The Play

“But you can’t do it for me,” she says.

But I would be doing it for her. I’d do anything for her, anything at all.

“I don’t want to be like this anymore,” I admit, voice choked with my pain. “I don’t want to be the man you hate, only the man you love.”

She sighs heavily and I can feel how heavy her heart is. I hate that I’ve done this to her, my beautiful, happy girl. “I just don’t know…” she trails off. “This relationship is just so new and…shouldn’t it be easier than this?”

I swallow hard. I have no answer. Because even though loving her scares me, not loving her scares me even more. How can love be easier? How can it not be anything but absolutely terrifying?

“Loving you is what’s easy,” I tell her after a beat. “That’s the only thing I know.”

She glances down at me, her brow softening, even though I can see the battle behind her eyes. I haven’t won her back yet, not fully.

“I have to go to the washroom,” she whispers to me and I let go of her legs, getting to my feet. She shoots me a small smile as I’m back to looming over her and leaves.

I pull out the chair and sit down, head in my hands, waiting in anticipation for some clear sign that everything is going to be okay. But there’s never a sign for that, is there?

All I know is that that things have to change. And as much as it hurts, as scary as it is, I will make the changes. I’ll face everything head on, I’ll work through, anything just as long as she’ll stay with me. The thought of her leaving is this big black hole in my chest, promising nothing but emptiness.

Her phone on the table rings, startling me, and I glance at it. She doesn’t get many phone calls and the number says Toshio, her brother. Normally I would just let it ring but in her emotional state, I figure she may need to talk to him. Who knows, maybe she’d already called him, wanting to come home.

I answer it. “Hello, Lachlan speaking.”

There’s a pause. Then, “Lachlan. Is Kayla there?”

Something about his voice puts me on edge. “She’s in the bathroom, should be out any minute. Do you mind holding?”

“Sure,” he says so softly that it’s almost an afterthought.

I get up and take the phone over to the bathroom, knocking on the door.

“Kayla?” I ask and she opens it, stepping out into the hall. I show her the phone. “It’s your brother. Toshio.”

She frowns. “Okay, thanks.” She puts the phone to her ear, turning away from me slightly. She clears her throat. “Hey Toshio.” A long pause. “Um, no,” she says to something and her voice warbles slightly. She looks at me but she’s not really seeing me. Her eyes are slowly growing wild.

She gasps loudly, mouth dropping open. “What?! When did…” Her hand flies to her chest and I’m right next to her, peering at her, trying to figure out what’s happening. Her lip trembles and she starts to shake. “No. Oh, no. No. Oh my god,” she whimpers. Her eyes pinch shut and I put my hand at her waist to support her. Something absolutely terrible has happened, far more terrible than what happened last night.

Now she’s nodding, staring ahead with pained, glassy eyes, trying to breathe. “Okay,” she says quickly. “Okay, I’ll be there. I’m coming. Just…” she pushes her fist against her forehead and yells, “Oh god. Oh god.”

The phone drops out of her hands, skittering across the floor.

I quickly bend down to pick it up, trying to hand it back to her but the call has already ended. She turning away from me, fingers pressed over her eyes, her mouth open and I have to pull her back by the arm before she walks into a wall.

“What happened?’ I ask gravely, prying her fingers from her eyes. “Kayla?”

She stares at me in a new kind of horror. Her lips open and close. Eventually she says, “My mother. She had a stroke, they think. They don’t know. Oh god. They…they found her. Toshio found her a few hours ago in the house and…and…” She swallows loudly, licking her lips. “She’s in a coma. The doctors had to put her in a coma to protect her brain. Oh god,” she gasps and nearly falls over. I quickly wrap my arms around her, holding her up. She starts shaking in my arms. “I have to go home. I have to go home right now. I never should have left her. I never should have left her.”

“It’s not your fault,” I try and tell her but I know my words fall on deaf ears. My good friend guilt has a way of blocking everything else out.

“I have to go home,” she repeats, her face frozen in this state of blank fright. “I have to get on the next plane out of here.”

I bury the crushing fear deep inside. “Of course,” I tell her. “Let me handle that okay. Just go and pack. We’ll get you back to your mother. Everything is going to be fine, okay love? Everything is going to be fine.”

She nods and turns in a daze, heading over to the bedroom.

I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. If her mother doesn’t pull out of this, Kayla will be beyond devastated. More than that, she’ll be an orphan, just as I was. And though she grew up with two loving parents, when I only had one and for a short time, I know what it’s like to feel utterly alone in this world.

This is going to destroy her.

I lean against the wall, trying to breathe. Our relationship is hanging on by a thread, I’m probably the person she trusts the least at the moment and now she has to go back home. I can’t even go with her because of rugby, even if she wanted me there.

Still, I have to make sure. I could try.

I head to the bedroom to see her shoving everything in her suitcase, a blank expression on her face.

“Do you want me to go with you?” I ask her.

She barely looks at me. “You can’t go. You have rugby.”

“I know I do but this is important.”

She shakes her head, grabbing a pair of jeans out of the laundry basket. It’s all happening so soon. She’s leaving.

It would be completely selfish to fear that she might not ever come back.

“You stay here,” she says. “This is…I have to go be with my brothers. We have to figure out what to do.”

“I know,” I say softly. “But I could make something work. If you needed me, you know. For support.” The truth is, I probably couldn’t make anything work. Not right now, before our first game. But if she needed me to be there, if she wanted me there, I would do whatever I could.

“You stay here,” she says again.

I nod. “Okay. I just wanted to make sure.”

I go to my computer and quickly book her a ticket on the next flight out of Edinburgh. There’s one that leaves tonight, stopping over in Newark and then LA, but at least she’d get to leave as soon as possible.

And just like that, both our worlds completely change for the second time today. We’re both silent and reeling on the drive over to the airport, with Lionel and Miss Emily in the back seat to keep me company on what I know will be a very lonely drive back home.

Everything is happening so fast, my heart and mind can barely catch up. One minute I’m begging her to stay, to give me a second chance. The next minute she’s leaving and it’s out of our hands. She’s leaving and what we are as a couple, who are to each other, is being left completely unresolved. But that’s the least of our problems right now and right now I don’t think I deserve to dwell on anything that remotely resembles myself.

It’s all about Kayla. And that’s where my heart breaks all over again. Because I know how much she loves her mom, how much responsibility she feels for her. I just want to be with her, by her side through all of this. I want to be the rock she so desperately needs. I want to be the hand she reaches for at night, the chest that she cries into.

And skip, skip, skip goes time.

I’m getting whiplash.

We’re now at the security gate and she’s already said a teary goodbye to Lionel and Emily in the car, and she’s all checked in and now we’re standing a few feet apart and the short distance between us feels a continent wide already.