Messy by Choice

Mess 18 (Ally)

We're heading down some street that I start to recognize. This strip of the town is historic and usually busy, but I guess not for Christmas Eve. It's also exceptional late at night and every light intertwined in fake garland twinkles extra bright when Lenox parks against the street.

Well, he actually illegally parks in a firefighter spot.

"Excuse me," I say.

"What?"

I point to the reserved sign. "Are we just going to ignore the law?"

"Minor concerns," Lenox dismisses with a wave of her hand.

I laugh. "Says the lawyer."

"Especially for the lawyer," he adds as he escorts me through a back gate hidden between the alleyway of two buildings. Out of the alley, we come into a quaint outdoor area that's entirely walled in by the back of the front shops and another one. I've scoured these streets countless times before but never knew this spot existed nestled behind the scenes of things. It seemed magical almost. Like those little pocket dimensions that exist out of reality. Maybe anything I felt tonight here could exist out of reality too.

Lenox gets a key out of his inside coat pocket and walks me past the fountain to a very old door of Victorian style. There are windows to see into the shop and I can faintly make out lights, but it's blocked by stacks of books taller than me.

"Close your eyes," Lenox says.

I'm so close to cutting the tension with a sex joke but something holds me back. Maybe it's the hope in his voice or the flutter in my chest.

I allow Lenox to usher me carefully along by the waist until my other senses discern, we're in a slightly more open area.

"Open them, Ally."

Lenox is in front of me. Thankfully not down on one knee again but smiling just as cheerfully as he did after placing his ring on my finger. It jolts my heart. I look past him when I see this space is an art gallery. A small cramped one that's also half a library but full of what I can feel is decades of art and the magic art produces invigorating air and seeping into the walls.

I watch as it flourishes to life around me with twinkle lights flickering and lulling music surfacing from a phonograph. I'm smiling because I love art. It's the only thing I've ever felt true passion  for, and it fills my heart with purpose beyond something I've ever been able to describe. And here on Christmas Eve surrounded by what I love has to be one of those heaven on Earth moments. Maybe this really is a pocket dimension. A little portal into Heaven.

I draw mindlessly and blissfully closer to the sketches of art expertly displayed behind glass frames and my heart drops.

They're mine. All the ones I can see are mine. The ones Lenox took and used as blackmail for our dates. Everything grows eerily cold in the warmth of the small shop that now closes in and cloister around me as I feel a panic wrap around my lungs like when my dad first threw me into the open ocean, when I thought, I would die to that abyss. I need to scream with the same intensity I just felt that gush of joy. There's no point of screaming into an abyss, there was no point screaming against the ocean. They don't care. No one cares and it would be a waste of breath I don't currently have.

I grip my elbows to cross my hands across my chest. My face pales like a ghost and when I meet Lenox's eyes, color drains from his face too.

"T-this isn't..." I stutter to say and have to physically turn away from him to continue, because I know I'm about to hurt him. "This wasn't ok."

It's the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me. I hate it. He doesn't have anything to say. I do. I hate that I do.

Neglect is still an action.

"Lenox. I've only known you for like what a month?" I ask as my eyebrows draw so close together, they almost touch. "This isn't a thing you do for someone after a month of fucking. This isn't something you do without wanting something immense from me in return."

"What?" he says as he steps closer, cautiously, to me. "Ally, I don't want anything from you."

I step back. "You do. You want too much from me. More than I'm ever going to give you back." I pause and my mind floods with what will happen. He'll expect all these nice gestures will lead into me wanting to spend more of my time with him. I'll be roped into more dates, and then months and years will get taken from me that will go by in a flash and it'll be forty years before I know it and I've done nothing I wanted because I've given all of my life to him before I even started to pursue the life, I wanted for me. I can't voice all that. Instead, all that comes out is. "That... this. There isn't anything father from being what I want."

Lenox's hands are tight fists at his side and his voice is just as tight as he asks me, "Ever?" Like it's hurting him.

God, I don't want to hurt him. "I don't know about forever," I say, and my hand goes to my temple to press pressure into my brain. "I'm only 25. Why does everyone want me to think about forever? I just know what I want now. And that's not this Lenox. It's not a relationship with you."

Lenox's gritting his teeth. He's restraining his emotions. Nearly paralyzed by the looks of his iron locked posture. I've ruined his Christmas. I wish he was Jewish so I'd feel less bad.

"Can't this just be fun and light?" I ask him. Beg him. I don't want to hurt him. I am hurting him. I'm trying not to. "This is only so easy because it's not serious. Let's not ruin that."

"No, this is something serious because it's so easy," Lenox says like he's braving a fight against a monster. I guess I am a monster in his eyes. "Easy is a sign this is supposed to happen. Doesn't it feel right? To get along with someone so fast like this?"

"It just feels like being friends..." I say, half committal at best and losing my commitment as I speak it.

"Maybe that's what the best of things should be," Lenox says, stepping closer to me. "Easy friends."

I instinctively step back as my hands recross. See? Monster? "Maybe you're forgetting the terms I set," I say, hardening my voice to set my resolve even when my hands shake, and I grip them tighter around myself so they can't.

Lenox braces himself again and with hopeful gentle courage in a voice that has to be the most genuine sincere show of emotional vulnerability I've ever heard says, "Then change them, Ally."

I have to get mean not to cry, because I have too much empathy to not know exactly how he's feeling. And I'm going to break both our hearts in protecting myself. "No."

Lenox drives me home and I don't feel bad. These terms were defined. He knew they were from the beginning and he's making me feel like the villain when it's him trying to force me to rearrange them? Now he's pissing me off. It's my Christmas too. I don't deserve to be painted as the bad guy in his story because he didn't listen.

"Bye," I say shutting the car door before he has time to say anything. Once I'm inside my stomach knots. I'd have probably thrown up if I had anything in my stomach. So instead, it's just painful contractions that don't fade even after minutes pass of me holding my tears back. Stupid empathy of mine. It kept me from saying and doing the things I wanted for myself for almost all my life. Until I had worked like an ass at a job I hated out of college and got to understand empathy just made everyone around my life easier while I was suffering their pain. I wouldn't let Lenox manipulate my empathy into getting from me what he wanted. I wouldn't. I still cry that night into my pillow. Thinking back to how excited he must have been setting everything up. For me to come in and shoot him down. He'd probably think of every woman after me as an ungrateful bitch. I was an ungrateful bitch. But I wasn't a push over. I wouldn't be. I had my heart to protect. An abyss to avoid.