tahariel | The Mourning Tree Extract (Reply)

“I won’t do that to myself again, Claire. I can’t.”
She laughed, short and without humour, shaking her head so that her curls bounced and shone in the lamplight. “It’s always the same with you, isn’t it, Tobias? It’s always too much to ask you to be open with me. Heaven forbid I get in the way of your incestuous relationship with your sister!”
My breath caught in my throat and I stood up, mouth moving as though to say something but I couldn’t think of anything to say, and so I grabbed our empty glasses from the coffee table and took them into the kitchen, turning on the tap and running water all over them inside and out. My reflection was in the window, pale and blurred. “I need to go back to the university. I think I forgot something.”
I could hear her get up behind me, and her knuckles cracked as they clenched into fists. “This is exactly what I’m talking about, you never talk to me, you always pretend that we’re not fighting and talk about something else and you never look at me!”
“It’s dark out, will you be okay getting home?”
“This is exactly why I broke up with you, Tobias!”
“I thought I was wrong,” I said, and put the glasses down carefully on the draining board with a clink, knocking together like drunks holding one another up. “About love, I mean. About love being the brain’s stupid way of explaining hormones and pheromones and not wanting to be alone.” I dried my hands slowly on the towel I kept hanging over the cupboard door below the sink, the cotton rough against the scrapes on my palms. It hurt. “I thought I was in love with you.”
“Tobias – ”
“It’s alright, I’m not,” I said, and there was silence. “I was right the first time.”
She let herself out.

I woke up and John was touching my hair very softly from the sofa behind me, and I couldn’t remember how he had got there.
“It was never enough that I loved her,” I said in a dry, cracked voice, and his hand stilled. “Why would you ever tell someone that they could hurt you?”
“Do you still love her?” he asked, quiet against the rushing of traffic outside the window.
“Love doesn’t exist,” I said, and he said nothing at all.