No Love Is Unconditional
Chapter 14
By: Erynn*Alice
Luxx---
I wish I could be right next to you, to hold you, and tell you how much I love you. I do love you, I love you more than life itself and I’d sooner die than not love you.
I can’t be there to hold you and to love you the way you want and need, and the way that I want and need. I’ll never stop loving you, you’re the only woman I could ever love this much. It may never seem like it, and I hope you hate me because I deserve hatred. I don’t deserve you and your love.
I know you’ll be a great mother, I just wish I could be a great father. You mean so much to me and this child means so much to me, I wish I could be there. I’m not doing this for me; I’m doing this for you and our child. It’s better this way.
Luxx, I love you. I always will. Please never forget that.
---Benji
Luxx sat down on the floor as she felt her knees get weak and her vision blur. She didn’t understand what was going on, it made no sense. Was he gone? Was he dead? Where was he?
“Luxx,” she turned at the familiar voice that sounded so much like her fiancée’s. “Are you alright?” Joel asked, walking into the bathroom slowly.
Her face was blank and her mind was cluttered with questions and assumptions and painful thoughts. “I…he…” She stumbled over the massive amounts of words that begged for a way out. “I…I…I don’t understand.”
Joel knelt down next to her on the tiled bathroom floor and put his hand on her back. “Luxx, he’s gone.” She gave him a questioning look, still not understanding. “He left last night. He’s not coming back, Luxx. I’m sorry.”
Tears poured down her soft olive skin and fell into her lap. Joel moved his hand along her spine, not feeling the tears and emotion shake her frame like it had after the confrontation with his mother. He watched tears fall from her jaw line one after another, cascading from her eyes to a silent soundtrack.
“Why?” She asked in a meek voice as a tear fell between her lips.
He sat back on his feet and tried to find a reason, a lie. “He just didn’t think he’d be a good father.”
Luxx rolled her eyes and Joel feared she saw through him, saw that the reason was nothing more than an act to cover up what his mother forced his brother to do. She didn’t question it aloud, but he could tell that she didn’t believe it and he didn’t blame her.
She wiped a few tears away from her eyes and kept her mouth shut. She wasn’t sure what to think or what to say. Luxx felt her throat burn and her eyes sting with a chlorine feeling. She was lost in the situation and more confused than she had ever been before. Nothing made sense to her, not even what she always held to be true: Benji’s love for her and her love for Benji.
Luxx turned to look at Joel through her tear stained eyes that blurred her vision. A spark of pain ignited through her body, he looked so much like Benji it hurt. She shook her head, trying to erase the image from her mind. Rubbing tears out of her eyes, she looked back seeing Joel once more. “I want to be alone.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Luxx.”
“I’m fine.”
He raised his eyebrow, questioning her. “I don’t think you are. You’re not. I’m worried about you, Luxx.”
She rubbed her hands over her face and stood up quickly at his last comment, something Benji often told her. He was always worried about her. “Get out.”
“Luxx…”
“Just leave!” She screamed at the top of her lungs. “Go! I just don’t want to see your face anymore! Leave, Joel!” Her voice shattered at the volume she was screaming in.
He looked at hurt, stunned. Luxx hardly ever screamed that loud with such anger in her voice. He nodded, knowing how hurt and lonely she was.
Luxx watched him disappear out of the room. She walked into the closet, which was cluttered with clothes that had yet to be hung up.
Everything on the floor was black and most of it was dirty, but Benji always swore it was clean. She threw herself onto a pile of clothes, taking in his sent and letting her tears fall from her eyes onto the clothes yet again, making them blacker.
“Why?” She screamed into the air.
She was angry, sad, confused, hurt, and full of emotions that were nameless. She wanted to rip him limb from limb and show him all her pain. She wanted to wrap her arms around his and never let him go, tell him that he was going to be a great father, and tell him how much she loved him. She wanted to question him and the world and love itself.
Luxx slid a sweatshirt of Benji’s around her body and curled up in the fetal position on top on his clothes.
“Oh, God, Benji! I love you…why…oh, God!” Luxx felt so alone at that moment, and the pain that was building up with every passing second of his absence made it hard to even breathe. She clutched her stomach, wanting to get all of her insides out and expel her pain.
She felt so alone, and she wanted to die just to make all of her pain go away. She rubbed her stomach, feeling the bump that was beginning to grow larger in her. Her child, their child, wasn’t going to have a father. He’d never get to see their child grow and become something, someone.
She pulled herself from the floor and walked downstairs with tears in her eyes. She sat on the couch and tried to think of what she did to make him leave, because she felt it was all her fault.
She pulled her knees up to her chin and hugged them, longing for someone or something to hug her back.
Luxx hated Benji with a passion, but her love for him outweighed the hatred. She closed her eyes tightly, wanting the world to disappear from her vision. Hatred was easier and felt better than love did, like Benji knew it would, but she still couldn’t abandon all hope of never seeing the man that had made her so happy, had given her so much, and was the father of her child.
Luxx was still so in love with Benji, and she feared she always would despite all the pain and sleepless nights that would lay ahead for her.
[“Well, I'll give you a thousand reasons that tonight you should grant me this one wish. Like the one year of my life that I gave to you and now you put me through hell. You break me up. I should hate you, but I can't replace you in my heart. Why am I so pathetic? I don't get it why you won't return my calls. Can't you look at me once? And please if you got a minute, enjoy this lonely sky with me. It'll swallow us whole if we only let it.” Saves the Day: “Sell My Old Clothes, I’m Off to Heaven”]