The Monster In Us

27- fall OUt of loVe

Two days go by and I am miraculously still alive. I've been able to keep myself sane by telling myself a thousand different lies, by making myself believe that maybe this doesn't have to end in disaster. Maybe Dante never has to find out who I really am and we can live happily ever after.

I'll get an apartment near the Renegade, tell him that I got a job there that paid better, see him on the weekends and keep my life functioning at Pantera during the week.

I'll convince my father to let me stay at Berardi for a longer term so that we will always have the Berardi secrets so that I never have to go back to Pantera at all.

I'll talk Dante into running away with me, we could go anywhere. I know that he's not happy here and I can keep my Elisa identity, I can create a new one for him too and we can go somewhere else. To Maine or to Amsterdam or somewhere that just isn't here and he'll never have to know who I really am.

I can keep lying to myself, telling myself that all of this is possible but the one thing that I can't deny is that I love him. Because I do. That's why I've been trying to make it better in my head, telling myself that it can really work out.

But on the third day of me lying to myself, especially about how pathetic I've gotten, I wake up on Thursday morning and I know that all of my rationalizing is useless. I've known from the beginning that this will not end well, and I knew that it was a bad idea, but I did it anyway and now I'm in too deep. Perhaps I was in too deep even before this started because I never really could say no to him.

I will die or I will leave but either way, I do not end up with Dante. Just thinking that, knowing how this will end, makes me want to throw up. Or jump off of a building. Or maybe I could throw up and then jump off of the building, landing right into my own vomit because that scenario sounds more pleasant than falling in love with a man I can't have forever.

I decide after I've woken up some more that I'm not going to work today. I feel like shit and I need to get my head on straight. I'm not thinking clearly and one wrong move out there can end up getting me killed. I don't know what taking the day off will do, if it can help or not but I need something.

I don't know what to do.

I remember that night at Dante's house, after I'd read his favorite poem and he'd seen my best drawing, how he kissed me. It wasn't a rough kiss and it wasn't sexual either. But it was passionate and deep and I held onto him for as long as I could because that kiss was like both of us telling each other 'I understand you'.

I don't think either one of us have ever felt that before, to be understood. I know that I haven't. And I know that I will never be understood by anybody ever again, especially not like he understands me.

At lunch time, Dante texts me as I'm lying on my couch, staring at the ceiling and trying to figure out the best way that this situation ends.

'I heard that you called in sick'

I close my eyes and think about what it would be like to spend the rest of my life on an island somewhere with Dante, a private island with just me and him. Maybe some animals and butlers. He could read me his poetry, his stories, while I draw the waves of the ocean and the grains of the sand. I could drink coconut milk right out of the coconuts and I could kiss Dante whenever the hell I wanted.

Eventually, I open my eyes again and greet reality as I text him back.

'I did. Just a cold, I'll be back tomorrow'

I get up from the couch and make myself a lunch. If I was on an island, maybe I'd have a chef make my lunches for me so that I could spend the afternoons on a boat with Dante, fishing or just having sex on the sway of the ocean.