Heaven

She's wearing her ripped jeans and a black tank top when she opens the door. Her skin is so pale, blank like a canvas. Smiling at me, long black hair falling down her shoulders, her eyes darkened green in the dim light of the corridor.

"Come on in," she says but I know she loves watching me frozen on her doorstep like this, afraid and full of wanting. I walk in as she pours out a glass for the two of us. Alcohol is water to Eden. I didn't drink until I met her but now it's a ritual when I see her – a little game I play with myself hoping that I'll wake up tomorrow and remember nothing from the night before. I don't think I've ever won before.

Eden thinks she's something out of an indie movie, all teenage alcoholism and stick and poke tattoos of these tiny stars freckled all over her back. When I was fifteen, I wanted to be her as much as I didn't want to be me. Now I'm seventeen and I count all twenty-three with my fingertips, trace the constellations I made up in my head until she's asleep and I'm lying there alone.

She's talking about her writing now and I'm listening, staring at her little wrists with the bangles clinking up and down softly as she takes a sip. She is so small. She's writing her story all over again. When I look at her, I can feel the whole weight of me. The best friend character is just too bland, she's ruining the sexual tension between the heroine and the bad boy who's crazy about her. I can feel how heavy my thighs are, how my belly is pressed so tight against my jeans. This time there won't be a best friend, she says, it makes the heroine more mysterious, more beautiful. I can't take my eyes off her collarbone, the angles softened in the dark we are sitting in.

She knows I'm staring. She wants me to say something. Agree that pretty girls don't need anybody. Say that the only way to be noticed is to be beautiful and utterly alone. Accept that my loneliness wouldn't be so repulsive if only I looked like her.

"Yeah, I never really liked the friend either. She sounded insecure."

Her eyes find mine when I pull up my gaze, twinkling at me, knowing she has me absolutely. The way she has everybody. Whatever is in my glass, I drink it all.

"You hungry, Stevie?" The question is a sing-song formality when she gets up to find herself something to nibble on - I am never hungry. Not anymore, I starved the need right out of me. Haven't eaten since last night and I think I can make it till morning. Whenever I see her long thin legs, the hunger dies inside me.

"No, but can I get a refill?" I ask, holding up my glass. She grins, returning with a bottle, so happy to share her vices with me. I watch her eyelashes as she pours again, so long and delicate. Her eyes are always lined with black but against a shimmery bronze today. The colors are dark against her white skin and I don't know if she looks beautiful but I know that she is. The way I know that the sky is blue. I should have known my brother would be like me - helpless.

I still didn't expect it though; I didn't even imagine she'd think of it. That she would look at Josh, as sweet as I am bitter, twice when she caught everyone else's eye. He's not even her type and I know her type: the nineteen year olds lurking around the cinema with their hoods up, eyes staring right through the clothes on her skin. She always makes us walk in front of them, me with my head down, her with her hair flipping over her shoulder. Sometimes we watch the same movie twice.

Could I blame him though? Could I be as angry as I am? Does she love him? I already know he loves her. I knew it the night he came home with his shirt smelling like her shampoo, humming the tune to a song she'd made me listen to near a hundred times.

She doesn't know that I know about them. It's the secret that's singing on the smirk of her lips right now while she eats her low-fat yoghurt as I watch her, so pleased to take something else away from me. I wonder if she knows that she is his first. Of course she knows. That's why she's doing this, feeding on how easy his love comes, how helplessly he trusts her. The way he must kiss her, feeling so lucky when she says she'll write stories about him and her.

This disgust suddenly gives way to jealousy. Envy tastes just like bile. She wrote me out of our story. She never even wrote about us - the way she bites my lip and I tug her hair loose from its tie. How we stumble our way into her bedroom, my entire heart on fire.

She took my brother from me, the only family I had left. And he took her from me, the only friend I had ever found. Her body is a painting. Not a classical one, none of those fat ladies with their grotesque legs and protruding bellies lounging around like they are too engorged to even move. Eden is a stick figure in soaking colour. Sharp angles, perfect leanness. The kind of art I'd cover my mirror with. The kind of art I feverishly memorize with my hands, my lips, my own body. I'm picturing what my hips must have looked like when she pressed me against her last night, how wide and disgusting, and I suddenly remember I don't know what this drink against my lips is and I don't know how many calories are in it.

I can't ask her. She will laugh if I ask. I can't have her laughing at me, even her softest kisses can't soothe the shame of her derision. My body already knows what to do, the bile is rising up my throat. I am so proud that I have taught myself so well.

"I'll be back in a minute," I tell her as I get up quickly, trying my best not to run into her bathroom. I shut the door behind me, my hands finding themselves gripping the sink tightly. Sink or toilet? Toilet or sink? I choose sink because I kind of enjoy the satisfaction of ruining her perfect little bathroom with her beauty products and makeup all lined up. Fuck her, I think as I begin to heave. Fuck her, I think as I clean it all up until the sink is sparkling white as if I had never been here. The mirror is unavoidable, of course. I look at myself and I'd rather think about Josh looking at his reflection in this very spot than look at my own face. Josh was beginning to catch on. In fact, I think he already knew. My little secret, my guilty pleasure. And what pleasure it really was - I felt so clean. Like nothing had passed my lips at all. I felt pristine, porcelain like I wanted to be. My own collarbone was showing now but it wasn't the same. It wasn't like hers. Nothing was like her.

When I open the door and step out, she's standing there with her glass in her hand, staring at me.

"You good?" She asks like she gives a shit. She steps closer when I don't respond, her eyes level on mine. She offers me her glass when she's close enough to snake her other hand around my back. She watches me drink as she pours it down my burning throat, washing away my penance. I drink so hungrily. My hands shake as they find her narrow hips, rubbing her hipbones, memorizing. She holds the glass behind my head as she kisses me. Her breath is always so fucking sweet but mine must smell like vomit and just a little blood. She kisses me like she can't taste it, like she can't taste anything but the alcohol.

I don't know what I want more - her or to be her. When we are close and twisted like this - me intoxicated on her, her drunk on my need - I think it is one and the same.