#124 angst

  If only it were that simple.

  You’d waited until you were sure he wouldn’t be back anytime soon. His pattern was predictable: fight, leave, drink himself into oblivion, maybe get into another fight with strangers who didn’t know to stay away from him when he got like this. Usually he’d be gone for at least twenty-four hours, sometimes longer if he passed out at some friend’s place or ended up in jail for the night.

  The thought of him in jail should have worried you. Six months ago, it would have. You would have been calling every precinct in the city, bailing him out, making excuses to his boss when he didn’t show up to work. But now? Now you just felt relieved at the idea of a locked door between you and him.

  He’d come back tomorrow or the next day, bruised and sorry and full of promises that meant nothing anymore. The same fucking script every time. “Baby, I’m sorry. I was drunk. You know I love you. I’ll never do it again.” And like an idiot, you’d believed him. Over and over and over until the words lost all meaning.

  But this time, you wouldn’t be here when he returned.

  The bedroom felt smaller with half the furniture missing, your absence already carved into the space like a wound. You’d taken only what was yours, left behind anything that felt contaminated by what you’d become together. The bed where he’d held you down when you tried to leave during arguments. The mirror that had reflected your face, swollen and tear-streaked, too many times to count. The chair in the corner where you’d sit and wait for him to calm down, where you’d learned to make yourself small and quiet until the storm passed.

  Your best friend had offered to help you pack, but you’d turned her down. How could you explain the shame of it? How could you tell her that you’d let it get this bad, that you’d stayed this long? She’d never understand what you saw in Namgyu anyway. “He’s bad news,” she’d said after meeting him the first time. “There’s something off about him.”

  You’d defended him then. Told her she didn’t know him like you did, that he was sweet when it was just the two of you. That he’d had a hard childhood, that he just needed someone to love him the right way.  What a fucking joke that had turned out to be.

  You were sealing the last box when you heard his key in the lock.

  “Fuck,” you whispered, heart immediately hammering against your ribs. The sound of that key still made your body react like a startled animal, even when things were good between you. Even when he came home sober and sweet and apologetic.

  He wasn’t supposed to be back yet. The sun was still up, bars weren’t even open. It was barely three in the afternoon, and he’d left yesterday evening. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. You’d planned this down to the minute, had everything timed perfectly.

  “Baby?” His voice carried through the apartment, slurred and rough. The sound made your stomach clench with familiar dread. Still drunk, then. Or drunk again. “Baby, where the fuck are you?”

  You stood frozen in the bedroom, surrounded by boxes and the evidence of your escape attempt. Maybe if you stayed quiet, if you didn’t answer, he’d think you were out. Maybe he’d just grab some clothes and leave again.

  “I know you’re here,” he called, and you could hear him moving through the living room. Heavy footsteps, unsteady. Something crashed, probably the lamp you’d left on the side table. The sound of glass shattering echoed through the apartment. “Your shitty car’s outside.”

  Your hands were shaking as you tried to think. The fire escape was too far, and he’d hear the window. The front door was the only way out, but he was between you and freedom now. You were trapped, and he was drunk, and history had taught you that this combination never ended well.

  More crashing from the kitchen. Probably throwing open cabinets, discovering the empty shelves. You could picture his face when he realized what you’d done. The way his features would twist with rage and hurt and that particular brand of possessive fury that made him dangerous.

  Footsteps in the hallway. Getting closer. You could hear him breathing hard, muttering to himself. Words you couldn’t quite make out but recognized the tone of. He was working himself up, getting angrier with each step.

  “What the fuck is this?”

  You heard him in the kitchen, probably seeing the empty cabinets, the missing appliances. Your coffee maker was gone, the good knives, the blender he’d bought you for you last year. All of it packed away in boxes, ready to start over somewhere he couldn’t find you.

His voice was getting louder, more aggressive. You knew that tone. It meant broken dishes and holes in walls and your wrists pinned above your head while he told you exactly what he thought of your attempts to leave him. It meant hours of screaming and crying and him blocking every exit until you promised you weren’t going anywhere.

  “Baby!” The bedroom door flew open so hard it bounced off the wall, and there he was.

  He looked like absolute hell. His left eye was swollen shut, purple and grotesque. A cut across his cheekbone was still seeping blood, and his lip was split so badly you could see the white of his teeth through it. His knuckles were raw and bloody, skin torn open like. There was a bruise across his ribs that looked fresh, dark purple spreading across his pale skin.

No shirt, jeans unbuttoned and hanging low like he’d undressed in a hurry. His hair was matted with what looked like dried blood, and there were scratches down his neck that definitely wasn’t from fighting some random guy at a bar.

  He’d been with someone else. You could smell perfume on him, something cheap and cloying that made your stomach turn. Lipstick smeared across his collarbone, barely visible but there if you knew where to look.

  “Jesus Christ, Namgyu. What happened to you?”

  His good eye took in the boxes, the half-empty room, your guilty face. You watched the realization hit him like a physical blow, watched his expression change from confusion to hurt to rage in the span of seconds.

  “No,” he said, so quietly you almost didn’t hear it. His voice was raw, like he’d been screaming. “No, no, no, you’re not—” His voice broke, and suddenly he looked younger, more fragile. “You can’t fucking leave me.”

  “Namgyu—”

  “Don’t.” He stepped into the room, and you instinctively backed toward the window. The movement was automatic, learned from months of reading his moods, his body language. “Don’t you fucking dare say my name like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re about to break up with me. Like you’re about to destroy my whole fucking life.” He was crying now, tears cutting tracks through the dried blood on his face. “Where are you going? Where the fuck do you think you’re going to go?”

  “I found a place—”

  “What place? With who?” His voice was getting higher, more frantic. 

“With that bitch of a friend of yours? She’s been trying to turn you against me since day one.”

  “She has nothing to do with this.”

  “Bullshit. This is exactly the kind of shit she’d put in your head. ‘He’s no good for you, honey. You deserve better.’” His impression of your friend was cruel, mocking. “She’s just jealous because she can’t keep a man for longer than five minutes.”

  “Don’t talk about her like that.”

  “I’ll talk about her however the fuck I want.” He stepped closer, and you could smell the alcohol on him now. Not just beer. Whiskey, maybe vodka. The kind of drunk that made him mean. “She doesn’t know what we have. She doesn’t understand us.”

  “We don’t have anything, Namgyu.” The words felt like pulling glass from your throat. “Not anymore.”

  “That’s not true.” His face crumpled like a child’s. “That’s not fucking true. We love each other. We’re supposed to be together forever, remember? You promised me forever.”

  You had promised him that. Two years ago, lying in bed after making love, both of you drunk on wine. You’d traced patterns on his chest and whispered about the future like it was something you could control.

  “I can’t do this anymore.” Your voice came out smaller than you wanted, but at least it came out. “I can’t keep living like this.”

  “Like what?” He was getting agitated again, pacing back and forth in the small space. “What did I do? Tell me what I fucking did.”

  “You know what you did.”

  “The fight? That was an accident. You know I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was high, I was angry about work, I wasn’t thinking straight—”

  “It wasn’t an accident.” The words felt like a confession. Like admitting to yourself what you’d been denying for months. “You held me down, Namgyu. You wouldn’t let me leave the room.”

  “I was trying to make you listen—”

  “You hurt me.” You touched your lip, still tender from where it had split against your teeth when he’d grabbed your face. “You’ve been hurting me for months, and I’m done pretending it’s okay.”

  His face went through another series of changes. Hurt, anger, desperation, calculation. You could practically see him cycling through his usual strategies, trying to figure out which one would work this time.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I’ll stop drinking. I’ll quit drugs too. I’ll go to therapy. I’ll do whatever you want, just don’t leave me.” The words tumbled out in a rush, practiced and hollow. “Please, baby. Please don’t do this to me.”

  You’d heard this before. The promises, the tears, the desperate bargaining. It always sounded so sincere in the moment. And for a while, things would get better. He’d be sweet again, careful with you, like he was trying to prove something. He’d bring you flowers and cook dinner and hold you like you were made of glass.

But it never lasted. It couldn’t last, because the problem wasn’t the drinking, the drugs or the anger or the stress from work. The problem was deeper than that, something fundamental about who he was and how he saw you. You weren’t a person to him. You were a possession, something that belonged to him, and he’d destroy you before he’d let you go.

  “I’ve already decided.” You moved toward the door, but he stepped sideways, blocking your path with his body. He was bigger than you, stronger, and he knew it. “Namgyu, please. Just let me go.”

  “No.” His hand moved to his back pocket, and your blood went cold. You knew what he kept there. Had seen him clean it after fights, had watched him practice with it when he thought you weren’t looking. “I can’t. I can’t fucking let you leave me.”

  The knife was small, nothing fancy. Just the one from your kitchen, the one you used to cut vegetables. But in his shaking hand, it looked deadly. The blade caught the afternoon light streaming through the window, and you couldn’t look away from it.

  “Namgyu, put that down.” Your voice was steady, but inside you were screaming. This was it. This was how it ended. Not with a breakup or a move across town, but with blood on the bedroom floor.

  “You don’t understand.” He wasn’t looking at you anymore, staring at the floor instead. The knife trembled in his grip like he was fighting himself, like part of him knew how insane this was. “You don’t understand what happens to me when you’re gone.”

  “Nothing happens to you. You go out, you drink or get high, you come back—”

  “I can’t breathe when you’re not here.” His voice was getting higher, more panicked. “I can’t fucking breathe. I sit in this apartment and I think about you with someone else, and I can’t—I can’t handle it.”

  “So you’re going to threaten me with a knife?” The question came out sharper than you intended, but you were beyond caring about his feelings now. “This is your solution?”

  “I’m not threatening you.” He looked up then, and his eyes were wild, unfocused. The pupils were blown wide, and you realized he wasn’t just drunk. There was something else in his system, something that made him unpredictable in ways alcohol never did. 

“I’m not threatening you, baby. I would never hurt you.”

But the knife was still in his hand, still pointed in your direction. And you were still trapped between him and the wall, your escape route blocked by three feet of desperate, unstable man who thought love meant ownership.

  “Then put it down.”

  “You leave me, I’ll do it.” The words came out flat, matter-of-fact. Like he was talking about the weather or what to have for dinner. 

  “Right here. You walk out that door, and I’ll do it right fucking here.”

  Your heart stopped. The room went silent except for the sound of your own breathing, too fast and too shallow. “Namgyu—”

  “I mean it.” The knife turned, blade now pointing toward his own chest. The tip pressed against his skin, not quite breaking it but close enough that you could see the indent it left. “You think I’m bluffing? You think I won’t?”

  You stared at him, this man you’d loved, this man you’d tried so hard to save from himself. His face was a mess of tears and blood and desperation, and you could see in his eyes that he meant it. Every word. He’d rather die than let you go, and he’d make sure you watched.

  “You can’t put that on me,” you whispered.

  “I’m not putting anything on you.” His voice was softer now, coaxing. Like he was trying to convince you of something reasonable instead of holding a knife to his own chest. “I’m just telling you what happens if you leave. I’m just being honest about who I am without you.”

  The manipulation was so clear, so textbook, but it worked anyway. Because you could see him doing it. Could see him following through just to prove a point, just to make sure you never forgot what your leaving had cost. And you’d have to live with that for the rest of your life.

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Fair?” He laughed, but it sounded more like a sob. “Nothing about this is fucking fair. Nothing about loving you has ever been fair.”

  You took a step toward the door, testing him, and his grip tightened on the knife. The blade pressed harder against his skin, and you saw a thin line of blood appear where the point met his chest.

  “Stop.” You held up your hands, panic rising in your throat. “Stop, okay? Just… just put it down.”

  “You’ll stay?” His voice was small, childlike. Like he was asking for something simple, something easy to give.

The question hung between you like a noose. You looked at him, really looked at him. Broken and bleeding and so desperate that he was willing to die rather than let you go. And you realized that this was what your love had become. This was what you’d created together.

  “If I stay,” you said carefully, each word chosen like you were defusing a bomb, “will you put the knife down?”

  “Promise me.” His voice was breaking again. “Promise me you’ll stay. Say the words.”

  “I promise.” The lie tasted like ash in your mouth, like everything good in you dying at once.

  The knife clattered to the floor, and he collapsed with it. Just fell to his knees like his strings had been cut, sobbing into his hands like a child. You stood there for a moment, watching him fall apart, and felt absolutely nothing.

  This was what rock bottom looked like. This was the end of the road you’d been traveling for three years, the inevitable destination of a love that had curdled into something poisonous and unrecognizable.

You walked over and picked up the knife, your hands surprisingly steady. The blade was warm from his grip, and there was a smear of blood on the tip that made your stomach turn. You set it on the dresser where he couldn’t reach it easily, then sat down on the edge of the bed and waited for him to compose himself.

The silence stretched between you, broken only by his ragged breathing and the sound of traffic outside. Normal life continuing while yours fell apart in a bedroom that smelled like blood and desperation.

  “I’m sorry,” he said eventually, not looking at you. “I’m so fucking sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “You’re sick, Namgyu.” The words came out gentler than you felt. “You need help.”

  “I need you.” He looked up at you with red-rimmed eyes. “I just need you.”

  “No.” You shook your head. “You need a therapist. You need medication. You need to be in a hospital somewhere getting the help I can’t give you.”

  “I’ll change. I swear to God, I’ll change. You can even hit me back. You can hurt me however you want. Just stay.”  The offer made your stomach turn. That he thought your relationship was something that could be balanced out with reciprocal violence. That he thought you wanted to hurt him the way he’d hurt you.

  “I don’t want to hit you,” you said quietly. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “Then what do you want?” He crawled closer, and you forced yourself not to flinch away. “Tell me what you want, and I’ll do it.”

  What you wanted was to go back in time. To meet him when you were both different people, when his demons were smaller and your boundaries were stronger. You wanted to love him the way you used to, when his intensity felt like passion instead of possession.

But you couldn’t say any of that.

  “I want you to get help,” you said instead.

  “Okay.” He nodded eagerly. “Okay, I’ll get help. I’ll call someone tomorrow.”

    “You’ll do it now.”

    “What?”

  “Call someone right now.” You pulled out your phone. “I’ll help you find a place.” He stared at you for a long moment, and you could see him calculating. Trying to figure out if this was real or just another way for you to leave him.

“You’ll stay if I get help?”

  Another lie balanced on your tongue. Because you knew that even if he got help, even if he got better, you’d never be able to look at him without seeing this moment. Without remembering the weight of that knife in his hand and the look in his eyes when he promised to use it.

  “I’ll stay while you get help,” you said carefully.

  It wasn’t the answer he wanted, but it was the only one you had. And as he reached for your phone with shaking hands, you started planning your real escape. The one he’d never see coming.

Because love wasn’t supposed to be held hostage.