Garden of Sins

I relax under your lips. I won’t probe any further. I understand. However, from now on, when you’re gone at night, I’ll be wide-awake and waiting, not sleeping peacefully.

The cab stops, which is good because I finally want to be alone with you and not think about the mafia, your problem with Carter, or anything else.

I want you. All of it.

Because with you, it is always extreme. There is no normal with you. Extreme lust, extreme pain, extreme happiness, extreme failures, extreme ecstasy, extreme insecurity, extreme love, extreme hate, extreme joy, and extreme fear.

And I love your extremes, Caden.

You pay the cabbie and we get out. We stand directly in front of my home. Immediately, you take my hand and interlock our fingers before you pull the back of my hand to your lips and kiss it. With you, everything seems a bit different and although I hate it here, I am not uncomfortable because you are here.

All the lights are off except for the flickering TV in the living room. It’s always on, but Dad’s probably asleep.

“Come on,” I say, pulling you gently behind me. Even though it’s always been so hard for me to really show myself to you and confess to you how my life really is, how broken things really are, I now feel the urgent need to be open with you. I want you to know and be aware of everything. I want to share everything with you.

You follow me. And I like it when you do that. I feel so safe with you behind me. We walk through the overgrown grass.

“Careful, the middle step is broken,” I whisper and you lift me over it as if I didn’t weigh anything. I giggle a little but press my lips together because I don’t want to be too loud. You lift the corner of your mouth and your eyes sparkle. I love it when they do that.

We stand at the door and I try to unlock it quietly. I hope my mom isn’t here, but somehow, I also wish she were so you could shoot her.

Did I really just think that? God!

“Used to be,” I say, looking over your shoulder, “the lawn was always mowed in front, our garden fence was white, and I sometimes sat for hours on the porch swing. My mom always had flowers on the porch, but she couldn’t take care of them and they died after two weeks. Then she bought new ones because she is crazy. But she always tried to keep the house beautiful. The front used to be bright white. I remember how often Dad repainted it. We had those cute white curtains on the windows, whereas now you can’t even see through them because they’re so dirty.” You listen to everything and follow my stories with your eyes as if you could imagine it. “Come on!” I whisper and open the door. “People used to come and go all the time here. Neighbors, friends, and family. We had visitors all the time. It was such a lively, noisy place, but you know that from back home, only without the visitors. I smile a little, which you respond to. There is something tortured in your eyes.

As we enter, I discover another pile of dirty dishes in the decaying kitchen on the right. And yesterday morning I just did the dishes.

“My mom used to stand here for hours, always trying out new recipes. It was always spotless and clinically clean because she scrubbed thoroughly three times a week and when Jamie ran around the house with dirty shoes, she always chased him out into the garden with a broom,” I recall wistfully and can literally see it. I can still hear my brother laughing.

“Jamie was your little brother,” you realize. I close my eyes briefly and nod. That’s all I can say right now.

Then I pull you further along and we walk past the living room where the TV is on and a thousand beer cans lay. There is a permanent commercial on and you can see my father deep asleep under a blanket on the couch. “He has been sleeping here for five years. We used to sit together on Sundays and watch shows, but since it happened, there is no such thing anymore. The fireplace is never lit anymore, there are no more family di

We walk towards the stairs where pictures are hanging but not a single one of Jamie because nobody here can stand the sight of him. The frames are dusty, still. “Mom used to love to take pictures just like your mother. But you can imagine when she stopped doing that. Shh...this step here creaks loudly.” We step over it and continue upwards. I take a deep breath before we enter my room and turn on the light. It makes me feel like I’m stripping naked before you, but in a different way. You seem so out of place here, but you don’t seem uncomfortable. Your gaze is constantly on me.

“This is not even a quarter of your room, but I have lived here since I can remember, and I have had the bed since I was six. My dad wanted to buy me a bigger one when I got older, but then our drugstore slowly went bankrupt. I know I told you all differently, but I was simply uncomfortable and embarrassed.”

Now you take my other hand and kiss my wrist. It is somehow so easy for me to tell you everything. I never thought I would. I’m not good at showing what’s really going on inside me.

“You never need to be embarrassed in front of me, Alayna.” I stand on my tiptoes and kiss you. We hold hands. I love to feel your big, strong fingers around mine. I love holding on to you, kissing you, and lately, I also love to bare my soul to you. Instinctively, I know I can trust you in that respect. I trust you.

After we have relaxed, I turn to the carpet, squat down, and pull it aside. I loosen the loose floorboard and remove the box.

“This is where I hide everything that’s important to me, otherwise, Mom will take it away.” You grind your teeth, but you don’t say anything and we sit down on the bed with the box.

I haven’t opened the dusty lid for so long. Jamie handcrafted the box in the first grade from a shoebox and that’s what it looks like. It holds all the photos I could save in it, his favorite Lego toy, and a little teddy bear that he defended with his life after Dad won it for him at the fair.

I open it. There is a barely readable class assignment with a recipe he wanted to prepare for Mom on Mother’s Day. There are also photos of me and my old friends before my life went down the toilet. And pictures of my first and only boyfriend, a friendship bracelet that my then best friend gave me in ninth grade. I’ll show you everything and tell you about it.

You don’t seem amused by the picture of my ex, but you restrain yourself.

Your fingertips run across the back of my hand as I spread the photos out in front of you. I look down and you put your finger on the photos where I’m laughing or frowning, have my arm around Jamie, or he kisses me on the cheek and I roll my eyes. Gently, you glide your fingers over them – almost in awe – and then you tap my chin and force me to lift my eyes.

I gaze into your honest, deep eyes and you whisper, “I love you too, Alayna, and I have never really loved a woman before.”

My heart skips a beat. Suddenly, nothing hurts anymore, as if I was completely healed for a magical ten seconds. All I feel is the blood rushing through my veins, my hot breath escaping my lips, and I have to pull myself together not to cry because I haven’t heard those words in a long time and I haven’t meant so much to anyone for so long. Because I simply ca

We sit in my decaying room with the ceiling light flickering, everything dirty and used, but it seems as if it all fades away because you are sitting here with me — so perfect, so right, no matter where you are. The main thing is that you are by my side.