Over the Edge

Ch.36-The Truth About Love

I swore under my breath, running a hand through my hair. “I don’t know how to handle anything any way else.”

“We learn new things every day.”

I grunted. “Not this. This doesn’t just happen ‘every day’. She’s like a completely new person.”

“No, she’s not. She’s still Emma, just without her memory. She’ll get that back, Rhys.”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

“No, I don’t, that’s true. But it also doesn’t help thinking she won’t. She’ll need help, not a bunch of people giving up on her.”

I clenched my hand into a fist. “I would never do that.”

“I know.” He smiled. “Do you love her?”

I stared hard at the rippling liquid of the trashy coffee. “Yes.”

“Then focus on that to bring her back. We might have to start from scratch but anything could help potentially jog her memory the slightest bit.”

I sighed heavily, tossing the cup into the trash can. I had lost any desire or appetite for it. “Maybe.”

“You have to be willing to work at this now, Rhys,” he continued, voice taking on a warning tone. “If you commit yourself. You haven’t had the run-of-the-mill life most teenagers get and yes, I know that’s mostly my fault before you say anything, but this won’t be like that. She isn’t one of ‘your boys’. That girl has been through hell and back and if you really love her, if you really care about what happens to her, you can’t give anything less than one hundred and ten percent.”

I said nothing, glaring at the speckled tile, muddy from the tracks of my boots. He didn’t seem satisfied with my silence.

“I’m serious. How I treated your mother? Unacceptable. And I’ve come to terms with that. But those other girls I’ve seen you tote around, like they’re nothing more than a freakin’ pastime? If she turns into that, you have to let her go.”

I wanted to argue with what he was saying, but I couldn’t, because I knew there was truth written beneath them. Shape up, he was implying. Grow up, change the past.

As if the past could be changed. Each sin, each gross deed I had ever committed, was forever written in my history, a part of me, like the lines on my palms.

Permanent.

“I don’t think I even know how to love somebody,” I admitted dejectedly out-loud. Because that entailed a lot of things. Soft touches, meaningful gestures, the ability to even function right in a relationship. I couldn’t even hold on to the ones I did have, and they were barely existent. With Rico, my father, Judy . . . All different, in various degrees of crumbling. But with Emma, who had four times as much baggage as any normal person to carry on her shoulders, it ensued so much more; gentleness, caution, the tender kind of affection I was sure I could in no way ever possess.

I realized then why I never bothered with the particular emotion. There were too many hidden details, too much written in the fine print.

“It’s not something you can learn; you can’t teach it in a class.” I found it fucking hilarious and horribly ironic that the one man to show me how to push away the world and spite everything was the one teaching me about my feelings. “It just happens. Like breathing. And eating. It’s a natural life function.”

I couldn’t believe we were actually having this conversation. The fact that it was on such a touchy and sentimental topic was nothing compared to the actuality of my father trying to willingly connect with me. It was mind-blowing.