I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
He is a simple man.
But he is not stupid.
He knows that he’s said the wrong thing. Perhaps he’d known it was the wrong thing even as he was saying it. But he has never known how to be anything but honest, sometimes brutally. She goes quiet, doesn’t even make a sound. He had meant to say it with a kind of softness.
He had not meant that he did not love her. Or even that he would never love her. He’d meant that he would never be able to love her with the tenderness she deserves. He would never be able to love her freely, without inhibition. And it has nothing to do with her and everything to do with him.
He is inherently selfish, if only because he has never had to think about anyone but himself. He has never had to consider the emotional lives of anyone else. He has never had to dwell on matters of the heart – his or anyone else’s, really. He does not know how to take care of a heart, especially one shoved into his hands when he had not known to ask for it.
He nods but does not speak. He has said enough, he knows. There is nothing left to say. Nothing left to do except go along with her instruction. He picks up his pace without further prompting, occasionally breaking into a trot. Her heartbreak curls itself into the hollow cavern of his chest, smarts and pulses in time with his heartbeat.
“Alright,” he concedes. They’ll split up and one of them will find her, he’s certain of it. But he doesn’t say this out loud, sees no reason to. He moves in thick, studious silence, his brow furrowed in concentration.
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
