The Story of a Man, A Woman, and the Corpses of 1000 Evil Students

Gerard was sitting in his study, a sketchbook propped open and his computer blaring music. He had been like this for almost twenty hours; he wasn’t drawing or sketching or singing along to the music, but staring blankly at the paper. I wanted to say it was because he was embarrassed or ashamed about the party, but he didn’t seem to want to talk about it, and I wasn’t about to pry and annoy him.

I busied myself with housework and carefully counting the bottles of alcohol we had in the cupboard. I drank a lot myself, but I liked to think I had it under control, or at least I thought. The sun was setting a casting an orange shadow over our entire apartment on the second day of the year, and I was sitting at the dinner table flicking lazily through facebook when I heard the floorboards groan under a shift in weight. My heart skipped as the door to his study slid open, and he stuck his head out, his expression softening at the sight of me in the dining room.

“Hey, I just wanted to tell you I’m not really hungry tonight. My stomach’s still giving me problems,” he said, looking down at his feet. I just nodded, doing my best to bite my tongue and not address the elephant in the room.

“Okay. Have you at least had some crackers today? Been drinking enough water?” I asked delicately.

“Yeah.” He shuffled over to sit down next to me at the table, placing his head into my hands folded on top of the hardwood surface. “I’m tired. I think I might go to bed early.”
“It’s not even four,” I began to protest but thought better of it. “But do whatever makes you feel better.” I kissed his hair before wiggling my fingers to get him to straighten up and look at me.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. I sighed, not entirely sure what to say.

“I love you,” was all I could muster. Gerard just nodded, looking down at our intertwined hands.

“I still have some work to do before Monday. I need to get that done,” he said as he rose to his feet, planting a kiss on the top of my head. The door to his study slid shut after he snaked back inside, and I was left alone in the dining room. I felt like a failed girlfriend. Was it me and all my stress that was causing him all of these problems? Did he even view them as problems?

There was still music coming from his study as I slid into bed later that night, trying my best to shut the bedroom door silently. I couldn’t really believe he was still awake, but maybe he had just gotten on a creative streak with his project or something. He’d only been out of there once since our short powwow in the dining room, and that was to use the bathroom. I’d been dozing on the couch and hadn’t had the energy to try and intercept him and get him to talk to me. I just wanted to keep telling him that I loved him...but was that enough?

A few minutes after I had crawled into bed, I heard the music stop and the sliding of his studio door. Gerard came into the bedroom, changing into pajamas. I thought he assumed I was already asleep, so I rolled over onto his side quickly as he was about to lay down. He yelped, jumping in the air. Once he looked down and saw me, he cracked a smile.

“There we go, that’s the first time I’ve gotten you to smile all day,” I noted dolefully. He gave me a half shrug as the smile began to dissipate from his lips and he got under the sheets with me.

“I haven’t been in a smiling mood today. I feel like a raincloud,” he said, crossing his arms. “I don’t like it.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” I prodded softly, playing with the sleeve on his tee shirt. I saw him purse his lips as he considered it, flipping his bangs out of his eyes.

“About what?” So he was going to play innocent.

“What happened at Ray’s party.” I gazed up at him from my side on my pillow, watching as he swallowed.

“I’ve been saying I’m sorry, Charlotte, what else do you want?” I was actively trying to avoid getting into a raised voice argument, so I just traced some of the freckles on his arms.

“No, no,” I cooed softly, “all I want from you is to know you’re okay, or you’re going to be okay, Gerard. That’s all. Because I care about you. A lot.” Too much. Way too much. He let out a long sigh and nodded and a wave of relief washed over me as I realized I’d gotten him to see we were on the same team.

“Recently, I slipped back into some...bad habits,” he said. That pause was ominous and made my heart sink and my mind race in a million directions at once.

“What kind of ‘bad habits’?” I asked, making air quotes. He bit his lip, eyes darting between various things in his room and me. “Have you told me about these things before?” I decided to try and make it easier on him by asking more specific questions.

“No. Because I was afraid you would run away screaming from me because I’m a crazy person, Charlotte.” He flopped onto his side, staring me down with those delicious eyes of his. It was funny that he said that, because that was the exact thought I had had with him regarding my issues.

“I would never do that, Gerard. I love you, an awful lot, but if you don’t feel comfortable telling me yet, that’s okay too,” I explained, leaning forward to give him a quick kiss on the lips.

“You’re too amazing for me. I don’t deserve you.” Whoa, where did that come from?

“Why would you say that?” I asked.

“Because you say wonderful, supportive things like that and I just go and publicly humiliate both of us and get alcohol poisoning that I’m still shaking off and you’re still...here,” he motioned vaguely to us under the sheets.

“I’m still here saying these things because I like you a lot, Mr. Way. And because you have done the same exact thing for me, just under different terms. If I recall correctly, you flew across the country to do this for me. You deserve a lot of things.” Gerard just groaned when I said that, burying his face in my chest. “Apparently you deserve a face full of my boobs, too.”

His laugh was muffled, but it was there alright. Gerard leaned back onto his pillow, his hands behind his head. “I used to have a really bad alcohol and prescription drug addiction and I had mostly gotten past that. I thought I had. It’s getting bad again.”

It’s getting bad again, the words nearly everyone with a mental illness says or hears at least once in a while. It’s getting bad again, I said as I clutched my stuffed animals to me when I was a little kid and could not stop convincing myself a monster in the closet was going to come kill me. It’s getting bad again, I realized with a sigh when I was with Anthony and having my confidence beaten down by him at every step, causing me to look in the mirror with disdain at my own appearance. It’s getting bad again, I realized as I stitched up gouges I made on my own arm in freshman year, refusing to leave my dorm for a week after that. It’s getting bad again, I had said to Jordin when I was back at home over Christmas break and nothing would numb the pain.

“I know. It’s okay. Because I’m here. And I’ll be here to help you through this every step of the way, Gerard, I promise,” I scooted closer to him, grabbing both of his hands to cradle against my face. “You won’t be going through this alone anymore. Never again.”

“I’m going to fuck this up, I just know it. You’re saying all of these amazing things that are breaking my heart because I’m so afraid that I’m going to say something one night or do something another night and I will be alone, and not only that, I’ll hurt you. That’s...that’s not a risk I’m really willing to take,” Gerard rambled before drawing that conclusion, a dark look clouding his face suddenly.

“What do you mean, Gerard?” My heart was picking up speed; if he means what I think he means, I am going to die.

“I’m just saying I’m not good for you, Charlotte, especially right now. You have your own issues to deal with, I can’t be added on top of that and expect you to continue being able to function. You’re going through your last semester of college, you don’t need a worn down professor dealing with binge drinking and suicidal ideation bringing you down.”

“Are you breaking up with me?” I couldn’t help but shriek. Gerard’s eyes widened, but he frowned, and I was afraid he was about to nod.

“No, Charlotte, I’m just thinking out loud about what’s best for you. I’m not going to break up with you, especially not right when we’re about to cuddle off and going into the dream realm together.” He said, as if that was supposed to quell my fears.

“But that means you are going to break up with me then? You’re just not now because it’d be inconvenient?” My voice was rising and I was about to start the waterworks, any moment now. “What about what’s best for you?” Waterworks had commenced by the time I said that.

Gerard was sitting up in bed next to me, mouth agape at the transformation from the calm supportive girlfriend to the blubbering mess with separation anxiety and abandonment issues that I’d just been through. He threw the blankets back so he could reach over to wrap his arms around me in a tight bear hug.

“Charlie, Charlie, I love you so much. Please don’t say things like that, because I don’t ever want to break up with you. You’re never just a ‘convenience’ to me, or an inconvenience for that matter; you’re my girlfriend, and you’re my whole world right now. I’m worried that is too much for you to handle though. I want you to be okay, too, you know.” He pulled me into his lap and began to rock me back and forth, running his fingers through my hair to calm me down. I was crying and crying, the pain in my chest ebbing only slightly at his words.

I wasn’t just crying about the fact that I thought my amazing boyfriend was going to break up with me in bed; I was crying because of all the pent up frustration and sadness and anxiety I had been feeling the past few days. It was pouring out of me, tearing out, and it hurt. It stung. I was wracked with sobs, and it was all Gerard could do to just hold me and hand me a tissue every now and then. I think he understood why I was crying, too, which I was ever grateful for.

I couldn’t even begin to imagine Gerard breaking up with me. It would be the worst pain imaginable, and I had thought that about Anthony breaking up with me. But Gerard and I actually got along amazingly and worked well together and loved each other...I never wanted this to go away. I wanted this to last forever. And even thinking about him leaving for a moment destroyed my world.

When the sobs began to subside, Gerard just pulled me down to cuddle with him under the sheets. “Are you feeling okay?” He asked. I nodded, sniffling and feeling like a stupid little girl. A stupid emotional girl.

“I’m sorry I’m such a crazy mess,” I said, tears forming at the corners of my eyes again. “I just got really worried you were breaking up with me.”

“I’m sorry I made you worried about that. And you’re not a crazy mess, I feel like that’s a normal reaction. I’m not leaving you, Charlie. We’re in it together.”

“You said you never wanted to break up with me.”

“That’s true, I don’t ever want to have to come to that.”

“So does that mean you’re waiting for me to break up with you?” I had to ask, it was bubbling at the back of my mind and about to explode. I felt Gerard stiffen, most likely with slight frustration, but he shook his head.

“No, baby. No. It means I love you a whole, awful lot and you are all that I ever think about and your smile is what gets me through the day, and your boobs are what get me through the night,” he said as he rolled over onto me, using my chest as a pillow. He let out a nervous laugh, and I had the feeling he was keeping something from me. But I ignored it and kissed him. We resumed our normal cuddling positions and he turned off the nightstand light.

“Goodnight, Gerard. I love you so much,” I kissed him.

“Goodnight, Charlie Barley, I love you more.”

A few hours after falling asleep, I woke up with a sudden realization. Gerard had said he never wanted to break up with me…because he wanted to marry me someday.

Notes