Creeps, Anonymous

Chapter 17 - Body Hurt

You didn't so much describe Body Hurt as much as you simply felt it. It was a sluggish ache that came with being depressed. An icy, hard lump in the gut that radiated outwards, settling lifeless weight into the arms and legs.

The worst part of Body Hurt was that it was hard to numb. Sometimes there wasn't a drink or a drug strong enough to knock the sense back into you. Sometimes you just had to lay down in bed and wait it out.

Olivia felt Sammy's arm shake her shoulder gently to wake her. She'd been up for a while now, staring at the light change through the pinholes in her blanket.

"Hey Liv, you have work today?" Sammy asked.

Olivia looked down at her missed calls and swiped them away. She sat up, choosing not to take Sammy's reaction to her swollen red face to heart. She knew she looked like shit.

"I'm off," she lied, "What's up?"

Sammy gave her a concerned look, taking all of her in with her round, dark eyes. She was graceful enough not to verbalize anything she saw, though. "D'you think you could drive me to work?"

Olivia checked the date on her phone, scowling, "Your boss is making you come into the comic shop on New Year's Day?"

"It's a comic sale day, he's opening up early while kids are home for the holidays," Sammy shrugged, fixing her bangs in the mirror on her dresser.

"Devious," Olivia snorted, and tossed the covers off of her. "Meet me outside by the car, I'm gonna throw on sweats."

Sammy nodded, and disappeared downstairs, leaving Olivia in the quiet attic alone. She fought back the oncoming nausea of her hangover, but the body hurt strangely kept her in check. If she could count on at least one constant, it was that she could count on feeling like shit.

Jess had called her multiple times since early morning, along with a few texts, but she didn't have the heart to open them at this point. Work was also going to have to do without her, mostly because she wasn't in a state to be palatable to most people.

She splashed water on her face and threw her hair up into a bun, swept away neatly enough to not draw any attention to her state of her. A quick, perfunctory brush of her teeth helped wipe the taste of bile from her mouth, but the body hurt still remained. A quick zip of a hoodie to shield her from the January cold. A glance in the mirror made her stomach drop.

She'd grabbed Dima's sweatshirt. The one she'd comically kept forgetting to return. Olivia swapped out the hoodie and threw Dima's under her bed, out of sight, trying not to think about last night, Dima in the bathroom with her, the yelling and the judgemental glances. Her mind kept running the moment back again and again.

Sammy waited out front, idly breaking up a bit of ice on the sidewalk with her boot.

"You ready to go?" Olivia asked, more for herself, than for Sammy. She prayed that her roiling stomach would behave on the drive over.

Sammy nodded and climbed into Chaka with her, buckling her seatbelt as the station wagon lumbered slowly out of the driveway.

On the road, Olivia was able to slide into traffic and jump on the freeway without too much trouble this early on New Year's Day. The streets were mostly dead, with most people still at home sleeping off all of last night's merrymaking. A sheer sheen of frost had covered everything while they slept, like a fine slip of lace.

Her mind traveled back to last night, a dull anger forming in her when she thought back to all the underhanded ways Dima had tried to seek attention from her. The comments, his foot touching hers under the table. The dull anger melted into a gnawing shame. She'd let him treat her like this. This entire time. Despite the warnings, and the disquiet inside herself when she leaned into him for comfort. The comfort was always an empty one. One that left her feeling scooped out, and used.