A Scale of Sapphire

Matt

I was not ok.

I finally thought I was getting a handle on all this. I thought I’d come to terms with the guilt and the anger, and then my fucking dad shows up, and it’s like the floor just dropped out from under me. I was angry. I was furious. I was bubbling with all this hatred I didn’t know what to do with. I knew what I wanted to do, but by this point I’d at least figured out it would only end up hurting me more.

As pissed off as I was though, I still really wanted them(?) to hug me. I wanted them to tell me it was alright. I wanted to let myself forgive them, but I couldn’t figure out how, and every time I opened my mouth, more and more hateful bile came spilling out.

Fuck, I wasn’t ok.

They were gone now. It was just me and Chel and the minotaur who’d excused herself from the room as soon as she realized what was coming. Erica was nice enough, but she had a tendency to bump into things and clog doors. Somehow, I’d started to genuinely enjoy her company, but extending the courtesy to my own father was beyond me.

“Well,” The minotaur in question was currently squeezing her way through the kitchen doorway. “Sounds like that went well.”

“Fuck off, Erica.”

“Fair enough. Read the room, I get it.” She plopped down on the couch, grabbing a book she’d left on the coffee table. It looked almost comically small in her hands, though I’d heard she wasn’t even the tallest person in the village. Somewhere by the forest’s edge, apparently they had a giant. “If you need anything, lemme know. I’m not great with emotional stuff, but I’m always happy to listen.”

“Sure. Thanks…” I tried my best to smile at her, but it swiftly turned into an awkward grimace.

As Erica began to absorb herself in her reading, Chel began approaching me warily. We were both still on edge, and I did kind of shout at her… I was a really shitty friend, huh?

“Sorry Matt.” She was apologizing. Not where I was expecting this to go, but ok. “I probably could have handled things better, but I knew you and Evelyn had to talk, and I knew there was no chance you’d say yes if I told you beforehand. Even still, it was pretty awful of me to just spring this on you, wasn’t it?”

“You don’t have anything to apologize for, Chelsea.” I refused to let her take the blame for this. I’m the one who made things messy. I’m the one who freaked out. This wasn’t on her. “I can’t think of any way you could’ve made things better. I just wish I wasn’t so quick to freak out like that...”

I trailed off at the end, and the room swiftly fell into awkward silence, punctuated by the occasional page turn from Erica. I allowed my thoughts to wander, trying to process everything that’d just happened, and trying my best to suss out how best to proceed.

“So… it’s Evelyn, is it?” I realized that asking questions might be the easiest way to make sense of things, so I figured I’d start simple. “Does that mean..?”

“She’s a woman, yeah.”

“Alright. Good to know.” There was another lengthy pause. This whole situation was feeling progressively more uncomfortable. I had dozens of questions, but I couldn’t figure out how to actually ask any of them. Eventually I just blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “It’s not exactly surprising though, is it? I’m glad she finally figured that out, at least.”

“You knew?”

“Not exactly. I mean, there was always obviously something going on there, but I never really knew what. She was always just- she just never seemed comfortable with being… perceived..?” Erica claimed she wasn’t great with emotional things, but I don’t think I could claim to be much better, could I? At least not with how this conversation was going. “There were just a lot of little things, and a lot of them seem a lot more obvious in hindsight, y’know?”

“So you’re ok with it then?”

“Of course I am.” I felt a little offended that it had ever been in question. “There’s a lot to hate about this whole situation, but that’s not one of them.”

“Do you hate her?”

Yes.

No.

Did it even matter? 

That’s what I was trying to figure out.

I couldn’t even decide if I hated myself.

I didn’t hate Chelsea, that was for sure, and she’d done all of the same horrible shit that I did, so you’d think I’d get a pass as well, but for some reason, I couldn’t find it in myself to think that way. Chelsea was forgivable, I was not. I knew that was bullshit, but that’s the whole point. If my hatred is so irrational, what does it actually mean for me to hate Evelyn? Is it pointless? Is it wrong? If it is wrong, how can I actually stop? I didn’t fucking know.

“I do. I really do. I hate her so much it makes me sick.”

“But you’re happy for her, aren’t you? You’re glad she figured herself out. There’s more to it than that, right?”

Unfortunately, she was right.

“I don’t think I should hate her, but I don’t know how to stop. Even as awful and consuming as the hate I feel towards her is, I hate that I feel that way even more. I just don’t know what to do about it…”

“I could pitch in, if ya want.” Erica had looked up from her book and was glancing between the two of us. I guess she’d been listening in. “Kinda hard to read when everyone’s bein’ all angsty and stuff around me.”

“What kind of ‘pitching in’ are we talking about, Erica?”

“The advice kind.”

“Then sure, I guess.” I gave her a nod.

“From the sound of it, the only memories you have of Evelyn, and especially the Evelyn we have now, are the yelling that just happened and the trauma of when she first changed. If you really want to try and move past how you currently feel towards her, maybe just hanging out with her could make a difference.”

That sounded surprisingly simple, and it felt like it might actually make some kind of meaningful impact. I’m beginning to think Erica wasn’t being entirely honest about her own emotional intelligence.