Becoming (INSECURE SEQUEL)

16: Fist

CATALINA

August turns around to look at me once we stop at the redlight. I see him out of the corner of my eye, but I just keep staring ahead like I don't. I don't feel like there's anything I have to say to him, and even if i do, I don't want to. I see how he's different and my mind is still trying to process how he's the same person. I can only disconnect his past from his present, because I literally can't see him as the same person.

It's made me realize that I never thought of him outside of who he is to me. I never imagined how his life was or how he is with his daughter and wife. The only thing I thought--and the only thing I wanted to think-- was how terrible he is for the stuff he's put me through. With all fault going to me, I never tried to think of him as a regular person. His heart beats just like mine does, and he feels love the same way I do, but I hadn't seen it that way.

"Where are we going?" He finally asks.

"I don't know." I admit. "At first I wanted to beat you, but now I'd feel bad if I do."

"Okay...."He nods his head.

"You can take me to the hospital." I tell him.

I guess I'll go to see Emilio. Something about questioning my disdain towards August makes me want to see Emilio. I don't know if I want to scold him for being the reason we're all so messed up or if I'll end up pitying him and wondering who it was that messed him up.

It's always easier to think of people as what they show you, but what they want you to think about them isn't always a true reflection of who they are: I am slowly learning that. I should know that because I'm one of the people who pretend to be something she's not. I want people to think that I'm mean and unforgiving, but that's just so they don't hurt me.

"How are you going to get home?" He asks, knowing that my car is still by the ice cream place.

"I'll take Ashton's car." I shrug, coming up with that in the moment.

"Okay." He nods in agreement.

We sit in silence on the drive there. The windows are up and the radio is off, making our silence excruciatingly loud. I start to scratch my fingernails along my leggings. Beyond the knowing he isn't the devil who's out to get me, I have nothing to say to him.

I don't know how to make small talk. Especially not with him. I can't start a conversation the way someone who doesn't know you would. I don't know the new him, true, but I have no questions that revolve around his life as it is now. There's nothing I want to know and all I know is that it's a little pitiful of me to not want to know.

"Here take my list." I put it in the cupholder beside me. "Don't read it if you don't want to, but still take it."

"Okay." He nods. "Do you really want me to read it?"

I look at the paper and then my eyes move down to my hands. I don't know. I thought I really wanted him to read it and now I don't know if it matters. I'm not sure it'd make a difference, but what's the harm?

He already said that he thinks it's pointless. I can't make him look at something that he feels is wasting his time.

"Yes." I nod.

"Okay then, I'll read it."

"Okay."

Our small talk ends there. We're mostly quiet on the way to hospital unless it's him asking me if I would like the radio on or off, the windows down or the air conditioner, and so it goes.

*******

I hum as I walk down the hallway of the hospital. I know, why would I be humming in a place as morbid as a hospital? No idea, humming is just something I do to fill the silence when I'm alone with myself. It's helps me to stop thinking about the crazy what-ifs that all end with me dying or hurt.