I know somebody and they cry for you
They lie awake at night and dream of you
I bet you never even know they do but
Somebody's cryin'
Things had started out between us so differently from how they ended up. Lou had made it clear she wanted a relationship… wanted to consummate it … and had been the one complaining about the slow pace we were on, for the first few months we’d known each other. It had been me who wanted to go slowly, wanted to be sure we were doing the right thing, and at first that upset her.
But after that night in Redfern, things slowly but surely changed. After that, Lou was the one putting the brakes on. When I suggested the next logical step, marriage, she refused to even discuss it. Over and over, when I tried talking about our future, she changed the subject or made a joke of it. Were her feelings for me even real if she wouldn’t take me seriously, wouldn’t make a real commitment?
Before, she worried openly about me if I was late on a run or in trouble, so much so that it raised more than a few eyebrows, since no one else knew Lou was a girl. She was so sick with worry sometimes she almost gave away her disguise and jeopardized the job that later, seemed to be all she cared about.
I know somebody and they called your name
A million times and still you never came
They go on lovin' you just the same I know that
Somebody's tryin'
In spite of knowing how it feels when someone you love is in danger, she couldn’t or wouldn’t understand my worries about her. Instead, they angered her, and she even told me once coldly, “I got a job to do, Kid, and I can’t have you getting in my way.”
When I got angry in return at her coldness then, she softened, but she was still more concerned with me hiding my feelings so she wouldn’t have a problem at work, than with how I felt.
Worse, her actions grew more and more reckless, more foolhardy, as if she wanted to prove something to the whole world, but especially me, not just do her job. If I dared to worry or give advice, she’d become enraged - - “stop trying to be my mama and stick to being my man,” she snapped once. Another time I made the mistake, desperately trying to hold on to her, of trying to move her into Rachel’s house. She flew into a rage, and when I tried to make amends, she turned a cold shoulder.
But my fears were real, and her reaction to those fears made me question all the more whether she really cared or just was stuck in a mistake she’d made, and was trying to pick enough fights to get rid of me. Many nights I cried inside, lying awake at night, wondering why she was pulling away, what had changed, and why it had. Trying to hold onto her, desperately, only seemed to drive her farther away.
All I know is that it was too painful to be with her if she didn’t see a future together, if she didn’t care as much as I do.
So please
Return the love you took from me
Or please
Let me know if it can’t be me
Then, things got worse. Jimmy was always taking her side, always in the way. When I saw her put her arms around Jimmy, it felt like the whole world was crashing in. Was that it? Did she wish she had waited, wish she could be with Jimmy instead? Would she admit it if that were the case?
For that matter, was anything she’d told me the truth? Did I ever really know her? As much as I loved her, I had creeping doubts … in so many ways, she was almost a walking lie, or at best such a mass of secrets that I couldn't tell where the secrets end and she begins. There was so much about her I didn't know. I found out only when we slept together the first time, that she had been with someone else before me - - she still hadn’t told me who or when, and I couldn’t ask her. There were so many secrets, so many lies; from smaller ones about her father and her night out with Tyler DeWitt, all the way up to the biggest one, the constant, overriding deception that affected our whole life together -- her male disguise, nothing but a false front to the world about everything she is, that we both had to keep up at all times. And after a while, it started feeling like she'd put up that false front not just to the rest of the world, but to anyone who tried to get close, including me.
I know when somebody's lyin'
I know when somebody's lyin'
I know that somebody's lyin'
I know that somebody's lyin'
I meant it when I told Rachel we couldn’t keep going on this way. And it wasn't just because I had been brought up thinking what we were doing wasn't proper. It was more because I won’t settle for somebody just tolerating me, who doesn't love me like I love her. And who isn’t ready to come out of the shadows and live in the open with me, have a real life together. When she told me she “wasn’t ready” , I knew that was her way of giving a sign, she doesn’t love me enough. There is nothing else I could do. And it was time to walk away, end it before we wound up hating each other.
Lou cried when I told her we had to go back to the way things were. Those tears she shed were different from mine, though … the tears I cried alone, silently, night after night after I lost her, while she slept seemingly undisturbed above me. Her brief tears in the barn after I proposed were just tears of remorse, regret, pity… not heartbreak. Otherwise she would have given some sign, some hope, some promise that in the future, we would be together. That we could work things through. Since she let me walk away, I knew that Lou didn’t want me any more.
Give me a sign and let me know we're through
If you don’t love me like I love you
But if you cry at night the way I do
I'll know that somebody's lyin'
Kid can't know how much it killed me to see him walk away, and even worse, move on to someone else so quickly. He thinks that I said no because I don’t really love him, but that isn't true at all. I’ve just lived with so many secrets buried so deep, for so long, I don’t even know how to let them out now. I couldn't promise him my future, when I still haven’t faced my demons and secrets from my past. I can't even be sure - would he even want me if he knew the real me, scars and all? And how can I let him in, let him see my ghosts, when I am still afraid to face them myself? So I cry inside every night, and add those tears to all my other secret pain.
Somebody’s Cryin’, by Chris Isaak, from the 1995 album “Forever Blue”.
Thanks to my beta Shannon for her encouragement on this songfic answer to her wonderful “Look Away” songfic.