our last summer. (e.m)

twenty-one: goodbye letters.

"home? you're not going back to georgia,"
eddie demands incredulously.
any other time,
i might shame him for demanding anything of me.
but i cannot blame him.
when my head is swiveling itself on my sore shoulders,
hearing his steady, definite tone helps to settle me.
but it only subdues this desire to find my mother again for so long.
each time his voice begins to soothe my racing thoughts,
it's replaced with the hunger of my mothers two, warm arms which i've known since birth.
i cannot live two lives.
i must choose.
but how can i when two different versions of myself exist within these spans of time?
which version do i prefer?
the dismal home brightened by my mothers welcoming,
or the rebuilt house glued together by my fathers efforts and eddie's everlasting love?
the choice sounds so easy...
then why is it so difficult to make?
"talk to me...please just say something."
"i don't know what to say,"
i whisper in shameful coated syllables.
eddie let's his hands fall to the frame of my face,
gently as though the slightest touch will fade me into oblivion,
and pleads in the softest of voices.
have i ever heard his tone so raw?
breaking with the ache of departure?
"say you'll stay. say you'll choose your dad. choose me."
i hold his shaky wrist with trembling fingers of my own.
"you don't understand,"
i whisper with a fraction of hope:
convince me.
please god convince me.
"what? you don't think i understand wanting your parents back, especially your mom?"
his hands fall from my face and i nearly scramble to find solace in them again.
i've offended his pride,
i've neglected his parental pains,
and am left frozen in regret.
"you know...i've spent all my life loving you. there was not one person i chose over you."
"i never asked you to do that."
he scoffs at my ridiculous statement.
"ask? you didn't have to ask. i did it because i loved you."
i take notice of the way his talk of loving me now refers to something he used to do;
a habit of the past.
"loved?"
i repeat,
adding the extra emphasis on the past tense.
eddie waves a hand through the air to dismiss my claim.
"don't make this my fault. you can't expect me to love you forever, not when you never choose me. never."
i reach out for his arm and am successful for a mere second.
eddie falls complacent in my grasp until he remembers my hands have been named the betrayer,
so he quickly rips himself away from me.
"so, what? if i stay, you'll suddenly decide to love me again? that's not how loving someone works, you asshole."
eddie hangs off the edge of my bed,
putting his head into his hands.
"god, y/n...how could i love anyone but you?"
i come up behind him and lay my head to his shoulder.
tears kiss my cheek and make way down,
where they'll stake a claim on his shirt.
"i'll always choose you, eddie. always. you're my best friend. and i...i love you. there's nobody i will ever love more. but she's my mom. it's so...so different."
he doesn't move a muscle when he bluntly responds,
"there will always be another man standing by your door, so long as you're with your mom."
the reminder of what my mother put me through so many years ago makes me flinch.
it's odd what longing will obscure from your memory.
so desperate for my mothers company,
i'd neglected to remember the man by my door,
the same man who haunted my dreams for what felt like forever.
the feeling of her hands in my scalp,
the stinging rejection and abandonment as i stood on my grandmas front porch with my existence shoved into trash bags.
the harsh memory of it hollows my chest out,
only filling with the tidal wave of my affliction.
this feels like crawling on glass.
eddie notices how i've withdrawn from him and inches to comfort me.
"i can't protect you from here."
"i don't need you to protect me,"
i spit,
listening in horror as my voice grows venomous and shaky.
i push him away with the force of my palms,
but he moves none.
his hands are still searching my skin for an answer,
for a clue on how to convince me to stay with him.
when he cannot find one,
because one does not exist,
his hands fall limp into his lap and his voice is exasperated,
"what do you want from me, y/n?"
"nothing. i want nothing from you."
what am i saying?
please stop,
i beg myself.
but my temper has been lit aflame and shows no signs of being smothered.
the wound of my mother has been ripped open;
bleeding, throbbing aches that will need restitching.
i'm hurting and my words are nothing but spite.
"nothing?"
he echoes with a look of agony clouding those once beautiful eyes.
how did this night turn so sour so fast?
i sag into my own hands and let the sobs rack free from my concaving chest.
i'm comforted by bliss the moment eddie's arms wrap themselves around my shrinking existence.
i desperately grasp onto him,
knotting my hands around his neck and begging him to stay in the echoes of my cries.
"i'm sorry,"
i manage to say.
eddie smooths a hand down my hair,
kisses my temple,
and soothes through his own scratchy voice,
"just go to sleep, y/n."
"tell me you forgive me,"
i plead more than i demand.
i take note of the hesitation in his shaky breaths.
"come on, y/n...let's go to sleep."
i'll take what i can get.
the love i've sheltered has now shattered.
so i'll gather the scent of his skin,
the cologne on his clothes,
the product in his hair,
and i'll lock it away in my lungs.
i'll cower away in the comfort of his chest and wither away in hopes of becoming nothing.
i'll remember the shape of his hands to my waist,
the curve of his lips to my skin,
and the promises that are beginning to fragment.
"hey, clover?"
eddie whispers now in the dead of the night,
where only my hiccuping breaths can be heard.
"yeah?"
"i don't know what you'll decide to do...but you can always come home to me."
"always?"
eddie kisses my forehead,
where i can feel the beginnings of a smile.
"always."
he might not forgive me,
but he will always love me.
and that's a greater comfort than his words of absolution.
at least for now, anyways.
tomorrow will come and i will be forced to deal with the need for forgiveness and the memory of my mother gone rouge.
but for tonight,
i'll close my eyes to the sound of my lovers steady song of life in this chaos.
***
i wake up the next morning with bleary, swollen eyes.
i'm almost embarrassed for eddie to see,
until i'm reminded of all the other horrors he's seen emitted from my body.
it's not until i turn and search for eddie with open hands do i realize he's left.
this is unusual for him,
considering he's rather forced out of my bed by the morning sun.
it seems now he's left before the sun could kiss the horizon.
was he in that much of a hurry?
the sounds of wrinkling paper on eddie's pillow steal my attention.