by Leah Raeder
“I don’t understand,” Frankie said. “His kid was the drunk driver. Why is he harassing you guys about it?”
“It’s not harassment,” I said. “He wants closure, and he’s looking for it anywhere he can.”
Ellis gripped the couch cushion. “He said there are ‘strange findings’ in the black boxes. They don’t match our reports.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
“They could reopen the case—”
“They won’t. Relax.”
She eyed me askance. “Why are you defending him, Vada?”
It was jarring to hear my real name in front of others. “I’m not. But I had to deal with him when you were gone. When you abandoned me. So I’m the authority here.”
Ellis averted her face.
“Is this going to be an ongoing problem?” Frankie said. “I can refer you to a good defense attorney.”
“It’s fine, really. I’ll handle him.”
“You understand why I dislike strange men yelling my colleague’s name on the street, right? Anonymity is a precious thing. It protects us.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Ellis took a shaky breath. “It’s all because of me. I’m a liability.”
Frankie frowned. “Liability?”
“She’s upset,” I said. “She always blames herself.”
“No, it’s true. It’s my fault. I was the one who—”
I put my arms around Ellis and yanked her to my chest. I had to shut her up.
“It’s okay.” Over her head I gave Frankie an apologetic smile. Look rational. Look calm. “We’ll get a restraining order or something. He won’t bother you again, Elle. I promise.”
She trembled in my arms.
“It’s okay. It’s okay, baby.” My right hand was hidden from view and I traced her ribs, the curve beneath her breast, gentle. Her breath caught. My voice lowered. “Let me take you home.”
The light was failing, a rusty stain seeping through the trees, like cooling blood. A thousand leaves whispered little lies underfoot. I let her walk ahead so I could see what she reacted to. What she noticed. When she froze in the tree house doorway, I stepped behind her and threaded my arms through hers. Stronger now, sinewy from rowing. I pushed her past the beam of bloody sun that cut across the living room and into the shadows and stopped, holding her against me. My hands cupped the thin cage of her ribs, felt her heart flitting madly at the bars. My own pulse beat hot and tight in my belly.
The last few times we’d been this close, we’d been hurting each other. But not now.
“Vada,” she whispered.
Control yourself.
I released her, crossed the room. Faked a stumble and knocked the log pyramid off the table, hiding the misplaced one. “Shit. Sorry.”
“I’ve got it.” Elle nudged me aside. “Light a candle? Matches by the stove.”
I pulled a candle from a cupboard and lit it. When I brought the shivering yellow light over, Ellis looked up at me strangely.
Had she told me where the candles were? Fuck.
“Need some help?” I said.
“Someone was here.”
“No one was here. We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“Max found me in the middle of nowhere.”
I set the candle on the table and touched her shoulders. “You can’t talk to anyone about that night. Especially not him. Let me do the talking, okay? We have to stick to the story.”
“The story,” she echoed. “The story we’re telling each other.”
I let go and tumbled onto the couch. An oak branch snaked to one side of the table, and the flame flickering against it made long, clawing shadows on the wall, the scratching of a black nail. “Are you punishing yourself, Elle? Is that what this asceticism is about?”
“No.”
“Then why are you living in the woods?”
“I wanted to be near you.”
I winced, and looked up at her, and couldn’t bear it anymore. “Come here.”
She threw herself into my outstretched arms and I hugged her fiercely. Our first real hug since I was in the hospital, so tight I felt the tendons in my arm pull like barbed wire. But I didn’t relent. I’d dreamed of this. This was exactly how it felt in my dreams: so sweet it hurt.
After a while I realized she’d gone still and I’d pressed my face into her hair and was just breathing her scent, that autumn spice, leaves turning, grass crackling. Her heart drummed fast against mine. I disentangled myself, sprawled on the opposite side of the couch. She drew her knees up tidily.
“Are we okay?” she said.
“I don’t know. But this is better than hating you.”
“Did you really hate me?”
I gazed at her across the couch. “Hate is when you love someone but wish you didn’t.”
Candlelight danced in her lenses. She faced me unflinching. Elle had a hard time looking people in the eye, but not me.
“Max won’t bother you again,” I said. “I promise.”
“How can you promise that?”
“I just can.”
They were paying too much attention to us. I was designated drink-watcher that night, and I spotted the creepers right away: two clean-cut frat boys in Ralph Lauren who ignored a club full of sorority girls to beeline straight for us—my nerdy bestie, our tatted-up Aussie friend, Blythe, and me in paint-splotched work clothes. Not your typical bro bait.
These guys were up to no good.
Blythe was already hammered. “So which one of you blokes is the bottom?” she said, and Ellis, polite as always, tried to apologize till Blythe kissed her in front of everyone, open-mouthed. We were all shocked. I looked away, feeling weird. Like something clutched at me from the inside, claw-nailed. Something you might call jealousy. Ralph #1 caught my eye.
He smiled, but it was a shark’s smile.
I put Blythe in a cab, and told off Ralph #2 when he tried to climb in with her. Sleazebag. When I walked back into the club, Ralph #1 was pulling the oldest trick in the book on Ellis.
He dropped his wallet to the floor, credit cards sliding out. As she bent to retrieve it, he tapped a packet of powder into her drink.
“We should get going, too,” I said. “Mind walking us to the train?”
I flirted the whole way. He boarded with us. When we left the station I insisted that we switch cars, sending Elle across first. The frat boy followed, and I yanked him back onto the coupling between cars. He teetered off balance. I levered him over the edge by his collar. Wind screamed and streetlights smeared past in neon ribbons.
“Look down.” I pushed his head forward. “See this? If you ever lay a finger on her, this is how I will kill you.”
(—Bergen, Vada. The Things We Do for Love. Colored pencil on paper.)
“I’ve never let anyone hurt you, Elle.”
“That’s true. You’re the only one who hurts me.”
Something sharp pricked my gut. “I should go. Don’t talk to anyone else about the accident. Come to me first.”
“Why don’t you tell Max the truth?”
“I did.”
“Then why don’t you tell me the truth?”
I got up and stalked toward the door. Elle darted after me, and when I knocked her away she made another grab, rougher, and we stumbled against the wall.
“What are you doing?” I hissed, pinning her to the planks. “We’ve been through this before. It doesn’t end well.”
“It doesn’t end, ever.” She trailed her fingers over my throat, my wild pulse. “I know you still feel this.”
“Of course I feel it. I’m not totally dead.” I shoved her hand off. “But it fucking hurts. And I’m tired of pain.”
“Then stop fighting.”
“Fighting what?”
“Us.”
Ellis grasped my face and kissed me.
My mouth hung open against hers, gasping. Shock. Every nerve lit and overloaded and popped and for an instant it was like the mome
nt of impact, glass floating all around me, a shrapnel cloud of shattered light. Then my hands shifted to her jaw and I kissed her back, hard. She tasted like cigarette vapor, cool and herbal. It used to drive me so crazy. It still did. My thumbs bracketed her mouth and I pulled her lips open, took the top in mine. Ran my tongue inside, roughly. I tasted spearmint and sage and her, just her, a clear sweetness like a mountain stream. I pressed my body to hers to the wall. Slim bones, the thrash of blood and breath beneath translucent skin. Her want all tangled up in rage and fear. My hand slid under her shirt, found the tattoo on her left ribs. The one that matched mine.
If you’re going to get one, I’d told her, get one that’ll mean something when you’re older.
Get it for someone you’ll love forever.
She kept kissing me and I couldn’t stop. My body rebelled. I wanted this so much, even knowing where it would lead. Knowing I’d wake in her bed, a lace of bare limbs and soft skin, hair knotted, hearts heavy. Knowing she’d bury her face in her hands while I dressed and left.
I jerked away, breathless.
“Don’t stop,” she said.
“I can’t do this.”
“Why?”
I started to speak but I really just wanted to kiss her again, softer. We drifted from the wall to the couch and I leaned on the armrest and brushed my lips over hers. An open kiss, breathing into each other’s mouths. Slower, lighter. Eventually so slow and light it stopped being a kiss at all, and I looked up into her face.
“I can’t,” I said again, weakly.
“I missed you.”
I touched her cheek. “I missed you, too. So much.”
Her bangs tumbled into her eyes, hanging above that wine-red mouth. Her eyelashes were a fringe of fire. She gave me a mournful, longing look that twisted me up inside.
“This is why we fight so much,” she said. “Because we’re fighting this.”
I kept trying to let go but my hands locked to her skin and she kissed me again, this time slow, intent, raising my chin and raking my hair back. Ellis kissed with that charming meticulousness that was so her, moving over every inch of my mouth and parting my lips and curling her tongue around mine softly and insistently till I tasted her everywhere, till I felt totally filled in, completely kissed, completely hers. Then her teeth sank into my bottom lip and I gasped and she tilted her head, watching me come undone.
This felt right. No matter how fucked-up things got, this always felt right.
Being in her hands.
“I want you back,” she breathed.
“As your friend, or this?”
“Everything. You were my everything, Vada.”
This was the problem with being so close. Friendship became codependence. Codependence consumed. When you possessed every piece of someone’s heart and soul, it was only natural to want the flesh, too. Skin, bone, blood.
I grazed my lips over her cheek. “I have to go.”
Out in the night woods I sank to my knees, hands over my mouth, holding in something wild, bestial. In The Wounded Deer, a buck with Kahlo’s face kneels on the floor of a withered forest, his body pierced with arrows. His eyes are calm, focused on something far off. In the distance the turquoise sea glistens while he bleeds.
I bit my palm. Didn’t cry out. An owl watched me with coin-bright eyes, pitilessly.
* * *
Need to avoid real life? Drown yourself in work.
I’d disappointed my regulars this week, so I made up for it with hard-core shows. No build-up, no tease. I started with the tie around my neck, face aflame with broken blood vessels, all the life in me surging to the surface of my skin. Afterward I’d check stills from the video captures and see a stranger. A necklace of bruises around her throat. A glaze in her bloodshot eyes.
But there was something else there, too. Ironically, in the pics where I looked most corpse-like there was a flash of fury, of desperation. Of life.
Blue didn’t attend those shows. I looked for his name, or a variation. Someone called cyan_of_doma lurked one night but when I googled it, I got some video game character. Ellis would’ve recognized the reference. Never heard of Final Fantasy VI? You need some culture, Vada. Staring at paintings all day will rot your brain.
She came and went to the house but I never ran into her. Mutual avoidance.
“Everything all right?” Frankie said, checking in on me.
“Yep.”
“Jasmine says you’ve been doing breath play all day. Take a break.”
“I’m fine.”
“It’s not a request, Morgan.”
So I turned off my cam and lay in lukewarm water in the bathtub, testing how long I could stay under.
The thing about not breathing is no one tells you how addictive it is. That tingling rush, the buzz in every neuron as they eat through oxygen stores and reach for more and find nothing. It feels like a billion minuscule teeth digging into your brain. A shimmering wave of needle pricks starting in your lungs and skittering up your brain stem like a silvery centipede and spreading over your whole scalp, numbing you like a drug.
Yes, I was in love with my best friend. So fucking what.
That’s all in the past.
We fell apart. Broke each other’s hearts and screwed up our friendship. Now I’m adrift, unmoored without her. I keep treading water, looking for land. All I can see is endless blue.
People knocked on the door, calling, “Morgan? Are you okay?”
But they didn’t really mean Are you okay. They meant Should we call 911. Should we find someone whose job it is to care. Who gets paid for it.
What a strange world where we pay people to listen to our problems, and pay them to fuck themselves while we watch, and pay them to save us.
Three days after the kiss, he came back. No private message. The email arrived first: SoBlue has sent you $1,000 USD. When the chat request followed I hit ACCEPT immediately, and didn’t even mind that it felt like a life preserver tossed to someone drowning.
* * *
SoBlue: hi.
I stared at the black feed on his side for a while. Then I typed, Morgan is thinking . . .
SoBlue: what is she thinking about?
Morgan: everything
Morgan: my stupid fucking life
Morgan: how I hurt everyone I love
Morgan: how I’ve wanted to talk to you again
Morgan: and how sad that is
SoBlue: why is it sad?
Morgan: you only said hi once
Morgan: you’re not as excited as me
SoBlue: you have no idea how many times i’ve jerked off to you these past three days.
SoBlue: it’s downright superheroic.
I rolled my eyes, but smiled, too.
SoBlue: i’ve thought about you. incessantly.
SoBlue: analyzed every word i said to you.
SoBlue: edited the script in my head so i sound much smoother.
SoBlue: in my version it ends with me saying i want you.
SoBlue: but i want a connection first.
SoBlue: any two people can get each other off.
SoBlue: i want it to mean something.
SoBlue: for both of us.
This guy. He wanted to know me as a person and I just wanted to use him. Like we’d flipped roles.
Morgan: sorry I got defensive last time
Morgan: I’ve been on edge these days
SoBlue: i like that you’re prickly.
SoBlue: it’s real.
Morgan: what do you want to do tonight, Blue?
SoBlue: just talk.
SoBlue: tell me why you’re on edge.
I sat back with my legs crossed. Still in shorts and a sleeveless tee. “Are you a shrink in real life?”
SoBlue: not even close.
SoBlue: but i’m a good listener.
“Okay. I’m prickly because I’ve been . . . fighting. With my best friend. Things are weird between us. They’ve always been weird, honestly, but sometimes it gets more
. . . intense. This is intentionally vague.” I narrowed my eyes at the cam. “I can’t let you into my real life. You know that. It’s a safety thing.”
SoBlue: i can read it in your face.
SoBlue: you look like you’re battling something.
“Pretty observant for someone who’s not a shrink.”
SoBlue: i can’t help it when it comes to you.
SoBlue: i drink in every detail.
SoBlue: what are you and your friend fighting about?
“It’s hard to explain. She wants me to be someone I’m not sure I am. She doesn’t realize how scary that is for me.”
SoBlue: have you told her you’re scared?
“Kind of.” I frowned. “Well. Okay. No.”
SoBlue: well. okay. why not?
“It’s complicated. Her parents were horrible to her. She’s really struggled to accept herself.” Great, here I was defending Ellis to Blue. “I’m scared of facing the same thing. My mom loves me, but not this part of me. She wanted me to be something else.”
SoBlue: what did she want you to be?
“A princess. The Disney kind.”
SoBlue: but you turned out to be a rebel princess.
SoBlue: like leia.
“God, you and Elle would get along so well.” I caught my mistake too late—her real name. Idiot. Divert him. “You don’t have to do this, you know. Send me huge amounts of money. I like talking to you. You can pay the normal private rate.”
SoBlue: how romantic.
SoBlue: run away with me.
I laughed. “Why money, by the way? You’re the first rich guy who just sends me cash.”
SoBlue: various reasons.
SoBlue: for one, you deserve it.
SoBlue: you work hard.
“Taking my clothes off isn’t hard work.”
SoBlue: no.
SoBlue: letting yourself be vulnerable in front of strangers is hard work.
SoBlue: what you’re doing is a type of performance art.
I laughed again, darkly.