What We Keep

by Jennifer Millikin

Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell. JOAN CRAWFORD

If a hero would sacrifice their love to save the world, but a villain would sacrifice the world to save their love, what does that make me? What would I sacrifice to get it all back, to save my husband? The answer is easy. The world.

most of it is just stuff. It’s replaceable. You are not replaceable. And you’re here. Everything else is noise.”

"I know I said it was the fire, and technically it was. But some days I wonder if Gabriel was the fire. Because it honestly felt like after I met him, my entire world was engulfed in flames.”

“There’s something about you, something I can’t wrap my mind around.” His head moves back and forth slowly as he speaks. “I just knew that if I let you drive away, I’d regret it.”

“You know when you break glass, even if it doesn’t shatter, it never goes back together perfectly? Alongside those big pieces are tiny shards that have a big impact? That’s what this is.

“When sex doesn’t mean anything, nothing stops them. When it means something, it terrifies them.”

“Sometimes, fires are too hot to enter.” He kisses the top of my head. “That’s what you feel like. Or, what I feel when I’m with you. My feelings for you…they’re intense. If I had to compare it to my job, I’d say it’s the hottest fire I’ve ever come up against.”

“Baby, we’re in trouble.” I kiss the space beside his ear, my heart flip-flopping at how he called me baby. “What kind of trouble?” “The kind that buries you alive, and all you can do is hope rescue never arrives.” “I like that idea.” “Being buried alive?” “Being inundated. That’s what I want to be. Inundated with you. By you.”

“Sounds perfect. When did you realize he had a flaw?” “The night I met his mother.”

“People lie all the time. Every day. It’s human nature. It doesn’t mean they’re being outright deceitful. It just makes them human.”

“So it should be acceptable?” “That’s not what I said. Most lies are told to protect a part of the person lying. To protect the ego, the image, the pain, the shame.” The last word confuses me. “The shame?” “Oh, yes. The shame most of all. We tend to protect our feelings of shame, because we abhor it and never want to show it to others. So we cover it up, we create stories around it. Lies, fibs, half-truths, call it whatever you want. At the end of the day, they are stories.”

“Good people can do bad things, and bad people can do good things. One does not exclude the other. In fact”—Dr. Ruben holds a finger aloft—“several things can be true at the same time.”

“Most twenty-somethings think they know everything, which means they are certain they will never do things the way others have done them.” Hello, head of nail, here’s the hammer. “Maybe it’s more that I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And I thought I knew things I knew nothing about.” “Who told you I love riddles?” I laugh once, but it’s more of a bark. “Hindsight is usually twenty-twenty,” Dr. Ruben says. “Everyone has things they look back on with greater clarity than when they were in the moment. You’re awfully hard on yourself.”

Dr. Ruben’s expression is one of sympathy. “Do you want to keep going?” I nod, swallowing as I steel myself. Isn’t that what I do? No matter what, I keep going.

“I’ve been wondering why I continue. Why I do this to myself. Then I remember you. The look on your face when I opened your bedroom door that night. The weight of your body when I carried you. The relief in your eyes when I handed you over to the paramedics. You became my world.” The pad of his thumb strokes my cheek. “Every person is someone else’s world. It’s my responsibility to preserve that.”

I love Gabriel. I hate his actions. I love our marriage. I hate who I’m turning into.

“I love you, baby.” His voice rings with conviction. “With everything I have.” “I know.” I really do know, but I’ve been considering if there may be other times when something is more powerful than love. Addiction.

I want Gabriel to have what he wants from life. I want him to stop denying himself. I want him to stop living for Nash, and live for himself.

How can I keep loving a person who refuses to love himself?

True loneliness isn’t being alone. It’s being with someone else and still finding yourself alone. A truth I wish I never learned.

I’ve placed Gabriel on a pedestal he didn’t ask to be on, and now I’m experiencing his fall. I won’t tell him what he’s doing is hurting me, because I’m protecting him from my anger.

“Bonds are forged in fire, and right now, Gabriel, we’re in the middle of a fire. And even you can’t put it out.” “I started it.” His eyes close. More tears splash onto my chest, sliding down between my breasts. “I’m responsible for the fire.”

It is as if I’m holding an ice cube in the middle of July, watching it slowly melt and slide between the cracks in my fingers. My husband is slipping away.

I learned early on that life isn’t fair. But I didn’t think it would be this cruel.

There we were, two women connected by a common thread, both knowing we contributed to its downfall. And yet, we are ultimately not at fault.

Sometimes, the simplest acts are the most difficult to execute.

“Addiction is a beast you use to attempt to fight the beast within, and all you’re left with is a bloody disaster. You hurt yourself, you hurt others, and you justify your behavior. I’d like to think I could’ve quit for him, but I just don’t know.”

He once saved me from a fire. But when it was all said and done, he’s the one who burned me down.

There are all kinds of love in this world, but never the same love twice. - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“I wasn’t going to, Avery. I wasn’t planning on inserting myself in your life. But then you showed up in mine.”

“I broke your heart long before I divorced you.” No response. No noise. Not even a movement. She is utterly silent. We both know I’m right.

“I never loved you more than the day I let you go.”

“Getting over you nearly killed me. I won’t survive a second time.”

We can’t come back from what happened. It’s all there on these pages. We started out a fairy tale, and turned into a nightmare. Because of me.

Avery described us as a storm we created, and willingly put ourselves in the path of its destruction. I wonder how often people do that. Create storms and die inside them.

When Avery and I met, I was already a stealth tornado. I didn’t know it, and neither did she. When you’re living your life for someone else, how can you be anything but a disaster in the making?

The irony of my past life and my current life intersecting isn’t lost on me. No matter what I do, I end up around fire.

“Memories,” she repeats, the word heavy, as if she knows exactly what I mean. “Isn’t it amazing what we’ll do to ourselves with memories? How willing we are to experience pain over and over again?”

The realization doesn’t stop me. All I want is to exist in a world where Gabriel never hurt me, where our slates have been wiped clean, and we are together again without all the pain of the past.

When you’re stripped bare, you don’t need a mirror to see yourself clearly.

“Why didn’t you come for me five months ago? Why wasn’t I your first stop?” How can I explain it to her? There are a million words I can choose from, but they all fall flat. Instead, I choose a story. “You have a yellow dress with blue flowers printed on it. It has sleeves like a T-shirt, but it’s low-cut.” Using the pointer fingers on both hands, I demonstrate a deep ‘v’ going down the front of my chest. “It reaches half-way down your thighs, and you look like an angel when you wear it.” Her eyes widen. “I bought that dress last summer.” My heart beats double time. “You were my first stop.”

I cannot watch her agony and not attempt to soothe it. I was made to love this woman.

Why don’t you hate me, Avery?” “I could never hate you.” “I hate me.” “That’s why I can’t.”

“You think I should hate you, but let me tell you something I’ve learned. Once you separate the action from the person, clinging to hate becomes a more arduous task.”

“People tend to write what they know,”

“Some problems simply exist, and that’s all there is to it. Talking about them won’t help.”

This connection between me and Gabriel just is. It exists. As essential as food, air, and water. Nothing we know about why it’s there can fully encompass that it is there at all.

“You’re always going to be mine, Avery. I’m always going to be yours. I don’t need a piece of paper or a ring to tell me that.” He taps two fingers over his heart. “It’s in here.”

“You used to look at me like I was a hero. Like you knew I could keep you safe. Your human shield. From bad guys, from pain. Then the look in your eyes changed. I was the one causing you pain. And you pitied me. I wanted your anger, your hatred, even disgust with the way I was acting. Anything but your pity. I couldn’t take it. Your compassion was suffocating, because I didn’t deserve it.”