only seconds, Taylor said, “I’m sorry things didn’t work out with that guy.”
“Are you?”
“Do you want me to be happy about it?”
“I want you to be honest,” I replied.
“I’m trying to be,” he said. “I really am. And I honestly don’t want to see you hurt by anyone.”
“Not even yourself?”
Taylor looked away. “I can’t go back in time and undo the hurt I caused you. But if I could, believe me, it would be on the list of things I would do differently.”
“Then why didn’t you do it differently the first time?” I asked, not even trying to fight the tears threatening to fall. I knew Taylor could hear them in my voice, because he winced at my words.
I had to strain to hear his whispered reply. “I was trying to spare you. You never did understand that.”
“You just had to hurt me to do it?” I asked.
“Think about it, Lady. I’m going to die. Sooner rather than later. I’m going be gone, poof, out of your life forever. I can’t stand that thought. I know it seems silly to push you away, but I was trying to spare you. Give you a chance to move on, find someone else. If you could move on, love somebody else… I don’t know, maybe you wouldn’t have to deal with… with everything that being with me means.”
I tried to process his words, and even though it was a theory I’d considered before to explain his behavior, hearing it spelled out, it really didn’t make a lot of sense. Shaking my head, I asked, “So what about the other girls? It was okay to hurt them?”
“It’s going to sound horrible of me, but… I never loved them. And they never loved me. They were safe. I could keep them at a distance and not have to worry that they would be so hurt to lose me. But you… you’re strong, Lady, but you’ve got a breaking point.”
“And it’s you? Taylor Hanson is just so wonderful that I’ll never be able to get over him?” I practically spat the words at him.
“Lady,” Taylor said, his eyes pleading with me. “I didn’t say that. That’s not what I meant. There are plenty of women out there who don’t love me. You’re not one of them. And there are plenty of women out there who I don’t love. And you’re not one of them, either.”
“You keep saying that,” I replied.
“What? That you love me? Tell me you don’t, Adelaide. Tell me.”
“You know I love you. But you could at least wait until I’ve said it before you put the words in my mouth.”
Taylor lips twitched like they were going to turn up into a smirk, but they didn’t. “There. You’ve said it. That’s why you came here, wasn’t it?”
I nodded. “I didn’t… I didn’t want you to die without having heard it. It didn’t even matter that I didn’t think it would change your mind. You just needed to know.”
“Change my mind about what?” Taylor asked.
“Being with me.”
“I never didn’t want to be with you,” he replied. “I just didn’t think it was… in your best interests.”
“How about you let me decide that? Sometimes I do know what’s best for myself.”
“And that’s why I agreed to let you come here,” he said softly.
I stared at him in disbelief. The conversation had gone in so many different directions, few of them good, and my heart was still racing from the things he’d said.
“We’ll have to agree to disagree about whether it’s in your best interests, but… do you honestly want to be with me, Lady? You know I could die tomorrow. Or next month. Or next year. Can you live with that?”
“I want to be with you,” I replied, not caring that my tears were no doubt smearing mascara down my cheeks. I didn’t want to glance away from Taylor even long enough to wipe them away. “I want to be with you, for however long I can. I never cared about how long. Never. All I’ve wanted, since the moment I realized I loved you, was to know you felt the same. That was all I needed. But knowing it… well, it didn’t immediately fix anything. It didn’t change anything between us. So, yes, I want, maybe even need, to be with you.”
Taylor nodded, then reached across the bed to grasp my hand. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know how long I have to make up for… for everything. But I’m going to try, okay? I can’t be everything you deserve, I know, but—”
“I don’t give a fuck about deserve. I only care about want. Need. Love.”
“Yeah,” he replied, giving me a weak smile. “For once, I think… I think that’s all I care about, too.”
“So does that mean…?” I trailed off, still fearing this couldn’t possibly be real.
“Yes. Do you want me to actually ask the question, Lady? Will you be my girlfriend?”
I rolled my eyes. “You know I will.”
“Yeah. I know.”
– “I didn’t want to see you”
– “They told me”
– “I was afraid that I’d still love you”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game