Nessa slept soundly for the first time in weeks that night. He didn't have a dream, for his tired mind was too exhausted to produce one. But that didn't matter. It was the reprieve from all of his stress and worries and memories that kept him at peace throughout the entire night.
There was a rustling of wind at the back of her mind. It carried a million different thoughts in its breeze, each one screaming into her ears so loud that she was sure that she might go deaf.
Keely had been having a lot of bad days recently. It wasn't fair of her, she knew that. All of her friends seemed to be going through so much, and what did she have to complain about? Her problems were nothing compared to theirs.
But she couldn't seem to stop the thoughts. The ones that she usually quieted through popping pills and smoking weed. Maybe even some acid. She really wanted a tab right then.
She thought of Emi, and she wondered what she could have done to fix things. All along she thought that she was the only one with those doubts and concerns. Then it turned out that Emi had been even more insecure than she was, absolutely horrified of getting her own heart broken again. Keely had just wished that Emi would have talked to her instead of acting so irrationally. Maybe they would have been just fine in the end.
Keely loved her. She couldn't stop loving her no matter how hard she tried. That night she had drank herself to sleep, laying on her mattress entirely naked as she sobbed into the vodka bottle. Emi loved her too, she couldn't stop herself from truly believing that. But Emi had been too weak. Keely wished that she would have just admitted that everything she did was a facade from the very start.
Deep down, Keely always knew that Emi was unstable. She knew that things were never as flawless as they outwardly seemed. However, she hadn't wanted it to be true. Keely was so fixated on her own problems and depression, that she couldn't bear to indulge upon the fact that Emi wasn't any better off than she was.
And so she sat on the couch in her trailer, staring blankly at the wall. To others, she seemed to simply be dozing off or spacing out. In reality, she was drowning in her mind. She really wanted that weed she had stashed in one of her dresses. More than that, she wanted the acid that her parents hid beneath their bed.
On shaking limbs, she forced herself to stand. She made a beeline for her bedroom, rummaging through her clothing rack fervently. The second that her stash was in her hands, she went still once more.
She shouldn't smoke it. She knew that she shouldn't give in to the desire. There wasn't anything inherently wrong with weed, she knew that. But it was never a good thing to become reliant on that feeling of being numb. Everything was just a little bit more tolerable when she was high. She wanted to know what it felt like to be happy without the high, but she didn't seem to have that option.
Emi had given blissful temporary happiness to her. But looking back on it, Keely wondered how much of it was real. Sure, they loved one another, but love didn't solve the true problem. It was something at Keely's very core that was off-kilter and wrong. And if Emi couldn't fix that, then she supposed that getting high wouldn't either.
A voice in the back of her mind told her that all she needed was one more fix. If she just got high one more time, she could use that short-lived euphoria to make it through the day. Just long enough for her to collect her thoughts and figure out where to go from there. Keely wanted to believe in that sugar-coated lie. After all, it tasted sweet when she swallowed it.
However, it wasn't true. Despite all of her built up reliance on drugs, she knew that they were never going to solve all of her problems. If she smoked right then, all she would end up doing was putting everything off another day. Then a day after that as well. And the cycle would never end.
Her hands shook and her head hurt. She wanted to take something so badly that her stomach began to church as though it would forever be unsettled without it. Her eyes began to water, and with a start, she realized that she had begun to cry.
Coercing her surprisingly weak limbs to comply, Keely stood on wobbling legs. They had never felt heavier than they did in that moment — as though there were weights tied to both of her ankles. The bathroom was lit only by the dimness of the afternoon light seeping in through the white-stained window, and she didn't bother with the light switch.
She stood above the toilet with a perturbation in her mind that made it almost impossible for her fingertips to follow suit with what she had intended from the very start. Keely thought that she might throw up, because even her stomach was physically ill by the idea of going through with what she was planning.
Despite all of her pain and suffering and reliance, Keely opened up the bag and dumped its contents into the toilet.
There was a moment of pure panic that followed. Her heart seemed to stop entirely as she tried to comprehend what she just did. For a second she even considered reaching in and trying to pull it out. She didn't do that, because she had already gone too far. Instead, she flushed it. Her fingertips burned at the touch.
Sitting on the floor, she sobbed hysterically into her knees.
Keely hated herself for going through with it. She needed the damn drugs, she couldn't live without them. And yet, she was still alive. The world didn't fully end.
It seemed that hours went by before she dared to move again. With quivering fingers, she plucked her phone out of her pocket.
During her past few days of drinking until she vomited and then collapsing onto her floor mattress, she had done some research between her vodka-induced daze. It was fleeting and temporary, and she wasn't sure how much of the data she could even remember. But she did recall one thing, and that was enough.
So she typed through blurred vision as she tried to find a specific contact and then formulate a coherent text message. In her research, she found a crisis hotline that would help work her through a breakdown if needed. She saved the information, and then hoped that she would never need to use it. In that moment, it was mandatory that she gave it a shot. Otherwise, she wasn't sure that she was going to make it through to the other side.
The car-ride home was filled with slimy silence. Emi couldn't think of any other adjective to describe it. The silence was simply slimy in every aspect of the word — mostly repulsive and largely sycophantic. That was the kind of energy that her mother had recently taken a liken to. It reminded Emi of her father. That was a synonym for: she loathed it more than she loathed God.
To add fuel to her annoyance, her mother also made every excuse under the sun so that she could be the one to drive Emi to and from the therapist. Emi had been seeing Dr. Wallow for a very long time. He was a complete and total douchebag. She did not like him one bit. He agreed wholeheartedly with her mother and never with her. She stopped telling him her problems an eternity ago. Instead, she just made fun of him. He was too stupid to even realize most of the time. The best sessions were the ones where he did notice, because he would have a ridiculous twist in his brow and blotchy red tint to his skin.
"You'll have to skin me alive before I go there again." She told her mother.
She sighed in response, already used to Emi's empty threats of destruction. "Don't be dramatic."
"I'm serious this time, Mum. I'm not going back there." On that particular day, Dr. Wallow had insisted that Emi tell him about Keely. She refused, and he blamed her for all of her problems. She truly loathed him, and was blown away by the fact that he still had a license.
"Well what if—"
"And you wonder why I don't tell you anything." Emi frustratingly threw up her hands, at a complete and utter loss as to what to do anymore. Her mother never listened, so what was even the point in talking to her in the first place? Emi's ability to handle her was reaching a sharp point. She was going to stab her with said sharp point if she kept pissing her off.
"Look, I'm trying my best here. But you don't tell me anything in the first place, so how am I supposed to help you?" She babbled on. "I wouldn't know what happens at therapy since I'm not there, so you should let me know what the problem is."
"The problem is that you forced me to move to an entirely new country and live with you when I could have just lived with an aunt or uncle instead. I'd rather be in fucking Scotland than be this miserable in this stupid fucking city." Emi told her with the purest form of rebellion in her eyes and on her tongue. She often told her mother exactly how she felt, and yet she never even seemed to realize the honesty in her tone.
A wholeheartedly embarrassing urge welled up in her throat. Emi hadn't cried in front of her mother since she was just a kid. But the truth was that she wasn't doing well at all, and she wanted nothing more than to curl up into a ball and sob some more than she already had. Never before did she think that love could hurt as much as it did right then. When Xavian hurt her, she cried for hours. However, knowing that she hurt Keely the way that she had was a far more excruciating pain. Apart of her couldn't even bear it.
When they exchanged the conversation after what Emi had done, she was relieved. It proved that everything happened for a reason, and that in the long run things would be better rather than worse. But for the time being, it was impossible to figure out what exactly was the best method for moving forward. Emi knew that Keely needed her distance, and she also knew that it was entirely possible that they would never be together again. However, she didn't know that for sure, therefore she refused to accept it as reality.
"Would you rather have stayed with your pathetic father?" Her mother was growing blatantly angry.
"It is either him or my pathetic mother." And with those words, Emi found the door handle and pushed it open. Her mother instantly gasped, screaming at her to close the door while they were driving. Emi did no such thing, preparing to open it even more.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" She screamed, slowing the car down with the hopes of pulling the door closed herself. Instead, it just resulted in Emi unbuckling her seatbelt and making a run for it. Her footing was nearly lost at first as the car still had some momentum, but she regained it and ignored the honking coming from the cars behind them.
She ran down the sidewalk and into a random alleyway, hoping that her mother wouldn't have known where she went. It smelt of garbage and piss, which only made her realize even more how awful it was that she was forced to live there opposed to the Scottish countryside. Nothing in the world would ever make her love her father, but she did miss the rolling green hills and speckles of wooly sheep.
If she had stayed there instead, then she wouldn't have ever met Kiwi. If they never met, then he might not have come out so soon or cut his hair or had help burning his dresses. And that fact caused Emi to frown, because she loved Kiwi like a brother and it was selfish to want to take all of that back.
But if she hadn't met Kiwi, then she never would have met Xavian or Keely. She wouldn't have fallen in love the way she had, and she wouldn't have hurt another person in such a horrific way. Maybe Keely would have lived a much better life and fallen in love with a far more honorable woman.
Crouching in the alleyway without touching anything, Emi hung her head and silently cried.
Plenty of time passed as she did so. It could have been hours, or maybe only a few minutes. Emi had no way of knowing because of how oblivious she was to anything other than her own self-misery.
But the spell was broken when she saw something change in her blurred range of vision. She quickly lifted her gaze and rubbed at her eyes vigorously. A girl stood in front of her.
"Hey."
It was that beautiful fucking voice that Emi would seemingly never grow tired of hearing. And there was that perfect face that she wanted to never stop studying. Keely's skin was swollen and stained red, as though she had been crying recently as well. Emi quickly stood straight and tried her best to appear more calm than she actually was. "Hey."
"Did something happen at therapy?" Keely knew Emi's schedule better than she knew her own — which was mostly a product of Keely not even having a schedule in the first place.
She was going to tell her no, but then she stopped herself. Emi needed to learn honesty, and it was better to try being honest to the person she loved rather than the people that she didn't. "Sort of. I'm just sick of that prick."
"He's such a douchebag, I don't know what your mom sees in him." Keely nodded, her voice shaking slightly. She wore one of her usual pink dresses, and her tasseled purse was slung over her shoulder.
"Where are you headed?" Emi asked, because she wasn't sure what else to do.
Keely dropped her gaze to the ground for a few seconds, shame casting its ugly shadow over her serene face. Then she swallowed it down and spoke quietly. "I'm going to an alcoholics anonymous meeting."
Taking a moment to process what she said, Emi stared at her. She knew about Keely's tendencies to get addicted to things easily better than anyone else in the world. And she was beyond proud of her for actually trying to do something to help herself. It occurred to her that she was the one who really needed to try to get help as well, because it wasn't fair that she was putting all of the weight onto Keely instead.
"Really? I'm proud of you, bonny." Emi smiled softly, and she knew that it was her first real smile in far too long. "Can I ask why you're not going to a narcotics one?"
"I plan on going to one next time it's held, but AA is what's happening right now. And also... I've kind of got... a bit of a vodka problem at the moment." She admitted with flushed cheeks and glimmering eyes. Emi wanted to hug her, but she refrained. It probably wasn't the time. However, she was more than just proud of her for actually admitting the issue as well as trying to do something to fix it.
Realizing her own flaws, Emi waved towards the street. "I'll walk you, if that's alright."
Keely smiled anxiously and nodded. It was obvious that she was incredibly nervous to actually attend the meeting. "Thank you."
They walked side by side down the street, and Emi wondered why things happened the way that they did. It was entirely her fault for ruining everything she had with Keely, but it was still odd how they managed to find each other completely by accident.
Maybe there's a gravitational pull for lovers to find one another when the universe is collapsing around them.
Xavian must have been right, which annoyed Emi. Keely was no longer her lover, but she was still very much in love. And it was clear that they were being guided together by some invisible force, because they were walking down the city streets just as they always had in the past, just with none of the initial intention.
"We're going to make it through this." Keely mumbled. "Maybe not together like we want, but we'll make it. We've got to."
"We will." Emi nodded firmly, looping her pinky with Keely's as they walked.
They stayed like that all the way to the AA meeting, where Keely offered her a nod and walked on shaky legs inside. Emi almost wanted to follow her, but she knew that Keely had to do it on her own. So she walked all the way to Kiwi's house, who opened up the door with shock in his eyes.
He ushered her inside, and ignored the judging eyes of his mom. Emi slept beside him that night, allowing for Kiwi to cautiously rub her back and assure her that everything was going to be okay. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, Emi and Kiwi talked all night about what had been happening in their lives. Kiwi told her about Ilya kissing him, and she told him about what she did to Keely and the conversation she had with Xavian.
Even though Emi had thought about what life would have been like if she didn't leave Scotland, she knew that it was better that she had. Because the one thing she didn't fuck up was Kiwi, and she was going to make sure it stayed that way.