Harrison swallowed, the motion seemingly painful to him. Maybe he hurt as much as she did.
"I can deal with your illness. I can deal with the days of hopelessness and sadness and anger. I can deal with it all, if I know you won't shut me out. I know you want to be with me too. I see it in your eyes." Beth clasped her hands together, her eyes telling him to believe her. To have faith-if not in him, then in her. "You're allowed to be happy."
Shards of pain, like sharp daggers of glass, filled his eyes. Cut the light from them. Deadened them. But he didn't say anything. Harrison looked at her, and said nothing.
Words spewed forth. Words she hadn't been aware she thought, until they were leaving her mouth. "You're not the only one in the world with HIV, you know? And it could stay HIV. You don't even know that it will progress to AIDS. And you're just out here, pretending not to exist, and for what? So people talk, and people look at you funny, and people write stupid articles about you. People talk about everyone! People talk about me getting my hair done! People talk about everything. So what?" She threw her arms up over her head.
"You could be doing something good with your knowledge of this disease, and instead you're doing nothing. You're a public figure. People listen to public figures. You could be helping people who are struggling to understand what's going on with their bodies, their lives, their futures. Suicidal people, angry people, depressed people."
She stood in the driveway, a small figure with a loud voice, and Beth forgot about Harrison's feelings, and his anger. She forgot about everything except what she needed to say, and he needed to hear. He looked back, a tall, voiceless figure made of granite. He didn't try to talk, or move, or look away.
"You could be talking to kids, explaining how important it is to use caution, and condoms, and how even when you think you know someone, you still need to be smart about things. Explain to them the danger of needles, and drugs, and how one seemingly unimportant moment can be life-changing. What about the kids born with it? The ones who are even less blameless than you? They need someone to look up to, someone who understands what they're going through."
Beth sucked in a ragged breath, her body shaking with emotion. "Who are you helping right now? No one. You say it doesn't bother you, and I know it does. You say you want this isolated life, and I know you don't. You're scared, but you don't have to be. Do something about it."
"You don't," he began in a voice that shook. "Get to tell me how to feel." His eyes were cold, filled with deadly resentment. "You have no idea, none, what I'm going through, or how I feel, or what I'm thinking." Harrison's voice grew, lashed out in quiet destruction.
"Then tell me," she beseeched, wrapping her arms around herself in a desperate attempt to get warmer, to not feel quite as lonely as she did right now.
His jaw hardened.
Harrison drove her to create, to be something better. And what did he do? He kept himself in a prison of his own making, cut off from a million beautiful moments. It didn't have to be this way. It could be different. Not perfect, but who really needed perfection? She didn't want perfection; she wanted Harrison. That was all. That was it. A simple request with all kinds of ramifications. The unfairness of it stung her eyes with the promise of tears and Beth looked away from his form, the sight of him painful to her.
"You gave up," Beth choked out. "You said you didn't, but you did."
His reaction was instantaneous, and explosive.
"I didn't give up," he roared, flinging his arms in the air.
Harrison cursed as he watched her, as she felt the color leave her face. Snarling, he tugged the stocking cap from his head and flung it across the snow. Harrison's chest heaved and his face twisted with fury as his control snapped.
"I didn't give up, Beth. The world gave up on me. Me." He slammed a hand to his heart. "What was I supposed to do after that? Huh? What?"
Beth blinked, all of her crumpling inward under the haze of his pain, and rage, and injustice.
"They judged, and they ridiculed, and they made me feel like a piece of shit." Harrison turned and stalked away, whipping around to face her. His eyes were lightning, and his face was the storm. "I didn't give up. I didn't choose this. All right? I just-I couldn't stand it anymore. I couldn't be around my friends, knowing they couldn't understand. I couldn't be around my family, seeing the fucking sadness in their eyes, every day, like I was already dead."
Harrison took a shuddering inhalation and looked at the ground. Bleak and quiet, he said, "They put me in the ground before they ever knew if it would come to that."
Beth took a breath, and her heart rejected the motion, squeezing, squeezing. Until she couldn't breathe anymore, and her chest ached, and she feared it would never stop aching. She didn't understand. He was right. Beth didn't know what he went through, what he was still going through.
She couldn't imagine having everything figured out, and then being told there were no more certainties. She placed a hand on her heart and pressed down, trying to alleviate the pain it throbbed for Harrison. And then she stopped, her hand falling away. It was okay for it to hurt. It should hurt. Harrison needed it to hurt for him.
Cracks lined his face, heartache oozing out of them. Harrison stood like he was being attacked on all sides, outwardly, inwardly, his body curved in around itself. He should never stand in such a way, never feel so beat down for being who he was. "I thought I'd make it easier on everyone and just be alone."
"But you're not alone," she whispered in a wobbly voice. "I'm here. You have me."
Harrison stared at the ground, looking up with eyes brightened by tears to ask, "What should I do then? Since you seem to have all the right answers. What do I do?"
Beth shook her head. "I don't have the right answers. There are no right answers. But I have hope, and you don't even allow yourself to have that."
"And you? What are you going to do, Beth?" He took a step closer, snow crunching beneath his boots.
"What do you mean?" Her throat burned from all the words that earlier catapulted from it, and in the absence of anger, came apprehension of the unknown. Where would she and Harrison go from here?
Harrison's eyes took on the sun, captured it inside the irises, and annihilated it. His expression mocked, demanded. "All these things you tell me I should be doing, you see yourself standing by my side as I do them, right? You, with your big heart, and your big dreams-what are you going to do? Live in the castle with the moat full of alligators with me?"
"Are you telling me I can't?"
"I'm telling you it would be reckless, but no, I'm not telling you, you can't."
She said the words on an exhale. "You make me want to be reckless. You make me want to be everything I never knew I could be."
His jaw shifted forward, and his eyes took on their own life. Shadows and light whispered through them. Happiness, fear, shock, doubt. His forehead wrinkled, and smoothed. Harrison's expression went so blank she swore she imagined it ever holding any kind of emotion.
"One day at a time, Harrison," Beth told him shakily. "Each one a chance to make it brilliant. That's the only goal either of us should be thinking about."
He blinked, a flash of sorrow hit his eyes, and then it was gone. "I'm going for a walk. I need to think. I can't think when I'm near you."
She watched him swoop down to retrieve his hat, slap the snow from it before slamming it on his head, and then he strode away. She turned to look at the road that angled down. Beth took a deep breath, feeling her chest expand. She let it out. The more times she did that, the calmer she became. Minutes passed, and she let her mind wander, go as unpainted as a bare wall, and it helped. The cold didn't touch her; she was an inferno of conviction.
Beth walked up the short incline to the Blazer, took back the notepad and pen, and followed the trail of Harrison's footsteps. She thought she knew him. Partly, she was right. Mostly, she was wrong. Beth didn't have a clue how Harrison really felt, but she didn't have to, to know she cared.
Finding a spot far enough away where she could observe him, but also wouldn't disrupt Harrison from his thoughts, Beth sat on the winter ground and set her notepad on her knees. The snow seeped through the bottom of her jeans, a shockwave of cold that got her brain working. Beth's eyes bored into the figure in the distance.
Suddenly Beth felt unworthy to try to put all he was into words. She dropped her gaze to the pen in her hand. She wasn't talented enough, smart enough, she didn't know enough. Harrison couldn't be explained in a book. She chewed on the inside of her lower lip as she thought. Simplify your goal. Show the world how you see him. That she could do. And maybe it wasn't enough, and maybe it would be found lacking, but she would do her best. Beth would pen Harrison in thoughts and feelings and color and life.