Apologizing With More Than Just Words

“I wanted to apologize. I–”
“Accepted. You can go,” she said, cutting me off again.
I sighed as I laid down next to her. “I’m sorry, Leah. I panicked.”
She remained silent for so long that I thought she wasn’t going to. She rolled toward me.
“Why?”
I fought the urge to roll away from her or to just get up and run away again. “Because what you said frightened me. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I just reacted,” I admitted almost silently.
“Why?”
I closed my eyes, wanting to groan and refuse to answer, but I knew if I did, whatever progress we had made would be ruined immediately. “Because certain words don’t mean the same thing to me as they do to everyone else.”
She studied my face intently before asking, “Do you mean the word love?”
I swallowed hard as my body stiffened. “Yeah, that word,” I confirmed, struggling to speak around the lump now lodged in my throat.
“Okay,” she replied, nodding. “I understand. I’m sorry. I didn’t know that word would upset you. If I had known, I wouldn’t have said it.”
I shook my head. “Can we stop talking about this now?”
She eyed me before nodding. “Alright. How are you feeling now?”
I groaned. “Leah…”
“That’s the same topic isn’t it?” I nodded. “I’m sorry.”
When she went to curl up on my chest, I stopped her, glancing around. “We can be seen,” I told her softly.
“The rules?” She asked. I nodded and she sighed as she laid back down. “I hate the rules.”
I glanced at her. I was really starting to hate them too. After scooting closer to her, I took her hand, using our bodies to hide our joined hands. She turned head to smile at me.
“I really like this new R. H. M.”
I returned her smile before looking at the sky above us. “What are you doing out here?”
“Coping.”
“Coping?” I repeated.
“Yes. When you left, I was so angry and confused. I didn’t understand what I did. When I brought Sugar out to play with her, I ended up falling. I had a small temper tantrum before the beauty of the sky hit me. If you really pay attention, you can almost feel the earth turning and see the clouds move. Miriela and I used to do this on our lunch breaks. It was one of my favorite things to do. We would talk about everything. Well, almost everything. I didn’t tell her about certain things.” She paused as a soft smile graced her face. “We used to talk about our future dreams. I never had the heart to tell her that I would never have a fairytale ending, but I loved hearing her talk about being in love. She was magical. I could almost believe that good men existed.”
“And now? Do you believe that good men exist?” I asked, holding my breath.
“Yeah. What do you do to cope when you get overwhelmed?” She asked.
My hand tightened on hers. “Honestly?”
“No, I want you to lie to me. Yes, the truth, R. H. M.”
“I put myself in a dark closet.”
She shivered and I reached over to rub her arm. “Are you okay?”
“I hate feeling trapped. My mother used to lock me in them every time I got in trouble. My father would stand outside the door and play recorded clips of animals growling while scratching at the door. When they finally let me out, I would be covered in blood because all I did inside was scratch myself,” she told me, rubbing her arms as she trembled. “I hate the dark and small spaces. I also hate locked doors. My father had this padded room in our house where he would throw me just because. He said I needed to be trained to not run away, so he put me in it and would make hot water pour down on me when I tried to open the door. Sometimes, he would turn the lights off and play the animal sounds on the speakers in there too. When I couldn’t get out, I would vomit. And then I would get beat for vomiting. He would make me eat it before he would let me out.”
She fell silent, still trembling and I moved closer to put my arm under her head, tugging her closer to my side.
“If I begged to be let out, he left me inside longer. The longest I was in there was 9 days. He didn’t care that I was frightened. It was all in the name of making me an obedient wife,” she whispered.
“I would force you to be anywhere you didn’t want to be,” I told her softly.
“I appreciate that.”
I hesitated before reaching into my pocket to pull out my keys. I sat up to remove one from the key ring before handing it to her. She turned it over in her hands before looking up at me.
“What is this to?” She asked.
“It’s a master key. There is not a lock in this community that it won’t open,” I told her.
“Why are you giving it to me?”
I leaned down to kiss her softly. “So that you know that you are never going to be trapped while you’re here. I never want you to be afraid.”
“But isn’t this against the rules too?”
I sighed as I kissed her again. “It seems that when it comes to you, the rules don’t matter much to me.”
Her lips lifted up in a smile. “I’m glad to hear that. Maybe you’ll break the no dating rule for me too.”
I pecked her lips again before settling back on the ground next to her and taking her hand. “So, princess, how does this sky thing work?”
She lifted her hand to point to a cloud. “Do you see that cloud right there?”
“The squiggly line? Yes,” I answered, making her giggle.
“It’s not a squiggly line.”
“Then what is it?” I asked, still not seeing anything but a squiggly line.
“It’s whatever you want to be,” she told me.
“Okay? What do you want it to be?” I inquired softly.
“I see my daughter, swaddled in a blanket,” she murmured sadly. I closed my eyes as her pain washed over me. “What do you see?”
I opened my eyes again to study the cloud for a moment before smiling as I brought her hand to my mouth to kiss it. “I see a stick. Not just any stick, a wand.” I lifted my other hand to point to the tendrils that were coming off the line. “And those little lines are the smoke from it that tells you that it just cast a spell.”
“Oh yeah? What kind of spell would you cast?”
I squeezed her hand. “I would make all the bad things in life disappear.”
“That’s a good thought.”
“What spell would you cast?” I asked her.
“I would cast a spell to go back in time.”
“To when?”
“To the day that Miriela asked me to run away with her. I should have but I was too afraid of what my father would do if he found me,” she told me.
Wanting to change the subject to a lighter topic, I pointed to a rounder cloud that resembled an apple. “What about that one?”
She glanced at me before smiling. “I see a heart. Do you see those little curved things on top of it?”
“Yes. What about them?”
“They look like arteries,” she giggled.
“I suppose so. Do you like science, Leah?”
“I love science. It was my favorite subject. Did you have a favorite subject when you were in school?”
“Yes.”
“What was it?”
“Debate,” I chuckled. “English in most peoples’ vocabulary. I loved researching and arguing. I loved writing speeches and papers. I love to present my work. It didn’t matter what subject it was. I loved being the center of attention. Nothing made my day more than speaking in front of the class. Believe it or not. Everyone thought that I would be an attorney, not Joseph. He hated being forced to speak in front of people,” I laughed. “I remember one English report I had to give was on a book that one of my classmates had written. It was terrible. I politely told him that it sucked so bad that I wanted to wash my eyes out with bleach after I read it. My teacher pulled me aside after I gave a glowing report about how incredible the book was to tell me that I should have been honest with my report.”
“Why didn’t you?” She asked.
“Because nothing good would have come from humiliating him in front of the entire class,” I told her.
She glanced around before shifting to lay her head on my chest. “I think you were always meant to people, R. H. M.”
“No, Leah, I wasn’t,” I murmured, brushing her hair back. “I was just meant to be here so that we could have this moment.”
She sighed happily. “I really, really like this R. H. M.”
I moved my arm to her shoulders, holding her tightly. “I’ll try to keep him around.”
“I hope so. I really do.”