Breaking Free

by Winter Page

  Clare’s phone rang. Hastily, she fished it from the bottom of her giant purse. Her eyes widened ever so slightly when she read the caller ID. I peeked over her shoulder and saw what was awaiting her on the other end of the line.

  Dad.

  I heard yelling through the phone and a lot more profanity than you would think a pastor would ever dream of using.

  Clare winced, tears claiming her eyes once again. “I’m sorry, Daddy—” She broke off.

  He had cut her words in half. I held her tighter to me as words like hell, faith, disappointment, useless, worthless, and evil hung in the air between us like little individual nooses. I was gaining a new respect for my family’s exceedingly quick acceptance. When the phone call finished, Clare blinked back tears and just stared at her screen for a minute.

  I wrapped my free hand around her. “My parents are out of town. If you want to crash at my house, just let me know,” I murmured.

  Her lips slid into the barest half smile I had seen in my life. “That depends. Do you have booze?”

  I snorted, kissing her lightly on the cheek. “Are you kidding me? My dad has an entire man cave devoted to just that. And a flat screen TV that will blow your mind.”

  I GLANCED into my rearview mirror to see Clare’s car following me faithfully up my driveway. I tapped my fingers impatiently on the steering wheel as the garage door opened as slowly as mechanically possible. Finally, I pulled into the far left, Clare taking the far right spot. That left a space between us. And I wasn’t sure it was just distance anymore. We walked into my house quietly, my sneakers the only occasional squeak of sound around us. I turned on the lights in the kitchen and started looking through the fridge.

  “Do you want anything to eat?” I asked as Clare took a seat on our counter.

  “Ice cream?” she mumbled.

  I laughed. “Sorry, don’t have any.”

  “Pizza?”

  “Don’t have that, either.”

  “Candy?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Chocolate?”

  “I’m starting to see a trend here.”

  She laughed then, the tiniest hint of a giggle. “I think we need a shopping trip.”

  I watched as her eyes lit up and then dimmed sharply, filling with tears. My eyebrows shot up. “Let me get my coat.”

  Clare blinked a few times. “I wasn’t serious. I’m fine,” she said wryly.

  I rolled my eyes, sighing heavily. “In the women’s dictionary, ‘fine’ does not exist. Now get your coat or freeze, but either way you’re coming with me, and we’re going to buy all the junk food we want.

  “And we aren’t going to care one single little bit about anything else,” I said with finality.

  Sixteen

  WHEN WE got back to my house, I could actually feel the fat starting to settle onto my thighs, and we hadn’t even started eating yet. Basically, if you could name a junk food available in our local store, we now owned it. I took a long slurp from an energy drink, discarding all thoughts of caloric intake and possible morbid obesity. Oh, well, calories don’t count when you’re with someone else.

  Clare popped the top off of her raspberry ice cream and immediately went to my mom’s blender. She spooned in half of the carton, then turned to ask me, “Where’s the booze, honey bunches?”

  I stood there, letting the decision set in. “Are you sure you want to do this, Clare? You know alcohol is a depressant, and it’s really not a good idea to layer a depressant on top of being sad,” I said logically.

  She started laughing, not with humor but bitterly, her laughter sour with anger. “I’m positive. Get me drunk, Rain. Get me really, damningly, drunk.”

  She followed my heavy footsteps into my dad’s man cave. It really was an impressive set up. The room was easily as big as our family room. When you entered, the plush carpet led down three stairs into an almost basement-like setup. I padded down those stairs and switched on the florescent lighting.

  Clare giggled from behind me. “What, no disco lights?” she teased.

  I sighed and flipped another switch. The florescent lights lowered to a deep purple before changing color. The lights kept changing, going through the rainbow in a surreal ’80s way. I continued down the stairs, my feet sinking into the deep shag carpeting. In the middle of the room was an iridescent chandelier that threw colored shards of light over the huge pool table. The wall facing us was completely covered in mirrors, and the two sidewalls were covered in every sort of fermented liquid you could imagine. Jack Daniels, assorted schnapps, every type of vodka ever made, malts from around the world, and any age scotch you could dream of. It was drunk-heaven down here.

  Clare was loving it. She stood in the middle of the room and turned in a slow, delighted pirouette. “Oh my God. Your dad is a pimp, and you never told me?”

  I choked on my laughter. “No, no, Clare. He is not a pimp. I swear.”

  She snorted as she turned a small dial on the wall. Soft music began to pump in around us. “You’ve got to be shitting me,” she breathed.

  I sighed. Dubstep. My dad’s latest obsession was Dubstep. I figured it was his manopause kicking in, but Clare obviously had other ideas.

  “Not only is your dad a pimp, he has legitimate bitches. I want to meet them,” she demanded.

  I rolled my eyes, but I could see why anyone looking at this room would think that. I perched myself on the pool table and opened my arms. “Mis bebidas alcohólicas es el alcohol,” I said, not sure if I said it right.

  Clare seemed unconcerned with anything but the very long row of liqueur bottles in front of her. My dad must have had forty different flavors of liqueurs, varying from orange to licorice, to cookie dough flavored.

  She exclaimed, “Oh, damn. You have coffee liqueur? I love that stuff!” She took the bottle down off the shelf. Her slender fingers snaked around bottle neck after bottle neck until her arms were full of goodies. She glanced up at me. “Aren’t you going to get anything?”

  I shook my head. Permanent designated driver’s status is a hard thing to leave behind. Not to mention that I worried a little about what would happen if one of us didn’t stay reasonably sober and self-controlled.

  Clare threw her hair back with gales of laughter. “Oh, Rain, Rain, Rain. That’s it! Grab yourself some vodka, honey, we’re making Jell-O shots.”

  I shrugged and hopped to my feet to leave.

  “Nope. No leaving until we have some vodka to play with. My arms are full. You have to grab it for me. Go on, now. I’m not going to talk to you until you fetch the happy juice.” And with that, she pressed her lips tightly together and looked expectantly at me.

  I felt myself flush as I made my way over to the vodka. I picked one at random. Vanilla vodka? With Jell-O? I thought not. I put it back and searched a little before settling on plain old Russian vodka, trying to keep it as classy as possible. I trudged out of my dad’s room, turning off the lights and music as we left.

  “You know, Clare, I’m starting to think you’re a bad influence.”

  Her peals of her laugher bounced back in on me from the walls. “That’s what they all tell me. But then they get drunk and love me, anyway. So it’s kind of a karmic wash.”

  It turned out that Clare wasn’t as much of a lightweight at drinking as she painted herself to be. She explained to me about her heavy Russian and German roots as she poured the coffee liqueur over her ice cream in the blender. Clare added ice to the blender, then picked up the bottle again, studying it carefully. After a moment’s contemplation, she took a deep swig from the bottle. A grimace passed over her features, no doubt from the sharp burn of alcohol down her throat.

  I did the responsible thing and took the bottle away.

  She scowled at me and switched on the blender. As it whirred in the background, she declared, “We need music.”

  I pointed her to my parents’ massive stereo. Clare plugged her iPod in and, surprisingly, cued up an indie playlist. I raised an eyebrow at her.
What happened to the jazz and swing?

  She answered my unspoken question. “I save the oldies for when I want to remember.” Her voice was melancholy, serious, almost lost in the down-tempo harmony.

  Remember what? I watched her stride over to the blender and stick a straw straight into the oddly colored brew. She sucked down a considerable amount at a fairly alarming rate.

  “Slow down, there, kiddo,” I said disapprovingly, trying to coax the blender from her hands.

  She shook a reproving finger at me. “Didn’t your mama ever teach you manners?”

  I shook my head and gave up on separating her from her high-octane milkshake. I opened the freezer and grabbed my own carton of chocolate ice cream. I hopped onto one of the barstools, pulled my knees up to my chest, and started picking at my ice cream. We stayed there in silence for a few moments, Clare not speaking until she’d downed the rest of her concoction and broken into an Irish malt whiskey and tossed back a couple of shots.

  “Better?” I murmured.

  She nodded, her cheeks starting to flush with the beginnings of a buzz. “Yep. Definitely.”

  It wasn’t pleasant just sitting there, watching her mix drink after drink. What was interesting was that between drinks, I spied the beginning of tears forming at the edges of her eyes. But then, as the acrid burn of alcohol hit the back of her throat, the tears would clear away.

  I couldn’t bear to see her drink herself into oblivion like my dad did every night. I eventually had to separate myself from my own semipanicked feelings and observe her in a clinical, objective way. As she finished a glass of orange juice and vodka, I finally spoke up.

  “You done yet?” I asked grudgingly.

  She nodded, as she swallowed the last bit of poison that so dominated my dad’s life. “Yep. A lot better now.”

  I had to give her credit for holding her booze well. Her enunciation and pronunciation were absolutely perfect. Her hand snaked out and popped open a bag of Doritos. She ate a good chunk of the bag before starting in on a bag of Cheetos.

  “Want to talk about it?” I asked, scraping the last bit of ice cream from my pint carton.

  “No.”

  I nodded, picking up the discarded Doritos. I crunched through a few, not tasting anything. “But you need to. Talk about it, that is. Like it or not. So spill,” I ordered.

  Clare shook her head. But at least this time when the tears pricked her eyes, she didn’t reach for booze to stop them.

  “I can’t, Raimi. I just can’t.”

  I snorted. “Yes, you can. Don’t lie to me or to yourself. It’s a waste of our time.”

  Her eyes swam behind a sheen of tears like melting turquoise. Her shoulders shook with unshed sobs, held back by her tightly pressed-together lips. Watching her cry in complete silence like this was like watching humanity without a human. It was awful. It was empty.

  I moved over to her, taking her hand in mine and hugging her. She was cold to the touch. Lifeless. All I could think was, this was how a corpse must feel.

  “My dad is planning on sending me to rehab in Mississippi. To pray the gay away is exactly how he described it. Actually, he said a lot of things.”

  Her voice ripped through the silence she’d cloaked herself in, breaking my train of thought. How in the hell could any parent intentionally cause their only child this kind of pain?

  She continued, her words more gasps of pain than sound. “He told me I was going to hell. That I was broken and a disgrace and wrong and a Satanist.”

  I wrapped my arms around her. My fingers dug so deeply into her shoulders that I could feel her frantic pulse. No, she didn’t feel like a corpse. She felt like someone who wished she were a corpse.

  “He said that whatever demon had taken his baby from him would be exorcised, and that he promised he would get his little girl back, no matter what the cost,” she whispered. Her tears spilled down my arms, tracking down us both.

  I held her tighter.

  She clutched her fists at my back, clinging to me as desperately as I was hanging on to her. “My mom lives on painkillers, day and night. She pops them around the clock like some sort of zombie. Literally. The only time I see her is every four hours when she comes into the kitchen and takes her pills. Then she just goes back into her bedroom. My parents haven’t slept in the same bed for years.” Clare continued on, her voice gradually losing emotion. I got scared when her pulse started to slow.

  “I told my mom I was gay the night the picture was posted. She would see it anyway. I told her I was gay, and she just looked at me like I didn’t really exist. She didn’t even say a word. She just looked at me as if she could see right through me and took her damned pills. Then she left me standing there alone in the kitchen. She just left, like she was too tired to care.”

  I buried my face in her collarbone. My tears slid down her skin. I was crying for her. Because I knew I had to tell her tonight. There could be no more hiding between us. No more secrets. I guess once you cry on someone, there isn’t really an option to go back.

  “Oh, Clare,” I whispered.

  Her chest heaved against me, and she shoved me off. “No, I don’t want your sympathy.” She wiped angrily at her face. Even after all the drinking she had done, her words were perfect, without any hint of a slur. “I don’t want it, Rain. You and your perfect family. You with your perfect mom, your perfect brother, even your perfect alcoholic dad. You don’t even know what you have,” she shouted, her voice striking me like a slap.

  I stood there and took it, not letting her words sink in. She was drunk. She didn’t mean it. Her eyes boiled, the melted turquoise heating and hardening like lava. The stereo stuttered in the background. Clare took a step toward me. She raised her hand as if she were going to hit me.

  I clenched my face, my body, my entire being in preparation.

  And instead of hitting me, she knotted her hand in my hair and kissed me as frantically as she could. Her mouth found mine, begging for me.

  I returned her urgency as best I could. It was hard to keep up with her passion, her hand holding my back strongly. I wrapped my arms around her, settling against her. It wasn’t like anything I had ever experienced. Our first kiss had been innocent. Our second kiss had been romantic. We had kissed since then, but nothing like this. This was raw. It was something… more. The salt of her tears and the taste of vodka on her lips mingled in a way that was distinctly Clare. I don’t think I’ll ever forget how she tasted that night.

  Eventually we parted for air, our lungs heaving against each other. Once the fog of heat subsided, only one thought made its way across my mind. I squinched my eyes closed, trying to shove it away. I could still feel her lips on mine as warm tracks slid down my cheeks.

  Clare settled her head into my neck and sighed. “Tell me, Rain. Whatever your big secret is, you can tell me,” she whispered, her lips tickling against my skin.

  Goose bumps shivered down my arms. I didn’t say anything.

  “Please,” Clare breathed.

  I swallowed hard. She kissed my neck.

  I couldn’t think then. The only thing I could feel was her and me and the secrets and her taste and the music and everything. I felt everything. I felt her. And it all poured out. Everything. From Texas up until this very moment, I told her everything.

  She kept her arms around my neck the entire time.

  When I finished I let out a huge, shuddering breath. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I murmured.

  Her breath washed over my skin. Clare’s laughter brought a deep numbness into my throat. After everything, she was going to leave me. I braced myself for the blow. I wished she had hit me. It would have made things easier. Safer.

  But falling in love isn’t something you can do safely. It’s something you don’t even realize you’re doing until you’re already too far gone to turn back.

  Clare sighed and kissed my neck again. “Never stop surprising me, Raimi. It’s the best part of being with you.”

 
I don’t know how long we kissed or when we curled up on the couch and fell asleep together. We didn’t have sex. We just fell asleep in a pile like a couple of puppies. I drifted into sleep from the safety of her arms, her head resting on a pillow and my leg thrown across one of hers. She toyed with my hair as dreams claimed us both. I don’t think I had ever slept so soundly.

  WHEN I woke up the next morning, Clare was absent. The smell of eggs wafted in from the other room. Saturday morning cartoons were playing on the TV. I sat up and ran my hands through my hair.

  “Morning, sleepy head.” Clare’s voice drifted in to me from the kitchen.

  I smiled over at her and stood. I lazily made my way toward her, taking some orange juice from the fridge. I let my mind sift through the events of last night. I took a swig of juice from the carton, Clare’s voice droning in my head, casually.

  “You’re going to have to fill me in on the details of last night. It’s a little hazy.”

  I put the carton down, confused. “What do you mean?” I asked wryly. I took note of the empty coffee packets poking out of the trash and went to the cupboard to pull out an actual glass. I carefully poured myself a serving of orange juice. For lack of anything else to do with my restless hands, I took a sip of it.

  “I mean that I don’t remember anything from last night,” she elaborated.

  The glass nearly slipped from my fingers. I didn’t say anything. Numbness seeped into every inch of my body.

  “It’s weird,” she commented, blithely unaware of my horror. “I haven’t blacked out like that in months. Well, more like years. Oh, well. It’s not like we would’ve talked about anything important last night while I was drunk off my ass,” she said flippantly.

  I thought I was going to faint. But instead, I took another drink from my glass, wishing fervently that the juice was spiked with vodka.

  “No. You didn’t miss anything,” I whispered.

  Seventeen

  I DON’T remember the rest of that weekend. Whenever I try to pull up the memories, there’s nothing there. Just empty, numb space. Monday morning, I woke up with another note taped to my pillow. It was just like her first note, her swirling handwriting scrawled messily across the page.