Becoming (INSECURE SEQUEL)

15

CATALINA

I clear my throat and stare at August as he sits across from me with his hands folded against the table. He doesn't look at me, in fact, he looks at the painting on the walls to avoid looking at me. By the slightly irked looks he gives me, I can tell that he's trying to avoid staring back and making me just as uncomfortable. I don't know what to say. Why do I have to be the one to speak first? He's the reason we're like this in the first place.

He sighs and turns his head from the wall. "My number is still the same." He says.

"What?"

"My number. It's still the same."

"Oh...." I don't know why, but it shocks me. It seems so small and insubstantial, but it shocks me.

His number still being the same even after so much has changed about us, is absurd. It reminds me that we're still living in the same world, who I was five years ago wasn't made up. I can't quite put it into words, but it almost makes me angry. Why would he want anything from back then to still be the same? How does having anything that reminds him of that time not repulse him?

I get angry with him for no good reason at all, and then I start to feel this sense of entitlement. Like I'm entitled to his regrets or his apologies because it's the least he can do.

What exactly does he owe me though? Technically, nothing. He had caused all of this damage, but still, he owes me nothing.That's the unfair way the world works. It doesn't matter that he killed my mother, gave me perpetual nightmares, or caused damage that will affect me for the rest of my life. Counting it all, he still doesn't owe me as little as a sorry.

Then, even when he does say sorry, it isn't enough. It can't be enough because sorry is just a word. So I find myself always asking what it is that I want from him? Nothing he says or does will ever be enough.

"I tried to-- I tried to make a list." I start to speak, rummaging through my purse and looking for the crumbled up sheet of paper. I wrote it, and then I ripped it up, so I wrote it again, and that time I crumpled it up because I hate everything about it. "Of all the reasons I don't like you-- I didn't mean that, but like...of all the reasons why I just can't."

"What am I supposed to do with it?" He asks and I scoff before I can do anything else.

"I don't know." I narrow my eyes, offended. "I made it to try to talk instead of arguing with you."

"I understand that, but after you show it to me, then what? Is there anything on the list that's fixable?" He asks me.

I feel my ears get hot and I don't even bother uncrumpling it. It took a lot for me to even write it--hence the reason I balled it up-- and he doesn't want to see it. I really tried to be serious and vulnerable in the best way I knew how and he wants to make it seem like it was silly. Like I had wasted my time because nothing can be done about those things. Maybe he's right, and nothing is fixable, but I at least wanted him to know.

"Why did you come then?" I scoff. "If not to belittle me, then why?"

"I'm not belittling you." He says, but you should see the way he looks at me and how he says it. He does it like I'm a child and he's an adult, like we're playing a game and I insist on playing but he knows I'm going to lose. It's mockery in the most subtle of ways.

"Yes  you are. You're talking to me like this is a waste of time but you didn't give it a chance." I shake my head.

I take my wrinkled sheet of paper back out of my purse and start unfolding it. He doesn't want to see it, but what he wants doesn't matter. I didn't want him to kill my mother, but here we are anyway.