Caged

Lane Shuler was the one for me. I knew it from the very first time that I had ever met him. And it wasn’t because of the way he looked or even the way he smiled but the warmth that came along with him. It was like being wrapped up in a soft blanket and despite its fragility, you become convinced that it can protect you from anything. 

Lane was my safety blanket and maybe that’s why I had a hard time letting him go.

I didn't know that making a deal with my heart was the first step in breaking faith within myself. Is falling in love truly a risk if it's with the right person? 

My eyes blink rapidly, trying to adjust to the fading light and the first thing I see are gray metal bars. I laugh. Once again, after trying to hold on to a crumbling relationship I am at the bottom of a towering cage. 

“Great. Just great.” I say out loud. Then I pull my knees to my chest and sigh. 

The darkness in the cage barely dims and I’m forced to squint to see Lane’s lanky figure across from me. There’s sweat on his brow and he’s slumped against the bars, his blonde hair covering his face. 

“Don’t know why you’re upset.” He snickers, every syllable a violent stab to my chest. “It’s your fault we’re stuck here.”

“Fine, blame it on me, but you know damn well that we both had a part in this.”

He could have walked away anytime if he wanted to. But he didn’t. He stayed. And that’s what made him different from the others. It’s part of the reason why I believed. 

Out of habit, I reach for his hand but he pulls away from me, his face blank but his green eyes smoldering. They have always said all the words he refuses to say. 

“All I have ever done is love you,” I say. 

“I’m not the one who cheated,” Lane says nonchalantly. 

It was one party and it was just a kiss on the cheek. Lane was away on a trip and I missed him terribly. He was gone for three months.

On the outside, the kiss seemed so friendly but I was drawn to that man that night and I allowed myself to think of a life with him, a life without Lane. 

It was the worst mistake of my life and I never repeated it. Ever.

He has been holding this over me for years. A clutch, that fissures and disjoints, a ferocious demon clawing its way out from it, enlarging its bloodthirsty and rotten fangs. 

And it always works. Every time.

“How many times are you going to make me apologize for that?” I wonder. Mistakes are so much harder to surrender when other people are constantly reminding you of them. “I felt horrible. I still feel horrible. You’re the only person I want.” 

He gets up, wiping the dust that has formed on his pants, and stares at me in the dark. His eyes are pink and wet. He freezes and lifts his lips as if he wants to say something but then he starts walking around the cage. “We should be trying to figure a way out of here.” 

His hands trace the lines of the bars as he scans the high roof. He places his hands along the bars then he places his feet trying to place some footing but he slips and ends up falling on his back. 

I gasp and want to run towards him but I stop myself then I cover my mouth with the back of my hand so the giggles forming on my tongue don’t escape.

Lane lays there on the floor and I can’t tell if he’s angry, frustrated, embarrassed, or all three. 

“Are you okay?” I ask. 

I get up and lay down next to him. When our arms touched, my lungs momentarily refused to work and in that second I wondered if I’d ever be able to breathe again.

Then my lips are on his, my hand in his hair, and the kiss is passionate, sharp, burning through my doubt. “I love you, Lane Shuler,” I whisper into his skin. 

Every so often, unanticipated, my devotion to him consumes me and creates a flash flood in my lungs. 

But it is all that I have, all that I can give him. 

When I pull away he nods, laughing, his eyes on me. “Remember that time when you were outside of the liquor store with your arms around my shoulders and your eyes far away. The whole time I was wondering what you were doing there. It was like a puzzle piece that was out of place. I came up to you and expected you to flinch but you didn’t. Your hair smelled like toasted s'more, the kind that was burned just right that when you took a bite the marshmallows melted in your mouth. I asked you if you needed a ride home and you looked up at me. Curly black hair and all and said no, but thanks for asking. Thanks for noticing me. I could feel my heart in the back of my throat. I knew then that there was no other girl that I wanted by my side.”

Our substantial history, meshed in seared heart tissue and bittersweet memories, so extremely gaping with heartache that I could feel it in my core. 

“That’s not how I remember that moment,” I say.

I could still feel the tears I shed that day. He was drunk and he could barely form words together. And what made the situation even worse was that he had tried to kiss me. Even though I was alone, even though I was scared. Maybe he chose to not remember that part on purpose. I know I did. I had even forgotten that we had that dark, bleak, moment together. 

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind,” I give him a small smile. “I just remember it differently that’s all.”

Once again instead of saying anything, I bite my tongue. I know he’s trying to be cute, and lighten the mood, but he’s the one that has been ill-tempered this entire time and I’m the one constantly trying to cheer him up. And to make matters worse, what he recalled as one of the best nights of his life with me was a night I wish I could forget. Because every moment for me that was like lightning on fire was only just going to eat and hooking up in his mind. 

“What’s wrong Sabine?” He rolled his eyes and smiled.” “Did I do something to make you upset again? Like that time you thought I was cheating but she was just a good friend?”

His ignorance was brazen, a flourishing luminescence that quivered; it stirred me, heart-rending from the crown of my feet to the scope of my ribs up until it reached my throat, strangling me, yet I refused to scream. 

“How does the floor feel? Do you think we could dig a way under the cage?”

He scoffs. “How? With our hands?”

I hated when he did that, made me feel weak and stupid.

“It was just an idea that’s all.” I looked down at my feet and started picking the skin around my nails. “Hey Lane, have you ever been in love?”

“Where is this coming from Sabine? What kind of question is that?” 

I shrug. 

His lips grinned, showing a full set of teeth. “You know I love food.”

He had that charming, patronizing, look on his face, the one that buried my senses, taking me to the brink of insanity. 

He was being ambiguous to make my skin crawl. It was infuriating. 

“Why do you have to do that?” I say softly that it’s barely detectable to the ear. “Make everything a game?”

“Why do you have to take everything so seriously?” 

Lane groans and slumps his shoulders causing his face to slam against the bars causing the cage to shake. A little part of me wants to reach out but I know he’ll just think I’m crazy. 

That I’m being dramatic.

He doesn’t even seem to care that he might’ve given himself a concussion. 

That’s the other thing, no matter how many times he hurts me, I’ll always care. 

When he faces me his lip is split open and blooms bright crimson. “We’re never going to get out are we?”

“Maybe not right this second but we will,” I say.

Lane scoots towards me, closing the distance between us. 

“What happened to us? What happened to the bombastic rumble of our hearts?” He said, his lips near my ear, so soft and quiet that I could feel the heat returning to my cheeks.

Hellfire seethes in my eyes but I am certain he won’t even notice. 

“My heart is still beating erratically, you’re the one who’s lost faith,” I yelled, prodding his chest with my finger, digging into his skin so hard I didn’t care if it would leave a mark. “You. Not me.”

I expect him to apologize, beg for forgiveness, kiss me, do anything. But he was gazing at me like he didn’t know the girl he used to be with and he wasn’t sure how he got there. I wasn’t sure either. 

I realize this is the first time I have ever yelled at him and told him what I was truly feeling. 

My shoulders are stiff. 

The atmosphere between us had shifted, it was different. We were different. It felt wearisome, clouded, like all the love between my fingertips had been stripped out of me.

“I swear sometimes Sabine, you’re too much. For fucks sake you barely even know me. This used to be fun and now all it does is give me a headache. You’re always overreacting and overthinking everything. You’re exhausting.” 

As his sharp words melted into my skeleton, slackening my jaw, and flooding my chest with hurt, I placed my cheek into his chest. For a millisecond, nothing happens and I almost think I should have backed off, and given him space. But then I feel it in my hands. His fingers were entangled in mine. 

I could feel his heart thrashing through his chest, begging for a way out. Then he pulls away from me, shoving his hands in his pockets.

My knees hit the ground and a sharp pain shoots up my legs but I don’t care. This time I scream, my mind scrambling, my bloodstream boiling. I press my hand into my mouth, my teeth cutting into my knuckles. 

“How could you do this to me?” I whisper. “How?”

Then I rush towards the cage and put my arm through the bars, shoving my shoulder and trying to squeeze my body through. 

“What are you doing Sabine? Stop it!” Lane says.

But I ignore him as I continuously jam my shoulder in there. “I don’t fit!” I collapse on the floor, my head in my hands. “We don’t fit.”

There was that tension again between us, an unbreakable rush that kept ebbing its way between our fears, our hearts, with all its strength, almost as if we were going straight into a storm. 

It’s been this way for a long time but I’ve been trying to ignore it. I used to think loving someone was bracing that storm together but I’ve been alone since the beginning. 

The nauseating twist in my gut is flourishing and swiveling, and my mind detached itself from my body. Then I no longer know how to move the muscles in my limbs or my tongue. I am paralyzed. 

I know what I have to do. 

It appeared to be too soon for me to bring this up but the idea of being trapped in a ruinous free fall of uncertainty was dangerously frightening. 

None of this was fair. 

“You don’t love me.” I take a deep breath. “Not in the way I want you to. Not the way I deserved to be loved.”

Lane kicks the floor. 

My fingers tremble. “It’s over Lane. We’re done.”

With all these clashes of unstable growth, we must continue to fight for who we are, for who we love, because then who will? I won’t be the one that left my heart to die. 

He stares at me, his eyes wet with tears. Lane doesn’t even put up a fight. And just like that everything we ever were vanishes as if it never existed. 

Then I see it, glinting underneath my feet. A key. I pick it up and place it inside the lock and open the door. 

Before I go, I take one last look at him and pray that my memories will fade and it’ll be like a bad dream when his name comes up but I know my heart will forever have his name stitched between its veins. 

I walk out of there without him, my head above my shoulders. There was a time when I would beg Lane to hold me, to make me forget my name. 

That seems so silly now.