#dear eli

I’m not even sure what I should say. You fucking broke me. You made me feel like I was worthless, like you were the best thing I was ever gonna have. You conditioned me into thinking I would never be happy. You made me feel like my life was good for nothing, that my only task was to fuck you and pay for your addiction.

And yet I still fucking love you.

I don’t get it. You ruined my life, my chance of happiness. And yet here I am, sitting outside under the stars and drinking whiskey from a fucking Cinderella cup, thinking about how much I miss you.

I miss how perfect we were. I miss staying up with you all night talking about everything we could think of. I miss the way you held me at parties, the way you’d help me put on my dress for an event that I dragged you to and the way you’d rip it off of me when we got home. I miss the way you would hold me when I got homesick. I miss your eyes and how they sent shivers down my spine when we fucked because I was so incredibly in love with you and I thought you were the one I would spend my life with.

Man, how fucking stupid was I.

It’s my fault.I don’t give a fuck what anybody says, it’s my fault. I should have left you. I should have seen that you were venomous and impossible to fix. But I stayed. 

Do you remember the things you told me?

“You’re worthless”

“If you weren’t such a bitch I wouldn’t hurt you”

“Get over here, whore. You don’t ever walk away from me.”

“Fuck me or you’re gonna be sorry.”

I hear your voice every day. I’ll be on set talking to Wolf or watching a movie with Faith and I start shaking because it feels like you’re right behind me, reminding me how worthless I am. 

I hear your voice at night when I try to sleep. The room is dark and so much nicer than our apartment but your drunken screams still echo from the walls into my head and I cry myself to sleep.

I run my hands over every part of my body that you broke, but I can’t touch my heart, my sanity.

I watched you die. I don’t know why, maybe it was supposed to bring me peace. But I looked into your damn blue eyes and I knew you would never change. You were better off rotting in hell. 

It’s my fault. It’s always going to be my fault. Everybody tells me it’s not, but it was. If i came home earlier, or didn’t hang out with Wolf like you told me not to, if I just let you fuck me instead of putting up a fight, maybe you would still be alive.

You used me. You ruined me. You left bruises on my skin and cuts on my arms but nothing can heal what you did to my heart. 

I don’t think I can ever move on from you. Which sucks, because sadly, I’m falling for my best friend. And she doesn’t know because if I told her, you would be mad. 

You can’t hurt me anymore, not physically. But you’re always going to be the devil haunting me until the day I die. And I have to live with that. 

I love you

I hate you

I hope you’re having fun in hell.

Aspen had been on set all day, and was on her fourth cup of coffee (even though what she really wanted was a tall glass of something that would make her fall asleep). She had drove home alone, finding herself going slower than the suggested speed limit. She didn’t want to go home, to have more bruises to cover up, to be up for hours until Eli was finished and fell asleep in a doped up slumber next to her in their studio apartment bed, otherwise known as a mattress on the floor. 

She would stay up for hours afterwards, memorizing lines or talking to fans on Twitter. Anything to get her mind off of what was going to happen when Eli woke up.

Things had always been so perfect with them, Aspen had fallen in an insane sort of love for him, she and him became inseparable. But, on their one year anniversary, he got the phone call that changed them forever. His mother was in a car accident, one that left her dead, and he spiraled down so quickly Aspen couldn’t save him. She traced over the scar on her arm, one that she had covered up with tattoos, but she knew it was there. Eli had gotten angry one night when she came home later than planned. It was the first time he had yelled at her, and the then seventeen year old started shaking in her boots. He threw one of the dozen beer bottles at her, cutting her arm and landing her in the ER. When they asked her what happened, she didn’t think, she just said she fell on the steps to her apartment, and they believed her.

She had been lying ever since. 

Her costars and wardrobe team would ask her about the new bruise on her leg, or the cut above her lip, and she just kept making very believable excuses. In a way, it was like extra acting practice for her, and that’s what she thought of it as. If she were comfortable with them, she would say it was a “rough night” and wink, making them laugh. This went on for two years, until that night she came home.

She parked her car and started walking up to their apartment, and something felt off. She shook off the feeling and unlocked the door, the sight before her forever ingrained in her memory.

Eli was slumped in the kitchen, his hands at his sides and shattered bottles everywhere. Aspen immediately ran to his side, looking for signs that he was still alive. And he was.

But she didn’t move.

His shallow breaths were weak, his eyes barely open. She reached for his face and grasped it gently, allowing their eyes to meet. She looked into his cold blue eyes, the eyes she had grown to hate to the point of tears, and watched them.

“Baby...” he said, weak, his voice croaky and sending chills down her spine. She looked into his eyes for something...remorse? Regret? Guilt? Something to prove he was worthy of her saving him. And she just couldn’t find it. She let go of his jaw forcefully and sat next to him, counting his breaths. 

One...eight...twenty...forty four...seventy eight...

And then they stopped.

And she let out a breath that she hadn’t known she was holding, and sat there for what felt like hours before she grabbed the phone to call for help.

“911, what is your emergency?”

“I think my boyfriend is dead.” she cried, but the tears were not from sorrow. They came deep down, the hidden realization that it was over. The pain, the bruises, the lies...it was over.”

The minister allowed the front row of seats to go up and say their final goodbyes, and Aspen laughed. Eli hated religion of any kind, they had long drunken discussions about it before things got bad. Eli’s family went up first. His father urged Aspen to go forward, but she waited until she was the last one to approach the casket. 

She stood over top of it, staring down with emotionless eyes. She could hear cries and sniffles behind her, but she focused everything on what she knew was in the casket; the boy she had thought the loved, and wound up killing. 

“You're going to like it where you’re going.” she whispered, knowing that everyone was focusing on Eli’s sobbing father. “I hear it’s lovely for people like you, you’re always warm.” her voice was flooded with rage, and she narrowed her eyes. “I hope you rot in hell.” she whispered, her blood boiling. She regained her composure and walked back to his family, her dark red lips forming a frown. She was a fantastic actress, all that damn practice she had.