Forgetting Sylva

Resolve

I feel filled with a restless sort of energy. I am like a battery; I am energised by resolve. In a bad way. I feel jittery and frightened, and I fear I might move too quickly and hurt myself, and I would not like to constantly be in pain when there is time for that, later, and hardly any time to live at all.

Lance met me in front of the hospital, looking wary. Marc waved from Hannah's car, and I waved back, and then they were gone.

Lance looked at me for a moment, saying nothing. I told him that we needed to talk. And now we walk, very slowly, side by side, to the park across the road. A man pushes his daughter on the swing, and she laughs when he pushes her. When she reaches the dizzying heights, the limits of the swing, she kicks and screams and squeals her way down, but once she has reached her father's arms, she collapses into giggles again. I smile at the cycle and slowly swing my arms at my sides, feeling free and unfettered by the world. Lance isn't holding my hand, or pressing his hand to my back to hold me up, because he knows I do not need it, not now. And I feel strong and capable, though a snail could go faster than I am going, but I don't care.

I open my mouth to speak, but Lance does first. "Syl?" he says.

I look at him curiously. "Yeah?"

"What do you want from life?" he asks. If the question came from anyone else, it would be cruel. But I consider it.

"Why?" I ask, finally.

He watches the little girl on the swing: up, scream; down, laugh. "Tiana seems to take you as a model for her life, now," he says, softly. "And it sounded like she was repeating something you said, when she told me that all she wanted was everything, but she would not confine her wants to a word, anyway."

I am surprised, a little, because I said that to her a long time ago. But I love the capacity people have to surprise me, especially when one of those people is Tatiana. I smile. "'Confine' is a tad refined a word for a little girl," I tell him.

He hums softly in agreement.

"What do you want?" I ask.

He kicks at the ground as he takes a step, nudges a scarlet leaf from the path as if saving it from something. "I've told you what I want," he says, lifting his gaze from the ground. And we have been over this, again and again, and I have said the same thing, because I won't hurt him, I will not. At least, I will try my best not to, but there will always be some things that I cannot avoid doing.

"Lance," I start, then stop. "I'm not worth it," I say. My voice is so quiet it is almost a whisper. "But-"

He stops walking, and I look at him, startled to silence. Because there is a certain violence, a fury, to his stance; a helpless hopelessness that he cannot change or contain. And it is bright in his eyes and I cannot look away, because he is alive alive alive and so bright, burning with life.

"Why do you always say that?" he asks, quietly. "Why do you think you're not worth it? Why do you think you can just decide that you don't want me to want you, and that's it, there's no chance?" His voice gets louder as he speaks, and the man with the little girl looks over at us worriedly.

"Lance-" He cuts me off with more words, and they pour out as if he cannot contain them, not any longer.

"You are the most amazing person I have ever met, Sylva. You're beautiful and you're strong and you're so smart, you don't even realise it. And you bite your lip when you're thinking and there's a scar next to your nose that I haven't had the chance to ask you about, but I want to ask you, because I want to know everything about you, everything you want me to know. And you're so damn stubborn, trying to convince you that this is right is like trying to talk to a rock!" He is shouting now, and from the corner of my eye I see the man take his daughter from the swing and leave, but I don't care; I can't take my eyes from him.