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Link tugged at his tie.
He didn’t want to be here.
He didn’t want to be here, in his room, taking off his tie at the end of a night of watching the love of his life get beat into the dirt by the fists of demons. Demons with all kinds of faces.
Tragically enough, the love of his life didn’t know that she was exactly that.
What Zelda did know was that she was his roommate. So . . . as a roommate it wasn’t his place to bother her about these looming, whispering parasites of the mind and heart.
The suffocated, drowning, hollow look in her eyes when her father asked her why she hadn’t published anything yet flickered in his mind hauntingly.
Her father was a millionaire lawyer, and Zelda was his greatest conflict and conundrum. She didn’t want the support of his wealth; she wanted to pave her own way. She wanted to prove that the pursuit of actualizing human emotion and manner in prose and poetry was something worthwhile and that it did make a difference and that she could be happy even if she would now unconditionally be a disappointment to him, even if she were to hopelessly scramble for his title of worthiness. She wanted to make a career of upholding the nobility and awe language could inspire and bring with it all the truth she could muster.
But tonight had been the type of living nightmare that would remain painfully etched into his recollection for ages to come. He . . . couldn’t believe it had happened and that it had happened with him present on top of it all. Link was disgusted with how long he sat there in shock before he took action. He had stared on in horror as her father flayed her out cruelly, picking her apart, pointing out her flaws, listing all the parts of her that upset him. Reducing her to a tear-leaking, catatonic mess. Ultimately, Link had stopped it by grabbing her wrist and hauling her away to his car.
“Has this happened before?” he had asked, shaking with rage. She didn’t even blink. “Is this how he treats you?!”
A lock of her blonde hair fell to swing in front of her eyes.
He had slammed the car into reverse, too angry to think straight, let alone say anything coherent. But now he was thinking again and Zelda was not okay. There was no way she was okay. But Link was just her roommate (as well as a friend), and this was obviously a deeply personal matter and she probably needed space after something like that and-- Link wanted to rip his tie in two.
To hell with that.
Link wandered down the carpeted hallway between their bedrooms in his socks and dress attire. His knuckles softly met with the wood between them. But it turned out she wasn’t there. So it was he found out when no answer came with his second, more fervent knock. Very cautiously, he edged the door open to an empty room. The air was stale without her. A metal lamp whispered the presence of an open book on her desk. As he got closer he recognized the graceful, hurried scrawl of her hand. The page was wrinkled with water. Oh.
With tears.
He knew he shouldn’t read it . . . but he needed to understand. She wasn’t okay, and he needed to understand how to help her. He peered down at the journal.
You face a blank page.
You face.
A Blank Page.
You’re staring.
It’s staring back.
It seems as if neither of you have eyes.
Blind in thought.
You are staring.
Everything is staring and it all has eyes.
And you can’t feel anything.
And you feel everything.
More than you should.
Inspiration is most profound in pain.
And in truth.
Because Beauty is truth.
And it always has been.
And truth is pain, and it is the remedy.
And we still get stuck in the in between.
Because it seems as if we don’t have eyes.
Your hands grasp in the dark looking for the purchase of reassurance.
For the reassurance of finding yourself.
But you are not reaching inwards.
Your hands go out.
And it hurts when they are empty.
You do not want to be empty.
You don’t want to face the blank page.
There was a clock ticking somewhere in the room. Just ticking. The fan was on even though it was the dead of winter, the dead of night. It circled overhead mockingly, begging him to action. His legs had given out at some point, but he couldn’t be sure when. He sat there, staring at the page, like she must have.
And then his legs sent him blindly tearing through the hall. When he got to the doorway of the kitchen his legs almost gave out again.
Zelda lay there, facedown on the kitchen floor, gorgeous dress of midnight limply resting around her, gazing vacantly at a glass of water beside her head. Another tear fell in the path carved on her face.
Their eyes met in the draining silence, but in that moment it still felt like he couldn’t see them.
Then she snapped.
“GET OUT! NOW!”
He didn’t move. She grabbed at the glass and threw it at the wall beside him. It burst on impact. She yelled yet again, “LEAVE! GO AWAY!”
He didn’t move. “LEAVE ME ALONE!”
He sat down and turned around, leaning one side on the doorway. “I won’t look.”
No hallway light was there to accompany his eyes that strained to see her instead.
“Leave.”
“No.”
“Leave.”
“No,” he whispered.
It was because he whispered that Zelda eventually decided to roll on her side and contemplate the soft back of his skull, to ponder the cut of his cheek dusted in the blue shadows of the darkness’ light.
It was devastatingly beautiful.
“Why?”
“Because, “ he whispered, and then placed down an open hand. “Why would I?”
A car on the distant pavement below beeped as it locked. She haltingly brought her hand toward his.
Your hands grasp in the dark looking for the purchase of reassurance. And it hurts when they are empty. You do not want to be empty.
He met her halfway.
His skin was a blazing reality. The type of reality that makes you realize you feel like ice. She’d already been shattered, so how much more would melting hurt?
Every action she took he seemed to reciprocate in instant measure. His grasp strengthened at the same time as hers, and he pulled her to him in the simultaneous moment that she used him as an anchor to drag herself across the frozen tile. She wasn’t just holding his hand anymore; she was clenching the back of his shirt in a death grip and gaping at the hollow of his throat. He held her even closer. It was there with her face pressed into his burning neck and his arms tightening around her that Zelda lost all sense. It was there she finally let go of the crumbling walls and decrepit remains of pretense.
He rocked her slowly, smoothing his hand over her silk textured hair he’d never been able to feel so fully as she released a torrent of tears into his shirt collar. When her shaking worsened he simply held her gentler. She muffled the sobs wracking her body with his chest. It may have been the most intimate thing Link had ever experienced to have someone scream into the flesh around his heart.
And yet the most painful as well. He couldn’t breathe in the face of it. He couldn’t think at all. He could only feel the ripping sensation travelling through his whole body. He had to do something. He had to do something, to help.
His body moved before his mind and when he blinked he was pulling his lips away from her velvet forehead. They were both ice now, crystalline sculptures curled around each other, him cradling her head, incredulity liberaleraly spread between the two of them.
Link’s lungs filled with air first. “Talk to me.” A trembling thumb brushed her cheek. “Please.”
But she couldn’t. She just. Couldn’t. She simply sat there in disbelief. Then she realized he was still holding her, so maybe it was real after all. She coughed and her voice warbled so weakly. “I don’t-- I-- How . . . How do I do this?”
“One step at a time,” he promised. She nodded. “Take deep breaths.” She nodded again and began inhaling through her nose and exhaling through her mouth. He joined her and soon enough they were breathing in sync, breathing the same air, and he couldn’t stop looking her in the eyes. All his senses, all his thoughts were completely overwhelmed by her, inundated by the coiling, twisting emotions he’d held for her for so long. He was losing his breath again.
“Now,” he sighed. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
Her movements stopped before picking up again, breath accelerating, tears seeping out anew. “I-I--”
“Breathe, Zelda. Breathe” He rubbed her back. “Breathe. It’s alright. It’s going to be okay. Take your time.” As she started to relax, he stroked the back of her neck, continuing to soothe her with quiet affirmations.
In time, she falteringly choked out, “I am the most hopeless, miserable poet that’s walked this earth.”
His hand fisted in her skirt and he tilted her face toward him with a palm on the back of her head. “I’m walking with you, so you really can’t be that hopeless, can you?”
“Maybe . . .”
Someone blared their car horn on the street below, causing more to trumpet in response.
“Something I do know is that I am a bleeding heart.” Her hands slackened. “I am bleeding. And it hurts. I don’t want to be in pain anymore.”
He placed his mouth to her ear and whispered, “. . . I don’t want you to be either, Zelda. You’re not alone.”
Her hands clenched again.
“Did you know that . . . I almost can’t feel? I almost can’t believe I’m awake. I almost feel like I’m not in my body. It’s like falling, like being thinned and separated. And it still hurts. Despite everything. Despite distractions and disembodiment. I’ve already been here, Link.”
Her fearful gaze searched in the dark before landing on his. “I’ve been in the pit before. I don’t want to go back, but I can feel the slipping. I’m scared, Link. I’m scared. I feel like I’m losing myself. I feel like I’m going to lose being that person that makes people happy and that makes me happy. I feel like everything’s slipping away. It’s so hard not to hate myself for even feeling any of this. I don’t want to hate myself. Not again. I just-- I just-- I don’t want any of this! I don’t want any of this. I wish I could just catch a handrail and stop sinking, but I feel so weak.” Her chest heaved against him. “You know why it hurts so much? You know why I can’t just let go of all the things he says? Because I see the truth in them. I know so much of it comes from something real. I must annoy so many people. How do you sit here? How can you bear to touch me? How--”
“Zelda, stop, stop. Stop.” Tears budded in the corners of his gentle blues. “Zelda, you are amazing. You are one of the biggest reasons I love getting out of bed in the morning. You have made my life more worthwhile than it has felt at any other point. You have no idea how glad I am that I know you. You have no idea. It’s not a question of how I can bear to touch you. I-- There’s no question there.” He threaded his fingers through the moon-silvered gold at her temple. “There’s-- Zelda’s there’s no reason I wouldn’t want to. I lo--”
He cut himself off by placing another kiss to her forehead, and then another to her temple, and then another to the opposite cheek. Her hands constricted more yet around the fistfulls of his white shirt, and she pulled him forward until their heads were right beside each other, cheek pressed to cheek. He could feel her heart race against his own.
Breath escaped her lips in puffs creeping down his neck as she spoke again. “Even when I’m not crying I touch my face to make sure. I still feel the ghosts. Link.” She turned to talk into his ear, barely whispering, “I wasn’t scared of the dark very long when I was younger. How are you supposed to fear something that you barely realize is there? The darkness I see at night is in my head. My head is full. And my hands are so empty.”
One of his hands found hers, prying it loose from his back. The fingers of his other ran through her hair as he whispered, “Well then I won’t let them be empty.”
She couldn’t help but let loose a sob at that.
“Zelda. Even if there is some truth to be found in his-his tirade of criticism, it does not mean that what he did was okay. It is not right for someone to pick you apart like that. It’s not right for him to put you in front of a warped mirror and tell you that that is all you are. Zelda. You are so, so much more than your imperfections. What he did could be done to anyone. Because we have flaws. And we are allowed to have flaws, to still be worthy of love even with our faults, to be human. He doesn’t get to take that away from you. And I’m not letting you take that away from yourself, either.”
The refrigerator picked up a hum as she let out a long, tired, quiet sigh into his neck. “Thank you.” She nuzzled into him. “Thank you for not leaving. I didn’t really want you to.”
“I know,” he murmured, smiling into her neck. “I know.”
“Link?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I sleep in your room tonight?”
Immediately, his heart started thumping. He coughed. “Of course.”
She was playing with his ponytail.
“Link?”
“Hmmm?”
A beat passed before she asked, “Can I kiss you?”
He pulled back suddenly, and the suspense in her eyes confirmed he’d heard correctly. Finally, he gave a small, disbelieving nod when he’d at last processed the notion. Then she carded her hands through his hair and slowly brought his face toward her own. About an inch away, Link’s heart ready to jump out of his throat, they both stopped to see the other through soft, anticipating eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered again and then connected their lips in the most dizzying, thrilling experience Link had ever undergone. It felt like his spirit had floated up through his brain as he kissed her again. Somewhere in this swimming, morphing moment, Link had lost sense of his limbs, of time, of where he was. He didn’t think he could remember his name should he try. They must have been like this for quite a while because both were completely breathless upon pulling away.
“I love you,” he gasped.
She kissed him again, her tears beginning to pool between them.
“I love you, too.”
Eventually, they were simply holding each other closely and quietly on the kitchen floor, listening to the calming rhythm of the other’s breath. Then he pulled her up with him, softly suggesting, “Let’s go to bed.” She nodded and he let her amble back to her room to change out the tightness of her dress.
When Link found himself nervously threading his fingers back and forth, sitting on the edge of his bed, waiting, he decided to check what was taking so long. He knocked on her door for the third time that night, but the door was open and swung inwards enough to reveal Zelda in her pajamas, setting down a pen next to a page that was not blank.
“Hey,” he smiled.
“Hey,” she smiled back, standing to meander through the hall with him once again.
Crawling into bed with him didn’t feel nearly as nerve-wracking as Zelda would have expected. In fact, she was utterly lax in the warm, gentle circle of his arms. She lifted her head to kiss him one last time. Neither could help but smile into it.
“You make me happy,” she mumbled.
His heart clenched violently, and he had to wait before he was able to strangle out, “You make me so happy, too.”
With her face pressed into his neck and sweet, murmured goodnights passed between them, Zelda found sleep without a battle against any more demons that night.
And in her room, on her desk, sat a journal opened to an unstained, unempty page. It read:
You don’t want to face the blank page.
And yet you do.
Because if you don’t it will stay that way.
And if you don’t you will be aimless.
There must be purpose.
You want purpose and you have it.
And now you have to feel it.
Someone please say goodnight again, because emptiness hurts.
The emptiness of presence.
The body of loneliness.
You are not alone.
You are not alone.
You are not alone.
There’s a reason.
I’m telling you there’s a reason for all of this, and you are going to see it.
You’re going to be that person that can smile at themself.
You're going to look back to now and say to yourself, “I love that girl.”
“I’m proud of that girl.”
So keep walking forward so that you can get there.
The path will be uphill.
And yet you will still be going up.
You will forget the still present ghosts of tears escaping eyes you can’t feel.
It gets better.
It’s gotten better before.
It will again.
Please breathe.
And let yourself be where you are.
Let yourself be.
Just be who you are.
Because knowing who you are is one of the most precious gifts you will ever be given.
Lock away your demons for a little while.
You will look at the world and see finally, because you will see past the darkness in your head.
The page won’t just be blank.
It will be bright.