Spontaneity [On Indefinite Hold]

Spontaneity: Chapter 19

o   Ellie

 

I must have cried the hardest I had ever done since Jake left me. Recounting what happened, what I did… It was all as painful as I remembered them over a year ago.

Yet, it did not linger for as long as I expected. The pain I was feeling from simply remembering how much I cherished what Jake and I had before we fell apart, the pain I was feeling from remembering how easy and hard it was at once to go through with the abortion I wanted to avoid originally… All this subsided slowly but sooner than I expected it to. Perhaps, somehow, holding Martin like this had something to do with this relief.

My face was moist from the tears I had already shed, but the falling of additional tears had stopped. I took a breath and braved looking at Martin, pushing myself from his chest a little.

The first thing I noticed were his eyes, shiny and glistening with tears as well. Several had already created trails down his cheeks. He wasn’t bawling like I was, but his tears were there, and for some reason, seeing them made me feel even better.

I tried to smile and laugh, sniffing somewhere in between. “Oh God, I’m… I’m so sorry; I’ve made you cry too…”

Martin attempted to laugh as well, a reasonably slight smile spreading at his lips. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

He lifted one hand to my face and used his thumb to wipe the trails of tears that ran down my left cheek. His touch was warm against my cold, wet skin.

“So… what happens now?” I stared timidly into his dark, mesmerizing eyes.

“What do you mean?” he asked with genuine confusion, now wiping away the tears on my other cheek. It was hard to believe that I was feeling it already after having just wept, but my stomach was flipping over and over for as long as Martin’s fingers touched my face.

I didn’t want to explain, but I had gone this far to bare the truth to him. I might as well finish with no loose ends.

“You’re… gonna leave, aren’t you?” I mumbled, trying not to sound fragile anymore as I kept my hands on the back of his shirt, no longer digging my nails through it. “You said that I…I tell you my secret, and then we can just go our own ways. It would be best, wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t want to be friends with someone who’s done something this severe. You don’t want to hang around with someone sick like me.”

Martin used one fist to banish his own tears from his face and took in an orienting breath before making direct eye contact with me.

“Ellie,” he began with patience, his hands sliding slowly down to either side of my waist, “Nothing can change what you did. I… won’t pretend to think it’s… okay, what you did. But I understand why you did what you did. I know you had very little in terms of choice. We all make mistakes – it’s what makes you, me, and everyone else what we are. And I am not gonna judge you for yours.”

I was starting to feel dangerously relieved by what he was saying. Was it possible that he didn’t care about the wrong I had done?

Martin paused, seeming to try and find something else to say, then he added, “Besides, I can tell you’ve been trying to move on and learn from your past. You’re trying not to make the same mistake again. That’s more than enough for me to see the real you.”

“Martin…” I whispered, my insides starting to bundle and knot with my anxiety to hear from him what I thought he was trying to say.

“You’re a… wonderful girl, Ellie. I don’t ever want to be… not friends, with you.”