“I love you, Carrie.”
“I hate you.”
“Why?”
“I just do.”
“But…”
“Get out, Ethan…”
“Don’t say that. Please. It hurts.”
“I don’t care.”
“But, Carrie, I love you.”
“I despise you, Ethan.”
She says my name to make sure it hurts more. I know she does. I can see it on her beautiful face. And now I’m getting mad, and I can’t help but show that I’m getting mad. My blood is rushing through me; I can hear it in my ears. It’s noisy and I can’t think properly.
The blood, it smelled so strong. It was everywhere, dripping from the walls, soaking into the floorboards, embedding itself into my skin…
I grab a blanket from the bed and throw it at her. It hits her in the face and then falls to the floor, crumpling in a heap by her feet. She doesn’t even flinch. She doesn’t even care.
“Put some clothes on. You look like a slut standing there naked,” I say through gritted teeth. I don’t like saying things like that to her. But it just slipped out. It’s not nice. I should say sorry. But I don’t.
I need to calm down. But I’m so hurt and so angry. And I don’t understand why she said those things, continues to say those things. She doesn’t mean them, she can’t mean them. She said we’d always be each other’s. Those weren’t silly childhood promises. I mean of course they were; we were kids. But they were also so much more. They meant something. They were true. I know they were.
Her hand entwined with mine as she lay on the bed underneath me.
We were naked.
I was hard and she was soft.
“Do it,” she said.
“I’m scared,” I replied. “I don’t want it to hurt you.”
She laughed, tears shining in her eyes. “No one can hurt me anymore, Ethan.”
I rubbed the tears away from her cheeks as they spilled from her eyes. “Why?” I asked.
“Because I’m numb and empty.”
“I don’t want you to be numb and empty.”
She shrugged and pulled her face from my hand. “So fill me up.”
She reached down between us and held me steady in her hand. It felt nice. Her hand was soft. I couldn’t stop myself as she guided me to her entrance. I couldn’t stop as she raised her hips and I sunk inside of her, slowly at first and then all at once. I couldn’t stop as she bucked beneath me, and I groaned as her body engulfed mine like flames.
I was hot. Boiling. I was melting above her. I was sinking into her over and over. Her body was devouring me. Taking me. I’d never be the same afterwards. I wanted this, her, and I wanted so much more. I wanted everything.
“Will you always be mine?” I gasped as I felt my stomach tighten.
“I’m no one’s,” she said, her eyes looking sad.
I thrust into her again. “Please, Carrie. I want you to be mine. Always. Forever. I’ll always be here. I’ll always look after you,” I promised.
She looked at me then, her face serious. More serious than I had seen it ever before. “Will you, Ethan? Will you really?”
I nodded, and I wanted to stop moving inside of her but I could feel something building and it was impossible to stop. I nodded again. “Yes, always.”
“Will you always look after me?”
I nodded once more. The peak to whatever mountain I was climbing was cresting. I was almost there. Wherever it was. Whatever it was. I couldn’t wait to reach it. Was desperate to reach it. Something magnificent was waiting for me at the top. I just knew it.
“And you’ll always protect me?”
I nodded, half blind with desire and love for her.
“Will you do anything to protect me?”
“Yes,” I gasped, and I felt her body clench around me, squeezing me tighter, bringing me closer to the edge.
“Will you do something for me?”
I blinked a yes as my toes curled.
“Promise?”
“Yes! Anything! Anything you want!” I called as I came inside her. She was warmer than before, softer and more perfect as her hands clawed my back and her legs wrapped around mine and pulled me closer. My body shook and trembled, and I felt like I was in heaven in that moment.
It was bliss and it was perfect.
Our heaven.
She was everything to me.
We were fifteen.
And we were madly in love.
Chapter seventeen:
Carrie reaches down and grabs the blanket. She wraps it around her shoulders and covers herself. I’m grateful because I can think better when she isn’t naked.
I soften in my pants.
“Thank you,” she says. “You’re right, I was cold.” She smiles, and my world lights up with that smile.
Her face is different now.
Her eyes don’t look as scared.
Her cheeks are pink.
I smile at Carrie, and she smiles again.
“This is great,” I say.
And I think I want to cry because I’m so happy. But I don’t because I’d look like a pussy. But I want to because I knew it was all going to work out. With that smile, I knew it was going to be perfect.
“Yeah, it is,” she says. And she’s coming around the bed.
My gaze slips to the bed and I see that the covers are disturbed, and I know that she fucked Adam in that bed, and that’s bad and makes me feel a little nauseous.
“Can we go downstairs?” I say, forcing my gaze back to her and away from that bed.
I’m going to burn that fucking bed in the yard, I decide.
“Sure we can, Ethan. Can I get dressed first?” She giggles, like she did when I was coming up the stairs. Only it sounds a little different, but it’s probably nothing. It’s probably just because she’s embarrassed. And I would be too, if I were her.
“Yeah, yeah, of course.” I smile again, and she goes to the wardrobe. It’s a big old thing, and I notice that none of her furniture matches. Not even her curtains. One is red and the other is green. And I’m glad nothing matches. It means that she’s not a total snob. It means that the Carrie I love is still in there, and this big fancy fucking house is just a fake like I knew it was.
Just like Adam is a big fucking fake—only holding my place for me. Me. Not him, but me: Carrie’s true love.
I watch, because I can’t not watch. She slips into some jeans and grabs a black tee to pull over her head and cover her breasts. She doesn’t put any underwear on, and I can see her nipples through her top and I know the jeans will be right up her snatch, but I guess she’s just nervous and we do have a lot to talk about. So I don’t say anything even though I think it’s a slutty thing to do.
I go to the doorway and she follows me. I hold out my hand but I don’t think she sees it because she doesn’t take it. And that’s okay, I guess. I mean, it’s not really rude if you don’t realize, is it? I hold the door open for her. And I apologize about breaking it and I promise to get the door fixed for her. She says it’s okay and she doesn’t mind, and then she steps past me onto the landing.
It takes only a second for her to notice her cell on the landing floor and make a run for it. It’s on the other side of the landing, near the bathroom she came out of, and she drops to her knees to grab it. At first I’m startled because I don’t understand what she’s doing, and then I realize she was just fucking with me again and she probably wants to call Mr. Fancy Asshole Adam.
I’m so angry at her. And I don’t understand any of this because I know that I’ve done everything right. But none of that matters right now. All that matters is that I know I’m not going to let her make that call.
So I dive for the cell too. I land next to her, but my arm is longer and heavier than hers and my forearm hits the back of her head as I grab the cell.
Her face smashes into the floor like mine did on the way up. Only worse.
Hurts, doesn’t it? I think.
<
br /> But I don’t say it to her because of course I’m not a total asshole. I bet Adam would have said that to her though, because he is an asshole.
I have the cell in my hand and I get to my knees, holding my prize in my hand, and I look down at Carrie and see she’s not moving.
“Carrie?” I say, and I reach down for her. My fingers touch the back of her head. They run through her damp hair and push it to one side so I can see her face. Her eyes are closed. Blood trickles from her mouth, like it did with mine, and then she startles me because her eyes open and she jumps upwards with a scream, pushing me off her, and she makes a run for the stairs.
My heart jumps in my chest and I call out “shit” because she scared me. And then I laugh and run after her, and think how hilarious she is. She always had a good sense of humor. She knew what things to say to mess with my head and make me smile in confusion.
What do you mean you like that other boy, Carrie? You’re so funny, always messing with me.
Sometimes her sense of humor was a little mean, but she never meant to hurt me. I could see the worry that flashed across her face when she did. And then she would hug me and say she was sorry, and I would laugh and say it’s okay.
I catch up to her on the fifth step down.
There are only eleven steps but I hear every painful thump as I grab her ankle and she falls down the other six. She lies at the bottom of the stairs, her arm bent out awkwardly. Blood dribbles from her mouth. Her eyes are closed again.
I come down the stairs slowly, and now I really want to cry, because I hadn’t meant to hurt her and it looks like that would have really hurt.
“Carrie?” I say, my voice really quiet. “Carrie, are you okay?”
She doesn’t answer me.
I get to the bottom of the stairs and I bend down. I can see she’s still breathing, and I’m all like thank fuck for that! And I want to laugh and cry and cheer, all at the same time. Because I thought maybe I’d killed her.
Or, not me, but she’d killed herself by running and falling.
I didn’t do that.
I only wanted to talk to her.
She was the one who ran and fell.
She groans when I try to move her. But I have to try and move her. I can’t leave her here like this. I pick her up and take her to the living room and I see a long gray sofa with floral cushions on it, and I think you really have no taste, Carrie. Because she doesn’t. I mean, she was fucking Mr. Fancy Asshole after all, right?
I lay her on the sofa, and then I close the drapes. These ones match, even if they are brown and cheap looking, not heavy and expensive like I thought they were from the outside.
I see what you’re doing, I think. Matching drapes downstairs to help with the pretense, but upstairs is where the real you comes out.
I use the tiebacks on the drapes—one to tie her ankles together and the other on her wrists. I go out of the room and rummage around in the kitchen drawers for some masking tape to cover her mouth.
I feel like the worst person ever doing this to her. But it’s only temporary while we sort out the kinks of this mess. Because that’s what it is: a mess.
It was not supposed to go like this.
She’s still out cold, but she’s breathing.
She has a bruise forming on her cheekbone, and dried blood on her forehead, but she’s okay. It’s all just superficial stuff.
We can heal from the superficial stuff; it’s the really deep stuff that makes us suffer. The things that slip between our bones and creep into our veins. You can’t get rid of that sort of pain. But this? These cuts and bruises are nothing.
She’ll be okay.
I’ll be okay.
We’ll be okay.
I say to myself. And I know I’m right, because my mom said that same thing to me the last time she saw me.
“I can’t come to see you anymore, Ethan, but it’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. I know you’re a good boy deep down. Just don’t forget that. Don’t forget who you are and not what she made you,” Mom said, and then she cried and blew her nose really loudly.
I had cried then, and I had looked like a pussy in front of everyone. And I got beat up for it too. The guards did nothing to stop them either. Fuckers.
“Please,” I begged her between tears. “Please, Mom, don’t do this.”
She cried then too, and she looked away from me. “It’s for the best.”
“Dad?” I asked.
She nodded but didn’t answer.
Dad hadn’t come to see me since all of this had happened. He had died inside when I had been arrested. That’s what my mom had said when she first came to see me. I had destroyed him with my actions. I didn’t understand until she explained.
“When something is destroyed,” she explained, “it’s never the same again. You shattered our life, and it can’t ever be put back together the same. Do you see, Ethan?”
My mom was a beautiful woman. She hadn’t aged much over the years, but at that moment she looked a thousand years old. So I nodded that I understood, even though I didn’t.
“You’ve shattered our lives and I need to let you go so I can move on.” And then she cried really hard and had to get another tissue out. “I need to let you go, because I can’t do this anymore. I can’t come here and pretend it’s okay, because it’s not. One day I’d like to be happy again, and one of my new neighbors says that I’m not too old for that to happen.”
“When I get out, can I come and see you?” I asked, my chin trembling.
“No, Ethan. We can’t ever see each other again.”
“But you’re my mom,” I wailed, reaching for her, my hand skimming the top of hers.
“NO TOUCHING!” a nurse shouted across.
“Not anymore,” she replied.
“You are! You’ll always be my mom!” I screamed, and I grabbed her hand tightly.
She tried to pull it away, but I wouldn’t let go.
“You’ll always be my mom!”
“You’ll be okay, Ethan. I promise.”
“I SAID NO TOUCHING!” the nurse yelled as she stormed over to us. She yanked my hand out of my mom’s and then Mom stood up to leave.
“Don’t leave me, Mom! Don’t leave me here!” I screamed and screamed.
And then people were laughing at me, and I knew I was going to get my ass kicked later. And I knew the nurses and the security guards would let it happen because I was making them do extra work and they always let it happen to the patients when they had to do extra work, or even when they were bored.
“I’m sorry, Ethan,” Mom said as she started to walk away, tears pouring down her cheeks like she was sad about all of this, but she couldn’t have been that sad or she wouldn’t have been doing it. “I promise, it’s all going to be okay. You’re going to be okay, Ethan.”
I screamed for her and I fought to get out of the nurse’s grip, and then another one came and another one, and then all three had me on the ground, and my face was pressed against the dirty floor. And I didn’t like that. And I didn’t like the knee in my back. And I didn’t like my mom leaving me. And all I wanted was Carrie to be there with me. And my dad to still love me. And my mom to still be my mom.
Chapter eighteen:
I look through Carrie’s kitchen cupboards because I’m really hungry. I missed dinner, just like I missed work. She has soup, and that’s good, but she doesn’t have the soup I like, and that’s bad. She has tomato soup, and I really don’t like tomato soup.
Tomato soup stains everything it touches.
“You shouldn’t be eating this stuff, Carrie,” I say. “God knows what it’s doing to your insides.”
I cook some baked beans instead, and I eat them from the pan because she doesn’t have any clean plates or bowls. They’re good beans too, so at least I know she’s not completely lost.
I want a coffee, but her milk is sour. I drop the carton after I sniff the contents. It’s not just sour, but super sour. It spills on the
floor. It’s lumpy and creamy and vile.
“You shouldn’t have this in your refrigerator,” I say. “Because the sour milk will turn everything that’s near it bad.”
And I wonder, for a moment, with the door to the refrigerator chilling my slowly drying rain-soaked body, if that’s what happened to Carrie. If she was turned bad by sour milk. Because she’s not acting like herself at all.
She used to be kind, caring, and compassionate. She was always gentle. She was never violent. She was never angry. She was sad a lot though. But I don’t see her sadness now; I only see anger and fear. But I don’t know why she would be angry with me or why she would fear me.
I make myself a black coffee, and I have to put three sugars into it to take the bitter edge off. I need something to calm my nerves, and coffee normally calms me. Today it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. And that’s not good. It reminds me of the vomit in the back of my throat.
I go in and check on her, and this time I’m careful in case she’s tricking me again. But she’s still knocked out. I drink my coffee and I walk around her home, touching her things. I like to touch things; it grounds me. It keeps me present. I like smooth things, not rough things, and she has a lot of smooth things. But everything is dusty or dirty, and that’s not good. I wipe my hands down my drying jeans to get rid of the dirt that makes my skin crawl.
I find her cell phone still on the floor. I dropped it when she ran. I open it right up because there’s no password on it, and I tut because that’s just stupid and dangerous. I look through her text messages and I see she was texting Adam earlier. And then I see the pictures she was sending him and I feel both sick and eager to see more.
She’s naked in her pictures to him, and she has her fingers tucked inside her soft pink folds. Sometimes I can see her face, other times I can’t. I prefer the ones where I can see her face though. Adam never sends any pictures back, but he tells her how to pose in the next one she sends him.
‘Touch yourself.’ ‘Lick your lips.’ ‘Grab your nipple.’
I want to text him and tell him never to contact her again. I could pretend to be Carrie, and I could say he had a small dick and my orgasms were fake, and I was never satisfied with him because I was always waiting for someone else. And I’ll mean me; she was waiting for me.
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