"I feel like I do know you, but it's all so...fuzzy. You don't feel like a stranger, but...you don't feel like my girlfriend either," he explains quietly, hating himself for saying those words. "There's these weird instincts I have to keep fighting. Some I can explain, like how the reason I want to hug you so badly right now is because you're hurting and I want to comfort you, but there's other things...I want to make you a coffee with two sugars and a half sugars and milk, and I want to ask you to add grapes to our shopping list and part of me knows I should point out I want seedless, but I have this weird feeling like you know what I'm really asking for. Then there's this sensation like the box of sex toys under my bed is really for us, not me, and definitely not Ana. I also want to stop speaking because I'm terrified of you running out on me, which wouldn't make sense if you were a complete stranger, right?" His hands desperately tug on his hair as if he can ease the memories out of his mind to no avail. "I look at you, and I just have these feelings about places and objects that don't make sense. It's like a jigsaw puzzle but I'm missing half the pieces and right now it doesn't look like anything. I'm getting mental hospitals, and a star, and late night Chinese food and early morning coffee in bed. I keep wanting to sing 'Little Things' to you, but I hate One Direction which means that it must be the words that mean something, not the band. I want to kiss your thighs, and tell you I think you're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen, and beg you to forgive me for things I don't even remember, and ask you if we're still getting married, and joke about how I have a book of baby names under my bed for our future children - but really I do and it's not a joke at all, and most of all I want to kiss you and tell you I love you no matter what. But I can't. You're a stranger that feels like home, and I don't know what to do."
He wants to scream for a million reasons, the largest one being that she's running from him without saying it. She calls him a good boyfriend, then gives reasons why he was anything but. She sits on the bed, then suddenly starts packing her bag again. She says that they've done the 'I love you's, but she doesn't say it now. He has a feeling she hasn't said it for a while. Everything she does is like a whisper of 'I need to stay' and a yell of 'But I won't' and each little scrap of hope that gets discarded shatters him a little more. "That hardly seems fair that I'd ask you to share everything but not share anything. I'd like to tell you a bit about myself, if you don't mind. I...I want to, and I'm not sure why, but I do," he mumbles, sitting against the door with his legs tucked against his chest.
"I'm guessing if you know about my dad and family, then you must know how abusive he was. Everyone seems to know about how he abused my sisters, but nobody really knows what he did to me. I guess it's because I don't say it much, or...ever really. I thought he was the greatest man in the Universe until my eleventh birthday. Up until then I'd beg him to give me the day off school so I could go to work with him, or we'd go to baseball games, or he'd pay for me to take art classes. I guess we were all willing to overlook the way he'd grip our arms too tight or yell too loud because for every other minute of the week except for when he'd flip out, he was a brilliant dad. But he began to drink a lot more after he lost his job a few months before I turned eleven. We noticed the effects on our mum, mostly. She'd be bruised sometimes, and she'd always say she fell down the stairs, or tripped, but...we knew. Then he started turning to us because she began to drink too much too, and we all figured it out when we were older that she was probably too drunk to react to the pain." He shut his eyes, the flashbacks hitting him with such force that it took his breath away for a moment. "A week before my birthday, I caught him slapping Dakota. He had to go to school because the teachers were concerned about her growing weird behaviour. He was mad because he didn't want to risk losing his new job, and the day off got him in trouble from his boss. I caught her, and I remember throwing a glass or something near the wall to distract him so she could run away. He didn't say anything as we ran into her room, but he got me back for it on my birthday. It was Dakota's birthday too, obviously with us being twins, but she had gone to Aunt Marie's. My dad got me the baseball glove, bat and ball I'd been wanting for months. I thought nothing of it when he said he wanted to go to the fields after dinner and play. What kid would find that weird, you know?"
His fingers absentmindedly trace over the scars on his hairline, feeling the slightly raised skin. "He had me pinned up against the batting cages as soon as everyone else at the field had left. Dad told me that if I ever threw something he owned again, he'd kill me. I was terrified, and then he wanted to start practicing batting and I was so confused, but I took the bat and waited for him to throw the ball. It hit me right in the stomach...My hands were shaking too much to hit it properly, but I think even if I had swung I'd still have missed it. I realised he wanted to hurt me, and I begged to go home. I was scared, and angry, and so fucking confused...When he hit me twice more with the ball, I threw the bat near him. It was really stupid considering what he'd just threatened, but I did it, and I regretted it ever since. He beat me with the bat until I passed out, and then threw me in the car as if it was fine. When I woke up, he told me he'd never kill me, because death was the easy way out. 'You kids are so lucky; you're spoiled. I give you everything, and you all defy me time and time again. You're a disgrace to the family, the lot of you. Your mother and I work so hard to provide for you, and raise you. If you ever question the way I raise your siblings again, I won't feel bad for my actions, Ronald. Do you understand me?' I always remembered that."
Ron realises how off track he has become, stuck in his verbose explanation of the memory. "Ever since then, I felt a need to protect my sisters, but I couldn't. He'd hurt them so often, and I had to just hear it from my room. I was terrified and hated myself. It was my cowardice that caused their bruises. I let them get hurt because I was scared of him, and each time Dakota would come crawl into my bed and ask me to read her a story, I felt worse. She'd be bruised, and bleeding, and crying through her smile, and all I could fucking do was read her 'Alice in Wonderland' each night. It was like that for years, and then when I realised Amelia was being hurt in a much different way, I snapped. Maybe it was because that was too far for even our family to take, or maybe it was because I was fifteen and stronger than I'd ever been before, but I didn't want to take it anymore. I found the bat in my closet, and I found him, and beat the shit out of him. He got put in hospital, and I got taken to a psych ward. He hadn't hit anyone for a few weeks so the bruises had all faded, and Amelia was too scared to say what was happening, so she lied and said I was making it up. I know she feels bad about that still, but she said it then, and they threw me in the psych ward at the same fucking hospital he was in. Everyone said I was making it up, and I got so frustrated. "All I wanted to do was make him pay, and he still got out of it, and I got put on medication and given a criminal record that was wiped because of 'My loving father's dedication to his children's future.'"
He punches the door behind him, still feeling the anger swelling at the memories. He looks at Alison, the furious nature of his facial expressions morphing into regret and dull pain. Ron knows it's time to mention Ana, though his brain is still fuzzy. Amelia had cleared up the memory issue, and he knew she was dead and remembers grieving her, but he still loves her more than he thinks he should. He shakes his head as he begins to speak again. "He made me feel weak, and so did Ana. She was abusive sometimes in a whole other way. If I did something wrong, she'd fuck somebody to make me feel jealous and regret my actions. It was never for anything big, either. She fucked Jason Sliver because I painted a girl from my art class for anĀ assignmentĀ instead of her. I loved- I love her," he quickly corrects himself, the words tasting wrong. "But she was toxic for me. She could be so loving, but she broke me whenever I didn't please her. She wore me down and I sometimes wonder if maybe I loved her because she was something my family couldn't ruin, but it ruined me. She was there, and always came running back and would say sorry, and wow, is it just me or do I sound like I have such daddy issues?" he jokes lightly, though doesn't laugh. "I told her everything because if someone else knew something that she didn't, she'd find a way to hurt me. She'd spill paint all over my latest artwork, or scratch my car, or threaten to tell my sisters that I knew they were being hurt and didn't do anything for a while. We were madly in love, but don't they say the madly in love couples are usually simply mad?"
He knows he's been speaking for far too long, and the knowledge that he's rambled to this near-stranger makes him nervous. It was ironic, considering what his rambles lead to. "I guess what I'm trying to explain is that, if I was keeping things from you, hiding parts of myself, it was only out of fear. It probably has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with my past. People always use things against me, so I got used to simply giving out sarcasm so they couldn't do anything with it. Ā Plus everyone who I have loved has hurt me, everyone who I idolize simply changes or disappears...If I love you as much as I must have to call you everything, you have to understand that it means you have the power to make me nothing, like they did. I've been hospitalised after both of them hurt me, both for physical injuries either self-induced or otherwise, or for my mental state. I don't deal well with people letting me down like that, so...I protect myself by not giving them the chance. I'm so sorry if I hurt you in the past because of that self-protection, but you need to understand - Loving someone, to me, means literally putting my life in their hands. I don't deal with being left, or used, and I assume both will happen with everyone. It's why I shut my siblings out of my life for a long time too. You are beautiful, Alison, and for me to be in love with you means you must be amazing inside as well, but that means you have the power to completely shatter me, and there isn't much left to shatter."
