Drawn to You

by Natalie Vivien

  I pause in resisting Juliette’s yanks to stare at Ash; her expression is wan, pained.

  “Do whatever you’d like with your…ducks,” Ash says, her voice low, edgy, eyes pointed in a straight line toward the front door. She hoists up one of the suitcases and adjusts the backpack on her shoulder. The muscles in her jaw are twitching, and her whole body is taut, tense. “My ride’s here, anyway, so you’ll have the whole place to yourselves once I load up my stuff.”

  “Awesome!”

  “No. Ash…”

  My heart crashes against my ribs as Ash’s long legs carry her over the threshold and outside, beyond sight. Grappling with Juliette, desperate, I catch a few of the words Ash murmurs to the driver—hurry and the sooner the better—and am assaulted again by that timeless feeling, the feeling that the course of my future will be shifted, unalterably, in accordance with my next move…for better or for worse.

  “Ash—” I try again, but Juliette is adamant now, and somehow twice as strong as I am: she drags me into the bedroom, and I stumble after her, tripping against the mattress and bouncing back onto my feet with a jerk, biting my tongue. By the time I shove the hair out of my eyes and glare daggers in Juliette’s direction, she’s already shut the door, barring it with her coy, sequined body, arms and legs splayed.

  “Remember that game we used to play, Mol? I was the warden, and you were my naughty, naughty prisoner—”

  “Open the door, Juliette.”

  “Make me.”

  I shake my head and grab for the door handle behind her, but she juts out her hip and then clutches me against her chest, sequins scraping my wrist.

  “That’s against the rules,” she breathes, red mouth curved up into a self-satisfied smirk. “You’ve got to convince me to let you out… Or bribe me.” She watches me for a long, still moment, and then sighs. “Oh, you used to be so good at this game, baby. C’mon, try harder.”

  “This isn’t a game, Juliette. It’s my life.”

  The smirk disappears, replaced by a thin red slash. “I’m aware of that, Molly. And guess what? It’s my life, too,” she spits back, blue eyes dark and dangerous. I feel her nails digging into the small of my back. “And if it hadn’t been for Ash”—her narrowed gaze flits toward the side window—“then you would’ve given me another chance. You would’ve been able to see how sorry I was, how much I’ve changed, how much I love you—”

  “No, Juliette.” I swallow my rage and my frustration and my fear over Ash’s departure and speak in a quiet, level tone. “No. We were through the moment you left me. You dissolved the relationship, Juliette, not me, and it’s just gone. Dead. Let me bury it, bury us, so that we can both start living.” I pause to catch my breath, to calm my trembling nerves. To stare deeply into Juliette’s eyes—pooled with blue-hued tears now—and softly plead, “You have to let go.”

  “I can’t.”

  She’s crying.

  God… I can’t bear it when she cries.

  When she cries, truly cries, she’s not Juliette the actress, Juliette the seductress, Juliette the femme fatale.

  She’s just Juliette: bare, vulnerable. Fragile.

  And, finally—painfully—real.

  This is the woman I loved. And, despite everything, my heart is hurting for her.

  Black streams of mascara stain her china-doll cheeks, and her lipstick is smeared across her quivering chin. She isn’t blocking the door anymore; she’s crumpling at my feet.

  “Juliette.” My own eyes sting as I kneel beside her and reach for her soft, cool hand. “Juliette,” I whisper, “we’ve been over all of this. I told you when you first arrived that—”

  “But I didn’t think you meant it,” she sobs, squeezing my hand and looking at me with wide, watery eyes, so pale I imagine that I can see through them. “I thought you were just hurt. I mean, you were angry. You needed time to think. In time, you would remember—”

  “Remember what?” My voice catches in my throat, hoarse with unshed tears. “Remember how you disappeared from my life? How you grew bored of me? How I was never enough—”

  “You were enough. You were more than enough.” She draws back her hand and wipes at her eyes, then her nose, sniffling and sighing, curls bobbing as she nods her head. “You were more than I deserved.”

  “No.” I bow my chin; tears fall to my lap, dampening my wrinkled pant legs. My chest feels so tight, every breath pinches at my ribs. “No, I just wasn’t the woman for you. That’s all. And you weren’t—aren’t…” Exhaling painfully, I shake my head, raking a hand back through my tangled hair.

  “Yeah. I know.” Her tongue moistens her dry lips, and she breathes in deeply, lifting her red-rimmed gaze to meet mine. “And she is?” Juliette asks simply. There’s no malice in her voice, not anymore. Only sadness—and something else: resignation. I watch as one of her tears drips down to glide over a bright blue sequin on her chest, glistening there like a jewel.

  “I don’t know.” I smile miserably, my shoulders rising and falling in a shrug. “I hoped so. I felt…” Fresh tears spring to my eyes, and I blink them back, swallow them down, because I can’t let myself grieve for Ash—not yet. “But she’s leaving, and I don’t understand what happened. I thought—”

  “I told her we slept together.”

  “You…” I cough into my hand, choking. “You what?” And just like that, I’m numb all over. I sink into the floor, a hundred pounds heavier, my heart a lifeless rock beneath my breast. I yank at the knot of my tie, loosening it so that I can draw in more air. “How could you?” I whisper. “How could you lie—”

  “It wasn’t a lie, exactly…” Juliette swipes at her runny nose and gives me a sorry, sheepish look. “We did sleep together last night, after we caught Mona Lisa in the backyard. We cuddled on the air mattress in the living room with her, and then you fell asleep with her purring in your arms, and I…” She sniffles again and flutters her eyelids quickly. “I couldn’t leave you. You looked so…so beautiful. I slept there next to you—and left before you woke up. I think part of me knew it was the closest I would ever get to…” She covers her face and turns from me, sobbing silently into her hands.

  I stare at her shuddering shoulders for an electric moment, skin buzzing as the hair rises on my arms.

  Ash thinks I slept with Juliette.

  Ash is leaving because she thinks I had sex with Juliette last night, the same night I almost had sex with Ash—but didn’t, thanks to M.L.’s ill-timed escape act. No… Her impeccably timed escape act, I realize now, bile burning in my throat.

  Hot tears leak from my eyes, but I can’t move, can’t even blink.

  I’ve been through this sort of thing before, Ash said.

  Someone cheated on her before, and now she thinks I cheated on her, led her on or used her, chose Juliette…

  Juliette, who probably let M.L. outside on purpose, risking my cat’s life for her own selfish aims.

  But if I ask Juliette whether she pushed the cat into the backyard in order to disrupt my evening with Ash, she’ll lie. She’s lied so many times before. Maybe she’s even lying to me now.

  So I don’t ask. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except—

  Without thinking, without consciously moving, I’m on my feet, then, nudging Juliette back from the door. She leans away, scoots against the bed, whispering, “I’m sorry,” over and over in a strained, little-girl voice.

  I don’t listen, don’t respond. My hand grips the knob, turns it, and of their own accord, my legs carry me into the living room, empty now of suitcases and Ash’s paintings. Empty—palpably so—of Ash.

  The front door still stands open, and I wake up suddenly, feel suddenly, and with a wracking sob I throw myself through the doorway, but there’s no one there.

  Gone.

  Ash is gone.

  She didn’t even say good-bye.

  “Molly—”

  “Don’t.” I don’t turn around to look at Juliette, can’t look at her, can’t look a
t anything. Stumbling, I stagger around the sofa and then fall onto it, my sore face pressed hard against a pillow; the tweed fabric makes my raw skin burn. I want it to burn. I want this pain, because it eclipses the heartache. It masks the fissures slowly but surely shredding me from the inside out.

  “Molly,” Juliette says again, sobs again.

  And I feel my mouth move, feel my lips form words, hoarse whispers: “Go, Juliette. Now. Just…just go.”

  And Juliette leaves without another sound—save for the click of the door closing behind her.

  ---

  “Oh, sweetie, come on in.” Pauline takes my wrist and draws me out of the heat and into the third-floor, air-conditioned apartment that she shares with Brad. It’s a small but snug space: butter-colored walls, hardwood floors, with overstuffed brown sofas and velvety armchairs. I always feel like I’ve stepped into a tree house or a wren’s nest when I come to visit; it’s a place to snuggle, a safe place, hidden from the grasping reach of the cold, hard world.

  I breathe out, shaky on my feet, smiling weakly. “Hi, Paul.” My voice is a rasp, barely there.

  She makes a tsk-tsk sound, eyes flitting over my face, cool hands pressed against my cheeks. “You poor thing. You look like you’ve been struck by lightning. Twice.”

  My mouth slants to the side in a small, sad smirk.

  “C’mere.” Whispering soothing words, she wraps her arms around my shoulders, holding me tightly as I stand woodenly before her, my car keys gripped so hard in my hand that the pain would make me wince if my eyes weren’t already closed.

  I tuck my head against Pauline’s shoulder and focus on the simple task of inhaling and exhaling, willing myself not to cry. My throat is too sore to cry anymore, and, honestly, I don’t know if I have any tears left.

  After fetching Mona Lisa from the house, I curled up with her in the cottage and spent all night crying, and all morning crying. When my sobs finally slowed in the late afternoon, I sat on the lonely couch (M.L. abandoned me to go explore the wilds of the kitchen), surrounded by peaked villages of overused tissues, and I hiccupped and stared at a spider weaving webs at the corner of the living room ceiling.

  I’d been fascinated with spiders when I was a kid thanks to my third grade teacher, Mrs. Lexington, who gave our class her own dramatic reading—complete with character voices—of Charlotte’s Web.

  Most of my classmates identified with human Fern, but I, ever the weirdo, identified with Wilbur the pig. And I was obsessed with the notion of finding my own Charlotte, peering hard at every web I found, looking for a special eight-legged friend. But my mother put a stop to the pursuit when she discovered the colony of daddy long legs I’d hidden in my bottom bureau drawer, in the hopes that at least one of them would spell out a message for me in sticky, quivery webbing amidst the mismatched socks.

  None ever did.

  I smiled miserably to myself as I stared at that spider in the cottage, and I came to the baseless conclusion that I had found my arachnid soulmate at last. So I named her—not Charlotte but Carlotta—and proceeded to regale her, aloud, with a lifetime of romantic woes.

  I sounded off about each and every one of my heartbreaks in chronological order: from Chloe Watkins in first grade (who gave me half of her sugar cookie during snack time) to Ash Rosenburg (who left my life as unexpectedly and traumatically as she came into it—blindsiding me).

  Quite a good listener, that Carlotta. But she didn’t weave any words of wisdom into her web for me. And I was unreasonably disappointed about that fact—until I realized that I’d spent an hour talking to an arachnid…and expecting her to give me some Dr. Laura-esque advice.

  So I rolled off of the sofa and took a skin-scalding shower. I guess I hoped a shower would wash away some of my grief, give me a new, clean perspective. But, hot pink and fresh-scrubbed, with my hair smelling of Ash’s left-behind peppermint shampoo, I still looked like hell, and I still feel like hell. When I tried to bow out of dinner with Pauline, though, she put down her foot and ordered me to appear.

  Well…ordered isn’t the right word. Actually, she threatened to go all Artemis on Juliette—Pauline was top bow on the archery team in college—and only agreed to keep her sharpened arrows sheathed if I agreed to show up at her place tonight. It was blackmail, and it worked, because I’d rather not be responsible for sending my best friend to the big house. But I hardly feel present, despite the fact that I’m now standing in Pauline’s cozy orange kitchen and inhaling a cloud of savory, comforting smells.

  “I made your favorite,” Pauline tells me, removing the lid from a silver pot on the stove. She’s wearing a full-length red apron that reads Kiss the Teacher; the words are printed above an illustration of an apple with lipstick prints all over its shiny green surface. “Vegetarian no-chicken noodle soup, just like Ma…never used to make.” Pauline peers down into the pot for a moment and nods approvingly before replacing the lid and regarding me with a sardonic smile. “My ma never made anything meat-free in her life. Even her chocolate chip cookies had bacon bits in them.”

  I give her an incredulous look.

  “No, seriously! She called them Chocolate Piggies, and they were a huge hit at the church bazaar, a total sellout every time.” Reaching behind her waist, Pauline unties the apron and loops it over her frizzy head, then hangs it up on a wall hook beside the stainless steel refrigerator.

  My eyes alight on the black-and-white photo booth strip stuck to the freezer door: Pauline and me wearing twin pairs of those big-nosed, mustached glasses and making ridiculous faces at each other. That was the day that my girlfriend of four months, Lucy, broke up with me—because she said she was through “experimenting” with women and wanted to find a guy, someone she could get serious with, have a “real” relationship with.

  I was pretty devastated. Like, watching daylong reruns of I Love Lucy devastated. So Pauline tore me away from the TV and swept me off to the mall, where we ate far too much cheesecake and gorged on greasy soft pretzels. Then she bought those silly glasses from a novelty store, put them on, and told me, “Meet Lucy’s future husband, Mr. Serious.”

  I laughed so much that I forgot to be sad, forgot why I was ever sad at all. It’s Pauline’s superpower: shedding light on the dark; laughing until the shadows slink, ashamed, away.

  “Want some tea? Brad’s dental appointment is running late, and dinner won’t be ready for a while. We can sit and chat ‘til it’s time to eat.”

  “Sure,” I croak, then cough into my hand. “Sorry. I may not be the best conversationalist. I cried a lot, and then there was this spider…” I bite my lip, roll my eyes, and sigh. “Anyway, I think I’m losing my voice. And, probably, my mind.”

  “A broken heart’ll do that to you.” Pauline rests a hand on my shoulder and leans forward, her brown gaze locking with my achy, watery eyes. “But you aren’t alone, okay? Remember that. Hey, if you want to shack up with Brad and me until you’re feeling like your old fierce self again—”

  I laugh softly, both brows raised. “Was I ever fierce?”

  “Indubitably! You’re one of the fiercest people I know, Molly Mason. You’ve got those intense green eyes and that razor-sharp wit. I mean, come on. You’re so smart, it smarts.” She flings back her head and winces, scrunching up her face as if she’s just been punched in the eye. “You’re this power woman who wears power ties and works in a power office and drives a power—er, scratch that last part.” Pauline shakes her head of brown curls, giving me a disapproving look. “We’ve really got to talk someday about your taste in vehicular locomotion. I mean, a Volkswagen bug? Really?”

  “Hey, that car was my grandma’s. It’s got history. When I was a little girl, she used to let me sit on her lap and steer the wheel.”

  “That sounds remarkably dangerous.”

  “It was. I steered us right into a ditch once. But Grandma didn’t bat an eye, just laughed her wheezy laugh and wheeled us back onto the road—and then complimented me on my originality.” I lea
n against the counter at my side and smile faintly to myself, remembering. “She was an artist, too, you know.”

  “Too?” Pauline winks, mouth slanting up, as she fills the kettle with water and places it on the stove.

  “I mean, not that I’m an artist. I mean, not anymore. Or…” A rush of heat fires through my limbs as I think of my art lesson with Ash, as my muscles remember the sensation of her long, lean body pressed against my back, of her warm, sure hand guiding mine...

  I shiver, staring at my warped reflection in the soup pot on the stove.

  Ash left the painting that I made with her behind at the cottage; it’s the only proof I have of our brief…what? Affair? Friendship? Acquaintance? Unfortunate encounter?

  And I was right. The painting does look like the work of a sea lion, and a pretty untalented, possibly drunk, sea lion at that. Granted, I painted it without the advantage of sight, but still… Its random, jagged, thick-layered brushstrokes are emblematic of my failure—with art, and with Ash.

  When I first saw it, my instinct was to throw the painting away. And I almost did. Sobbing, I carried it outside, walked all the way up the drive, paused beside the trashcan at the back of my house…and then I turned around, retraced my steps, and put the painting inside the cottage again.

  It’s ugly; it’s a mess. It looks too much like how I feel. But I can’t let it go, because letting it go would mean I’ve let Ash go. Ash, with her low voice and slow smile and those changeable grey eyes: sometimes cool and soft as misted air; sometimes ardent, arrow-sharp, piercing me through.

  My heart clenches, and I put my elbows on the counter, head in my hands.

  “I don’t know what I am, Paul. I’m just…sad.” A couple of tears leak from my eyes and trace over my cheeks, but I sniffle and swipe them away.

  Enough, Molly.

  Enough.

  No.

  More.