Eternity Will Never Be Enough - Chapter Six

Delaney:

With the coming and going of Christmas, brought friends to our new apartment. People passed in and out, some insisting on spending the night in one of our two guest bedrooms, but Will would always hurry them out. The last thing either of us needed was for them to walk in on me, unresponsive and violent, with a razorblade posed at my wrist as Will had so often woken up to in the middle of the night. The person we were most reluctant to have over was my little girl, my Katie. Despite Will’s warnings, for four days straight, she and her friend Alexis would board a bus and head across town to our humble apartment. I tried my best to be as welcoming as I could to them, but the more I ignored it, the harder it was becoming to keep from slipping in and out of my memories, a state that could endanger both girls. But I tried my hardest - the second, third, and fourth day I had spent all morning, with Will’s hands guiding me along, preparing a tray of chocolate chip cookies. As much as I loved the girls, though, I couldn’t wait for them to leave each night, when I could slip into Will’s lap and just not… think. I long, every night and day, to be alone with Will, something that has never bothered me quite as prominently. But I’ve never been this far gone, and I just want to be us. Not parents, I’m not ready for parenthood, and not hosts to many guests and label mates… just us. I twist the ring around my finger, staring at the sparkling dragonfly.

“Hey?” Will whispers hesitantly, coming to sit next to me. He’s been across the room, methodically taking down the large Christmas tree he insisted we’d put up, though I knew we’d go spend Christmas at his Mom’s house. This doesn’t bother me as much as people coming here, because there I’m a guest. I don’t have to smile and pretend that I’m alright, I can retreat against Will and not say a thing. And I find myself, in the way that I was on Christmas, curling up against him. I breathe in and out slowly, focusing that and the way he smells, to keep me grounded here. He pulls me onto his lap, making sure I’m not slipping by lacing his fingers in mine and bringing his lips down on top of mine. Focusing on him is the only thing that keeps me here these days. I wonder, briefly, what it would be like if Will had left me in the hospital and gone back to Becky. I would have proceeded to relive all of my memories without waking, over and over. And while some of them are pleasant, a few with Kate and a few with Will, the two days I spent as Rylee’s and not Will’s, and the days before everything ached, most of my memories are the kind of thoughts that send me spiraling, that make me suicidal. I wish I could control it, only focus on the happy times, but I can’t, and lately when I slip, I find myself back in the times with my mother.

My mother hadn’t been much of a mother. She was always abusive when I was younger, but when I was small I had someone to cushion the blow for me. I had Jayden. Jayden was my older brother, and I use the term was simply because he left. When I was eight years old, the abuse Momma would give him became too much and all he left me, was a note. It was simple, one line, and it broke my heart. Jayden had been my world. He had taken care of me, made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches  every night, a substitute for the dinner my mom never made. He was also my hero, in the knight-in-shining armor kind of way. When my mom would threaten me for doing something stupid, like spilling my juice on the floor, Jayden would stand in between me and her as a roadblock. After he left, I didn’t have that. And after he left, the abuse got worse. Or maybe it was always like that, I just didn’t notice because I had somebody else to share it with me. Jayden was always Momma’s favorite. She said he was the spitting image of our dead-beat Dad, who took off when I was born.

“You gonna be okay?” Will asks me and it takes me a minute to pull out of my thoughts to look up at him. I smile, and nod reassuringly, before looking down again. He’s reluctant to let me go, but he does, his hands slipping away from my waist as he stands up. He has to lug all of the boxes full of our ornaments down to the storage locker on the first floor, and then he has to very painfully balance the pine tree we’d used for our Christmas tree on his back and lug it down the stairs and around back to put it in the dumpster. I’d begged Will to let us use a fake tree, because then we could just take it apart and put it in storage with the rest of our Christmas things, but he insisted we have the real thing. He wanted our first Christmas together to be genuine, with our house smelling like gingerbread and pine trees and cinnamon and our tree and fireplace to be decked out in green, red, and cold, with a stocking set for each of us. I watch him leave the room and smile, because I know he’s going to want to do it all again next year. I won’t have a single complaint, because if it makes him happy then it’s all worth it. I love the way he smiles when he’s getting what he wants, it lights up his eyes and it makes him look like a little boy, just absolutely and entirely full of joy. Lately, he has this air about him when he’s with other people. It’s not how he normally, it’s pulled back and reserved and to be honest, it scares me.

But as his figure leaves the room, I feel the familiar dulling of the situation around me. I curl my body into myself, trying to hold my knees to my chest to prevent what ever I’ll end up doing before Will gets back. But it’s no use because when I’m like this, my body takes control of itself and I no longer have any power. Before I know it, I’m eight years old again. I’m walking home from school when I first realize something’s wrong. Will usually walks me about as far as the playground but he can’t go much further because he needs to catch the bus. From there, I walk alone for three streets, until Jayden meets me at stop sign between our little house and the elementary school. He’s always there, with his backpack at his feet and smiling at me as I skip up to him. He’ll hold my hand and I’ll toddle along after him - as I’ve always been much, much smaller than him - and tell him what Will and I did at recess or what Mrs. Parker did today or something silly and stupid that I know he doesn’t care about but he listens to anyways. He always would tell me, that’s what big brother’s are for, and I believed him. He had been my playmate and my guide and my guardian. More than once he had forged Momma’s signature on my report card.

I’m walking home from school and I stop. The stop sign, it’s there as always. But the figure I had come to view as permanently there while I walked home isn’t. Jayden isn’t leaning on the stop-sign smiling at me. His backpack isn’t anywhere to be seen so I know he didn’t go running after something. He’s not there. He didn’t come today. And Jayden’s always walked me home, always. I look over my shoulder, contemplating maybe going back towards school. I could go into the main office and ask them to let me call my Momma, and call Will’s momma instead. And if I did, I know that she’d come get me, with Will and baby Claire in the back seat. Will would help baby Claire out of the backseat and over to me, probably sitting on the platform by the monkey bars, and we’d play hide-and-seek or tag or little games with her, usually winding up making up our own imaginary world hidden safely away inside the center curl of the winding tube slide. And this sounds nice to me and all, but it’s a school night and even though Will’s Momma would gladly let me come home with them, my Momma wouldn’t. I bite my bottom lip, and decide against that plan.

I wait at the stop-sign for five minutes. And they seem like forever as my feet kick at the sidewalk and I spin around the pole of the stop sign. Maybe he’s running late, I think and my eyes flick up at the sky. Five more minutes, and I drop my backpack onto the ground, skipping around the pole now. Five more, and then five more, and then five more until I have to go home or Momma will be even more mad than she already always is. I look around, and bite my bottom lip. It’s okay, Delaney, I tell myself. You’re old enough to start walking home alone anyways. I lift my backpack off of the ground and sling it over my shoulder, looking around once more and then hesitantly stepping away from the stop-sign. Jayden always told me to wait for him until he came, if he wasn’t there, because the walk home is dangerous, but I have to go because if I don’t I won’t get to finish the math worksheet that Mrs. Parker gave us for math homework, or the sheet of cursive letters she assigned, either, and then I’ll be in trouble and I won’t get to go to recess. Recess is my favorite time of the day, ever since I’d met Will. He made me… popular.

As I start getting closer and closer to our house, I begin to see crushed beer bottles and wrappers and litter along the street. There’s a woman in a short skirt with dark makeup who looks so much like Momma sitting on a bus bench, and she smiles at me coldly as I pass. I keep my head down. Jayden usually keeps me sheltered from these things, and I know that he won’t approve of the fact that I’ve been out and on my own. When I get home, he’ll probably scold me, but it’s okay. Because he’ll still sneak me cookies after dinner. Today is Wednesday, and Wednesday is the day we all eat together. It’s an awkward occasion which neither Jayden or I look forward to. Soon I’m walking up the front steps of our little white house, reaching up for the door knob. I’m small as I always have been, and I can barely reach it. Jayden, though he’s only three years older than me, is much taller and is the one who opens the door and reaches the things in high places (like the cookies at grandma’s house or the wash cloth’s in the closet.) My fingertips struggle to turn it and when I have the door swings open too fast and I’m stumbling forwards. Momma’s laying passed out on the couch as always, her face pressed into the arm of it and a beer bottle between her dangling skinny arm.


I shut the door quietly, so as not to wake up Momma, and toddle to my room - my little legs tired from the fact that I had to focus on walking this far. This isn’t really just my room, it’s ours. Me and Jayden’s. We share a room because Momma can’t afford - or won’t afford - a bigger house, but it’s perfect for when I wake up in the middle of the night from a scary dream or Momma’s locked us in here and I need help with the spelling homework Mrs. Parker assigned. I nudge the door open with my hip, dragging my backpack along after me. It’s heavy from the useless things I put in it every day, all of my favorite books, drawings Will and I have done, my stuffed bunny rabbit, my rock collection. There’s only barely enough room for my homework. When I look up, I expect to see Jayden sitting on his bed with either a notebook and a pencil in his hands or one of his really long books, but he’s not. His bed isn’t made, and there are clothes all over the floor. His books are gone, and his shoes, and his backpack and I feel myself starting to panic when I see the note on the yellow notepad paper on my pillow. I stumble over to it, leaving my backpack on the floor and the door open. I pick the piece of paper up, my breathing quick and shaky as I read the letters in his messy print.

Delaney,

I love you. I’m sorry.

- Jayden

My eyes tear up and I curl up on my bed. I can’t be loud or Momma will be upset, because she hates it when I interrupt her beauty sleep - and I do have to admit, Momma is very pretty. But I curl up on my bed and I cry, I cry harder than I ever have, my tiny body shaking and heaving as I try to keep my sobs quiet, because Jayden is gone. Jayden got out and Jayden’s not coming back. I know he won’t come back for me - Momma tell me daily what a mistake I am, and how no one could ever want me. And she’s right. I always thought that maybe Jayden did, but… it turns out that I was wrong. I hold the note tightly to my chest, trying to press the words strongly into my memory. I have to hide it. Destroy it. I have to get rid of it because if she finds out that I know she’ll blame me, and the nightly beatings will be worse. She’ll hate me even more. She already hates me because I made Daddy leave, because I’m such a bad girl and no one could ever love an ugly little thing like me. Now I made Jayden leave, too, and now it’s just me and her and now he can’t protect me from everything she keeps telling me she’ll do, the second he’s not looking.

“Delaney!” Except it’s not Will’s voice or his strong hands that snap me out of it. I realize that I’m screaming, and I try to stop myself, but all it does is make my screams turn into heart-wracking sobs. I stare up at the person who snapped me out of it, and then look down. I’ve found myself back in the bathroom and I’m holding the razor, unbroken as always, against my scarred wrist. There are three sets of five little lines, all of which are burning and bleeding, dripping onto Will’s floor. I begin to panic, taking the razorblade and chucking it at the wall. The person who snapped me out of it wraps his arms around me and pulls me closer to his chest, murmuring quiet ‘shhhh’s against the top of my head. I curl up against him, and wish he was Will. It’s Rylee, and Rylee is my best friend, but it’s not the same sort of comfort that I need. He rubs my hip in slow, soothing circles.

“Laney, baby,” He murmurs. “It’s going to be okay, it’s all going to be okay. Braydon went to get Will, honey, sh, it’s going to be alright.” And even though he’s comforting and all, it’s not enough to keep me grounded here. It’s not the way Will’s arms tighten around me after I slip away, as if to tell my body that I need to be here.  It’s not the way his lips would press against the top of my head, or the way he’d tell me that it’s alright and then proceed to show me by kissing my lips and taking my mind off of the stinging as he puts rubbing alcohol and gauze on the little cuts, and then it’s not the way that Will would lift me up, bridal style and cuddling me close, when Rylee does. But he gets me back to my bed and I scramble out of his arms, tearing back the blankets and desperately trying to bury myself beneath that and the mass of pillows we own. Rylee slides onto the bed next to me, rubbing my back as I bawl into the sheets.

“Let me see her.” Will says and I feel Rylee tense next to me, his fingers moving through my hair for a minute longer before he wordlessly stands. I breathe out shakily as I feel Will’s familiar weight settle in next to me, and reach out from beneath the covers to wrap my arms around his waist. I pull myself close to him and he wraps his arms around me, holding me firmly and kissing the top of my head gently. “It’ll be alright, baby,” He tells me gently, his fingers intertwining with mine as he pulls my wrist into view. He’s done this a million times before, and he’s used to it, and he can do it so well. The cuts aren’t that bad, barely bleeding and not enough for treatment, so he lets me settle in one his lap, and kiss his neck, and apologize over and over and over and over again. Because I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to lose myself and let it get this far. I want to get better, Will, I should be saying. I should be begging him for his help. But he knows what I’m thinking and he tilts my chin up so he can kiss me softly, and smile against my lips. He doesn’t need words to help me.

“I’m sorry…” I tell him, making his hands press into my waist. I kiss him over and over again, desperately, and I’m reminded of the way that I kissed him the day he left. The day I tried to hang myself. Will smiles against my lips and he tells me it’s okay again, that he knows I didn’t want to and he knows that I love him. I nuzzle my nose into his neck, feeling my heartbeat slow into a normal pace in my chest. It’s honestly true that Will’s scent is the most comforting thing in the world to me. It’s like that last cigarette, it’s perfect and when I have to pull my nose out of his neck, it’s gone to fast. He turns me so we can face our guests, situating me on his lap perfectly and rubbing my hip. I can feel his trademark crooked smile working up on his features as Rylee and Braydon stare at us, both equally horrified and confused. I open my mouth to explain, not really wanting to, but Will beats me to it.

“She loses herself sometimes,” He says simply. “She’ll be okay, don’t worry.”

I smile up at him gratefully. He’s my prince charming.