Peep Show

by Starling, Isabella

  “I do,” he admitted. “Enough to live on. But I inherited some money, which made this apartment happen.”

  I looked around his place one more time. We lived on the same street, in an upscale part of town, but now that I was finally here, I knew his apartment must’ve cost at least half a million more than mine. It was truly exquisite. I would’ve loved sharing it with him…

  I blushed at the thought, averting my eyes and burrowing my face into his shoulder.

  As if sensing my discomfort, Miles tickled me and I giggled against his skin.

  “What about your family?” I muttered, half mumbling because I wasn’t sure whether he’d dodge the question or answer it truthfully.

  “My family?” he repeated, and I nodded against him, still trying to hide my face. “Are you sure you want to know?”

  “I do… please,” I begged, and he sighed heavily before starting to talk again.

  “I had a family,” he said. “Parents. My father was an investment banker, my mom a housewife. We lived in a little suburban house until my father got laid off at work. Then, the rumors started spreading.”

  “What rumors?” I asked gently, looking up at him.

  My fingers were exploring his face, the stubble on his chin, the firm line of his jaw. I was falling more and more in love with him as the minutes passed. I was falling for him so impossibly hard I could almost feel the impact physically.

  “About my father,” he replied stiffly, his eyes on the sun now fully above the horizon. “That he’d committed fraud, that he was the one who’d driven the whole bank into the ground. There was a whole bunch of layoffs after he left, and rumors like that spread quickly. Dad was fucking crucified. Blamed for everything. It made everything hellish. I was only three years old at the time.”

  “What happened?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

  His story was building up to a crescendo, and I was starting to get nervous, even though all of it was in the past. I wanted him to be okay, I wanted his father to be alright. But a voice in the back of my mind was telling me this story didn’t have a happy ending.

  “He killed himself,” Miles said simply, his voice barely even breaking. He held a hand up when I tried to speak. “Please don’t worry, sugar. It was a long time ago, and I was just a kid. I barely remember him.”

  “But you still lost him,” I protested. “You still lost a parent. A father. I’m so sorry, Miles. I’m so sorry you had to suffer through that.”

  He gave me a strange look, and in that moment we connected on a level we hadn’t before, seeing the loss of our friends and family in each other’s eyes and suddenly understanding we really did know what it was like, what it meant to lose someone like that, so suddenly, so final.

  “Thank you,” he said softly, then switched his gaze back to the window. “Would you like to know more, sugar?”

  “Yes,” I whispered without hesitation. “Please…”

  Serendipity, noun

  Finding something good without looking for it.

  “…What happened next?” she asked.

  Her voice was soft, not prying in the slightest, and I knew I could trust her. She was the first person I wanted to divulge the truth to, and it shocked me. But I should’ve known it would’ve been her in the end.

  “Were you close with your mom?” she wanted to know.

  “Used to be,” I replied. “I guess when I was really, really little. I have a few nice memories of her. But after that shit went down with my dad, it was all downhill. Our house was taken away from us, and we moved in with my aunt. She had a house full of kids, and she didn’t really care for having two extra people around. We didn’t stay there long.”

  “What about your dad’s company?” she asked. “Did they ever apologize for the wrongful accusation?”

  I loved how she assumed it was wrongful, without me having to tell her. I loved her a little bit more for that alone.

  “That came later,” I shook my head. “But no, at the time it was a royal fucking mess. No one would employ Mom, not with my dad’s last name. And she refused to get rid of that, saying she wasn’t going to give up the last part of him. But I think it was really because she needed an excuse to feel sorry for herself.”

  Bebe touched my hand and I looked away as she stroked my skin, her touch so sweet, so fucking tender.

  “Did she ever find a job?”

  “Yeah, at this seedy bar,” I explained with a grimace. “It was fucking awful. The guy there…. the owner. She started dating him, but he was bad news. She got herself high on dope, then stronger shit. She was an addict before I turned five years old.”

  I didn’t want her pity, but her tender caress against my skin still felt so nice I could barely tell her to stop. And when I did, she ignored it, continuing to stroke me gently, as if she was trying to tell me it would all be alright. And I let her.

  “My aunt kicked us out,” I went on. “Around my birthday, too. So we moved into this seedy trailer park… My mom, me, and the guy. But it all went downhill from there.”

  “He didn’t like you?” Bebe guessed, and I shook my head.

  “No, he really fucking didn’t,” I confirmed. “And my mom and he both got deeper and deeper into the hole of addiction. The place we lived in… It wasn’t fit for a child. It wasn’t even fit for a fucking human being. It was a mess, a fucking junkyard. I used to wade through the trash just to get to my own bed, it was awful.”

  “Didn’t they take care of you?” Bebe asked with a shaky, worried voice. “Didn’t they care that you weren’t being taken care of properly?”

  “If they did,” I went on, “they sure as fuck didn’t show it. I lived in that shithole with them until I was twelve years old. Then, my mom got diagnosed with cancer.”

  Bebe gasped at my words, and I squeezed her hand reassuringly. It was all behind me now, but if it weren’t for the ghosts of my past I would have well and truly moved on already.

  “She died quickly,” I said. “And her boyfriend only got more and more aggressive. It must have been two weeks after she died that he kicked me out. I was only twelve.”

  “Miles,” Bebe breathed, her expression horrified.

  I understood how heart-breaking the story was, in the back of my mind. I knew it wasn’t any way to treat a child, or anyone, for that matter. But I’d never told this story. Never shared the pain of my past with anybody. And somehow, it felt like a fucking relief. Like I’d finally exhaled after years of holding my breath.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I only spent a few nights on the street. Then, I contacted my aunt and moved back in with her for a while. But already I was… fucked. Broken. What happened had shaped me and it was starting to show.”

  This was where the hard part came in, and I felt deeply embarrassed, having to tell her about my nasty habit. But I realized with a start I had left the trashed room open earlier when I’d had my panic attack. A quick look into the hallway revealed that it was now firmly closed, no sign of my weakness anywhere.

  “I’d gotten so used to it,” I said shakily. “The trash, the mess. When I lived in the trailer park it was perfectly normal to be surrounded by shit like that, and I… I guess a part of it stuck around. I felt weird if I wasn’t surrounded by it… If I didn’t have a corner to myself, a small corner where I could hide behind the filth, like I’d had in the trailer.”

  “Your own room?” Bebe asked, and I shrugged.

  “Not really, there wasn’t an option to have that in the overcrowded house,” I explained. “But I had a small corner in the basement, and it turned from a storage room into a fucking… shrine to the life I’d lived before. I found comfort in it. Collecting used beer cans, dirty fucking pizza boxes, building forts with the stuff. I was a repressed kid, I didn’t know how to interact with others.”

  “Did it make you feel safe?” she wanted to know, and I nodded, not trying to hide my surprise. She understood.

  “My aunt found out,” I finally managed to admit.
“Not long after, maybe when I was sixteen or so. She called it my dirty little secret, made me feel really fucking ashamed of it. Threatened to throw me out if I didn’t stop… But I couldn’t. And she stayed true to her word.”

  Bebe’s eyes were filling with tears now, but I was desperate to tell her that it wasn’t as bad as it maybe sounded from the way I was telling the story. But of course, we both knew that would have been a blatant fucking lie. My life had been a mess.

  “She sent me to live with my grandma,” I finally said. “I barely knew her. She was Dad’s mom, and she was really fucking strict.”

  I chuckled at the memory, remembering the woman who had shaped so much of my life. Her name was Delores and she was a former school teacher, strict and old school about everything she did.

  “I lived with her until I was eighteen,” I went on. “She was great but different. We weren’t very affectionate to one another, but she supported me fully. She got me my first camera, helped me use a light room at school, pulling on some strings from her own teaching days.”

  “She was a teacher?” Bebe asked, and I nodded. “She sounds amazing.”

  “She was,” I said simply, plainly revealing that she was gone.

  When Bebe looked at me, I shrugged and swallowed thickly.

  “She was much older. She died peacefully in her sleep when I was eighteen. But she did one thing before she left me, and I’ve always been grateful for it. Unlike Mom or my aunt, my grandma believed Dad had been innocent, and she spent most of her later years fighting to prove it.”

  Bebe settled into my arms and I pulled her close, inhaling her intoxicating scent as I went on, my voice a whisper in the shell of her ear.

  “A few months after grandma died, I got an official post-mortem pardon for my father,” I explained. “Along with a large settlement. I used it to buy this apartment and moved in about ten years ago. I had such high fucking hopes for this place.”

  She pulled my arm around her, urging me to go on with her eyes.

  “I guess I just crumbled,” I admitted. “Over the years, I got worse and worse. The only hobby I stuck with was photography. And I left the apartment less and less until I was fucking confined to it. Until it was too late.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she breathed, her words barely discernible they were so soft.

  But they meant the world to me. And what meant even more was that I’d told her my story, something I hadn’t shared with anyone before Bebe. She’d been the right person to tell though, and I felt like I’d gotten rid of a huge burden. There was only one thing left, one dirty secret to share with my girl.

  “I…” I started, my words breaking off painfully. “You know I’m messed up, right?”

  She turned in my arms, directing her deep dark eyes into mine. She didn’t say a word, just stared at me, and it felt like she was looking straight into my fucking soul.

  “I have these panic attacks, and anxiety too,” I went on. “I take meds—antidepressants, and antipsychotics. But there’s another habit, something you don’t know about.”

  “I think I know,” she whispered, and it was my turn to stare at her. “I saw it… The little room.”

  My blood froze when I thought of it. The stench, the dirty little room, the epitome of my shame. But then I thought of something else, of the fact that Bebe was still there, right in my arms. She’d seen it and hadn’t walked away. Hadn’t judged me. She’d stuck around to hear my explanation, never stopping to ask me herself. She knew I’d trust her enough to fill her in eventually. My heart nearly burst with the love I felt for her in that moment.

  “It’s my secret,” I admitted brokenly. “A dirty fucking secret. Because it reminds me of my childhood. Because it’s the place where I feel safe. Surrounded by all this… fucking shit that used to be in the trailer. Sometimes it’s the only place where I feel like myself.”

  Bebe squeezed my arm and I hugged her, my chest heaving.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered, peppering my skin with kisses. “It’s all going to be alright. I’m glad you told me. Do you like that room?”

  “I fucking hate it,” I admitted it. “I fucking hate what it is and what it stands for, and that I’m so dependent on it.”

  “I have an idea,” Bebe said. “Do you want to come with me?”

  “Yes,” I nodded automatically, already trusting her with whatever she had in mind. “What are we going to do?”

  “We,” she said, jumping up from the sofa. “Are going to scrub that room clean and turn it into a proper dark room. And you’ll never have to deal with your nightmares again. Do you think you’re ready to let go of it?”

  I stared at her in front of me, so small but so fucking full of life, overflowing with energy and enthusiasm, ready to help me in any way she possibly could. She was incredible, amazing. She was the missing piece I needed to feel whole again. She was the missing part of my fucked-up equation.

  “You want me to get rid of the room?” I asked her, and she nodded with a shy smile.

  “I want you to turn it into something positive,” she explained. “Something that doesn’t give you anxiety. A place where you feel safe without it being shameful for you. A place where you can be yourself, but you aren’t afraid to show it to me, either.”

  The fear of her seeing my room was intense, making me shake.

  “Are you sure you’ll be able to help me?” I asked her in a desperate voice.

  I realized now that I needed her so badly.

  “Yes,” she replied, sounding more sure of herself than ever. “We’ll do it together. Our little project. Okay?”

  I stared at her, my heart pounding. I wasn’t sure whether I was ready for this, but she seemed so excited about it and so eager to help me. But what would happen if I crumbled under the pressure, if it was all too much for me?

  With a start, I realized there was a smile on my face and that I didn’t give a shit. I wanted to give it a try.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Wabi-sabi, noun

  A way of living that focuses on finding beauty within the imperfections of life and accepting peacefully the natural cycle of growth and decay.

  I could see the fear in his eyes as we approached the innocuous white door. He feared what lay behind, and I squeezed his hand to reassure him that it would all be alright. And then I opened the door.

  Immediately, the stench was overwhelming. I fought the urge to raise a hand to my nose and hold it. I fought the urge to retch. Instead, I just offered Miles a bright smile and passed him the rubber gloves I’d found in his cupboards. We’d also gathered a whole bunch of cleaning supplies. I was starting to think this was Miles’ only vice—apart from the tiny room, he kept everything else neat and tidy.

  “Let’s get to work, shall we?” I asked, and he merely nodded, giving me a second glance as if he was surprised by my lack of repulsion. “This place isn’t going to clean itself!”

  We stepped inside. The room was so tiny we had to maneuver so it would fit both of us. We were surrounded by trash, things I wasn’t even sure Miles had used himself. There were pizza boxes with the rotting remains of the dish, takeout containers, bottles upon bottles of acidic drinks that smelled so disgusting my eyes watered. There were apple cores and vegetable peelings, there were dirty blankets, there was anything and everything that I could imagine, the odor of it all so overwhelming it was burning my lungs more than the bleach ever could.

  I didn’t let it faze me though, I just got to work, and Miles followed suit.

  We worked for what felt like hours but must have been less than thirty minutes. The tension in the room was palpable, the fear and anxiety coming off Miles in waves. I stopped in the middle of picking up some trash and smiled brightly at him.

  “Why don’t we put some music on?” I suggested, and he nodded, his eyes nervously flitting around the trashed room. “What kind of stuff do you like?”

  “Just… traditional old school rock,” he said, and I made a face that made h
im chuckle. “What?”

  “You’re so old,” I stuck my tongue out at him. “We’re listening to my music today.”

  “Fine,” he said with an exasperated sigh.

  I tapped the app on my phone, and the tiny room filled with the sound of upbeat electronic music. Miles shot me a surprised look, but a few minutes later, I could tell the mood in the room had been lifted. We bantered and bickered as we cleaned the room, dragging out trash bag after trash bag. Then, we got to work with the cleaning supplies, and we scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed until the room started to resemble the storage place it should have been all along.

  It took us five hours to clean the room, despite how small it was. I was surprised by the amount of residual gunk in there, but after all that time had passed, we stopped, exhausted but so pleased we smiled at one another.

  “It looks amazing,” I told Miles, and it really did.

  The room was still just as tiny, but we’d cleaned the small barred window until it gleamed, and now it was filled with light. The hardwood floor was still intact, and the walls would need repainting, but the place was now spotless. I’d never done physical work like that, always relying on cleaners, but now I beamed with pride as I looked at the room.

  “I’m so proud of us,” I told Miles, but before I could get the full sentence out he was next to me, pulling me close, his hands rough on my own.

  He kissed me with so much vigor, I knew right away how much this had meant to him. He kissed me like he was never letting go.

  “Get the fuck in the living room,” he growled at me, and I mewled, stumbling out of the small room and pulling off my rubber gloves as I approached the main living area.

  Miles was close behind me, and I felt his minty fresh breath on my skin as he followed me outside. We’d been airing out the living room, and the windows were wide open. We were only on the sixth floor, so people could easily see us if they looked up.

  I turned to face Miles and he was on me in seconds, rushing to tear my clothes off my body.