Falling From Grace (64 page)

Robert.
 
Robert where are you?

I could feel him, even if I couldn’t see him.
 
I could feel him in my mind, searching.
 
He would know, he would see.
 
I kept telling myself that, because it was the only way I knew that I wouldn’t lose him.
 
I couldn’t lose him.
 
I stumbled over something that was blocking my path and fell to the floor, smacking my elbow on the cold tile.
 

Picking myself back up, I continued on, rubbing my throbbing arm, sometimes tripping over my own feet as one of the laces on my sandals came undone and flapped beneath me while I walked.
 
I finally saw the shadow of a figure standing in the middle of the hallway, his body outlined by the pale sliver of moonlight that broke through the glass window of a door directly behind him, his glow dark, almost black in appearance.
 
I recognized the door.
 
We were in front of the registrar’s office.

“Robert, thank goodness.
 
Why are we here?” I huffed; tired from walking through the maze he had pulled me through, but glad for the privacy that he’d provided for our reunion.

He didn’t move.
 
He didn’t say anything at all.
 
I continued to walk towards him, reaching my hand out, desperate to touch him, to smell him, feel his breath on my skin
—
but he held his hand up to stop me.
 
It was a stiff, jerky movement
—
it was a movement I had seen before.
 
It was a movement that asserted nothing but rejection.
 
It was one that I was all too familiar with, and my blood turned to ice water.
 
I had not been led here for a reunion.
 
There would be no happy kisses, or warm embraces.
 
He had not listened to my pleas, hadn’t searched my mind at all.
 
It hadn’t been him.
 
He saw only Graham with his arm around me, my arm around him, and our laughter.
 
I could see it in his eyes.

And I laughed.
 
It was a hysterical outburst that quickly turned inside of itself and became something else:
 
A painful, quiet laugh tinged with irony and misery and hurt.
 
How easy it had been for him, to lose all faith in me, while I had been struggling to find fault.
 
Graham had said that I could be trusted.
 
He knew that I could because he knew me, loved me.
 
But Robert couldn’t
—
he couldn’t trust me because…

“That’s it, isn’t it?
 
You can’t trust me because you don’t love me,” I whispered, my voice so soft, no one but God could have heard it; or an angel.
 
“You don’t love me-” I felt the twist in my stomach and the burning pain it caused shoot directly to my heart.
 
I shook my head, the words coming out having sealed out any chance for rebuke.
 
I turned around and started walking back the way I came, fighting the pull inside of me that kept wanting me to turn around.
 
It was screaming at me to turn around.
 
It fought with the burn in my heart.
 
My feet moved faster, not trusting the speed of a mere walk to get me out of that building fast enough, not trusting the pain of my perpetually breaking heart.

The darkness seemed blacker, my direction no longer destined, but random.
 
My hands were mindlessly waving in front of me, no longer sliding on walls, but slapping them, bumping into them, crashing into them.
 
I could feel the cuts and gashes caused by the sharp corners from lockers, and the growing throb of bruises yet to form from doorways and doorknobs that had been in my way of escaping the ever growing sound of the fracturing of my world.
 

I stumbled more often now, the laces of the sandal having grown decidedly longer and more dangerous.
 
I finally surrendered to the exhaustion that my pain had weaned from me, and fell over my own feet, the cold tiled floor biting into my hip.
 
I hissed at the sting, hearing it bounce off of the dark and empty halls, and then moaned in recognition as it was soon joined by the sound of broken sobs.
 
I scooted myself back against a wall and felt my body shake with the crushing pain of loss.
 

It was far more painful than anything else I had ever experienced.
 
The loss of Graham had been a mild irritation compared to this.
 
It felt like I was drowning in my own emptiness, and the echoes of my pain were forcing me under.

I closed my eyes as I felt my heart slowly being torn apart, each fragment of hope and love being ripped to pieces as the seconds ticked by, each one being claimed by hurt, betrayal, and despair.
 
The only part of me that could ever be truly immortal, truly like Robert’s and Lark’s was suddenly succumbing to the truth that I hadn’t been loved at all.
 
And only now could I admit that, even though he had never said it, I had believed he loved me, and that I was a fool for doing so.

“You’re not a fool.”

My eyes flew open.
 
His face was just inches away from mine.
 
“Go away,” I whispered, my voice cracking with emotion.

 
He shook his head.
 
“I can’t, Grace.
 
Don’t you see that I can’t?”

I braced myself against the wall and with all of my might, I shoved him.

He didn’t move.
 
He was a wall again, his strength too great for me to budge with any part of me…just like his heart.
 
“Just leave me alone!” I cried, no longer able to keep quiet.
 
If he wasn’t leaving, I would.
 
I tried to stand, but he placed a firm hand on my knee, preventing me from getting up.
 
I tried to push it off, the anger flowing into me just as quickly as the tears flowed out.
 
“Get your hand off me!”

He yanked his hand away from my leg quickly, his eyes wide with shock.

I tried standing up once more, but again his hand shot out, this time to my shoulder, his fingers touching the bare skin that the straps of my costume didn’t cover.
 
I could feel the fabric of my thoughts reach out to him, finding no way in
—
I was shut out completely, despite his nearness, despite his contact with me, despite how desperately I was still clinging to some kind of hope that I was wrong.
 

“Will you quit touching me?” I shouted, grabbing his wrist, ignoring the way the tips of my fingers prickled with sensation as I tried to pry it off of me.
 
“Let me go.” I cried; the broken sound coming from my lips didn’t sound like me at all.

His hand once again swiftly pulled away, and I heard myself sob at the unbearable way I felt more at a loss without it there.
 

“Grace, I-” he started, his eyes wide, as he looked to me and then to his hand.

I shook my head, not wanting to hear anything else, not wanting to hear his voice which made my dying heart sing, even as it was breaking.
 
“Stop, just stop it and leave.
 
Don’t you see how much you’re hurting me?”

But he didn’t leave.
 
Instead, he placed both hands on either side of my face and forced me to look at him.
 
“Grace, listen!
 
I
feel
this,” he said softly
—
desperately
—
as he rubbed his thumbs against my tear stained cheeks.
 
“I
feel
it.”
 
He lifted one hand away to rub a teardrop between his fingers, and stared in awe at me.
 
He placed his fingertips against my lips, and brushed them, softly, gently.
 
“So…soft?”

My heart was pounding as the realization sunk in that he was talking about actually being able to feel what he was touching.
 
I reached my hand up to his face.
 
“Can you feel this?” I asked as I cupped his cheek.
 
He nodded and turned his face into it, pressing his nose and lips against my palm.
 
He breathed in the scent from my wrist, and kissed the pulse point there.
 
It felt like my skin would burst into flames where his lips had just been.

“Soft.
 
I’ll never be able to hear the word soft again without thinking about your skin,” he whispered as he grabbed my hand and pressed it harder against his mouth.
 
I closed my eyes, trying very hard to keep from moaning, not wanting to fall into the oubliette of emotion that I could see was beckoning to me.
 
Only one thing would keep me from falling…

“Do you love me, Robert?”

Silence would have been better.
 
Silence would have been wonderful.
 
Silence would have been less painful than the whispered “no” that incinerated any hope that I had somehow been able to scrape up from the bottom of my heart.
 
I swallowed down the sob that choked me and nodded once, feeling my hand drop limply to my side as he let go.
 

I struggled to stand up, but did so without reaching for his aid.
 
The pain in my side caused me to stumble, but when he reached to help steady me, I hissed and shrank away from him
—
he might have discovered what it meant to touch something and feel it, but he had also murdered my faith in the process, and I did not want the slaughter to continue.
 

“I-I’m glad that you now know what it feels like to…to feel, Robert…but that has nothing to do with me anymore.
 
I could have stayed
—
I
would
have stayed not knowing whether or not you loved me, but I cannot now that I know that you don’t.
 
I would have risked everything for the chance, but now that I know there isn’t any, I just can’t.”

I stepped around him, keeping my hands tightly at my sides as I did so, for even now they were traitorous and itched to touch him, his hair, his lips.
 
I started to back away.
 
I paused as I looked into the two pale moons of his eyes, ignoring the pained look in them and, without thinking, I pressed a kiss to my fingertips and then laid my fingers against his lips.
 
“Goodbye, Robert.”

I started running.
 
I didn’t look behind me; I don’t know if I looked ahead of me either.
 
I just kept running, ignoring the aches and pains that were screaming at me to stop.
 
Endless darkness and endless hallways finally relented; I saw the bright light of the moon through the doors that had led me to my dream’s end and rushed forward, glad for the exit towards…what?
 
What was I running to?
 
A life without Robert?
 
Was that what I wanted?
 
Was I giving up that easily?
 

I slowed my pace and my toes stopped at the line that separated darkness from light, Grace before and after Robert.
 
But which was which?
 
Would stepping into the light really mean stepping away from Robert?
 
How could an angel be my darkness?
 
The ache in my heart shouted at me the answer; he had brought the moon down from my sky.
 
It’s last gift to me before it was gone was allowing me to find my way out of the suffocating dark that would smother me if I chose to stay.
 
Taking a deep breath, I started to move forward, my feet heavy, as if all of my pain, all of my sorrow and disappointment had settled there, weighing them down like anchors.
 
Slowly, I took a step and watched as the cool light grazed my toes.

From the darkness behind me, a sound tore through my body, through my heart, and into the deepest reaches of my soul.
 
It was a cry of pain, and my mouth opened; the cry felt like it was my own, like it was coming from my lips, my mouth, my throat.
 
It was agonizing and horrific, and I couldn’t stop it.

My body whipped around, the sound forcing me to turn towards it.
 
I shook my head, refusing its demand.
 
I tried to turn back towards the fading moonlight, shouting my objections, “This isn’t fair!
 
God, this isn’t fair, to toy with my heart, to be so cruel!
 
He doesn’t love me!
 
Why should I care?”
 
Again, the sound came, frantic and tortured.
 
I shook my head, covering my ears with my hands, refusing to hear it, but it broke through and shattered the last ounce of strength I had left in me to refuse.
 

Compelled by some unseen will, my feet pushed me forward towards the anguished cry, not caring what I’d find, only that when I got there, I could somehow stop it.
 
I raced through hallways, following the agonizing sounds that echoed and bounced all around me—through me—knowing who was making them, feeling the hurt crash through me as though I was the one suffering them instead
—
I wanted to be the one who suffered them instead, because my pain seemed so insignificant right now.
 
The sound kept knocking me down, it was filled with so much hurt that it was heavy, weighed down by the intensity of it.
 
I struggled for air as I fought to stand up, as I urged my legs forward.