by Jenn Cooksey
“I hate him, Cole. I know deep down I’ll always love him, but I hate him right now, and that’s making me hate myself and everyone else.” Between sniffles, I suck in a deep, but shaky breath and look back at Cole, wholly ashamed for giving a voice to my true feelings; feelings that make me desperate to hear the right answer to what I’m about to ask him. “I know you’re thinking it, so go ahead and say it…I’m a monster, right? I’m the most horrible monster imaginable for feeling like this, aren’t I?”
Taken aback by the soft smile that spreads across his face, I feel the heat of more tears in my eyes when he speaks the most perfect answer. “Sugar, feeling the way you do doesn’t make you a monster,” he tells me gently, pausing only to tuck a damp chunk of matted hair behind my ear, “It makes you human.”
“You really believe that? That having such real feelings of hatred and anger like I do is a human quality?”
“Yeah, I really do. Because if it isn’t, then I’m an even bigger monster than what your nightmares can conjure up,” he chuckles, sitting back against the couch again. When he does it though, he pulls me with him so that I can curl up into a ball sort of half on his lap and half next to him with his arms around me. With another sigh, he rests his chin on the top of my head and says, “Seriously, Erica, if you only knew what I wanted to do to some of the people here tonight…I mean I know she’s a friend of yours, but that Destiny chick honestly had me re-thinking the rule of guys not hitting girls.”
I sigh, feeling a little embarrassed and sorry for Destiny. She’ll just never work up the nerve to do anything about it and no doubt, I’ll have to hear all about how she was sooo close to telling Cole that she likes him, but chickened out at the last minute or something. Then I think about it and decide to do her and myself a favor by outing her. “Yeah well, she’s had a crush on you for a long time, but just hasn’t known how to say anything or go about showing you.”
“Uh, no kidding, I think I picked up on that. And mostly thanks to the excessive saliva she produces every time I’ve ever been within spitting distance of her. You know, drool tends to send the message special delivery like that. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m flattered, but I’m even more relieved she’s not a camel, because I’ve been to the zoo and those things can spit really fuckin’ far. Still, she really pissed me off tonight and it was all I could do to go easy on her when I booted her out. And don’t even get me started on what I would’ve done had I actually made it to the football field for that funeral today. I’m telling’ ya, your head would spin.”
“Why didn’t you?” I ask in a small voice, instantly dropping the subject of Destiny’s obsession with him due to the fact that I’m suddenly apprehensive about possibly having just opened a can of worms that Cole would prefer to remain closed. Still, I need to know why. “Make it to the football field I mean…”
He sighs and I can feel him shift his shoulders trying to get more comfortable with me haphazardly sitting in his lap like an overgrown baby. “I wanted to be there, really… I wanted to be there, to sit there and remember him with his parents and you, but, I just couldn’t do it. I got to the school and saw all the news vans and television crews hovering around everyone getting out of their cars and the people trying to get through the line to the football field in peace, and how it seemed like just about everyone in town was using his death to gain ratings and popularity.
“You know, like everyone else who’s ever lived here and died didn’t have the clout to pull in the votes or viewers like a hometown boy who’d already made it onto national television by playing football for a college that just spent however many millions of dollars upgrading their sports complex. I mean I get it, it was a shocking event and it literally happened on the field, which automatically makes it noteworthy, but…I don’t know. I just felt like puking when I pulled into the parking lot, knowing I was about to become another number in the funeral statistics that would be listed off on fucking ESPN or something,” he rants, and I’m becoming just as upset about the whole thing too, although when Cole starts talking with his hands and lowering his voice to make himself sound disingenuously sincere and self-important like a lot of news anchors sound, I have to bite the inside of my bottom lip to keep myself from giggling too much.
“And now on Sports Center… The funeral of Holden St. James saw an incredible 437 mourners this afternoon, that’s 78 more than what was projected for those of you who bet the over-under. No one saw it coming, but the empty casket was exponentially outdone in ridiculousness with its 2 dozen pallbearers. Flowers were in the range of an atrocious bazillion, we counted 16 well-executed and solidly caught basket tosses from the very perky varsity cheerleaders, who incidentally had to manage their rousing performance without their captain, as she was part of the aforementioned 437 gathered mourners, and not surprisingly, the musical score composed by the dead boy’s high school douche music director produced a house full of dry eyes with a rather somber 93 tears in the negative.
“I mean ‘Candle in the Wind’? The fuck was that about, you know? He was a twenty-year-old, somewhat privileged, barely mediocre student going to college on an athletic scholarship who was of German and Irish decent and couldn’t hold a tan for shit by the way, so add completely and totally white to the list, and he had a total of like eleven minutes of televised starting game time under his jockstrap, but he has one too many Rockstars before hitting the practice field and his heart goes kaput. All of that rules him out of being a homeboy from the projects who was cut down after persevering through racial bias and prejudice to fulfill his dreams of becoming an American leader, he wasn’t a fucking depressed and drugged out supermodel who might’ve been having an affair with one of the country’s most beloved presidents, and he wasn’t a member of English fucking royalty!”
I tip my head back to stare at him and then raise my eyebrows in amusement when he looks down at me.
“What? Too soon? Or did I go too far? I went too far, huh?” he asks rhetorically and with a chuckle, shoving my hip gently off his lap at the same time so that he can stand up and stretch his back, which makes some sort of worrisome cracking and popping sounds when he twists from side to side. He catches me wincing at him but blows it off by saying, “See, this is the shit that happens when I try to console a crying girl and not look up her towel at the same time.”
I roll my eyes again and then still when I realize he’s walked over to the box of Holden’s things intending to open it. I can’t even seem to crack a fake smile when Cole puts his hands to his head in a sort of mock-anxious manner and impersonates Brad Pitt in the movie Seven when he whines, “What’s in the booox?”
“It’s, um…mostly just some clothes, I think. His MacBook and some of his school books are in there too, though. His parents thought you might be able to use them sometime I guess,” I answer and then clear the lump that suddenly and painfully rises in my throat when he carefully and almost reverently starts pulling out some of Holden’s clothes and his computer, “Uh, you know…I think I should go to bed. Do you have anything except booze to drink, though? I should probably have something non-alcoholic to take my anti-freak-out meds with.”
“Huh?” he asks, looking to have traveled a million light years away just by simply opening the computer to stare at the login screen. “I’m sorry, what’d you say?”
“Do you have some water or juice or something so I can have sweet and um, medicated dreams? You know, so that neither of us are woken up by something resembling a screaming banshee.”
“Oh, yeah…check the fridge. There’s probably some bottled water or an unopened beer in there,” he tells me, and I’m not sure if he was joking around or if he considers beer to be a form of juice, but he goes back to time traveling the second he looks away and starts tapping keys on the keyboard, so I give him his space and don’t question him.
I grab my purse from where he’d put it on the back of a dining chair in the kitchen and setting it on the table, I go in search of my drugs.
> Oh my God, you are such an idiot…
I’d left Holden’s house with that box filled with what should’ve just been a collection of inconsequential things, but what is really thought of apparently by Cole and me as pieces of him. I drove my grandma home, and then I came straight here without ever going into my house. My grandma had squeezed my hand right before she got out as I put her car in reverse, and she told me to try to remember that Cole might be needing a friend tonight too. I remember feeling so overwhelmed with anger and disappointment over not just Cole being a no-show, but over the whole entire week, too, that I decided I wasn’t going to be that friend, even if he did actually need someone. Then she told me that if he and I got to talking and it got late that I shouldn’t worry about calling or driving home. I guess it just goes to show how well she knows me. Although, sitting in my driveway before I left to come over here, it never even occurred to me that I might be here long enough to need something, let alone that I might be staying the night here, so it would’ve been nice if she’d reminded me or asked if I’d thought to put any Xanax in my purse. I hadn’t.
Walking back towards the living room to ask Cole if he might happen to have anything to help me sleep through the night, my eyes hit an almost full bottle of Fireball and I figure, what the hell, using the excuse that I’ve already finished off a beer basically by myself so I probably shouldn’t be taking prescription drugs tonight anyway. Wrapping my hand around the neck of the Fireball and grabbing an empty shot glass, I pour and then down two spicy-sweet shots, almost immediately feeling my blood send bursts of warmth throughout my whole body, the sensation going all the way through to my fingers and toes before the cinnamon flavored liquor even hits my stomach.
The second I cross the threshold into Cole’s bedroom, I’m hit with an enormous wave of utter exhaustion, the likes of which has my eyes watering uncontrollably with each yawn. Spying Cole’s iPod plugged into some speakers next to his bed, I think to myself that having some music quietly playing might aid the alcohol to help me sleep, so I climb onto his bed and crawl across it to turn the iPod on and the volume down. I don’t even look at what there is in the way of songs to listen to; I just tap shuffle and pull the blanket up before scooting down far enough to bury every inch of my skin under the downy softness of Cole’s comforter. After I’m settled, I simply close my eyes and pray for the ability to pass out.
5
“Skinny Love”
—Erica—
Note to self: Xanax works way better than a little alcohol and half a cigarette as far as sleeping through the night goes. Booze on the other hand, combined with being exhausted and grief stricken, is awesome at adding up to semi-waking in the middle of the night with an addled brain that makes rash and not so great decisions which are based solely on selfish, wanton desires that are only further rationalized by a desperate heart and body, both insisting that if they get what they want right this very minute, the future and all it holds will be okay.
When it was that I woke up crying, I don’t really know. Actually, I’m not even sure I was crying at that point yet, but I was holding onto the dream I’ve been plagued with for a week. The dream that always starts with me slowly waking to find Holden’s hands on me. In my dream, they trail over the heated skin of my breasts and his lips drop kiss after kiss along my shoulder and one side of my neck. My chest heaves and my body yearns so badly for him to continue touching me, to continue until he finally fulfills his promise to me and we become one at last. It’s a wonderful dream, yes, but not when there’s no chance it’ll ever be reality, not when you always wake up before the promise has a chance to be fulfilled, and certainly not when you’re having it while you’re sleeping next to a guy who is far removed from who your dream lover is. A guy you trust; one you feel safe and comfortable with. Someone you know would do just about anything to take your pain away. Someone who might even go so far as to do something for you that might mean your dream lover would be lost to you afterwards. Something he would never forgive either of you for due to the simple fact that it was that particular someone and you…
“Holden,” I gasp, almost out of breath with my heart rate quickly ramping up even higher, “Please…”
I hear soft, sleepy muttering next to me and feel his body roll further towards mine, making blood sing through my veins, my body delighted with the real warmth it for once gains from his. Taking his hand, I place it on the already enlivened skin of my hip…hungrily guiding it over and down the curve of my bare butt and further, encouraging him to continue on his own by using my body; by lifting one of my legs over his hip as I move against him. When I removed my panties I haven’t the faintest clue, but I moan when he moves his hand out from under mine, using it to caress me and sweep it over me so very painstakingly slow, first down and around my thighs and then between them. His hand lingers only a bare moment, like it’s toying with me, driving me mad with need and expectation. It climbs its way back up to gently cup my breast, weighing the fullness of it. With his fingers having seduced my nipple until it’s fully alert and puckered to his satisfaction, his hand then leaves me panting, and travels down again, stopping at my waist this time where he holds me still, pressing his body full to mine before he goes to kiss me.
“Holden,” I breathe across his lips just before they part.
Then he stills.
“Oh, Jesus Christ, Erica, I didn’t know what I was do—I was asleep.” He sounds groggy, yet startled and apologetic. I know he isn’t Holden not only by his voice, but from so many other things that are different from my dream and memories.
I don’t care.
When I continue to pull him to me, begging him to touch me and calling him by the wrong name, he sighs into my neck and rests his forehead on my cheek. “Erica, sweetheart, stop. You’re dreaming. I’m not Holden,” he whispers, “C’mon, beautiful…stop. Wake up, sugar, you’re dreaming.”
My eyes beginning to fill with tears, I open them to stare into his. I think it’s a look of understanding and a willingness to help that infuses his expression, but a searing pain in my chest rips through me when he and his hand begin moving away. I become frantic, clutching at him and bawling, as if my life depends on him continuing to take part in the nightmare that my dream really is.
“But he promised! He promised! Please…it hurts so much. I need you to make it go away. I need you. I’m so empty. Please.”
Then I kiss him.
His lips seem confused under mine, as if they either aren’t sure what to do or don’t know if they should do what they actually know how to do perfectly well. As my hips begin rocking against his in a rhythm only my ears can hear, his firm lips become more pliant. They finally begin to move over mine, his tongue testing the waters by touching mine tentatively at first, but becoming more sure of itself as he kisses me back, even if he is still reluctant about doing so.
When he abruptly stops again, I become practically inconsolable. I’m so close to having this despised longing and hated feeling of being abandoned—of not being wanted or worthy—finally slain like the demons they are and deserve to be. I force his hand to touch me again, although he refuses to move a muscle or even breathe. So with his hand barely resting in the triangle of dampened curls at the apex of my thighs, I move against it and against him, simply willing him with my fevered body to, of his own free will, slake the tempest that I’ve built inside of me, like I’m giving him a choice. I only look at his face once to see his eyes squeezed tightly shut before I go back to kissing what I can reach of his chest with my lips, using my tongue to lick at the few beads of perspiration my mouth comes across while exploring his neck, and reaching underneath a waistband of elastic to wrap my hand around the velvet smooth skin of his length, stroking his erection until he’s shaking and hard as granite.
“Please, Erica…don’t make me do this.” In the dim light being cast through the window by the streetlamp, I look into his eyes and can see the plea in them that matches his words.
I kno
w I should relent; that what I’m putting him through isn’t fair, but I am so consumed, so completely overtaken by a desire that I’ve somehow allowed to become wholly twisted and then cemented it atop a foundation of what feels like insatiable, gnawing emptiness. So when I feel his fingers minutely twitch, just barely curling into the wetness between my thighs, I cling to him, crying, and whimper, “Please. Do this for me. Please.”
He closes his eyes once more and hangs his head for what is in reality, a fleeting moment. For me though, it might as well be an eternity. But, sighing and removing my hand from him, he shifts to situate his body over mine again and rolls me so that I’m flat on my back underneath him. Even in my state of heartbreak brought on by Holden’s death and all the loss that goes with it, my heart swells, knowing it will finally be getting what it thinks it needs.
That is, until he doesn’t settle on top of me like I expect him to.
I push myself up on my elbows, intending to protest or beg again, when he moves further down my body. Taking hold of the back of one of my knees, though, he bends and positions my leg over his shoulder. With the other hand, he gently pushes against the flat of my stomach, more or less forcing me to lay back once again. My mind is racing, not knowing how I feel because this isn’t what I want from him. Though once his lips find purchase on the inside of my thigh, my mind slows. However, when his mouth moves so that I can feel his hot breath on the sensitive nub under the hood of my vagina before he lightly nips it with his teeth, my mind goes all but blank. My focus is solely centered on him…on how he’s using his lips and tongue, and whole mouth to bring me alive in a way I never have been before. His fingers parting my swollen, throbbing lips and slowly penetrating me intensifies the sensation of rebirth he’s bringing to me. But with that new life, an ache of proportions previously unimaginable to me is being born as well.