Is this More than You Bargained for Yet?
The morning after Ava and I drank away our problems at the creek, we wound up at my house. She had told her dad she was staying with a friend, forgetting to mention it was me. He liked me just fine, but he didn't like his daughter messing around with guys.
Especially not after some of the rumors that went around the high school. And especially not after a picture of her with her shirt open at a party ended up on a social media site, making her a slut overnight.
So she lied. She was good at lying. Everyone was so wrapped around her finger that we believed every word that slipped out of her pretty pink lips.
I'm fine. Don't worry about me. Everything's okay. I love you.
In fact, she lied so much that she started believing some of them.
I'm just tired. I'm not sick. I love you.
Even the lies that didn't matter came to a meaningless existence from her lips. That morning was no exception.
It was like waking up without having ever gone to sleep that morning. We drifted into sobriety about as easily as falling through ice on the coldest day of winter—at least for her. She wasn't used to drinking and her lack of a tolerance made her incredibly sick.
The headache built up slowly and then suddenly became so bad that she couldn't remember if it had been there the whole time or not. Unfortunately for her, it probably had been.
That was always another constant in her life: headaches. She had lots of those. They came as frequently as the lies and only existed when she slipped up and let the hushed nuisance out.
All morning she sat in the bathroom, shivering and holding her head like the end of the world was coming and she was ready for it. I tried to comfort her at first but she wasn't in the mood.
"Get out," she said, pinching the bridge of her nose, turning her fingernails white and her flesh pink. "I don't want you to hear me throw up."
I laughed, low and soft. Leave it to Ava to worry about the most normal part of a hangover. "Please just leave," she said again, this time through her hands, fighting every muscle in her stomach not to convulse.
Desperation wasn't a good look on her. I left.
But an hour later when she was still sitting in the dark, dry heaving and shivering, I decided to step in.
"Leave," she said, a look of utter disgust on her face.
I told her no. I was bored and she was going to have to entertain me. What I didn't tell her was that I knew she was faking. She'd had the equivalent of one beer in the entire night and hours had passed. It didn't matter if she still had a headache. There was no reason for her to not be sobering up yet. No reason at all.
What I didn't know was that as right as I had been, I was also completely wrong. She wasn't exactly faking, but she wasn't hungover. She was doing it to herself.
At the time I didn't know she had a problem. I didn't know it bothered her how many calories beer had. It bothered her how careless she'd been.
It took her telling me straight across a year later that that afternoon she'd been making herself sick. She was doing it to end that headache. The one that told her she hated herself.
No, I didn't know it then. I just thought she was too scared she'd have to go see her aunt's husband. So I entertained her loosely scripted episode.
Her legs were stretched across the tile floor, the denim pants loose and wrinkled. When I sat down on the edge of the bathtub she pulled her them under her and curled into a tiny ball.
"Sorry we can't all be alcoholics and not have hangovers like you," she said, thinking that she could offend me out of the bathroom.
I told it was okay. I had nothing better to do with my day anyway.
She rolled her gray eyes to the ceiling and crinkled her face when another wave of pain throbbed into her head at the movement. But in attacking me she made a crucial mistake: she labeled her illness as a hangover. Everything that came after was like watching a brick wall tumble down from one stray piece of cement slipping. And it was going to come down slowly, with a nice bang at the end.
"Hey, Carter. If you tell anyone what I told you I'll deny it. I swear to God I will."
I just nodded, smiling to myself over her ignorance.
The only thing she should have known about that night was that we went to the creek and built a fire. Everything else should have been a mixture of colors and noises she couldn't place.
That was when I knew she was a liar: she made everything sound too good. That's when I knew I had a problem in her.
But she kept talking, digging her grave deeper and deeper. "Eighteen years together, but I swear I'll never speak to you again if you say anything."
Again I nodded, telling her I wouldn't say anything. And again I was silently acknowledging the way the nervousness in her eyes was so convincing. Like she wasn't lying at all.
"God, why did we do that?"
I asked her what. What exactly had we done that she was regretting?
Her eyelashes had been tangled together until I asked the question. Then her gray eyes flew open and she glared at me, not focusing on my gaze so much as my throat.
It felt like she wanted to dig her fingers into my neck and rip the flesh up, leaving bits of it under her nails. But she also wanted to put her lips next to my jaw. She trace the veins with her tongue and feel the pulsing like livewires. She wanted to taste my existence. It should have been terrifying, but it was tantalizing.
"What do you mean?" she asked, drawing small circles on her temple.
I asked again, not bothering to rephrase the question. Not bothering to sugarcoat it.
Trying to buy time, she pulled her knees to her chest. Against the tile her pale feet looked small and boney.
"I wish we hadn't drank so much," she said. Another shiver ran through her body but this time she couldn't keep her teeth from clanging together. They bounced and chattered as the muscles in her arms took control from her mind and convulsed under the gray jacket.
And that was when I started feeling guilty. Because whether or not she was hungover, she was still sick.
Knowing I was going to dick around and really hurt her if I kept pressing the matter, I dropped it. I went and got her a blanket instead.
She smiled a weak little grin when I wrapped it around her and she frowned when I sat on the ground next to her.
"Seriously?" she moaned. "Please just leave me alone."
Before I could object, her chest heaved and her stomach clenched, trying to rid itself of what it desperately wanted most: food.
I told her if she'd eat something it wouldn't hurt as bad to actually throw up instead of dry heave. I didn't know the real secret like I thought I did. I didn't know how sick she really was.
She shook her head as the muscles under her ribs twitched and she frantically tried to keep her composure.
It was almost like she was a perfect little doll right then. Or at least, she was trying to be. She could walk and talk. She could sing and dance. If you asked, she could play any part you wanted. That's how she made everyone feel.
But it wasn't real. It wasn't who she was.
And that was killing her.
I put my hand on her back and she laughed into her knees. "I'm a hot mess," she said. "My God. You've seen me naked, you've seen me ugly cry, and now you've seen me throw up. That's love."
She ticked each milestone off on her long fingers and smiled at the end, acknowledging the fact that we'd been through a lot together. A lot more than two kids ever should have had to go through.
We both laughed and under the sheer effort of it her muscles seemed to collapse on themselves. Trying to casually float toward me, she failed and crashed into my shoulder. Then she laughed like she'd meant to hit that hard. "Don't ever leave me, Carter," she giggled. "You've seen too much."
Slowly, I ran my hand up and down her spine, feeling the way each vertebrae protruded from her skin and dented into my palm. Each of her ribs I could feel with an alarming clarity, but before I could assess the situation, she bolted upright.
In trying to catch her breath, the air caught in her throat, choking her. Excited for the prospect of substance, her stomach jumped and trembled. A coughing fit ensued and I tried to pass the time by running my fingers through her messy blonde waves, trying to untangle them as she tried to regain her mentality.
They were crazy and unpredictable and the perfect picture of her. Under all the layers she wore I could feel the muscles dancing and throbbing. I knew how alive dying was making her. It was sickly exciting.
Finally, she drew in a huge breath and held it, letting her throat tingle and burn until it went numb. Relieved, she propped her elbow against the toilet and threw her head into her hands.
Staring at her in the silence a thought crossed my mind: she was just a human. Wasn't she?
An overwhelming urge crept into my hands. I wanted to grab the long waves at the base of her skull and throw her head into the wall as hard as I could, just to see if she would bleed. I wanted to watch that blonde hair get stained red. I wanted to see those gray eyes grow colder than I'd ever seen.
I just wanted to know if she could bleed. If she was human.
And when the thought wouldn't leave, I had to. I got up to go, excusing myself under the premise of hearing my housemate pull into the driveway.
She didn't argue. She didn't care.
As I left she cleared her throat. "Hey, Carter?"
I turned to face her, a crumpled mess on the floor of my bathroom. A beautiful little mess.
"I mean what I said before about telling what I told you."
I told her I knew and that what she'd told me was going to stay between us.
"And, Carter. If you ever try to fuck me like that I'll kill you."
She meant it.