by Elena Monroe
“Oliver, language! I shouldn’t be talking to you about this. He’s your father.”
She tried to take back her hand and leave once more. I was quicker than her, grabbing her hand again, stopping her.
“I asked you about first dates and sex. I think being my mom and what I put you through earns you a pass this time. I’m guessing I know what personal means…”
I trailed off, hoping to not have it be spelled out by my mouth. We both knew what she meant when insinuating her husband was having an affair. Just thinking about him hurting her stoked a fire always living inside me.
She groaned a petite noise of frustration. “Oliver! Enough.”
She looked defeated, worried, and broken in a way only someone like Richard could manage. She didn’t deserve this. She was practically an angel. She even refused to kill insects, always capturing them to carry them to the safety of the outdoors. She baked, cooked, threw parties that made him look good, and forgave me for all the shit she didn’t deserve from me too.
It reminded me of Hunter, destroying Layla for no reason.
Her hand slid down my arm so lightly it tickled. “I should get going, my little dove. Be good.”
I never really hugged anyone, maybe in extreme times; this seemed like one. I held my mom close to my chest, smoothing down her hair, squeezing the bad away. “I’ll figure this out. Don’t worry.”
I didn’t know what figuring it out meant. It slipped out of my mouth without permission. She let go before I did, forcing a small smile before closing the front door behind her. I reacted the same way I always do. I picked up one of the useless, fragile decor items on the hallway table and hurled it across the room against the adjacent wall.
Hunter.
Richard.
All just piling problems on one another, on top of my barely working lungs. Only adding to my desire to reach my stash before I destroyed more of this place and woke Layla up in the process.
The corner office was never even touched, not one item in the office was personally mine, except a few books with a small clear baggy pressed between the pages and a gem on the corner. I heard footsteps against the wood and clutched Jane Eyre shut.
“Oliver? Are you okay? There’s glass everywhere in the hallway.”
I rolled my eyes, annoyed she was stating the obvious. “I’m fine, Layla. Just go back to bed…”
I didn’t move from in front of the window. I remained stationary as I looked up at my parent’s bedroom window. I should have been listening for more footsteps. Her hand squeezed my bicep, coaxing me to turn around and verify I was, in fact, fine.
“Layla, I’m fucking fine. It’s a fucking vase. We’ll live.”
She drew back, like my sharp tone actually hurt.
“What happened?”
I didn’t want to go over it again. I didn’t even want to hear it the first time or be debating its truth and adding motivation to my not-so sober choices.
“Nothing. I got angry.”
She wasn’t satisfied and didn’t know when to quit. She touched my hand, making me flinch with my toxic book in my hand. My fingertips were now digging into it the binding.
“You know you can tell me things, like what’s bothering you… no judgment.”
Her big eyes were convincing. I wanted to spill every secret I was harboring and dump them into someone’s lap. I imagined it being freeing, even though it wasn’t a solution. The only way to make her stop was being the Oliver she met—the one that kept a safe distant for this reason.
“Layla! Stop. I said I’m fucking fine. Go back to bed.”
I wanted her to leave, so I could sniff up my medicine and feel less of what I did.
She walked out of the room, “You don’t have to be so tough all the time. Things hurt sometimes, and that doesn’t make you weak.”
I mumbled to myself, “It doesn’t make you weak, but it makes me wanna be less sober. That’s more dangerous.”
I knew she heard me; the sound of raw flesh padding across the wood floors didn’t start until well after I said it. She came back with a broom and cleaned up the mess I made, like she had been doing since she started staying here with me more. Cleaning up my messes. I peeked out the door and snapped at her, “What are you doing?”
My bones ached, my fingers twitched, and my nerves felt like barbed wire, every moment a sharp laceration. I was due hours ago for a bump. I was beyond the sober right now, and my body was begging for more.
She didn’t even look up at me. “There’s glass all over the hallway. Someone could get hurt.”
“Someone? It’s only me and you. I wasn’t going to let you get hurt. I can clean up my own messes.”
She stopped sweeping to give me this stare so filled with anger I wanted to crawl back into the office and pretend I said nothing. She stood up with the broom and dustpan still attached to her hands. “Are you done being an asshole yet? I don’t know what you want Oliver. I give you space, and that doesn’t work. I try to be there for you, and that doesn’t work. I’m just cleaning up the glass, because I can’t do anything else right. I might as well be useful since I’m not helpful.”
She wasn’t wrong. She was alarmingly accurate. I didn’t want space or help. I wanted some middle ground that didn’t exist. I wanted to reach into my stash without her being this close to catch me. The cruel parts of me crawled their way to my surface, egged on by the ache to be less sober.
“I want the fucking truth, Layla!”
She stood up again from cleaning and looked at me, questioning what I meant silently. She didn’t bother asking what I meant out loud, and I was thankful we didn’t fall down that rabbit hole. Instead, she pushed the cleaning supplies into my torso and said viciously, “You clean your mess then. Hell, maybe you’ll find the truth you’re after.”
The word “truth” was even more vicious than the rest. It stuck out, on fire, and I noticed. She knew I wanted a specific truth, my truth—not the one fed to me that kept me full.
The next morning felt unreal, all fogged over and too dreadful to be real. I fell asleep in the armchair in front of the window in the office. I was a flight down from where Layla slept, but it might as well have been another planet. My feelings about almost everything else except her built up into this flare up. It had been months since Hunter transferred, yet, it felt like yesterday.
I was holding onto everything with a tight fist and a sudden flare for dramatics.
I knew where the dramatics were coming from: the pit of my stomach right next to the ache for more, even though I was on a diet. I was carefully consuming only enough to get me by, no more or less.
I felt groggy getting up from the chair, like my body was fused to it, sweat lightly covering my body. I looked at my phone and read it was 11am already. I had missed two classes. I racked my hand through my hair, trying to care more, but my high wearing off got all the care I could muster up. There was a single white piece of paper on the island next to an apple that read:
Got a ride from Hayley to campus. Didn’t wanna wake you up. Meet you at Intuition at noon?
Nothing in her note held onto last night.
Showering made me feel human again. I made a point of stopping in to see my mom—something I never would have chanced if there was a possibility that Richard could be there. After last night, she really didn’t leave me with a lot of options. I pulled the sliding door open; it was never locked. When I lived in the main house, it was my form of escape and reentrance without being noticed. I shouted, “Mom!” a few times, casually getting louder, as I stomped around the house looking for her.
Finally, I ran into the house manager—a title I never understood. But, I guess it was a step up from maid. She handled everything, acting as a maid, to hiring and firing of staff, and basically making the house livable. She was an older, Polish women, who made life bearable when it wasn’t under Richard’s thumb. She never took over any duties of my mom’s, though, and she was never my nanny. She was hired as the oppos
ite, to handle everything so my mom could focus on me when she brought me home.
“Abena, where’s Mom?”
She swatted her hands in front of her before she turned me around away from the hallway.
In her accent, mixed Americana and Polish, she said, “No, no Ollie Bird. Let’s go this way. Your Tata is late for work and arguing with your Matka.”
I didn’t bother heeding her warning, and I kept going down the hallway that led to their bedroom. I was carefully quiet and listening with my whole body.
I heard his aggravated tone hiss, “I should be at work right now, but I’m not… for you. How is that not caring?”
I heard the sniffles of my mom’s small voice, instead of a response. Part of me wanted to protect her, and the other half of me wanted to hear more.
She sucked in air between her word. “Today… just one day, Richard. What about the last few months? We’ve known each other since college… maybe you’re finally bored.”
Burying your parents one day and hearing them cry were two things someone shouldn’t ever have to do. I leaned my shoulder against the wall, still listening closely.
“You really think I have time to entertain cheating on you? This is absurd, even for you.”
He didn’t sound convincing, or even sure. He sounded like a third party who didn’t care much for the opinion of people who didn’t matter. I couldn’t bear to listen to anymore. Whatever was coming next would be a load of bullshit he spun in whatever way benefitted him most. I looked at my phone, and I knew I was going to be late. I had a good reason that no one would ever know.
I left the same way I came in and took a detour to the office, brushing off the feelings I didn’t want to grasp all day.
I didn’t bother texting Layla. I thought it was obvious if I wasn’t somewhere then I either didn’t want to be or something came up. I obviously wanted to be where she was, so it would fall under the latter.
By the time I got to campus, I had to be at the lecture hall for my own class. I skipped the coffee shop altogether, planning to text her, but it was pointless because I’d see her in class.
I felt like Layla, as I ripped my laptop out of my bag recklessly. Slouching back, I let my head drop back and all the tension break up as the back of the chair dug into me.
I heard heavy steps, a familiar sound of doc martins haphazardly. I didn’t bother changing my position or even glancing that direction.
“Well, well, long time no see…”
I hadn’t seen Jade since the party when Layla came back with an extra body: Hunter. She hadn’t reached out, and neither had I.
Earlier this morning, I hadn’t bothered texting Layla, but I had made sure to text Jade that my stash was running low. I didn’t expect the sudden appearance, but if that’s the service she offered, I wasn’t going to complain.
“This isn’t a social call, Jade.”
She came much closer, sitting on the desk next to me and handing me another small bag. “Stretching it out? I could provide other types of relief Ollie.”
I felt snide. I felt like avoiding all the pleasantries and small talk.
“Well, if I haven’t gotten shit from you in months, then I guess so, huh?”
I was still staring at the ceiling, inspecting each imperfection and ignoring her presence.
Her voice sounded clingy, needy, as she said, “I thought you were buying from Hunter.”
I shot up from my relaxed position, feeling the tension in my neck cascade all over my body. I looked at her full of rage, no regret. “What did you say?”
I knew they were friends or whatever they were calling it. That was the only person he had here expect Layla, my leftovers. Selling? That was news to me, and now I could connect how he knew I wasn’t sober. I wondered if Layla knew he sold and if that would change anything. She was forgiving and too accepting. She accepted us all, regardless of the skeletons we kept in our closets.
Finally, I had something on him.
“So what? Hunter sells. How did you not know that?”
I didn’t care for the details, just having the information was enough for me. “What is actually going on with you two?”
She shrugged, unwilling to tell me, and I knew that meant trouble on her end, not his. I could tell by the way she looked at her shoes she didn’t mean to be in the position she was in—one involving feelings.
“Jealous, Ollie? We’re friends. You know platonic friends. We aren’t even having sex.”
Now, I knew how deep she was in. They weren’t even having sex, and she developed something raw for him.
“You aren’t having sex? You expect me to believe that?”
Her looks were trying to kill or least sting, as I crossed a boundary into her personal life. Jade never shared—not one tidbit, not even while high. She was someone you had to take at face value and accept that you weren’t getting any more. She was just Jade. Hell, I never even knew if that was her real name or if it was bullshit she made up to match her eyes.
She sat straighter up, still trying to hurt me with those jade-colored eyes. “He’s busy fucking his way through sororities, while picturing Layla right now. Do you picture me while you fuck her too?”
She pushed out her hands, waiting for payment, while I scoffed, still not done with the topic. She was done talking, though, and that meant I was done asking. I handed her what she wanted: two crisp one hundred dollar bills. She only stopped in the doorway to end on a pleasant note. “I’ll see you in a few months, Ollie. Don’t disappear this time.”
As far as Jade went, that was the most concern I had ever seen from her. She never referenced my stint in rehab. It was a warning—one I needed to hear when my life was being robbed from me. It was no longer just Layla and I; it was the problems outside our bubble gnawing at my nerves.
Oliver never showed up at the coffee shop. He hadn’t been the same since I came back from winter break. His abandonment ran wild, poisoning his veins and, if I was really honest, his heart too. I tried not to keep watching the door for him to parade through and demand coffee like he always did. The baristas here loathed him, rolling their eyes and trying not to be the one waiting on him. He was arrogant, curt, and not the happiest customer.
Hunter sat beside me, drinking his cold brew coffee. I teased him endlessly about his preference. “How’s your watered-down coffee?”
He always laughed and teased me back by calling me princess. Elizabeth, B, and Maddison were the only ones here with me. A rare appearance for B, but her absence did make me miss her feisty remarks. Caden skipped classes for baseball practice and something to do with scouts. Aspen had classes during our break. Hayley, well, she would always be hard to read. She certainly wasn’t telling me her schedule, despite our wiping the slate clean. The only difference now was that we weren’t shooting each other daggers when we were in the same room.
Maddison asked Hunter, “Are you gonna go on a date with that girl—the teal-haired one?”
She was more brave than any of us—so direct. She didn’t have to deal with the fallout of any of her questions. Mine had to be perfectly selected in order to navigate the minefield of bombs that each one of the sinners carried—each one having their own triggers, own defense mechanisms, and ways of lashing out. Maddison only had one foot in this group and one foot in reality. It helped that Aspen made it very clear to everyone, one night at midnight, in the study, after a party and before the traditional game of high/low, just how untouchable she was. He knew his friends didn’t give her a pass like he did.
“Jade? No. No, we’re just homies.”
He sounded disgusted by the idea. I watched his palms push down against the length of the destroyed jeans he wore while he spoke. I could tell there was so much more to his answer than skimming the surface like he was. I let my eyebrows waggle, and my lips pursed his direction. We only became closer friends as time went on and the dust settled. Oliver found a solution to dealing with my friendship with him: not being around when he was
. He wasn’t privy to the fact that Hunter was here in the first place.
I pulled my phone from the table, hoping to see a message from him. The screen only illuminated the time instead. I texted him quickly: Missed you at the coffee shop. I’ll see you at lecture?
I didn’t want to bring up the fact that I heard their conversation last night. I pinched my eyes closed, pushing away the empathy I had for him. His mom was his rock, and if she was hurting, then I couldn’t imagine the lengths he’d go to in order to rectify it. I knew it meant destruction was close by, and more than a vase in pieces in the hallway.
Hunter yanked my attention back to the group, “What’s up with you? Test today?”
I hated that he was the only person who saw through me. I looked at him in a way he knew I wasn’t going to confess in front of B, Elizabeth, or Maddison. His hand touched my thigh, giving it a squeeze, knowing I was coming undone.
Elizabeth’s hand touched his bicep, and her hungry eyes ate up Hunter. “That is so sweet of you to care so much about Layla. I really respect that.”
We all knew how much she wanted him, and hearing nothing was happening with him and Jade was only spurring her on. If he was into someone like Jade, she didn’t have a chance, but hearing about his escapades with sorority girls meant she had a fair shot. They were closer to her image than Jade’s badass, give-no-fucks attitude.
Hunter brushed her hand from his arm, while standing up. He looked down at me, “Refill?”
I stood up within seconds, not taking any chance to leave my phone behind. I went from watching the door to stalking my own text messages. We walked over to the counter, and he bumped his shoulder into mine. I almost fell over not expecting it.
“What’s really going on?”
I ordered my Americano black, with room for almond milk and sugar, before I answered. I even made my way to the pick- up counter, trying to avoid answering altogether. I could feel him waiting for an answer.