Blue brings me to his room and locks the door behind him. Whether to keep me in here from running away from whatever he's about to tell me or keep out the people who forced him to tell me, I have no idea, but I don't say anything. He's tense enough and about to reveal a very confusing part of his past. He sits on the edge of the bed, tucking his hands between his thighs. I'm not sure if I should sit next to him or very far away.
Noticing my dilemma, he waves me over and pats the spot next to him. "Come sit down," he instructs. I sit right beside him and watch him rub his hands over his face. "Before I start, remember that I love you more than life itself, and my past has nothing to do with me now. I've cut off most ties of all the assholes I used to hang out with, and Hunter is next. I swear it."
"I believe you," I assure him. "Tell me what happened, Blue."
"Okay, but understand I never had any common sense back then. I didn't think about the consequences and I was an asshole. I'm not the same person I was back then—"
"Blue," I cut off his nervous rambling and put my hands on his chest. "Take a breath and tell me."
He takes a deep breath and nods. "Just give me a minute."
He tosses his snapback on the bed and runs his fingers through his hair. He inhales and exhales deeply, rubbing his hands on his thighs. Then he rings out his hat with white knuckles, his cheeks paling and flushing at the same time.
He is so nervous, I can't help but wonder how awful this part of his past is. It probably isn't even that bad, and he's overreacting because he wasn't exactly a decent person. According to him, he was the devil's spawn. What with the drugs and partying and fooling around with so many girls he couldn't keep a track. Jealousy spikes in my veins even though I've been aware of the number of girls he had... encountered before.
But before I can let the ugly trait consume me, I breathe deeply and focus on the present. Blue won't stop trying to stall this conversation, and the more he keeps from talking to me, the more curious I am to know what happened.
After five minutes later, he's finally ready to talk. "I think I already told you about my group of friends I hung out with in the past. We would do anything to escape from reality, including drinking, hardcore drugs, stupid dares that almost got one of the guys killed... anything really. We'd tried everything we could think of and got bored, so... so Hunter and I came up with an idea to play a game. We would go to school long enough to find 'players,' — girls who were virgins, and we would add an objective to them. One girl would be worth a gaming console, another would be a pair of shoes... one was even worth about three hundred dollars."
I hear myself gasp out of disgust.
"I know, it's horrible, but I didn't have a conscious then." He avoids my gaze and continues: "After each stupid 'victory' the ante would grow more and more. Things got more intense around six months into the game."
"Six months?" I gape at him, not believing what I am hearing. I wasn't the first and last test subject for his and his friends' sick game, I was one of many. I think I'm going to throw up. I take a deep breath and struggle exhaling.
"Yeah..." He runs his hands through his hair. "I thought we would grow bored of it after a couple of weeks, but after each success and the 'prizes' were given... we did it more and more. There was this one time this guy named Mark had a... a threesome with two girls he met at the bar. They were daughters of the owner and helping out during the end of the night. After it was done, their father found out and beat him so bad, he was in the hospital for two weeks."
"And you didn't stop?"
He looks guiltier than ever as he shakes his head. "No, we kept going. Raising the stakes and making it more difficult. Hunter and I started the game, but he was more into it than me. He wanted to see... evidence. To have them as trophies or something, I don't know, he's a fucked-up guy."
My stomach twists.
"You mean evidence as in... pictures? And videos?"
"But we stopped with the videos after one guy with more compassion than all of combined said how sick it was, to watch a person who didn't know they were being filmed. Especially during their first time, so we only did slightly non-compromising pictures. Hunter went crazy after that and beat him up and threatened him not to tell. He didn't, but thinking back on everything now... I wish he had, before it was my turn again."
I feel sick to my stomach imagining this. Blue finishing up stealing an innocent girl's virginity, taking a photo, and receiving a prize for his sick victory. I look over at him, and suddenly he is a completely different person.
"Your turn with Stella?" I hate to ask, but I need answers.
He nods slowly. "I went to school one morning after getting high and met her. She was a nice girl. Captain of the swim team, one of the smartest kids in classes; she even organized pet-adoptions on the weekends and volunteered at the senior citizen homes. She was the epitome of innocent and kind... and I fucking ruined her."
"Ruined her how?" He's skating around the facts, but I need to know everything.
He struggles to look me in the eyes and settles on the door. "What no one knew was that... that she was clinically depressed. Her brother committed suicide a few months prior to meeting me and she was spiraling, but behind closed doors..."
"Oh my God." I wipe away the tears. I already see where this is going, but I wish I didn't.
His leg starts to shake, but he doesn't stop talking. "Anyways, after I met and convinced her to attend a party with me, that was when the game began. I wooed her, listened to her, seduced her—I basically did everything to earn her trust. It took less than two weeks. After we had sex, she revealed she loved me, and I lied to her. I said I did, too. I continued to lead her on, but after I'd gotten my prize which were expensive Ray Bans I don't even have even more, I got tired of her and threw her to the side. I told her I'd lied, that I never cared for her, and she... she tried to... she, um, c-cut herself and tried to..."
"Don't finish, I understand," I plead.
He covers his face with his shaky fingers. "Yeah... she didn't succeed, but she tried her hardest this time."
"This time? She was cutting herself?"
He nods painfully slow, a blank look in his eyes.
"Did you know before that sick game?"
Again, he nods, and his eyes begin to glisten with tears.
"How?" I ask, already knowing the answer, but I need to hear it from his mouth. When he doesn't move to answer me, I raise my voice, fisting the sheets beneath me. "How did you know, Blue?"
"I saw them on her legs when I was fucking her!" he shouts, and tears fall down my eyes. "I-I saw them clear as fucking day, but I never commented on them. Never brought them up all the times she was fawning over me and coming up to me when I did go to school. I never cared, never said anything about it. I ignored them and continued fucking her and playing with her feelings. And when I rejected her, it pushed her over the edge she'd been teetering on for months. I was the last straw, the final decision to end it all."
"Oh my God." I stand up and swipe away my tears. I can't believe what I am hearing. Is this even the same Blue who took me out to see Times Square and ice-skated with me? I look at him. He has his curly head hung low, his hands frantically rubbing at his dark jeans. He still has his beautiful eyes when he raises his head to stare at me. And he still has his dimples as he licks his lips. But he is not the Blue I fell in love with.
"You're fucked up, Blue. Really fucked up," I say, and he nods in agreement. "No, don't just nod. Admit it, admit what you did was horrible! Stop being so quiet about it. You ruined that girl's life, all for a pair of glasses you didn't give two shits about!"
He stands up too but doesn't come over to me. "I know! I feel bad, Lily."
"Bad?" I laugh humorlessly. "That's it? You just feel a little bummed about fucking a girl and ignoring she had serious problems, all for something you don't even have right now. You thought to yourself that she was worth an item that was worth nothing, in comparison to her life."
"But I do feel horrible. I was sick, and vile, and a disgusting piece of shit," he says and pants for breath, holding out his hands. I flinch and take a step backward. Hurt crosses his eyes, and he drops his hands. "Listen, I know what I did was seriously fucked up. I should have told her parents or a doctor or something and told her about the game before we got that far... but you have to understand that I didn't have a moral compass then."
"And you did when you did the same thing to me?" I scream. I want to throw something at him. He can't tell me that he completely changed after her, because he played yet another twisted game with me—the person he claims to love more than anything. But how do I know that he isn't still playing that game, that he's just waiting for me to snap just like her?
He gulps and is stunned by my words. "No... no, I didn't. It'd been three years since we played that game. But when I met you, and Hunter saw you at the gig... I don't know. I hadn't met someone so bright and naïve in a while, and I guess it brought up that time in my life. I was bored of fucking the same group of girls. I wanted a challenge, I wanted you..." He looks as sick as I feel. His fingers grip his hair and he turns to look out the bay window. He doesn't get to turn his fucking back on me. I walk around him and look directly into his eyes.
"Is the game done now? Or should I expect you to drive me insane? Are you still racking some points? Maybe hoping your prize will be a watch?"
His eyes widen. "What? No! Of course not. You were the last person I ever dragged into the shitty game, I swear."
"How can I trust you, Blue?" I shout.
"I love you, Lily. This was before you. Before I knew what being a sane person was. I was fucked up on drugs and sex and alcohol, and—and when I met you, that all flew out the window, because you were everything I needed to get over the pain from losing my mother. You are quite literally it for me." He pauses and pleads, "Please, you have to forgive me."
"I can't forgive you because I wasn't the one whose life you ruined," I say quietly. Then, I add: "Who was she to Elliot?"
"The sister of a girl he was in a relationship with. Her name was Sarah or Sydney of something, I don't remember. But they'd been dating since high school. He was planning on marrying her, but then the game happened and Stella... her sister broke up with him. She broke his heart, and in turn he's hated me ever since. But it's mostly passive aggressive and glazed over with a couple of years of therapy. And once he found that model fiancée of his, he's convinced himself he can move on now."
"And what about Stella? How is she?" I ask, knowing damn well he doesn't know; it's sick how much he doesn't care, not as much as he should.
He shrugs with a guilty look in his down casted eyes. "I have no idea. I know she's alive somewhere... but I have no fucking clue how she's doing mentally wise. I think I destroyed her mind after what happened." He stops talking and meets my eyes. "I swear, I am not the person anymore. I am a completely different man, and it's because of you. I love you—" When he reaches out to touch me, I back up and hold up my hands.
"Do not touch me," I spit, and he flinches, but nods solemnly. "I can't even look at you right now. I don't even know who you are anymore."
"I am the guy who is madly in love with you. The guy who would risk falling on his ass for an hour to impress you at ice-skating. The guy who would race up mountains after hearing you'd injure yourself. The guy who would wear fucking dress shirts. Who would beat up creepy guys at MMA fights in your defense. The guy who would do literally anything for you. You not only taught me how to be a better person, but you showed me that love is capable. Lily, I would rather die than see you unhappy. Without you I am nothing. When I didn't have you for those weeks, I went back to my own dirty habits to forget how perfect it was being with you, but it didn't work because I still dreamt of you every night. And that... that was worse than any withdrawal I went through." He cups my face and whispers. "I love you, Lily. More than anything in this fucking world. I am begging you... don't let me go again, I won't survive another second without you—without us. I need you."
His words warm my entire body and send me to another world. I watch tears build up in his dark brown eyes and fall down his flushed pink cheeks. What he said does wonderous things to me, but it isn't enough for me to oversee every disgusting thing he said before. I need to think and decide if I can truly look past this.
"I need space from you... to think," I say, my voice cracking.
"How much time?" His voice shakes and his fingers inch to claim my wrist, keeping me in place.
"I don't know, but just... just let me go. For now." I turn away and walk out of the room before he can try to grab me or say anything. I need air, and I need a lot of distance from him. Before I decide right then and there, that I won't ever forgive him.