It was easy to sneak out in the early morning hours. Madeline had only gotten a few hours of sleep, but her father slept like the dead. With a box of her own to give to Elijah, she snuck out of her house before daylight and drove the four miles to Elijah's apartment.
His television was already on in the living room. Either that's where he'd fallen asleep, or he'd gotten about as much sleep as she had, which was the most likely option.
With both her hands cradling the box, Madeline kicked the bottom of the door with the toe of her winter boot; not loud enough to wake him if he truly was asleep.
But his front door opened after about ten seconds, a disheveled Elijah on the other side looking back at her as if he'd seen a ghost. "Maddie."
"I can't be your friend," she blurted out.
Elijah's head dropped, and he ran his fingers through his dark hair, before it moved to his face to rub his eyes. It took him a while to speak, but once he did, his voice cracked and barely above a whisper. "I get it. I don't want to keep hurting you, and that's all I seem to do."
"Yes, you do," Madeline agreed. This was going to be painful for both of them, but she needed to speak her truth, just as he had to her. "Worse than that, you got my hopes up, and then you ripped them to shreds. I love you, Elijah. I love you so fucking much that the idea of being without you is unbearable. But what's more unbearable is having you in my life without being able to have you. I may be strong, but no one is that strong."
He looked up just enough to see the box in her grasp. With the top opened, he could see the contents inside. "I didn't need that back."
Tears pricked her eyes, but Madeline wouldn't allow them to fall. Not until she walked out of the apartment that he had yet invited her into. "This isn't your box, it's mine. Every letter I've ever written you, with no address to send them to."
Elijah was the one to break. He may not have broken out in sobs, but she could see his body shake and his arms tremble as he reached for the box. "I tried to make this easier for both of us. You could have mailed this to me."
"I could have," Madeline agreed. "But this isn't supposed to be easy. This is the worst heartbreak either of us has ever had to endure, and will probably be the worst of our lives. You don't get to make it easier by running away, Elijah. Just face something for once in your life. For me. I deserve that much."
The box dropped on the floor with a heavy thud, then Elijah stepped to the side. Once Madeline let herself in, she saw it. A series of holes in the walls, and his stained glass lamps in pieces.
"I let myself believe this was going to be our future," Madeline whispered. "Not this apartment, but that'd we'd find a place that belonged to the both of us; your things and my things mingling together."
"And I broke that future like I did this room," Elijah finished. "You can say it."
"I'd planned on it."
A quiet, barely audible laugh came out of him, and Elijah stepped further into the room. "If you came here to make sure I felt the pain of losing you, believe me, I did. Still am."
The evidence of that was all over the apartment. "I came here because you don't get to leave me again."
A few moments of silence passed between them before Elijah spoke. "I thought you said you couldn't do a friendship."
"I can't," Madeline confirmed. "Which is why I'm the one who's going to walk away from you this time, and you're going to let me because it's the only thing I have that stands a chance of making this pain a little less."
It would make his pain worse, but Elijah had told her he'd do anything for her. Madeline needed him to do this for her. Just this once. It had always filled him with so much pain that this little extra wouldn't make that much of a difference. Either that, or it would push him over an edge he couldn't come back from. Madeline hoped for the former, and hadn't thought about the ladder until just then.
Elijah sucked in a low breath, letting it out through his nose, and wrapped his arms around himself as she had in the hotel room as he was breaking her heart. "If that's what you need, okay."
There was one other thing that was a hope last week, and had become almost like a destiny two days ago. "And I want you to sleep with me."
Elijah's eyelids, which had been droopy through this conversation, shot open, and he, for the first time since she arrived, looked her right in the eyes. "As in sleep?"
"As in sex," Madeline clarified. "You were right. You love me more than anyone. That's what I deserve for my first time. If I can't have you, I should at least have that."
Another barely there laugh came out of Elijah, and he turned away from her. "And you think that's going to make this all hurt less?"
"No. I'm pretty sure it's going to make this hurt more. But the idea of any other man having that part of me fucking wrecks me. After that, we'll probably never see each other again. We can keep writing each other letters and even send them. We can text every now and then. But I can't see you, and I can't hear your voice.
"I'm not just walking away from a friendship I've held onto for years, and I'm not just walking away from a relationship. I have to walk away from a future you're telling me I can't have. You talked about how I'm this light, but this is about to kill every good thing in me. That smile you loved so much, it's never going to look the same. My laugh? I'm barely going to be able to use it.
"So much of me is tied to you, and once that line cuts, there's not going to be much left of me to love. I'm about to become damaged goods, just like you think you are. So I need you to give me this, because no man's going to want to deal with the mess of putting me back together for a very long time."
Elijah lowered his body to the ground, leaning his back against the wall as his body continued to shake and his tears cascaded down his face. "Come back tonight," he told her after the room had grown almost unbearably quiet. "Right now, I haven't slept for two days, and I'm too much of a mess. Come back, and I'll see if I can do this thing right, then you get to walk away from me twice."
She couldn't imagine going through this all a second time, but he was right. Neither of them had much for energy, and the little they had was drained by the conversation they'd just had. "I wish there was a way I could keep you," Madeline confessed, feeling the onset of her own breakdown. "Truth is, I probably would have been okay with the idea of not having children. I'm going into social work so I can help kids in a way I wasn't able to help you, and that probably would have fulfilled me enough. I couldn't promise that, but if it meant I could have you, I would have tried.
"But that's just the thing. I don't think I could ever have you completely. These past two weeks have been incredible, but you've already walked away from me once in those two weeks, and I can't trust you not to do it again. You told me you'd try to push me away, because that's what you do. But I told my dad, and now I'm telling you. I deserve better than that. I deserve a man who fights for me as hard as I fight for him. And you're too busy fighting your own demons to fight for me.
"You do love me more than anyone else, but that's never been the issue. The issue is that you don't think you deserve love, so you reject it. I can't be your constant rejection, and I can't chase after you every time you run away scared. I'll see you tonight."
With his head between his knees, Elijah nodded, and Madeline walked away.