by Corri Lee
But it really was just a bed, and sitting on it with me was a man who was none the wiser that I knew his secret.
“I worried when you weren’t there when I woke up, cupcake. I thought you’d gone.”
We’ll get nowhere if you keep thinking I’ll just disappear on a whim. I was aware that I’d only said the words in my mind, unable to say them out loud.
“I’m going to unpack your bag so you can’t make a quick getaway.”
Apparently satisfied by the grunt I managed, Blaze’s weight left the bed and was replaced by my surprisingly heavy holdall by my feet. I dozed through the sounds of him opening drawers and cupboards to rehome the clothes and cosmetics I’d brought from New York. I was going to need to go on yet another shopping trip and arrange for a locksmith to go to the apartment, as well as find a way to get everything I’d left there couriered to me...
“Emmeline, what are these?”
“What are what?” I forced an eye open at the sound of rattling. Blaze stood over me with my anti-psychotic medication in his hand, looking reluctantly furious. But because I was still half asleep, I closed my eye again and simply said, “Tablets.”
“No shit. Is this what you told AJ you were on?” Oh, terrific, he’d had a chat with the Monday’s Miracle medic, too. Surely telling my ex that I was on brain-chemistry altering drugs was contravening some kind of doctor-patient confidentiality rule. “Jesus Christ, Emmeline.”
The sound of the toilet flushing a few moments later jolted me wide awake. “What the hell have you just done?”
He stomped back into the bedroom and tossed me an empty bottle. “Potentially saving your fucking life. Those tablets were taken off shelves ten years ago.”
“Oh, sure,” I scoffed, “why?”
“Dystonia, tachycardia, metabolic disorders and night terrors.”
“In English, genius?”
He cursed softly and plonked down next to me. “Every single person who took them got fat, starting twitching, had lucid nightmares and began getting ridiculous palpitations at the first sign of stress. Great news for the shrinks who prescribed them, not so much for the fifteen people who died after heart attacks.”
“Wha—... Oh.” I’d been so sure of my new life while I’d been living it, now to find out it had been trying to destroy me from all angles... I lay down and pulled the sheets over my head, just needing to be somewhere dark and hidden.
“She came back, didn’t she?” Blaze wrapped around me over the bedding. “She was telling you to come back and you blocked her out. Look what happened when you denied that part of yourself, cupcake. I think she’s a necessary evil trying to guide you.”
“Don’t try and placate me with fairytale notions. I’m ill; I had a very expensive, if apparently illegitimate, psychiatrist Rorschach the shit out of me to prove it.”
“Well, did you hear her when you were with me?”
I pulled the sheets down just enough to look at him. “When things looked bad.”
He nuzzled into my neck. “And when did she come back?”
“... When I agreed to dinner with Calloway.” Hell, what were the chances? But the idea that she was kind of guardian was preposterous. She had, after all, spent years telling me to cut myself. “But stop trying to justify my madness by making out it’s functional. We both know it’s not normal.”
“Who exactly defines ‘normal’? Everyone has a little voice in their head that warns them away from trouble, yours is just a little more conversational. I think you need her to—”
“I do not need her!” Kicking off the sheets, I scrabbled out of bed and grabbed the first clothes in reach. “Schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, paranoia—these are insidious diseases that ruin lives. To tell me I can’t live a full life without sickness that’s...” I glared as I shoved my legs into a pair of methodically bleach stained jeans. “It’s an insult.”
“Emmeline, where are you going?”
“I don’t know. To see Chris. To see Daniel. Me and my ‘necessary evil’ need five minutes with somebody who doesn’t tell me I need to be nuts to make good decisions.”
He leaned back, arms crossed and arched a brow at me. “Are you throwing this bitch fit because you think I’m right?”
I stood, thrumming with apoplectic rage. “Fuck you.”
“Maybe I need to believe it.” Blaze lunged forward and gripped my thigh before I could step far enough away. “Maybe I need to make the excuse of you not being in the right mind to accept the fact that you were away for so long. To accept the fact that you stayed in a dangerous place just to be away from me.”
That stung because he may have had a point. If I’d have let her stay, Fat Emmy would have talked me around and convinced me to return to London sooner. As it was, I’d done away with her and it had put me playing house with a latent psychopath.
But how was I supposed to know that at the time? Henry obviously hadn’t known of Calloway’s shady past or he would have dragged me back home kicking and screaming. My media-savvy friends hadn’t known, either. No, my prolonged departure could not have been helped by a... quirk.
I looked down at Blaze’s hand and took the step to shake it off. “Are we done here?”
“Done?” Expecting another unfair jibe, I crossed my own arms defensively. “We’re done?”
Something in his tone bugged me, so I turned to look at him and saw him worrying the sheets with his thumbs. He looked completely broken down and defeated.
It was the same look he’d had when we said our last goodbyes in August.
“Blaze,” I collapsed back down and crawled to him. “I meant done with the argument. You can’t freak out every time I need some space to simmer down. I can’t spend the rest of my life worrying that I’m going to break you. You need to trust me.”
“I know.” Opening his arms, Blaze let me nestle up against him and covered us both with the bed sheets. “Of all the crap that could have happened to you, it sucks that the only thing that can take you away from me permanently is myself.”
“Enough of this doom and gloom bullshit,” I snapped forcing him to recline with me. “Let’s start this day over again in a couple of hours. Then you can take these freaking pins out of my hair.”
It seemed a shame to waste the chic waves that decorated my hair, but we did anyway. After snoozing the morning away we ordered in lunch, choosing to bypass an unsustained battle through the thick three inches of snow that had fallen so far, and ate it with our feet up on the coffee table while I read through all the love notes sitting in my inbox.
I fell in love with him all over again. They read like a time line of the months apart, more elaborate on the days he missed me most but more upbeat and complimentary when he hurt less. He’d told me of the progress of the work he’d done in the bar, the conversations he’d had with Henry to keep him optimistic, the lunch dates he’d had with Ivy so they could cry together, and the injuries he’d gotten through drunken stumbles.
I so wanted to believe those scars were accidental.
Blaze rattled around while I worked for a couple of hours, pulling me away from budget analysis to go grocery shopping for ingredients to create a meal he promised would put New York cuisine to shame. Remembering the few dinners he’d cooked before, I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, and pretended not to notice the way he eyed my tight jeans, fitted woollen turtle neck and blazer with doe-eyed adoration. It was hard to bear in mind that I’d once been style inept.
I was dozing on the couch, enjoying the smell of seasoned chicken roasting, when the door rapped loudly and pulled me from a happy day dream of lying on a long stretch of beach somewhere. Begrudgingly, I pulled myself up to the door and found myself confronted by a stack of suitcases.
“Uh, hi.” Hunter’s face peered around them and gave me a half-hearted smile. “Henry thought Blaze might need these.”
I pulled a face at the cases and stepped back to let the men deal with it. “So I guess he’s moving in...” B
laze’s hand hesitated by the handle of the biggest case and slowly retreated. “I’m kidding, fool. Get your shit in here. No wonder you didn’t think you’d be able to get it all here in one journey, I think some of these cases are bigger than your car.”
“Oh, Henry’s driver is bringing that back tomorrow.”
Blaze’s face lit up. “I’m allowed my keys back?” He grinned and did a small air punch when Hunter nodded, and hoisted up a few cases with almost superhuman ease.
As soon as he was out of earshot, I waved a hand in front of Hunter’s face impatiently. “They took his car keys?”
“Well sure, Emmeline. He spent three months drunk—you wanted to come back to find out he’d gotten himself arrested or killed?”
Wincing at the thought, I grabbed the smallest of the two cases and dragged them into the flat behind me, wondering how the hell we’d fit both of our belongings in such a small home. That’s when it struck me. “Where are your comic books?”
Blaze frowned at me and looked around the tiny lounge. “In storage. I didn’t figure you would—”
“Want them here? Damn it, Blaze, I thought you knew me. We’ll find space somehow.”
It was obvious that he loved me more for welcoming his nerdiness into my home, not that it really should have surprised him. Kissing the tip of my nose, he excused himself for a shower before dinner and covertly glanced at Hunter before he left. I knew he was still feeling off about him being around me, but I appreciated him putting a little faith in me and giving us chance to talk alone.
I led Hunter into the kitchen and set to making us coffee. “So, when are you going back to Japan?”
“I dunno,” he grumbled, fiddling with the hem of his jacket. “The house is my dad’s so I have to go back eventually...”
“Have you seen him?” I felt horrible for him when he shook his head. All five of Helen’s marriages had existed in the nine years our families had been close, and four of them had been shallow, short-lived and resulting in impressive divorce settlements. Even Hunter would admit with no preamble that his mother was a gold digger, and he’d had to live in the unsettled environment that transpired as a result.
Henry had loaned Hunter’s father the capital to start his own business and the essential contacts for success. As soon as he was well established, Helen had cut and run with half of his money and taken his two sons with her. Hunter had seen more family homes than a career wet-nurse and only the fact that he’d been enrolled in the same coeducational boarding school as me and Daniel when they’d first moved to Cardiff kept us close. Who knew how his mother’s cavalier attitude towards her ‘I do’s had affected his own outlook on marriage.
The real tragedy was that the only paternal thing Peter Rosen had done for Hunter was make sure he was set up on the other side of the planet. Helen had made it difficult for him to see his boys and he hadn’t tried nearly hard enough to rectify that. Nobody really understood why she kept his surname.
“Go home and get your girl back, Hunter. She’s been your only dependable constant for a long time.”
His lips tightened on a scowl. “But what she did to you—”
“It doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago.”
“But—”
“Hunter!” I leaned my elbows down on the breakfast bar and rocked from the balls of my feet to the heels, back and forth. It took a lot to admit that his fiancée couldn’t really be held responsible for my suicide attempt, and it took more to swallow that bitter pill and tell him so when I wasn’t even completely convinced myself. But he needed it. “Siobhan didn’t make me open a vein in that bathroom. I was just teetering on the edge looking for any excuse to fall over it. I would have taken anything. You can’t penalise her for something I did to myself. Do you actually think she’d have done it if she’d known what I was capable of?”
He sighed, only just shaking his head. “So I should let it go and marry her?”
“If that’s what you think will make you happy, then yes. You need to push past all the opinions that people are going to force on you and do what is right for you. Because after all, the only other opinion that really counts is mine and I think...” I looked across the room to the singing from the bathroom. “I think sometimes you just need to learn to live with someone’s flaws. The world isn’t perfect. The sun won’t shine every day and there are times when you’ll hate your own reflection. And those are the times when you’ll need them and their shit-eating grins to tell you how wonderful you are, because they’re the only person you’ll believe.”
And I needed to do that for my man as much as he needed to do it for me. I needed to tell him that it was okay to screw up and even better to just walk over those bumps in the road like they’d never happened because mine was the only voice he’d really hear.
“I should settle for less than perfection?” Hunter’s voice was dry and sardonic when he took a mug from my hand and blew at the steam. “Doesn’t that go against everything we’re taught about love?”
“Perfection is subjective. One man’s trash and all,” I joked, recalling Blaze saying the same thing about my graphic novel, ‘Syncretic Sciences’.
“Is that what you’re doing with Blaze? Rising above the clichés with one man’s trash?”
I tutted and smirked into my coffee. “I don’t think Blaze is anyone’s trash. But no, I’m only half rising above the clichés and conforming to others. That doesn’t make him any less my treasure.” In fact, he might have been more precious now than he was before for being so fragile. He needed more than to be put on a pedestal and admired; he kind of needed some serious long term maintenance and attention.
“Ever think you’ll get there completely?” Could I? Could I seriously learn to view the faults nobody would ever imagine he had as furniture.
“Maybe. I’m working on it. We still need to iron out a few creases but that’s fine with me. We’d tire of each other pretty fast if there were no challenges to overcome, right?”
Hunter stuck his lip out thoughtfully and nodded. “I guess you’re right.”
“Here.” I grabbed my wallet and fished through it for the folded up invitation that had been in it for months. “RSVP yes plus one. There’d better be an open bar.”
He stared at it numbly. “You’ll come?”
“Of course. You’re my best friend.” And my fresh starts would extend beyond my relationship with Blaze.
Hunter left us to dinner, which we ate at the breakfast bar over Blaze’s tablet looking at storage solutions and design ideas for the flat. It was strange to have a relationship of that level with someone, especially him, and one that was so organic and free-flowing it filled me with an unfamiliar contentment that almost made me feel like I was glowing.
Blaze looked great in just boxers and a white v-neck t-shirt—the central heating was cranked up high enough for us to walk around naked comfortably even with the subzero conditions outside. Not that he would when he was still hiding those scars. At least what he had on show was more than adequate; muscular legs, thick solid forearms, combed back dark hair and those piercing emerald irises.
“I know we were just joking when we talked about Henry buying me a house yesterday, but how would you feel about moving somewhere bigger?” He looked up at me dubiously, chewing the inside of his cheek to hold himself back. I rolled my eyes at him and leaned forward to tap him on the nose. “Stop being afraid to voice an opinion, you pussy. I don’t want a yes man.”
He immediately blurted, “I like it here,” and glanced around the room. “This feels like home with you. I like that it’s small and modest. Maybe we could move somewhere bigger one day just... not yet.”
“Okay.” I placed my hand over his, pushing ideas of a large luxury apartment like the one in New York to the back of my mind. “Evacuation postponed.” Though I couldn’t deny that I was a little disheartened to have my fantasy of a shiny new home to mark our fresh start squashed. The flat was cramped and held too many bad memories. It had see
n too much sadness and far too many lovers. Not to mention that I’d become accustomed to wide, spacious living spaces.
“While we’re being honest...” I looked up at Blaze slowly, eyes narrowed to slits. He responded with a cautious choked out laugh and began to fidget. “Why were you looking at tattoos this morning?”
Uh oh... “Um...”
“I wasn’t prying,” he insisted. “Your laptop was still on the page when I found you asleep on the couch. You know they freaking hurt right?”
I shot back, “How would you know?” and turned my attention back down to the tablet. We were going to end up talking about those scars of his and I didn’t think either of us were prepared for that yet.
He rounded the breakfast bar and came behind me, arms caging me and lips at my ear. “I won’t get back into a pattern of fucking the honesty out of you, Emmeline. It’s too much like an incentive for you to keep the truth from me.” His nose began to stroke up and down my neck. He’d barely touched me all day and that intimate closeness heightened the need I had for him. We had always been able to drive our feelings into each other through sex and he was depriving me of that. On purpose. Because of his own stupid mistakes.
“Are you taunting me?”
“I prefer to call it coercion.”
I twisted around in the small space between his arms and stared up at him severely. “I was toying with the idea of camouflage. I should have done it before.”
Unflinchingly, Blaze ran his fingers over my left side from ribs to hip. “Camouflage these? Why would you do that?” He paused for the length of a heartbeat. “He told you to cover them, didn’t he? And you said no because you’ve grown proud of them. So why now would you decide that you need to hide them?”
The string of questions I didn’t even need to answer niggled at me. He acted like he had no idea why, but he had to. He had to know that I’d seen them. But still, I was being criticised for wanting to cover something that appeared to have inspired his own recklessness.