Chapter 34

Chapter Thirty-Four

Ainsley

San Diego helped me understand a lot about myself, my past, and what I want for my future. I haven't healed, but I'm working on that. Now, I have a journal where I write a page with memories of things that hurt me. Words from strangers, from friends, or their attitudes.

Then I proceed to write two pages with memories of great things that have happened. Those happy moments that fill my heart with joy and make me laugh even after time has passed. It's harder to stop at two pages because every day I find more and more.

It's an exercise that's helping me find myself, who I am and who I want to be—for me. I lost myself during the Porter period. For so long Porter became my world and conditioned me to do everything around his happiness. I let him become the only person who mattered. Even after we broke up, my attitude never changed.

Porter is in a rehabilitation center. My brothers, who wanted to confront him, found him drunk and high, and sent him there. It was the last thing they did for a friend they once loved. When they arrived in Arizona, they confiscated two bottles of prescription drugs and a bottle of whiskey.

Now he's working through the twelve steps of AA, and the steps include me. Exactly at five, my phone rings. I close my journal and pick up the phone.

"Hi," I say.

The only noise I hear is Porter's breathing. I close my eyes. "Are you okay?"

"Better," he responds. "I'm sorry about…"

There's another long pause. "Everything. You offered me your friendship and heart, and I took advantage of you. I have an addictive personality. You were my drug. You had love—I never had that before and I craved it just from you. My madness got the best of me. You were so patient with me, you're gentle and soft… no one ever gave me that. I wanted to take it all from you, which is why I put you in a house away from everyone. I didn't want to share you."

Tears fall from the corner of my eyes as I remember that boy.

"I ended up an abusive alcoholic, like my father."

I clean the tears with the hem of my shirt and try to regain my strength.

"I'm sorry for all the pain I inflicted," he sobs.

I imagine him sitting in some sterile white room, scratching the nape of his neck. He's lost, lonely. I look at my journal and think about one good memory from him. "Thank you for the tender-loving moments, Porter," I sob. "They'll stay inside my heart forever.

"Goodbye, Porter."

A hand retrieves the phone from mine as I let the sobs take over. The tears blur my vision, but my parents are right beside me. I know they'll wait until the tears subside.

I'm strumming Breezy when Dad opens the door and stares at me before speaking. "You have a visitor."

I place Breezy on her stand and head toward the door.

He glances at me. "Are you going to receive your visitor like that?"

I scan myself from head to toe. A pair of shorts, a shirt, and my cat slippers. I lift one shoulder and continue walking.

"Who is it?" Papa asks. I don't hear the response, but I hear his loud voice. "Come back here and change Ainsley Janine. You're not receiving boys dressed like that."

His distraught voice drags a chuckle out of me, and the gloom still lingering from Porter's call is lifting. Until I go downstairs, and I see him standing at the bottom of the stairs.

Mason.

Dad was right. I should change. I haven't washed my face after the call, and the dry, crusty tears on my face must look hideous. I glance up the stairs but decide not to go there. My parents are there, and they might begin to ask questions, or come downstairs.

"What happened?" He takes several steps and holds my chin with both hands, examining me.

"I had a call from the past?" I don't know what to say, and he waits for me to continue. "Porter."

He releases my face and combs his hair with both hands.

"He's working on his twelve-step program and wanted to talk to me," I add casually.

"Why did you agree to talk to him?" Mason questions as I stare at the grayish-green eyes behind those Clark Kent-like black plastic glasses I love.

"Because." I know that's not a real answer.

"You need to stop having any contact with him," he suggests. "Why do you do this to yourself?"

His insistence puzzles me. Mason doesn't discuss Porter or the Porter era. It's like Fight Club. You know it exists, but you don't talk about the subject, which is why I'm curious about his question.

"Because he needs closure to heal, too," I explain as I take his hand and drag him to the couch.

We sit, and as I pull my legs toward my body and hug them, he touches the slippers and smiles at me.

"What about you?" he questions. His lips draw a thin line each time he closes his mouth. "Why would you agree to that while you're trying to fix your own shit?"

"I accepted the call because I was ready—I need closure as well. Real closure." His eyes aren't judging, but the imaginary hot seat is burning my butt. "After four years, I think the biggest issue I carry is the abuse.

"Mostly because for years I've watched movies, read books, heard stories of women who lived inside these scary, abusive relationships and I said, ‘That'll never happen to me. How can they not notice?' And yet, I didn't, and there's something inside of me that keeps wanting to find out why I was so stupid."

Mason opens his mouth to interrupt me, but I shake my head and continue.

"In any case, those self-doubts are the reason I lost all the terrain I've walked and slid back to the anger and bitterness. Then, I bargained with myself because if I had done things differently…"

"If he recovers, are you going to forgive him?"

I take a deep breath. I'd rather watch back-to-back movies of Alien vs. Predator or watch A Thousand Years at War twice—the shit Mason likes—than discuss Porter with him. Especially with him hating Porter with every cell of his body.

"I forgave him."

A strange animal growl erupts deeply from his throat, but he doesn't move, speak, or change his expression.

"For both him and me." I make myself clear, or as clear as I can since his defaced eyes aren't changing. "Think, Mase. What's the benefit of carrying any feelings he created—good or bad—inside me? The good moments will stay; my brothers and I have great memories from the time he arrived until we all grew up and things changed."

I place my chin on top of my knees. My eyes begin to water, and Mase squeezes my hand.

"That's what hurts, Mase. He was our friend." My brothers and I lost our friend. "I'm having trouble merging that kid with the guy I thought I loved. He asked me not to leave him over the phone, and when he said it, I remembered that scared homeless boy my parents brought home. How can we abandon him?"

I turn my head, and now my temple is leaning against my knee. Mason watches me with a strange void to his features. Not one hint of his mood surfaces. His cold silence makes the wait feel like hours or days; perhaps it's only seconds.

"I applaud your big heart," Mason says dryly. He doesn't change his serious expression. "I'll ask one last time, and after, we'll forget he even existed. Are you getting back together with him?"

"Not at all. At this point, I doubt what we had meant what I thought back then. He gave me what I needed, a person who accepted me as the little monster I believed myself to be."

I came to find that we didn't love each other the way couples should. However, that's a tidbit only for my ears and no one else's.

"At the same time, he used all those insecurities to fill my head with ideas and make me believe that without him, I was no one."

That was not the person my parents raised, but then my parents kept us away from the real world. "I don't want to forget. I want to learn from the past and the present, Mason," I say, his attention still transfixed on me. "I want to learn how to live, do all that I couldn't while trapped under his spell. That's what you get when you live enclosed."

I lift my head and look around the room and wave my hand through the entire house—my former cage. Or what I once thought had been my cage.

This is just peachy. The conversation turned out to be all about me and that pesky past.

"Dates, nightclubs, bars, movie theaters, the venues I only visited backstage… I want to concentrate on being me.

"If one day a great guy comes along and offers that thing I want, I won't shut him down because of my past."

"That's a mouthful." He rakes a hand through his hair and then brushes some strands of hair out of my face. "What's that one thing you want from your mystery guy?"

"A love story, his and mine. Ordinary and yet extraordinary," I tell him, hopeful that it'll happen someday. "One unlike any other. You know how they say there are no two fingerprints alike in the world… like that."