A Friend in Need
She was hesitant to tell me about the things she was so used to whispering to herself in the dark. I felt like we could be a couple of giggling schoolgirls again, back on the playground, cupping our hands around each other’s ears and throwing conspiratorial glances at the rough boys kicking sand into each other’s eyes. I felt giddy with the anticipation of learning yet another secret, but instead of speaking, she turned her head to the side, let out a deep breath and was quiet.
I stared at her from across the table and chewed on a complimentary breadstick, waiting for her to go on. She looked like she was about to cry – like at any moment she would collapse into herself and crumple up until she was gone.
“I don’t know,” she said quietly, “it’s hard to talk about sometimes.”
I felt a hard twang of annoyance. Something in me wanted to reach across the table and shake her until the words tumbled out of her mouth, all jumbled and tangled, but there. Something in me despised the weakness she wasn’t even trying to hide. I could never understand girls like this, and the men who yearned to hold them and keep them safe from harm – to keep them whole and unshattered when all they really needed was to crack a little. She had no idea what true pain was, with her silky smooth hair and pale, dewy skin – and those perfect, trembling, pouting lips and eyes like pale ice. She had no idea of genuine suffering, so who was she to feel so broken?
“Oh honey,” I said and swallowed a piece of bread, “I know this must be painful,” I paused so she’d know I understood the gravity of everything she hadn’t yet told me, “Take however long you need.”
I stared hard, and pursed my lips and kind of furrowed my brow in what I hoped was an expression of complete sympathy, and of a bit of anger at whoever could make her feel this way – at whoever could reduce her to this quietly shuddering fool.
She clasped her hands together and put them on the table and I reached out and let one of my own rest gently on hers. Her gaze was down and I let my thumb rub the back of her hand a little bit when suddenly she looked up and I caught that cold and piercing thing that always seemed to stun everyone around her. Even I had to admit she could be beautiful, and strangely frightening – so much so that I almost had to look away for fear she might actually see through me. But I didn’t look away. I held her gaze and I was pleased to see there was something hard in her now, something desperate and cold. And just as suddenly as it appeared, it was gone, and she was all slumped shoulders and downcast eyes, once again depleted and defeated.
“You’re so strong,” she said in barely a whisper, and she drew her hands back from under mine, “I wish I could be like you.”
And then she was up and gone, leaving the smell of something sweet and somehow sad in her wake. I watched her through the window as she disappeared around a corner, holding herself, head bowed. I took another bite of the breadstick and thanked the waiter as he put down the two cups of coffee I’d now have to drink alone.
I stared out the window for a little while longer, thinking about the impossible absurdity of what she’d said.
Oh honey, I mused, you don’t want to be like me.
