Shallow River

by H. D. Carlton

  “How was work?” I try, changing the subject and attempting to sound cheerful. I hate it when he’s angry.

  He turns his glare to me. “My dad hired a new secretary. Same age as me. Couldn’t keep her slut hands to herself.”

  My blood runs cold, and anxiety bursts in my stomach, swirling around like acid. Is she prettier than me? Did he fuck her? What if she’s better than me?

  “She better have,” I snap, my increasingly dormant attitude rising to the surface.

  Finally, a smile. Or rather, a smirk. His foot begins to bounce on his knee.

  “Don’t worry, baby. I don’t want anyone but you,” he assures with saccharine sweetness. Something dark unfurls in my chest, tainting any semblance of a good mood I had going. Alison had already put a damper on my day, and now Ryan’s weird attitude is completely ruining it.

  “Come here, baby. I just missed you, that’s all. I’m pathetic and just want you around all the time,” he says, patting the couch next to him. His tone seems genuine, though I still hesitate. Slowly, my fists unfurl, and my shoulders relax. Little red crescents are imprinted in my palm, and it burns. I hadn’t realized I even clenched them.

  At my reaction, his smile widens. “Come here. I missed you.”

  I walk over, grateful that he’s in a better mood. I’m still a little angry about the woman, but when he looks at me with as much pride as he is now, it’s hard not to forget about her.

  I cuddle into his side, and he wraps an arm around me. A light kiss lands on my temple, and I’m tempted to start purring like Bilby.

  A finger curls under my jaw, and gently, he raises my chin until I’m staring into his faded blue eyes. “Please don’t ever leave me. I couldn’t live without you.”

  “I would never leave you,” I promise.

  He shakes his head, and what looks like agony passes over his face. “Good. I don’t think I would survive it. I’d probably kill myself.”

  A line forms between my brows. His words are sweet and unsettling all in the same breath. “Don’t say that, Ryan,” I demand softly. “You wouldn’t kill yourself.”

  “I would,” he says firmly, his eyes boring into mine.

  “Why?” I ask incredulously.

  “I’ll never find anyone that makes me as happy as you do,” he says softly. “I’ll never find anyone as perfect as you.”

  I melt. Like that fucking ice cream I ate earlier.

  “I’m not. You’re perfect for me.”

  He smiles, showcasing his beautiful smile. “Yeah?”

  I bite my lip and nod. He grabs my hand and rubs it over his hard dick, straining against his shorts.

  “Why don’t you show me how perfect I am for you.”

  So, I do. He falls asleep only a minute after he comes. I don’t even have the energy to get myself off after the weird day I had.

  IT’S A SUNDAY AND Ryan and I have nothing planned. I wake with a smile on my face, excited to laze around all day with my boyfriend. He let me move into this house only a few months ago, and so far, we haven’t gotten a whole day to just relax.

  I stretch my body, enjoying all the aches and pains being stretched out. Ryan’s bed is absolute heaven, the perfect mixture of firmness and lying on a cloud. My body had lied on nothing but hard floors and lumpy beds up until I moved in. It had actually taken a good month before I stopped waking up incredibly sore—my body not used to anything so luxurious. Now, I can hardly remove from myself from the bed.

  Ryan’s spot next to me is empty. Patting his spot, I find that it’s cool. He’s been up for a little while now. The smile slowly fades from my face as my hand wanders over the spot he occupied all night. We used to wake up together on the weekends and snuggle in bed before we had to get up and attend to our responsibilities. It’s been a few months since the last time he stuck around in the mornings.

  Ryan’s been acting weird lately. Aggressive, distrustful, distant, and flat-out mean. While Ryan’s always been a bit edgy, he’s never caused this amount of turmoil in our relationship before. Up until recently, he’s always gone out of his way to make me feel special, loved, and cared for.

  So many memories of wonderful dates that ended in passionate sex. Moments where we would just laugh together, sometimes for no reason at all. Him doting on me, professing love to me in the cutest ways, and always surprising me with sentimental gifts. I don’t know when those memories started mixing with much darker ones. The sentiments and doting are nowhere to be seen. All the little things he used to do for me, like making sure I had coffee in the morning, keeping my favorite water stocked, or coming home with flowers after work, have disappeared. Now, it’s just Ryan demanding to go through my phone, calling me a whore for wearing too much make-up or revealing clothes, and now putting his hands on me in almost violent ways.

  Work has been stressing him lately, maybe that’s why. He’s still trying to make a name for himself that isn’t attached to his father’s. I can be understanding and let those little things go, they’re not things I need from him anyway. As long as Ryan and I are happy, that’s all that matters.

  Hopping up, I quickly run my hands through my hair. I’ll brush my teeth after breakfast. Though, I can’t smell anything cooking yet.

  When I walk down into the living room, Ryan’s lounging shirtless on the couch with his laptop on his lap and his reading glasses perched on his nose. He looks so damn sexy, I want to jump his bones. Bilby is lying in his usual spot on the back of couch, snoozing loudly.

  I rescued him from the shelter a few months ago, and he’s been my little shadow ever since. Ryan doesn’t pay much attention to him, and often sneers at the cat hair everywhere, but otherwise doesn’t complain too much. Ryan had asked me to quit my job when I moved in, so I’ve been lonely in the house while he works. Having a companion has eased the majority of my loneliness.

  “Good morning,” I chirp.

  He spares me a glance but doesn’t say anything.

  I pause on the last step. Uh. Okay then.

  “Do you want breakfast?” I ask.

  “What do you think I’ve been waiting for?” he asks coldly, not looking up from his screen. My smile falls and all happiness slowly deflates.

  “Fuck!” he shouts unexpectedly, slamming his laptop on the couch angrily. I jump from the sudden outburst, my hand flying to my chest as if I’m keeping it from jumping out of my ribcage.

  “What’s wrong?” I question breathlessly, trying to reign my heartbeat back into a normal tempo.

  “Fucking internet went out again,” he mutters, storming to his office where the router is. I stand there confused, staring at the space he disappeared from. He’s been fighting with our cable company for the last few months about this, but he’s never gotten this worked up about it before. Within seconds, he comes storming back in, plops down on the couch and proceeds to work on his laptop again.

  “Is there anything else wrong?” I ask hesitantly. Another glance, this time filled with annoyance.

  “No.”

  Deciding to let it go for now, I immediately start making breakfast. French toast, bacon and eggs. Maybe he’s just hungry and that’s why he has an attitude. It’d be hypocritical to act like I don’t get hangry sometimes, too. I pile his plate high when the food’s done, and even add a few fresh strawberries and cream on his French toast.

  He takes the plate and digs in. In complete silence. Not even a thank you.

  Of fucking course not.

  Slowly, I sit down next to him and eat. Did I do something wrong? I don’t want to anger him further. I look to him, watching his face for a reaction to the food. It’d only make things worse if I didn’t make a good breakfast for him.

  “Do you like it?” I ask anxiously. He glances at me, licking a dollop of cream of the corner of his mouth.

  “I’m eating it, aren’t I?”

  I frown. That’s not really an answer.

  I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s a wall around him. Like if I speak, he’l
l snap. I keep my mouth closed. I keep it closed during breakfast, during lunch and even during dinner. My only source of entertainment is playing with Bilby until Mary and Ava arrive.

  They’re house cleaners Ryan hired to come every Sunday. Most days, I insist on helping. I’m a grown woman and perfectly capable of cleaning up after myself, so I always feel weird letting the girls clean up after us.

  Mary is an older woman, with salt and pepper hair, wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, and a slight hunch back. Her grandmother built their cleaning company from the ground up, and Mary now in her 60s, has kept the business going. She’s a very stern woman but has a gentleness she preserves just for Ava and I. Ava, Mary’s granddaughter, is following in the family footsteps. She’s only sixteen, with sleek black hair, big doe eyes, and a shy smile. They’ve both always been so good to Ryan and I. And though Mary hates it when I help, she always ends up conceding since Ava focuses on cleaning better when I’m around.

  Even after Mary and Ava leave, Ryan still doesn’t speak to me throughout the entire day, and I grow angry. He talks to a few people on the phone, and he’s boisterous and laughs with them. Hands waving vigorously, more animated than a corpse awakened by a necromancer.

  Why won’t he talk that way to me? The moment he hangs up, the iciness settles back in, frosting the entire house with his energy. I’m not normally a petty person, but I’m on the verge of burning sage around the house to expel his negative vibes.

  A few times, I tried to ask why he won’t talk to me. He didn’t even look at me when he said, “You’re not talking, either.”

  Yeah, because you’re giving me the cold shoulder, dick.

  He had nothing else to say, and if I pushed, he’d just get up and go to a different room in the house. Even Bilby couldn’t cure my loneliness today. How can two people co-habitate the same house, but it feels like I’m alone? I give up trying, and by night, I’m silently fuming.

  We went to bed perfectly fine last night. I woke up from the couch and he gave me a cute sleepy smile. I helped him to bed, and he murmured how much he loves me. He cuddled me all night, up until early morning when he awoke before me.

  And now this. We were fine. We were fucking fine. What happened?

  I put a movie on without asking him if he wants to watch it. I don’t fucking care if he does or not. I settle into the couch, the buttery black leather comforting me as I cuddle into a soft blanket. The living room is large, with three large couches filling the space, a massive flat screen television with Ryan’s game consoles set up beneath it and expertly placed décor and family pictures along the walls. Ryan’s taste is more modern and sterile, with lots of shades of black, gray, and white. It’s a beautiful house, but it definitely lacks the homey, lived-in vibe that Julie and Matt’s house has.

  I’m halfway through the movie when Ryan closes his laptop and pokes me in the thigh playfully. The gesture irritates me, but I’d be a liar if it didn’t also plant that hopeless feeling in me again. Hope. Hope is hopeless.

  “Come cuddle with me,” he whines good-naturedly. He even has the balls to give me puppy dog eyes.

  I’m sorry, what? I look at him with a mixture of shock and anger. The audacity.

  “Oh, now you want to talk to me?” I sass.

  He scoffs and shakes his head, as if I’m the one being unreasonable. As if I’m crazy and he has no idea what I’m talking about.

  “Fine, then don’t. I just wanted to cuddle.” That cold, hard voice is back, except this time, he looks at me like he can’t believe my attitude. He leans away and crosses his arms, the wall erected once again. The small amount of attention he gave me is gone, and now I feel lonely again.

  Sadness hits me. He ignored me all day, and he finally is giving me attention, and I’m turning it down.

  “Tell me why you ignored me all day,” I demand, unwilling to settle back into silence. He gives me a weird look, as if I just asked him if he’d paint his nipples green for me.

  “You weren’t talking, either, River. You always do this. You make things into a big deal when it was just us sitting in comfortable silence and relaxing. Why are you trying to pick a fight with me for no reason?”

  My lip trembles. Is that what I was doing? This whole time I thought he was ignoring me when really, he was just enjoying my company in comfortable silence. I feel so stupid.

  “Do you want to cuddle or not?” he snaps. He’s throwing me one last bone and I snatch it up like a starved dog. Shamefully, I crawl into his lap. He smiles broadly and circles his arms around me, shifting into a comfortable position so we can both watch the movie.

  He intermittently kisses the side of my head and runs his fingertips over my skin. We go to bed the same way we did the night before. He has a smile on his face, and he cuddles me all night, while I lie awake berating myself for ruining the day.

  Next time, I’ll do better.

  SHALLOW HILL IS A black hole in this state. Normally, anything that goes in, never comes back out. I was one of very few exceptions. Some days, I still don’t know how I managed it. On those days, it still feels like I’m stuck here in this desolate place where innocent souls die.

  I walk alongside the river I was born in. Even the river is dead. Murky, still and devoid of life. And quite frankly, it fucking reeks. How I didn’t contract some type of disease from this river is beyond me.

  Broken down homes line the other side of me. The windows that aren’t intact are boarded up with splintering, rotting wood. Most of the houses are missing siding panels, exposing the wooden skeletons beneath. And every house has traffic of cracked out men and women entering and leaving. Some belong there, most don’t.

  Faint screaming can be heard in the distance. I keep walking until I reach Barbie’s house. Her house used to be white, but now it’s a sickly gray color with broken panels and rust. The closer I draw, the louder the screaming becomes until it’s apparent Barbie’s in another fight with an addict. More than likely because she smoked and injected all their drugs after she fucked them till they passed out.

  Slowly, I walk towards the back door. It’s rusty and creaks as I open it up. Barbie and a greasy, skinny man come into view, both screaming so hard that they’re spitting in each other’s faces. They’re standing in the kitchen, with yellowed, cracked linoleum flooring, a mold-infested fridge, and a kitchen table cluttered with cigarette butts, empty liquor bottles and used needles.

  Looks the exact same way it did every day for the eighteen years I was trapped inside this dump.

  “You fucking bitch! Those were mine!” the man shouts, backhanding Barbie across the face. I don’t even flinch. She grabs her cheek in shock—for the life of me, I can’t understand why she’s shocked—and then rears back and clocks him in the nose.

  The crunch comes a second before the man starts howling, holding his bloody nose.

  “You broke my nose!” Way to point out the obvious.

  “You deserved it, you piece of fucking shit!”

  “Leave,” I demand lowly. They both freeze and turn towards me. Neither of them even noticed I was here. It’d be so easy to kill them both. No one would care enough about them to find out who did it.

  The man’s beady eyes study me with anger and perversion, his hand still clutching his nose.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he demands, his voice now nasally and stuffed with blood.

  “The owner of this house. Now fucking leave.”

  He huffs and turns to storm out the front door, muttering obscenities and promises of revenge under his breath the entire time.

  Barbie turns to me and gives me a yellow smile. “Thanks, baby.”

  It’s honestly got to be one of the seven wonders in the world on how I came from… that. Barbie was once beautiful in her younger years, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at her. I only figured it out when I found an old picture of Barbie and Billy in their twenties, right when Barbie started getting hooked on drugs. I’m a replica of her former self. Long, curly black
hair, golden eyes and a wide smile. Now, her hair barely falls to her shoulders, the greasy strands thin and wispy. Her skin is full of pockmarks and wrinkles and cracked like cheap leather. And she’s as thin as a rail, though she does retain some muscle mass from the constant scuffling she finds herself in with men and woman.

  I suppose that’s one thing I can say about Barbie. Aside from Billy, she doesn’t take anyone’s shit. The man currently nursing his broken nose can attest to that.

  “I didn’t do it for you,” I deadpan. Her fake smile washes off, revealing her real face.

  “Bitch,” she mutters. Nothing I haven’t heard before. “Why are you here, anyway?”

  “You know exactly why, Barbie. Came to collect rent.”

  Her shoulders tense. She doesn’t need to say it—I already know. She doesn’t have the money. She smoked, injected or snorted it all. Probably drank it, too.

  “What did you steal this time?” I ask casually, referring to the man with a broken nose.

  She snarls, her dilated eyes simmering as she rages, “I didn’t steal nothin’! I fucked him nice and hard for that shit. I earned that, and it was mine.”

  I sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose. “If you’re going to sell your body, at least get cash for it. How are you going to eat and pay rent otherwise?” It’s like talking to a brick wall. Not sure why the words even left my mouth. They won’t ever penetrate her drug-addled brain anyway.

  She plops down on the chair, and lights up a cigarette, not bothering to respond. Typical. She’d rather act like I never said anything than acknowledge the fact that she owes me money.

  “I own this house. I can evict you any time I want. All I need to do is go to the courthouse and serve you the papers, and your ass is out in a month tops,” I threaten, sitting down in the chair across from her.

  I take care not to touch any of the surfaces if I can help it. I don’t know what kind of diseases I could pick up. Ryan would kill me if that happened.