Rupert tries to stop him. “Hey, man-” he starts.
“No,” Nigel waves him off. “It’s ok. I know it’s not your fault. But I think I’m finally starting to realize that it’s not mine either- and I don’t even think it’s hers.” He stares out the diner window at the snow blowing around. “I don’t think we choose who we love. I tried…tried to make her love me. But you’ll always be the one who has her heart. Maybe that’s why she likes that necklace so much,” he smirks bitterly. “It’s become her trademark, almost, wearing her heart on her neck.”
Rupert decides to take another approach. He bites into his burger- it’s good. Juicy but not dripping. He swallows, not without difficulty, and starts saying the first things that come to mind. “You know, it was weird growing up with her. It’s almost like every time I looked at her, she was looking at something else. And every time I guess she ‘noticed’ me or whatever, I wasn’t interested. We didn’t get the timing right.” He shrugs, trying to seem nonchalant. “She seemed really happy with you. I didn’t figure I should get in the way of that. She deserved better than what she had before you…” he purses his lips. “But I didn’t think I could give it to her, ya know? She was always out of my reach.” Rupert leans back in his chair, focusing on his French fries and letting everything else blur. “Maybe we were too much alike. We were puzzles. And neither one took the time to solve them- time was something we never had enough of. I’m sure if we’d spent more time together we’d have driven each other crazy. I didn’t get her. And I didn’t want to.”
Nigel sighs, absently stirring a fry into a bowl of ketchup. “She would’ve wanted to come with me. To see you. I couldn’t even tell her I was coming…I didn’t want to see the hope in her eyes. Like that night of the party,” he half laughs. “she kept looking at the door, wishing you would come through it. Someone mentioned your name- you should’ve seen her face. It just went blank. Like she was blocking out her emotions. I’m sure you’ve seen that face, too.”
Rupert half frowns and nods. “Yep. It always confused me. I wondered why she seemed to think emotions are a negative thing.”
“She’d only ever felt fear,” Nigel responds, giving her standard reply when he asked her that very question. Rupert clears his throat, trying to snap Nigel out of his daze. It’s making him uncomfortable. Nigel looks at him finally, but it’s with a sad look in his eyes. It offers no comfort. “She’ll get over me,” Rupert says this firmly, as if he believes it.
“She can’t. You changed her. Somehow, without meaning to, you changed the very way she views love. And you gave her hope. If she loses you…I’m afraid of what it’ll do to her. I’m afraid she’ll stay with me and end up in pain. But at the same time, I don’t want to lose her. I don’t know what to do anymore.”
“Let me talk to her.”
The wooden bridge is cold, but not insufferably so. There are no animals out tonight. Everyone and everything is hibernating. Starlight and moonlight are shrouded by clouds that offer snow. The fluffy, powdery white stuff that covers up everything that’s dead and ugly and makes it beautiful. Maybe if I stay out here, it’ll work on me, Ivy smirks as the thoughts, gloomy as usual, pass through her like waves.
Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. She’s supposed to spend it with family and friends, smiling and drinking eggnog and singing songs. If only she felt like moving.
Life without him isn’t working very well. Thoughts of him used to fill her, spark her dreams and make her daydreams come alive. But every moment spent with Nigel erases the clarity of her memories of him. Ivy wonders if she’s a truly terrible person. Nigel loves her dearly, and she loves him. Well, she loves the way he makes her feel alive, the way he obviously cares about her. She loves feeling like she’s worth something. But could she live without him?
The question is already answered for her, but she cannot share it. She promised him a good life, one in which she’d be happy and always with him, so long as he wanted her there. And she hated to break a promise. He reads her mind and actions far too well. She thought she was being clever, hiding the longings of freedom and the urges to run somewhere he couldn’t follow her to. But he knew all along and begged her to stay. Any hope she’d had of the life she’d grown up dreaming of was gone now.
There’d be no adventures into the unknown.
No dazzling landscapes to explore.
And no way to be alone, where she couldn’t hurt anyone- least of all herself.
With her life mapped out for her so kindly by him, she saw a predictable future. And part of her was happy. She digs her fingers into the wood, remembering the night he brought her to a lovely country home, telling her he was thinking of renting it so they could live together. That night, it almost seemed like there was some magic after all. But too often he told her to wait. Too often he talked about ‘someday’. And so she dreamed of another kind of magic. And she started talking to an old friend. And then the unthinkable happened- she felt sparks. She felt alive. She felt hope and love and butterflies and longing just thinking about him. Is it possible to love someone you can never be with? Ivy wonders if there is anyone who was not guilty of that. Is it possible to make the guy who fell for you think you still love him and him alone? Barely.
Footsteps on the bridge. She looks up. His face is taunt as he takes in her appearance. She’s frail now, having lost her appetite several months ago. A coat hangs off her bony shoulders. Dark circles under eyes, but not from lack of sleep- just from crying, like she is now. Tears stream down her face and she doesn’t even notice. They’re far too common lately. He’s surprised they don’t freeze into tiny icicles on her pale cheeks. There is no fight left in this girl, nothing to hint at that familiar smile that could light up a room.
He comes and sits beside her, ready to tell her what she needs to hear in order to move on, away from the pain. He places a hand on her icy fingers. “Ivy,” he begins, and at the tone in his voice, she jerks away as if slapped. “Don’t,” she croaks, her voice agonized.
“You need to hear the truth,” he says, doubting that now, after seeing her so weak. “Please,” she whispers, trying to stand up but ending up on her knees. His voice falters. It would take a heartless soul to break a girl so obviously broken. He finds he can’t do it. Instead he reaches over and pulls her into lap, holding her until her breathing becomes normal again. She fits inside his arms too easily. She clears her throat. “Thank you,” she murmurs into his chest.
“I know.”
“What do you know?” He asks, smiling despite himself at her defiant voice. Her sorrow always comes across as anger. “I know you never cared for me the way I did you. I know you don’t want me. And I wish…” More tears, then a sigh and squaring of shoulders. “I wish I was stronger. I wish you didn’t have such a hold on me,” she strokes his cheek. “And I wish I had tried to get you when it was still possible. Even though I wouldn’t have succeeded,” she smirks. “At least I would’ve known it wasn’t meant to be. But now I’ll always wonder. No matter what you say, or how you feel, I’ll always wonder if I could’ve made you like me.”
Her brows wrinkle, “Love me.” she whispers, correcting herself, but it comes out a plea that doesn’t want to be answered if it’s going to be rejected.
The snow begins to fall. He holds her, afraid to squeeze to tightly, as if she’ll break if he does. Maybe she will. She drinks in his scent, his warmth, his comfort. It’s temporary, an illusion, but it’ll supply her with flawless dreams again and she’s greedy for more. “You want to know something stupid?” She smiles, a hint of the real thing. “I think I’d stay asleep forever if it meant I could always see you.”
“Ivy…” His voice is almost a warning and it stabs her. “Sorry,” she says, wishing that for once, she could say the things that passed through her mind without being criticized for them. “No, don’t be,” he says, rubbing her arms, trying to get her warm. “But you should stay awake.” She looks up at him, and he brushes her lank hair out of her eyes. “You should wake up, Ivy,” he says, more strength in his voice now. “This is no way to live, and I won’t let you just drift through life.”
“I could be happy, couldn’t I?” She says, a statement more than a question. “Yes, you could-” he says, about to say more when she cuts him off, her voice full of acid.
“I could be happy and pretty and I could pretend like the world isn’t a dark place, where bad things happen to good people, and sometimes you reach out for God and you can’t hear Him, can’t feel Him. I could forget my daydreams and stay in the present, I could marry Nigel and live happily ever after in a small house with a small career and never do anything of consequence, but come on, kids, isn’t that better than being a failure?” She spits out the words with a whole new vibrancy to her.
“I’d be empty, but I suppose since I am a heck of an actress I could pretend all through life like I’m content. And he’d be happy to have me there, smiling and agreeable, but he’d never know me. Do you know he never tried to? Every time I tried to share what was really in my head, he’d draw away, making me think there was something wrong with me if I wasn’t rainbows and puppies. You were the one who thought maybe I’d fail, maybe I wasn’t good, maybe I was difficult and hard to comprehend. No. I can’t be truly happy. Not anymore.” She stands up now, and walks off the bridge, leaving him holding nothing but her words. He sits for a moment, slightly undone, then jumps up and follows her.
Through the clearing he sees her. She’s in the middle of a large pond, holding a sharp stick in one small hand. Crouching down, she’s chipping away at the ice that separates her from the icy water. He watches, confused for a moment, then as realization hits he jumps forward, onto the lake but not all the way to her. Because he just heard a crack that sounded as if the world were splitting open. “Ivy, look at me,” he commands. Her glare is the only response. She doesn’t stop slamming the stick into the ice with all the force in her small body. “I’m tired of being numb, Rupert. I’m tired of knowing what’s going to happen and being powerless to stop it. I’m tired of expectations and questions that I can’t answer. I’m tired of being angry.” He’s unsure of what to do.
“Do you want me to save you?” He asks bluntly. She drops the stick, surprised. He hasn't said what she needed to hear, what he thought was appropriate. He said what he was thinking. It wasn't necessarily nice, but it was honest. She looks taken aback for a moment. Looks at him with a strange smile. She runs over to him. They stand a few feet apart. She’s breathing heavily, color returning to her face, a twinkle in her eye. She leans over and scoops up a wad of snow, flinging it at him hard. He registers the shock then throws some at her, grabbing her arm and pulling her off the lake, relieved but still worried. She shoves him and he falls easily onto the bank, twisting her as he falls so she lands on him, with her back against his stomach. Ivy sighs. She turns and rests her elbows on his chest, staring down at him without tears now.
“You already did,” she says smugly.
“I did what?” He asks, thoroughly confused by her erratic behavior.
“Thank you,” she says, still smiling, standing up and brushing herself off. He sits up. “You’re welcome…for what?” She leans down and looks him in the eye. “For saving me. For the fact that you came out here to tell me a lie that even you don’t believe…and for not being able to say it.” She holds his face in her hands and pulls it so close their noses nearly touch. “Can you tell me the truth? Can you say it out loud? Or are you afraid that if you do, everything will crumble and your life will change?” She speaks softly and it’s nonsense to anyone else. He understands all too well. She smiles for real now, her tired face lighting up at his grimace. “It’s okay. Love doesn’t always make sense, you know.” Ivy stands and walks away from him, and this time he lets her disappear into the forest, knowing that her bare feet will barely leave prints in the snow, but somehow sure she’s no longer cold. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t feel cold either. Instead he’s filled with heat. Magic. Her magic, that he’s always denied himself of. It lingers in the air like perfume and finally, he accepts it, takes hold of it and understands.
It doesn’t ever make sense.
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