Paper Dolls

by Emma Chamberlain

  “Babe, you’re being paranoid,” I said.

  I hadn’t said anything like that. Not anything. I hadn’t even implied with a tone or anything else.

  “Do you realize how much I love you?”

  I realized that, when she was tensing it was to keep her chin from trembling. She was holding back tears.

  “Of course,” I said, getting up closer and touching my hand to her face.

  But what did she love? What was it even? What was I?

  Repetition?

  Security?

  I could be anyone…

  “No, you don’t,” Avery said.

  She was shaking her head, blinking, and falling back.

  “No, you don’t,” she whispered.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  She was lying next to me and there was space between us now but her hand found mine. She couldn’t stop touching me completely.

  “I’m bothering you,” I noticed. She didn’t want me close.

  I couldn’t even find it, the thing I’d done to make her think what she was thinking.

  “Stop,” she covered her ears. “You’re not just anyone. You’re not faceless. YOU ARE OLIVIA… my Olivia.”

  She whispered my name, the second time.

  Faceless…

  I hated that…

  “Ever since I told you about that stupid dream you’ve been stuck on thinking that you’re replaceable,” Avery said. “When we have this conversation it comes back to that. I can see that look you have when it happens and I know if I get upset it just reinforces it because you feel like you’re upsetting me and I’m going to go away but that’s not true. None of it is true. I could have other people but I want you. Just you.” She rolled over again and poked her finger into my chest. “The person inside this body and no one else.”

  It was never just the dream though… It was everything. It had never ever just been about that stupid dream. It was more about being someone different than her visions. It was more about being the best of basic things she desired and craved and that being more important than who and what I really am. She didn’t know me well yet. Every day she was telling me more things that told me that. She had to know what that felt like. I never had moments like that with her. I knew her. I knew what and who I loved.

  Regardless, she had me. That was never going to change.

  “Maybe you’ll get that someday.” She was on top of me now, getting closer. “Maybe you’ll realize that no matter where my head goes you’re my heart and I’ll die without you.”

  Maybe I’d get it if someone else wrote it to me in a letter…

  My thoughts angered me. They lit me up.

  We’d fought about things like this before and she’d made me feel crazy only to later be incorrect. Even today, after she made me feel crazy about Ben we found out the truth. She’d gotten so mad at me and told me Ben was playing with me. He wasn’t. We found that out. She was very capable of making me doubt my own thoughts and my own mind.

  “I am yours Avery. That’s something I know. I’m yours and I love you and I’ll never be someone else's and I’ve never been someone else’s before. I’ll only ever belong to you. I’ve only felt this with you.” What more did she want me to say? “I don’t want you to die without me. I don’t want that to be a possibility.” It’s sick but even now I was still thinking maybe in two years she’d really know me. Maybe in two years she’d realize that maybe I wasn’t her heart but more her soft blanket. If that happened I’d still love her. She might be done with me but I’d still want to love her for all time. I knew her. I already knew her.

  “I’m being stupid,” she closed her eyes and sighed. “I’m an idiot.”

  She moved her arms so she could lay her body on mine.

  As soon as she covered me again I could feel my breathing speed up. She’d been scaring me and I’d been holding my breath and trying not to move. I tried to make it seem like I hadn’t been doing that but it only made it worse and I needed to breathe.

  With Avery, I had a savior complex. With Avery, I had a problem. I hadn’t been healthy or right. I’d stalked her and obsessed and I’d placed myself in her path in her desperate hour of need again and again. I was fucking sick. I did this to myself.

  Yeah, maybe now I was beginning to come out. Maybe now, she was starting to really see me. But right now was somehow the most complicated point in our relationship and that all had to mean something.

  I wanted her to love me and she wanted to love someone who she could trust to love her back.

  It was like math. I found her formula and made sure to fit into it.

  I wasn’t a sane person or even a good person. I’d done that with her. And she was only starting to really see me right now. I’d never been this far into a relationship with anyone. I’d never gotten to this place where I was real.

  “Baby, your heart is beating so fast.” She had her ear pressed to my chest and her hand came up to my face. She lifted off me a little using her other arm. Her lips were pinched together and she looked over my face, examining me. “What did I do to you?”

  I shut my eyes, frustrated, and shook my head back and forth. “Nothing,” I barely gasped. I just couldn’t really breathe, I was freaking out. Tears flooded me and stopped. I realized I couldn’t control anything. I hated my thoughts.

  “Breathe with me.” She got up and grabbed my hand, pressing it to her chest so I could feel it rise and fall with her long, deep breaths. “You’re having a panic attack.”

  As soon as I really registered the motion I felt my eyes open to see her and I gasped.

  “It’ll be over in a second.”

  My throat burned but I couldn’t get enough air. When I tried to find air I lost the feel of her and I lost her eyes.

  “Olivia. Baby, focus on your heart and imagine it slowing. A little at a time. Think about when you’re waiting for something and it feels like it will never come. Time goes so slow and it’s like when you’re a kid and you think Christmas is never going to come. Just one beat… And another… And another. Sloooooow. Steady.”

  She’d taken me somewhere. Her voice cared for me and soothed.

  I wasn’t thinking about air anymore and I didn’t need it so much.

  My eyes shut and my heart slowed. All I could feel was her hand on my hand with that heart of hers beating right under it and calming me down.

  “Remember how you feel when you’re playing the piano? Something slow and sad, a song you know really well. Play it in your head.”

  I tried to do it but all I could think about was her and how she was trying to help and I started to cry.

  “I’ve got you,” she smoothed my hair and wiped away my tears but more came to replace them. She couldn’t stop them from coming.

  I fell into her and gave in. My throat burned and I hated today.

  “When I get like this I think about water but I didn’t think that would help you,” she cradled my face. “Now, I’m babbling.”

  I rest my eyes into her neck and held a hand to the other side to hold myself there and feel her pulse to try and calm down.

  “Which is probably even less helpful but then again maybe my voice will help. You seem to like it an awful lot but then I think about how I should probably shut up and just hold you and I’m right back where I was.”

  I laughed a little and pushed her back to crawl up onto her and just lay down.

  “I’ll take that as a positive thing,” she said and let herself chuckle.

  “You’re everything,” I whispered. If she needed reminding I would tell her again.

  I just wanted her holding me. I was probably the laziest and most emotional person she ever fucking met.

  “I don’t care what I am as long as you keep me,” she whispered, her lips pressing into my head after she said the words. And wasn’t that all I’d been thinking too this whole time?

  She deserved so much better than me but I was selfish and I wanted her forever and ever.

&n
bsp; “Okay?”

  “You’re everything,” I repeated.

  “You’re my everything.”

  “I can’t force you to stay but I want you forever,” I said.

  “You don’t have to force me. I want to stay forever.”

  She was always too in love. I couldn’t just take it without thoughts. It didn’t make sense. But fuck did I want it… I’d always say: yes please and thank you and never ever leave, my love, my love, my love…

  Chapter 4

  Avery

  That’s how we fell asleep and that’s how I woke up. She was laying on me in that same position and I felt our skin pressed together at so many points. Demons; it was always those bastards in our heads coming back for their pound of flesh.

  We were slaves to them with little free time to give to growing our love. That slow tick I heard was my heart echoing off of bones, telling me that I was still alive and her matching beat that hammered against my ribs let me know that she was also still pumping blood.

  It was Sunday. I didn’t have a reason to get up. There was no place to be and no one to answer to except her. I wished she could see that she wasn’t anonymous. It hurt me like my absence hurt her.

  I pushed hot air out of my mouth and aimed it at the hair that had fallen in my face by jutting my bottom lip out. The hair moved for the entire moment that the breath affected it but then it was back, tickling my nose.

  I gave up and lifted my hand out from under hers and moved it up to push the hair away from my face.

  The movement caused her to sigh and reach out with the hand I’d just released. I put mine back in the general area of her reach and she took it again, curling her fingers around my wrist and settling.

  She had really flipped out last night and I was glad I was there. At least I had some experience with that. Even if nothing I said helped, I still wanted to be the one that was there for her. Funny that now she was the one who thought I was going to leave her.

  We just kept switching places with these doubts. They never really went away, but they rotated in and out of favor with our minds, like food on a lazy susan.

  It pained me but I was going to have to move. My bladder was insistent and didn’t understand that Olivia would wake up when I left. I cradled her in my arms and lifted her up, pivoting at my hips and placing her on the bed beside me.

  Her eyes flicked open and she gripped my arms, shocked awake.

  “It’s okay. I’m just going to the bathroom.” I watched her come to awareness, waiting until she realized that she was awake and I wasn’t leaving. “Good morning by the way,” I said and kissed her quickly before rolling off the bed.

  “Morning,” she said, touching my face and carefully watching me go.

  I wrinkled my toes against the cold tile. I didn’t want to wake up just yet. If I hurried my brain would be sleepy enough to lay in bed for another thirty minutes or so. Unless Olivia got up because then I would to.

  I was hopelessly tied to her and happy to be hopeless. Where she went I would go and that would do my talking for me. I needed to remember that. I should write it down somewhere so I could look at those words again when the urge to press her about it came.

  I shouldn’t have said those things last night. She was dealing and I needed to let her go through that.

  When I got back she was still in bed and I got in with her, happy that she opened her arms to me as soon as my knee pressed into the mattress. She was always welcoming, always loving.

  As soon as I settled down, my phone started to ring. “Fuck,” I groaned and rolled over to grab it off the nightstand.

  I checked the caller ID before answering. My mom… She probably wanted to make sure I was coming to dinner.

  “Hey mom,” I chirped into the phone.

  “Avery Nicole Lockhart, you haven’t returned any of my calls. You better be glad you answered this time.”

  “Mom, I know. I suck. I have no good excuse but-”

  “Just stop right there. Are you okay?” She asked.

  “Yeah, Mom, I’m good. We’re good. I’m sorry I didn’t call you back.” I looked over at Olivia who was scowling at me. I was going to hear it from her too once I got off the phone.

  “You’re coming to dinner. End of story.”

  “I know. I’ll be there.” I lay back in the bed and tried not to look at Olivia. She was staring at me and I could feel the disapproval. “I’ll even come over on Wednesday to help you and Dad paint.”

  “So you got my message then.”

  Accusation and good-natured prodding from my mom made me feel like a total ass.

  “Yeah, I got it. I’m glad you guys are freshening things up.”

  “Me too. Okay, I have to go because you father is about to fall off of a ladder and someone has to drive him to the hospital when he breaks his neck.”

  “I heard that. I am not falling!”

  Dad’s voice came over the phone from far away but it made me laugh. It made me really want to see them. I’d been so wrapped up and busy and crazy that I just let it slip by me. All that time without them was strange and distant but this was still new. They were pretty precious though and I needed to appreciate that.

  “Okay, Mom, go save Dad. I’ll see you at six.”

  “Love you, honey.”

  I heard a clatter in the background and then my mom yelling.

  “Gareth, I told you.” She was holding the phone away from her face but she came back. “Bye, Avery. And don’t worry the only part your father broke was his pride.”

  She hung up, presumably to go berate my dad again. I laughed and tossed the phone away to the other side of the bed. It was time to face phase two of getting scolded. When I turned over Olivia was still looking at me but her eyes were softer, like the conversation had amused her.

  “Okay, hit me with it.” I waved my hand toward my own body.

  “What,” she shrugged innocently, a soft smile on her face.

  “I know you wanted to say something. I deserve it. I’m a terrible daughter.” I pursed my lips in a half amused, half remorseful smile.

  “I’m not your mother,” she warned, her voice lifting as her hand pressed down onto my stomach. “If you don’t want to do something you shouldn’t do it. That’s fine.”

  She got up off the bed and started to walk around to the closet.

  “Awww, baby. Thank god you’re not my mother. That’d be messed up.”

  She was so not my mother. As she walked past the foot of the bed I rolled off and got up, catching her wrist in my hand and pushing her a bit to get her back up to the wall where I could pin her and see.

  We hadn't been wearing clothes.

  As I trapped her, her mouth opened and she smiled all happy, taken, and breathless.

  “You gonna punish me?” She asked, hands coming up to lightly push on me as I trapped her.

  “Maybe,” I looked her up and down.

  There was this air of sex about her when she was like this. It put me right in that zone.

  “I might want you to,” she confessed.

  “Oh yeah? I think I might be able to help you out then.”

  I moved her hands above her head and to the middle of the wall and captured them with one of mine, freeing up my other hand to touch her.

  “What kind of punishment did you have in mind?”

  “Surprise me,” she said. “I just want you taking me.”

  Non-specific. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with her, maybe everything. I hooked my hand around her leg and pulled it up to my waist.

  “Take you… But where?” I dragged my nail down her side just hard enough to make the impression that this was serious.

  I needed something to help with her hands though. I intended to use both of mine. I looked around but all I saw nearby were my earbuds. I shrugged a shoulder. I wasn’t really that fond of them anyway. I pulled them off the nightstand and pulled her hands down.

  “This okay?” I asked as I started to wrap the cord around
her wrists.

  “Yes,” she said, like she’d been waiting for it to happen.

  I got the cord tight but not enough to really hurt her and then I knotted it. When I looked up I could tell she was ready. She had been all along but this was a different kind of ready.

  “How long are you going to last like this?” I tapped the leg she was standing on.

  “I don’t care as long as you catch me,” she said.