Ellie let out a keening cry as she fell to her knees in front of the shattered girl. “Oh my God. Oh no. Gabriel, I’m … I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to.” She used her hands to sweep all the pieces together into one small pile. Her hands were shaking so badly now, I wondered how she even managed the chore.
I moved to go down to her, when she suddenly sprang up and ran to the table near the front door, where there was a plastic bag. She ran back and kneeled down again and scooped the pieces into the bag. “I’ll fix it. I … I … I can fix it. If …” She let out another sob.
I came out of the strange trance I’d seemed to go into, the picture clearing as I fell to my knees in front of her. “Ellie, love, stop. Please. It doesn’t matter. It’s okay.”
She shook her head sharply from side to side. “It does matter. She was—”
I pulled her into my arms, smoothing her hair. “Shh. It doesn’t matter,” I repeated.
“You always say that. You always just accept everything. But it does matter. It does.” She sucked in a big, shaky breath and started to cry. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Anguish rose in my chest to witness the depth of her suffering. It seemed far too deep and boundless to really be all about a broken doll. God, what should I do? How could I ease her pain? I stroked her hair and kissed her tear-streaked cheeks. “Ellie, sweet love, you’re breaking my heart.”
She burrowed into me, crying harder, and all I could do was hold her in my arms until her tears finally abated. Finally, after what seemed like a long time, I helped her to her feet. She insisted on taking the plastic bag of broken parts with her, clutched to her chest. I called and told George she was sick and I was taking her home.
You can’t fix me, you know.
No, I can only love you.
* * *
That night, I made love to her, attempting to show her with my body all the love I had in my heart. I held her in my arms and whispered words of love and devotion to her in the darkness, and she nestled into me, accepting the comfort I so badly wanted to offer her. But her silence told me she’d retreated into herself and I just had to hope she’d come back to me again by the time the morning came.
But when the sun dawned, I opened my eyes to see that she had pulled an upholstered chair up to the window. She was curled up in it, watching the small sliver of sun as it appeared. I sat up on one elbow. “Morning.”
She sat up and turned, her expression soft and sad. “Good morning,” she whispered.
“What are you doing over there?”
She bit at her lip and turned her face to the window for a second. She stood up and came back to the bed, sitting at the edge. The look on her face was so filled with sorrow, my heart started beating faster. “I think you know I have to go, Gabriel.”
“Go? Go where?” Panic filled my chest and I sat up.
She took a deep breath as if she was attempting to calm herself. “I’ve been up all night, just thinking—”
“Ellie, if this is about that figure—”
She shook her head. “It’s not, not really. I mean, I think I know your feelings for me don’t exist because I happen to have the same name as the stone figure you carved.” She sighed. “I just, I can’t keep doing this to you, Gabriel. I can’t keep doing this to me.”
A lump formed in my throat, and I moved forward on my knees, taking her into my arms. She didn’t resist; on the contrary, she melted into me as she always did. “I love you so much,” she breathed. “And I know you love me, but I can’t stop questioning why. I’ve tried so hard and everything inside me just …hurts. I’m so lost, and I don’t think I can find myself here. And I need to, Gabriel. I need to find myself. I need to figure out who I am without you. I need to figure out what to hold on to and what to let go of.”
“God, Ellie,” I choked. “Please …” I pulled her against me tighter, panic and soul-deep pain warring within me. The agony of losing another person in my life slashed at my heart. Stay. Let me help you through this. You don’t have to do it alone. I wanted to say those words to her, to beg her not to go, and yet something stopped me—perhaps the memory of the talk I’d had with George, maybe the recollection of what it’d felt like to be in the place she was in. Most likely both. There was truth in her words, and I knew instinctively that to stop her would be at least partly motivated by my own selfishness. But, God, it hurt. It hurt so damn badly.
“Where will you go?” I managed to choke out. How will I be able to resist helping you? How will I survive wondering if you’re okay?
She shook her head slightly against me. I could feel the wetness of her tears on my bare chest. “Back to my apartment. From there … I don’t know.”
“You wouldn’t—”
She pulled her head back to look up at me, her eyes full of tears and tenderness. “No. I’m not Crystal anymore. I can’t ever be her again. I’ll find another job.”
I let out a loud whoosh of air and wiped a tear from her cheek. She paused before she asked quietly, “You paid my medical bills, didn’t you?”
I opened my mouth and then closed it, not prepared for the question, unsure if she’d be angry about it or not. She placed two fingers over my lips and then moved them out of the way so she could kiss me. “Thank you.”
I let out a relieved breath, understanding that her acceptance of my gift was a gift to me as well. My love for her was so intense in that moment, my whole body was shaking with it. “Will you come back?” My voice was a raw-sounding whisper, a broken plea.
Sorrow clouded her expression, and her lip trembled. “I need”—she clenched her eyes shut for a moment as if her words were physically hurting her—“I need you to go on as if I won’t. I need that.” She opened her eyes just as a tear slipped out and rolled down her cheek. Crushed. It felt as if my soul were being crushed.
I leaned down and pressed my forehead to hers, and for a moment we just breathed together. I wanted to beg. I wanted to scream at her and plead with her to stay. Beg her to want to come back to me. Not to leave me in the first place, but I couldn’t. Would she understand that in not fighting for her to stay, I was fighting for her to heal? “Stay today. Will you just stay with me today?”
She stared into my eyes for a moment before answering, “Yes,” so softly it was more breath than sound.
We lay back on the bed and I pulled the covers over us, determined to shut out the world this one last day.
We loved fiercely and sorrowfully, trying so hard to pack a lifetime of touches into a single morning. I felt desperate and heartbroken, but I knew in my heart that to stop her from going meant trapping her in its own way, and it was something I would never do. And so we took temporary refuge from the pain of goodbye and gloried in the moment: our heat and our bones and the tangling of our limbs. Our love.
We didn’t talk. To do so would only hurt more, and I didn’t think I could stand it, nor did I want that for her. When she finally pulled herself from my arms, I let her go. I lay there listening as she packed up her things in the other room, already missing the warmth of her skin and the smell of her hair and the way her smile felt like opening a window on a summer’s day.