Hamartia

by Scarlett Drake

All manner of disturbing notions play through my mind. Like going in there and grabbing him, fucking him senseless over the bathroom counter, falling to my knees at his feet and begging him to tell me not to go, to say that he loves me back, pleading with him to just say the fucking words. That I’ll do anything if he just…told me it’s what he wanted.

That I’m what he wants. But I do none of that. I pack, instead.

“But this was never going to have the ending you hoped for, Raphael. I thought maybe I could have…”

For you to think I was worth it. For you not to walk away. For you to fucking choose me.

“You are going to be a father, Raphael. Your child will need you. That is where your focus should be now—not on this, us.” He waves a small pale hand, like it’s inconsequential. Like he’s nothing. Like we’re nothing.

Like he’s seriously talking about me being the one who has any kind of choice to make. When I’d already chosen. I’d chosen him.

It hits me like a fucking truck. He’s already chosen too. This is him choosing. And he’s not choosing me. Just like Finn didn’t choose me.

“I told you I would have taken whatever you wanted to give me. Whatever that looked like.”

It takes all of my control not to shout it at him, to rein in the hurt and pain burning a path through my insides, familial and familiar.

He never said he loved me either. Never said he was ready to do this with me. He never really promised me anything. Still, I would have taken the scraps. Pathetic as that is. Likely Finn’s fault again because he’d left a hole so big it made me that desperate for Jae’s love now.

A desperation that really I shouldn’t be afflicted with because my mom had always loved me enough.

“Love cannot bloom hidden away in the shadows, Raphael. Eventually it will wither and die. It would not be fair to offer you a love like that, one that is half in the dark and dying from the start. You deserve something better than what I can give you.”

“And what about what you deserve? You deserve to be fucking loved too. And I would do that, I would love you enough for fucking both of us, okay? Just…let me…”

“This is the life I chose, Raphael, the love I chose. I am happy—you do not have to worry about me.” The love he chose. The life he chose. Neither of which involve me.

I envy him. Envy this fucking cat. Envy the love Jae has for him, envy the life he gets to live here, envy that Jae gets to be the center of his fucking universe so completely, so easily.

Of what might have been. Of what I could have had. Had I been braver or a different person or chosen another life.

No one can have everything. Least of all me.

Now he gets to go back to his life before me, to a woman who can love him loudly and boldly and without shame or fear. Now he will have a child who will love him unconditionally. My heart warms at that.

At the kind of father Raphael will be. A love as beautiful and strong and immovable as the sun. As fierce and certain as ...

“I love you too,” I whisper to no one. “In another life I would have chosen you.”

But now, all I can focus on is how happy I look in this stolen moment. How completely seen I always felt when Raphael looked at me. And I simply let him…walk out of my life. So easily. Without a word of protest.

At least there is hope on the other side. Hope that someone else will love me the way that Raphael was ready to.

I want him. I want Raphael Scott to love me.

And below that, ‘JaehyunxRaphael’.

The tattoo across my hand as I hold his face make it impossible that it’s anyone else. The look on my face makes it impossible that I’m not very much in love with him. The look on his…fuck… had he really looked at me like that? Like he loved me back? Fuck, Jae.

“You are a very hard man to hate, Raphael. And a very easy one to love.”

“Cam,” I call after her. “I love you, you know.” She stops and turns back. “I know, puppy.”

Manhattan Beach Pier is just the same as it always is, but it feels like a temple as I walk towards it. The wooden planks the nave of some holy place I’ve come to be baptized and Jae’s my fucking priest.

“I’m not cold, baby. It’s LA.” “Baby…” He smiles, blinking up at me slowly. “I did not think I would hear you call me that again.”

“What do you want to do? I’ll say whatever you want. Deny everything if you want. Tell me and I’ll do it. I just want…” I just want you to be warm and happy again.

“When I let you leave, I thought I was doing what was best for you; for both of us. I thought that if I let you go, you would see in the end that it was the right thing to do and that you would thank me for it. But I did not want to let you go, Raphael. I do not want to be without you. I want…”

“I want to be with you. I love you and I want to be with you and I am not afraid anymore of what the world thinks of it. I want to love who I want to love and do what I love to do. I want it all even if it makes me selfish. If you give me another chance I promise I will give you everything I could not before. I promise not to be scared, I promise to try to be everything you want me to be…I promise I will love you loudly and not in the shadows, I promise…”

“You don’t need to do anything except let me make you happy. Just…let me love you and make you happy. That’s enough. You’re enough.”

“This is gonna be great, you know.” He lifts his head to smile at me. “It is?” I nod. “I’m gonna write so many love songs about you. You’re going to be tired of hearing them. Every Christmas, birthday, Chuseok, Seollal.”

But then I think about how it became stronger when I told my mom, how I became more sure of it when I told Cam, how badly I wanted it back when the stranger with the camera showed me what I’d lost.

“I think so. We talked a lot about your asshole.” “My religious, soul-shifting asshole?” He laughs but it sounds heavy with exhaustion.

because sometimes it feels like I might be dreaming. That I get to have this life. With him. With my daughter. With my mom. With my music. With all the things that make me feel like the luckiest person on earth. People shouldn’t be this lucky. But I am. And I try to make sure everyone around me, everyone who helps make me feel it, knows just how grateful I am

“Because I love you. Because every single day I feel lucky that you let me love you. That you chose me, that we get to have this.”

“Saranghae,” I mouth. He beams. “I love you,” he mouths back.

Lili’s eyes filled with hero worship and love. Like father like daughter in that sense, I guess. So fucking lucky, I think again. So fucking lucky.