Re: Motel 77: Cris & Sam
"I know you're sick. I know you're making yourself sicker. I know whatever I'm doin' isn't enough, but gimme somethin' here. Tell me I'm doin' somethin' right. 'Cause if I'm not, if there's nothin'—if there's nothin', I'll go. You can stay here. Or I'll take you wherever you needta go. If there's nothin', fine. It was all horrible and you're bad for me, and I'm bad for you and there's nothin' for it. Just bad luck.—But, if there's somethin', I need to know it. 'Cause I try, mami, and I try, and all you say is you're ruinin' me, like I don't got no choice in nothin', like whatever's good can't, ever, outweigh the bad, and I don't b'lieve that. I don't like you lookin' at me and believin' what you see, insteada believin' me. Maybe what you see ain't real, but I am. I am real." He took her fingers and he pressed them, hard, to his cheek and jaw, until the skin beneath went white. "I wanna help you, but you never tell me how. You just assume you're failin'. 'I can't fuck him right, like he wants—' when you don't know what I want, you just assume—'therefore, nothin's right. Nothin' ever was. I might as well be killin' him' —That's bullshit, and you know it. You keep throwin' yourself over a cliff, like you'd better do it first, or I will. Like you think I'm tireda you and gonna walk away, 'cause, what? You're fucked up? 'Cause you punched out some gringa who deserved it? Or you throw yourself over and tell me it's for my good, and you don't know what's for my good." Cris pressed her fingers harder to his jaw before releasing them, his expression pained, but bright and earnest. "What's good for me, is to have you here, to be here with you. Maybe I'm messed up, but I like bein' around you. Even now. I'm not sayin' it's not hard or that it doesn't hurt me to see you like this, but—Sam, I wanna be here. Just tell me what I can do, or if I can't do nothin', let me lie with you." He pushed around the bottles when he leaned elbows onto his thighs as he talked, voice grating, wet, but no tears falling yet. "Tell me somethin's worth it here, I'm begging you, 'cause I keep seein' you throw in the towel and say it's for me, and I'm gonna really start to think maybe you just wanted outta the ring in the first place.—You wanna be here, I wanna be here. Okay, let's be here. Tell me what you gotta take. Tell me what you need. Tell me what you want. Just—tell me somethin' and don't say it's nothin'." He wet his lips with his tongue, he pushed at her hair with fluttering fingers. "You say I can't help, but you don't ever fuckin' let me. You peel away before I get the chance or you keep walls up, and what am I s'posed to do with that? Huh? Tell me, 'cause I dunno! Stop keepin' it all IN—stop—stop the lighthouse, huh? Stop thinkin' you're nothin' but somethin' made to fall on people, to kill them, to drown them. I like you, and I'm not wrong, just 'cause you don't see what I see. And it's not bad, just 'cause we both got problems. Is it?"