We Are Us

Michael blinks twice, nods once, then backs away until his heel hits the door. Opening it just until there is enough room for him to squeeze through, he disappears into the hall.

I wish I could escape, too.

There is a speaker on the shelf above my bed and I start the Spotify playlist I’ve recently created. KoRn, Rage Against the Machine, Nine Inch Nails, Betty X, Rollins Band. The manic rhythms and angry lyrics tu

I’m crying, choking. Drawing deep, ragged breaths that do a terrible job of getting oxygen into my lungs, into my brain. My chest hurts and my brain is sludge. A scummy, noxious puddle. At the back of my throat, bile rises up, burning the delicate tissue.

Kleenex is no match for my tears. It’s like defending a nuclear attack with a pocket knife. Useless. I flip over on my bed, pressing my face into the pillow. And scream.

Over and over and over.

Until my throat is a ragged tube, destroyed. My lungs ache, sharp pains lancing through my heart with each rasped breath.

I can’t handle this.

I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.

That night was a mistake. A foolish freshman fuckup. I don’t even remember it.

Maybe it di—

But no. I picture the clear plastic bag, the yellowish condom.

The nurse’s question. The doctor’s urging. Tucker’s explanation.

It happened.

Even as tears transform my pillow into a damp sponge, the logical part of my brain can’t understand why this hurts so badly. Why I hurt so badly. If I don’t remember Tucker unzipping my jeans, pushing them down my thighs, taking off my underwear—why can’t I pretend it never happened?

If I didn’t hear the sound of plastic tearing, see him sheathe himself in latex, feel him enter me—why does knowing he did hurt so fucking much?

But it does.

I asked Tucker about it last week, when he stopped by my room looking for Wren. I hadn’t seen him since the morning I came home from the hospital.

The question popped out of my mouth before I realized what I was saying. I’d wanted to race after my words, grab them in my hands and shove them back down my throat. Send them back where they came from, never to emerge again. Instead, I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted blood, waiting for Tucker to answer me.

Well, of course I used one. But then you started to shake, so I stopped. When you got sick, I rolled you to the side so you didn’t choke. I pulled the condom off and made sure you were dressed, then went to get help.

It wasn’t an apology.

It wasn’t even an acknowledgment that he’d been wrong.

Then he’d shaken his head. The first time we have sex and neither one of us gets off. Kind of sad, don’t you think?

Recalling Tucker’s words, my lungs constrict. He genuinely believed I wanted to have sex with him. He must have, to be so cavalier about it all.

And why wouldn’t he?

I flirted with him, didn’t I? I did shots with him and smiled at him and held his hand. I wanted Tucker to kiss me. And when he did, I kissed him back.

The shame ru

The embers of hope I’d been stubbornly guarding give a final flicker before dying completely. Even if Gavin were to come back, with a perfectly reasonable explanation for leaving, a reason for every day he’s spent somewhere else, it doesn’t matter anymore.

Because I have betrayed him.

I have betrayed us.

We aren’t us.

We are nothing.

Legs shaking, I stand up and go to my mirror. I’m pink-faced and blotchy. My hair is a riot of tangles, wet around my temples and forehead. Snot is smeared above my puffy lips. My eyes are red and swollen, as is the tip of my nose, like a clown.

And my neck is naked. No silver necklace, no iridescent sliver of moonstone perched on the subtle rise of my collarbone.

This is what I will remember about that night. Not the act itself. But my ruined, almost unrecognizable face. My blotchy, unadorned neck.

I am nothing.