He knocked three times on my door before it crept open a couple of inches. The sunlight penetrating the darkness of my apartment through the crack of the door hurt my eyes.
"Hi", he said.
He stepped in, I stepped back.
He looked around. The lights were off. The sun dimly lit the room from the little holes in the shutters. When he glanced at me I stared at him with no emotions. I could see he was pissed, but as his eyes met mine, his serious face softened a little.
"You didn't answer my calls", he said, analyzing the distance that separated us, noticing I stood a bit further from him than what I used to.
"I'm sorry."
"You didn't answer my calls for two days."
"I'm really sorry", and it was sincere and honest.
He looked at me, confused and sad. "Please, tell me what changed."
I stared at my hands for a very long time before looking at him again. I had no emotions left. The last couple of days I've been terrified. Now I just felt defeated. There was the man I loved in front of me. But nothing, I felt nothing. Nothing at all.
"Ari", he spoke softy and took a small step towards me. Instinctively, I took another step backwards. "What happened, Ari?", he asked gently.
"I haven't had my period this month", I whispered.
He stared at me, blinking a couple of times.
"I took a test. I took four, actually."
He opened his mouth and confusedly tried to articulate the question "and?". His voice cracked on the last letter, then there was a sigh, a raised eyebrow, a glimmer of surprise, fear, hope. "Are you...", he asked hesitantly.
I looked in his eyes and nodded.
"Fuck sake", he groaned.
Many emotions ran through his face. I watched them chase each other while my gaze was fixed, my breathing was regular, and my heart was beating the way it always used to. I watched his emotions chasing each other over his face while I felt nothing. Whatever he was feeling right now was not what I had felt when I found out. That revealed a lot about what we wanted from life. Certainly not the same things. Maybe that is why I cried so much in the past two days. I already knew Matty and I had chosen different paths in life. For a while, I just pretended I couldn't see it. But the signs were clear, and now everything was transparent. There was nothing to cry about or to hope for. That was where we parted ways.
"Why didn't you tell me before?", he asked, raising his voice significantly, not with anger, just letting his uncontainable emotions come out of his lips. He added another step forward, towards me. I added another step backwards.
"I was scared", I simply replied.
"Of my reaction?"
"Of everything."
Matty looked at me with worry lacing his features. Then he rubbed his face with his hands. He looked up, searching for an answer from Jesus, or who knows. I guess he was trying to get his head around it all. His emotions overflew from his face as they could shatter his cheekbones. I thought I saw him smile. He glanced at me again, with a strange look in his eyes. He stared at my body like it was already something else, as if he could see, beyond my fragile bones, the prelude to a swelling that would bear his signature.
"Bring it on", he whispered calmly, with a touch of pleading.
"What?"
"I said bring it on. Logistically, it'll probably be a bit of a nightmare, but we can sort it out", he added hopeful, a tiny grin on his lips.
I looked at him confusedly, trying to digest his words, his smile. I could feel my emotions raising again from my chest to my face. I stepped back, with a sense of repulsion. "Do you even know me?"
"What?", this time he asked, all confused and furrowed brows.
I was feeling everything again, suddenly, with such a violence that I didn't know how to handle it. "You're asking me to keep this thing?"
"Thing?", he repeated.
"You know I never wanted to have kids..."
"I know, I – "
"I told you I couldn't see myself as a mother and you, you said you've seen me..."
"Wait, Ari – "
"You said you've seen me!", I blurted out, raising my voice. "You haven't seen me at all."
"Listen...", he said, trying to reach me.
"Don't touch me!", I screamed.
Matty almost jumped back, disbelieving. "Alright", he said carefully, keeping his voice down. "You're panicking. I get that. I'm not touching you. I won't touch you, okay? Just, listen to me. Listen to me for a sec."
"I don't want to listen to you!", I blurted again. "You never listen to me...you pretend you do, but...but you don't, you just try to change my mind, all the time! You want to convince me of things I know can't work and make me say things I don't mean, like you...like I need to be fixed..."
"I don't want to change anything of you..." he replied, his hands trying to reach me.
"Don't touch me!", I stepped back again. The thoughts in my head chased each other like the cat with the mouse. My mouth struggled to meet them, trying to express them at the same syncopated rhythm. "You don't even care about me, no, I just...happened to appear during your premature midlife crisis and now you figured heroine and gang bangs don't keep you warm at night, you want to settle down and convince me I want the same..."
"What? This...", he laughed incredolous, "this is insane. This is not true. What – "
I felt hot burning tears and a feeling of choking – all together, all of a sudden. "Having kids? I never wanted them. You've always known that... you've always known! Why are you even asking me?"
"Stop fucking yelling at me, you look like the little girl of The Exorcist!"
"Who am I? Tell me who am I! Do you have an idea? Do you even know the girl you're asking to have your fucking – "
"Arianna, you need to calm down! You need to fucking calm down!"
I stared at him as if I could burn him with my mere eyes. I breathed deeply. "Why do you want to keep it?", I asked, suddenly keeping my voice down.
He looked at me helpless while my heart kept pounding. "I think it could sort me out", he replied, "as a human"
I shook my head, disgusted. "Right. Because raising a child just because we got drunk and forgot the fucking condom is definitely the way of finding the meaning of life."
Matty looked at me like I was an alien. He didn't seem to know me at all. "How can you be so cynical?"
"I've always been like this."
"What do you suggest to do, then, uh?", he asked me like he was throwing me down a challenge. Like there were no other options left.
My eyes filled with tears, and I suddenly felt ashamed for not being able to control myself. But I wanted him to look me in the eyes, look at those tears he caused. Cause he did that, right? And I did that too. We did something terrible – we let ourselves hope we could have made it when we were destined to fell apart. Wasn't he aware? Didn't he know it from the start?
"I won't raise a child I don't want. It's simple as that. Trust me, Matty, I know what it means not to be wanted. You have no fucking idea. But I do. And I could never do that to a living creature that I am supposed to love."
I stepped back until my shoulders touched the cold wall. If I didn't, I would have fallen to the floor. I let myself sob, trying to control the little spasms crossing my body in vain. Matty looked at me not knowing what to do. Something was broken, hopelessly broken between us, as if something was stolen from us.
"Listen", he finally whispered again with the soft voice he had used minutes before. "I know you're scared. I am too. But we can sort it out. You won't be like your dad. I won't be like him. We can do better than him."
"Better?", I stared at him, exhausted. "We won't be better, Matty. I'm disgusted by the idea of having a child. Disgusted. And you have no fucking clue what it means to be a father, since you think it's enough to get drunk and fuck to take such a big responsibility. We won't be better than him, we already failed."
Only then, when Matty's gaze hesitated on me, I realised the wound I had caused in him and a perverse pleasure took over me. I wanted him to feel guilty, and I wanted to hurt him.
"How can you know what kind of father I can be?", he asked, humiliated and disappointed.
"Don't look at me like I'm depriving you of something", I told him.
"Then don't look at me like I did something terrible to your body", he fired back.
I watched him go in the corner of the room as my tears kept falling down my cheeks, silently. He poked around his pockets. He put a cigarette between his lips, nervously pulling away a curl from his brow. The light blazed on his face, but before the flame touched the tip of his cigarette, he froze. He took it between his index and his middle finger and rolled his eyes as if he had forgotten something.
"Light that cigarette", I said glacial, realising what had stopped him.
He ignored me, putting the lighter back in his pocket.
My vision got blurry with hot angry tears again. I went at him with a mix of rage and panic, trying to put my hands in his pockets. "Light this fucking cigarette", I mumbled, as I reached his lighter with my hands. He took it from me with no effort, and I tried to take it back, repeating, begging, crying, I don't know how many times: "light this fucking cigarette". He stood silent. I could see he felt sorry for me.
"Light this cigarette, please", I cried loudly. "There's no reason why you shouldn't smoke around me. Who are you trying to protect? Please, smoke. Look at me, my belly is flat, there's nothing inside it!"
"There is", he whispered.
"No! It's nothing, there is nothing!"
"There is, Arianna, and it's something"
His voice was now sweet and sad. His eyes were full of pity. I felt his fingertips on my hair, and I stepped back immediately.
"Don't... don't touch me", I sniffed. "I'll die if you touch me."
He didn't touch me. He didn't speak. For a while all I heard was my sobs. Until his whisper broke the silence. He begged like a prayer, a lullaby: "Please, don't cry anymore. Please... It breaks me to look at you like this. I love you, Arianna. Okay? I love you. Don't cry..."
And there is where my heart shattered. "Liar. Where do these words come from? Why do they arrive now? If it wasn't for this mess, would you really love me?"
His stare waved. I saw it. He hesitated.
"Yes. I would", he said.
But I saw it. He hesitated. My heart cracked a little more. "You're such a liar" I cried again. "You don't love me. I'm not what you want... I tried, but I can't be what you need."
"Stop", he begged me in pain again. "Please, stop saying these things. It doesn't have to be this way. We'll get through this, okay? Together. Me and you, we'll figure what to do."
I looked up at him. His eyes were kinder now, every trace of contempt had given way to a kind of tenderness, which was perhaps even worse.
"I already know what to do" I whispered. I was about to shatter Matty's delicate, naive, dream of happiness. Close my fist around his heart. And with that, around mine too. "I am going to kill whatever is inside me. Otherwise, I am going kill myself"
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Uhm what can I say
Sorry?
And thanks everyone for supporting this delirium? You have no idea how much I appreciate you!! Also I had a bunch of new readers lately lol sorry guys you joined the wrong ship we suffer here