Stay With You

Stay With You…

        ”What are you doing here?” Viola asked him.  She and I were sitting in a little cafe down on Seventh Street.  It was pouring rain outside.  But hey, it was London, and it did that often.  When he walked in, he was covered in water.  He wasn’t even wearing a jacket.  He just stood in the doorway, looking around for her.  When he saw her, he just froze.  He didn’t say anything.  He just stared.  Until she yelled at him again.  ”I asked you a question!  Why are you here?”  She had been crying.  Her face was red and stained with tears.  ”No we don’t!” She snapped at him.  ”Viola please.” He begged.  ”Let’s go outside.” I told him.  We walked outside.  I always liked to pretend to be the big manly man.  But I wasn’t.  He had always called me homo-rific.  I agreed.  I had always had a little crush on him.  But I never told Viola.  And now, was definitely not a good time to do that. 
        ”I don’t even want to know what happened.” I told him.  ”I just want her to listen to me.” he replied. 
“What are you going to say to her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Exactly. Go home.”
“But I have to fix things.”
“Just go. Think about what you have to say.”
        After a while, I finally convinced him to leave and walked back inside.  Viola was leaned over our little table in the corner sniffling a bit.  I sat down beside her.  ”There are tears in my coffee.” She said, still sniffling.  ”You can have mine hun.” I passed it to her. 
I saw her trying to smile.  It was hard for her though.  “What happened?”  I asked her.  I could see the pain in her eyes as she started to tell me what had gone on that rainy, wet day. 
        She said that it actually all started the other night when they were having sex.  They were in the kitchen and she was propped up on the counter.  He had really started getting into it when he reached over and grabbed a knife out of the drawer.  He began to cut his arms.  “What are you doing?”  Viola asked him.  “Shhh.”  He started kissing her neck.  He brought the blade to her right breast. He made a small cut and licked the blood off of her breast.  Viola was kind of shocked.  But of course she didn’t say anything.  She was a very passive person.  She then looked at his arms and chest and arms.  He had scars.  He had done it before.  How is it that I had never noticed this before? She thought to herself. 
        When they finished, they got dressed.  And she asked him where that came from.  “I just thought that it would be fun.  If you don’t want to do it again, we won’t”  He told Viola.  ”Okay.”  She replied.  And that was it.  She didn’t know where the scars came from originally.  She was too afraid to ask.  She just left it alone. 
        A few days later, Viola showed up at his work.  He was a makeup artist.  So, of course, he worked with a lot of girls.  She wasn’t too happy with this.  But at the same time, she wasn’t too worried either.  But there wasn’t really a whole lot that she could do about it though.  However, there was one girl in particular that was a bit flirtier than the others.  Her name was Sarah.  He never flirted back, so she thought that there was nothing to worry about.  But when she went to visit him hat day, Sarah was flirting with him, and this time he flirted back.  Viola walked up to them.  “Hi.”  She said.  “Oh hi, Viola.  What are you doing here?”  He had a weird smile on his face.  “Just thought I would stop by.”  Viola told him.  “What are you two up to?”  She asked while looking at Sarah.  “Well, Sarah was just telling me how…”  Viola stopped paying attention to him.  He continued to speak, but she just found it impossible to listen.  She was looking at Sarah’s chest.  She saw a small scar across the top of her right breast.  Viola’s heart began to pound.  And her eyes widened with anger.  That’s when she figured it all out.  She didn’t know what to do.  She was so shocked.  She didn’t know whether to confront him there or just wait until they got home.  She did decide to go home and wait for him there.  Before she left, that he had a client coming in late, so he was going to be a couple of hours late.  She knew what he was going to do.  But again, she was too afraid to say anything to him.  So she just waited. 
        When he finally got home, he looked a bit worn out.  “Hey baby.”  He said to her.  She was sitting on the couch and she looked very angry.  “You’re sleeping with her aren’t you?”  The words just came out.  She wasn’t really thinking.  All she could think about was how bad he had hurt her, and how bad she wanted to hurt him back.  “What are you talking about luv?”
      “You know what I am talking about.”
        Finally, after denying it a few times, he admitted to cheating on her with Sarah.  Viola called me, and we met up at the cafe. 

You should go home honey.” I told her.  “I don’t want to go back.” She replied.  “Why don’t you go back to my flat then?” I handed her the key.  “What are you going to do?” She asked me.  “I have a couple of errands to run, then I will be there.”  I told her.  She got up and walked out.

When she arrived at my place, he was outside waiting for her.  I had called him and told him to meet her there.  After a bit of arguing, he convinced Viola to go inside and talk to him.

“Why did you do it?” She asked him while sitting on the couch.  He was pacing back and forth behind the couch.  There was a very dim light coming from a small crack in between the curtains on the window.  But other than that, the room was dark.  “I don’t know why I did it.” He told her.  Viola got a bit teary-eyed. 
“Am I not good enough for you?”
“No, that’s not it at all!”  He sat down on the couch next to her. 
“Then what is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“No!  I don’t want to hear that!  You lied to me, you cheated on me, and you ruined what I thought to be a perfectly good relationship!  And I want to know why!”  By this time, she was sobbing.  “It really didn’t mean anything.  She was just there.  I love you so much though.  And I never meant to hurt you.”
“Then why? Why did you” She was done asking why.  It was getting her nowhere.  And she was never going to get the answer that she wanted.  So she just gave up.  She slowly stopped crying and she realized that it was all over, they were all over.  She was paralyzed with so many emotions.  She was angry with herself because she thought that somehow this was all her fault.  She was sad because she was so in love with him, and she thought that she wasn’t good enough for him.  She was scared, scared of being alone.  So she slowly stood up, walked to the door and turned the knob.  It was then, that she heard sobs.  She looked toward the window, where he was now standing, staring through the little crack in between the curtains.  He was wiping tears from his eyes.  Viola took her hand away from the doorknob.  “Why are you crying?”  She asked him.
“Because I screwed everything up.”
“Yeah, yeah you did.”
“And I hate myself for it!  And you hate me for it!”
“I don’t hate you, I just hate the fact that you did it.”
        She walked over to him and rested her head on his shoulder.  “If I hated you, I would have left already.  I love you, that’s why this hurts so bad.”
”I’m so sorry Viola.”  He threw his arms around her and pulled her close.  She hugged him back.  “I know you are.  We need to take things slow.”  She told him as she pulled away.  “I know.  Things are different now.” He sat down on the floor with his back against the wall.  Viola sat down next to him.  Neither of them said a word to each other.  And neither of them looked at the other.