Fever

by Carnal, MJ

  “Why’d you pack?” he asks.

  I turn my eyes from his because I can’t take it; my chest physically aches at the idea of not looking into those eyes again depending on what he tells me. “I have to go to LA,” I say slowly.

  He begins to walk toward me, looking concerned, and I back away, putting space between us, which makes him frown again.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks. “Are you okay?”

  “No, I’m not, but I will be. I always am,” I reply quietly.

  He walks toward me again, crossing his arms over his chest when he notices me back away, again.

  “Can I ask you something?” I say, my voice quiet and calm.

  He tilts his head to appraise me. “Of course,” he says, his voice tensing.

  “Are you trying to start your own label?” I’m trying to keep my face as passive as possible, trying not to show the hurt in my eyes when his jaw slacks right before he catches himself and closes it.

  I find myself closing my eyes and taking a deep breath. I just want him to tell me it’s not true. I want him to look at me the way he always looks at me, with desire and care laced in his eyes, not the regret that’s there now. I want him to tell me that he’s with me for me, not who he could be because of my name.

  “I’m working on one, yes,” Nick says, putting his hands in his pockets. “But it has nothing to do with you.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask in a whisper.

  He shrugs, taking his hands out of his pockets and waving them around as he speaks, “What was I going to say, Brooklyn? ‘Hey, by the way, I’m starting a label and I would love it if you would ditch your father and come work with me instead.”

  I blink a couple of times, half expecting to wake up from a nightmare. Hoping that he’s not saying what I think he’s saying to me. I grind my teeth, trying to collect myself even though the adrenaline that’s running through me feels like it’s peaking instead of slowing.

  “So you’ve been using me? You’ve been trying to get under my skin—for what? So I could stop working for Harmon and go work for you?” I spit out.

  He shakes his head. “No,” he exhales, his face crumbling. “That’s not what I meant. I didn’t want you to think that and it never came up.”

  “It never came up?” I scoff. “It never came up?” I ask louder. “It never came up because you didn’t want it to! Am I supposed to guess? I’ve asked you about your work. I’ve asked you a million questions because I want to know everything about you, but it never came up? Just like the fact that you found me on that bridge and took me to the hospital never came up until I saw your brother?” I ask in a shout. “Let me guess, if I wouldn’t have remembered, you wouldn’t have told me that anyway because it never came up?” I ask, air quoting. I grab my bag from the counter and turn around to storm out, but Nick grabs my arm to stop me.

  I yank my arm out of his grasp, but not before he turns me around to face him again, his jaw clenched as he looks at me through narrowed eyes. Those eyes that I love to swim in, sail in, drown in, but will now remind me of betrayal. Our chests are both rising and falling heavily as we stand here, staring at each other. The only thing I can think about is the fact that he’s been using me just like everybody else.

  “Oh, you’re Chris Harmon’s daughter? Cool … wanna hear my demo?”

  “You’re Roxy’s daughter? Cool. I model on the side.”

  “I sing.”

  “I’m a video dancer.”

  Those are the reasons I cut back on the hundreds of friends I had before. They’re the reasons I deleted my Facebook and twitter account and said “fuck it, I don’t need friends.” I’d rather have 3 friends I can trust than be dragged along and lied to for months, investing my time on blooming a friendship, or worse, end up falling hard for somebody, only to find out they’re starting a music label. And to hear it from coked out sluts in the bathroom. And to have them confirm my worst fears: he may be using me for my name. It just fucking sucks. Especially since I just got blindsided by a lawsuit from somebody I thought was truly my friend.

  “Where does this leave us?”

  I let out a laugh in disbelief. “Are you serious?” I ask.

  His eyes narrow more. “I wasn’t using you, Brooklyn. I would never use you, you have to know that!”

  “No, I don’t have to know that, Nick,” I respond, grinding my teeth together at the remembrance of the conversation his fuck buddy and Gia were having in the spa. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath. I will not cry. I will not allow him to see that I’m hurt by any of this.

  He lets out a dry laugh. “So that’s it? You want to walk out of here as if none of this happened?” he asks, waving his hands around the suite in disbelief, his eyes beginning to spark blazes.

  “I don’t know,” I say, my voice wavering, showing some of my pain. “I don’t know anything right now, Nick.”

  He stares at me for a long moment, studying my face before speaking again. I see the moment his gaze flickers from disbelief to painful before setting on angry. His beautiful eyes dimming, taking me from the shallow to the deep end, showing me their depth as he speaks. “I can’t believe you can just walk out of here as if what we have is nothing ... You know why you’ve never had a real relationship before, Brooklyn?” he starts, his jaw is set and he looks livid. “Because of this,” he says, pointing at me. “Your flippant attitude about the whole thing. That’s why men treat you like you’re disposable. They’re not doing it because you’re not worth their time or they don’t like you enough, they’re just returning the favor,” he spits.

  His words shred me. Burn me. Make me feel like I’ve been slapped and kicked at the same time. My chest constricts as I blink at him in disbelief with my mouth hanging open. Finally, I let out a surprised scoff, shaking my head.

  “You know … I wanted you to be different. I wanted you to assure me that you weren’t with me because you have a hidden agenda and need me in order to fulfill it. But more than anything, Nick, I just want the man that I’ve developed these feelings for, these stupid fucking feelings, to feel something back. I just wanted you to be real,” I say, on the verge of breaking down. My chest feels tight from the tears I’m trying to hold back. “I want all of the bad memories you’ve replaced in this city to be real memories with real laughter and real fucking passion, not calculated or made up ones! But thank you. Thank you for returning the fucking favor,” I say, my eyes burning with angry tears. “Good bye, Nick,” I whisper, turning around and stalking to the door, letting it slam behind me. Sadness envelops my heart with each step I take, and I welcome it. Sadness is my home, I belong in it, it belongs in me; we are one and the same.

  I send a text message to Shea explaining to him, in short, what happened with Allie and letting him know I’ll text him again when I land in LA and know what’s going on. I sit on the airplane in the same seat that I sat in on my way to San Francisco. The same seat that Nick comforted me in when I freaked out over seeing the Golden Gate Bridge. Turning my head, I look out the window and look at the bridge and the blue water under it, and I don’t feel a thing.

  Once upon a time I would’ve killed to feel numb, like I do now. I would’ve reveled in the abyss of emptiness that fills my heart. The fear of the unknown would’ve made me want to kill myself. Again. But now I feel nothing. I’ve been stripped of everything that matters and I’m left with nothing. So much of nothing that I don’t want to end my life in some dramatic, painful way because I’d rather let myself marinate in the bleakness for a little while longer. When I’m ready I’ll begin to feel again, and I’ll feel much more suffering than I would if I just ended it all right now.

  And I want that.

  I want to become that pain.

  ***

  I remember that day like it was yesterday. It still makes me want to vomit when I think about it, so I don’t unless I want to feed into my depression. Ryan picked me up on Thursday night to head to San Francisco for the weekend. The foggy city h
ad become our stomping ground over the past year. We felt free of judgment there. He could make out with as many guys as he wanted, and I could wear my hair in fifty million shades of blue and nobody would even look at me twice. We loved it. The perk was that Uncle Robert would let us stay at his house on the weekends, and we loved being with him and his boyfriend, Victor. That weekend in particular, Rob and Vic were out of town and were letting us stay there, but Ryan and I passed up on their offer and decided to stay in a hotel closer to the bars. I was seventeen; he was eighteen. Neither of us could get into any bar legally, but legal doesn’t matter when you have endless money and the right last name.

  I made a couple of calls and got in contact with friends of friends that I’d met at the parties I frequented and was able to get us into a couple of good clubs that Friday. We did our usual lines of cocaine in the back of the car on our way to the club. Cocaine and cough syrup, that’s what we were about at the time. Periodically we would add heroin to the mix, but that was only when one of us was hitting rock bottom. Heroin was a rock bottom drug for us, the one we went to when we were feeing extra depressed. Shea loved it when we were on our heroin trips—that was his drug of choice, so when he’d hang out with us he brought it. He’d been to San Fran with us a couple of times but was busy that weekend. At that point he was still playing smaller shows in shopping malls and radio stations. He hadn’t hit it big yet, and our relationship was on the rocks, quite literally. The last time I’d seen him had been over cocaine.

  The thing about cocaine was that it was awesome the first handful of times. We felt like we were energized and on top of the world. After that, we started to become jittery after our first hit. That’s where the cough syrup came in to calm our nerves. We could’ve died, we knew that; we were playing with fire, we knew that too. We cared very little though. When you’re seventeen, you think you’re invincible as it is. When you’re seventeen and have nobody to show you that they genuinely care about you, or everybody that you want love from is too busy for you, you act out. That’s what we were doing: acting out, begging for attention from our parents. We realized at some point that we weren’t going to get their attention, but by then we were in too deep.

  We went to the club and danced our asses off that Thursday. On Friday we slept past noon, woke up, had breakfast again, sunbathed, got ready for another club and it was a repeat. Ryan’s parents were being more annoying than usual, blowing up his phone every hour. I never heard what they told him, but I saw the way his face crumbled every time he got off the phone. I saw the way he reached for our little Ziploc of coke the second he hung up on his screaming mother or berating father.

  That night, we went to a different club. Ryan disappeared with one guy, while I danced with a couple of others—it was our usual thing. When Ryan came back, he had a beaming smile on his face, his eyes glassy, and his red hair was slick with sweat. I asked him where he went and he told me he went to the bathroom with that guy. After they did whatever they did (Ryan and I never talked about specifics when it came to those things), he shot him up with heroin.

  “Best. High. Ever,” Ryan said.

  I pursed my lips in disbelief. “Yeah, right.”

  “Watch,” he said, calling the guy over and telling him I wanted some too.

  We ended up going back to our hotel. We had a two-bedroom suite with a huge living room and a gorgeous view of the city, so it made sense. Because my high was practically nonexistent by that point, I wanted to get straight to business. The guy, a skinny blond with shaggy hair and a grin that was way too big for his face—he kind of looked like The Joker. He was just as creepy, too. He wrapped my arm with a band and I balled my fist so he could get my vein. This guy, a nurse practitioner, he said he was, claimed he was the best vein finder. I don’t know if he was right or not, I didn’t care. I let him do it anyway. He inserted the needle and pulled the plunger until I could see my blood rush into it, then slowly pushed the plunger, pulled it back, then squeezed. Tingles instantly started rushing up my arm and I let out a sigh of relief as I felt them before throwing my head back in ecstasy when the high hit me. It was magical, beautiful; it was unicorns, painted ponies, rainbows, kisses, tight hugs, acceptance and unconditional love all wrapped up in one beautiful medley.

  Ryan was right, it was the most amazing high I’d had on it yet. I tried to stay away from heroin, only doing it when Shea came to town and wanted to do it. I never understood why he wanted to do it with me. Heroin wasn’t like ecstasy where we would do it and have sex for hours. He could barely get it up when he was high on heroin, but the feel of the drug running through his veins was more important than him being inside of me. I tried to limit myself from it by not keeping in contact with the people I knew could get it for me. I even banned Ryan from telling me who his suppliers were. I really didn’t want it to be my downfall, and I knew it could be because none of my heroin highs ever topped the first one. Looking for that first high, that irrevocable one where I felt like I was having a conversation with God and his angels, would kill me. I knew it even then. And I didn’t want to die at seventeen; I just wanted the attention that would come with almost dying. I wanted to play with death through the fence; I didn’t want her to invite me in for tea and crumpets.

  We partied all night that Friday. All. Night. And when I woke up the next morning and stumbled to Ryan’s room, I shook him awake and he laughed with me at the craziness of the night before. Then his phone started ringing and I knew it was his mom calling again, so I stepped out. When I stepped back in again, he was brewing. I always knew to leave him alone when he got that way because he was like me, he didn’t want people to see him cry.

  “I’ll be back, Rye, I have to buy a dress for tonight anyway,” I said.

  “Cool. See you later then,” he said.

  I spent the afternoon shopping, and when I got back, Ryan was ready for dinner. He was his usual smiling self, and I was glad he wasn’t letting his parents ruin the weekend for us.

  “I don’t understand what their deal is,” he said over dinner.

  We went to Akikos that night, his favorite Sushi joint in San Fran.

  “Why do they keep harassing you?” I asked.

  He tilted his head as he looked at me with a look, telling me not to be dumb. “Because I’m gay, Bee, and they don’t want their socialite friends to find out about it.”

  My shoulders slumped. I felt so bad for my best friend. He was a straight-A student, graduated salutatorian, and got accepted to Georgetown University. What more could they possibly ask of him? Ryan had been gifted an Aston Martin for his seventeenth birthday and had never even gotten a speeding ticket. I even got a speeding ticket driving the damn car, but not Ryan. Other than his frequent drug use, which stemmed from the hatred he got at home for being something he couldn’t change, he was a straight-laced kid.

  “I don’t get it,” I muttered. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  Ryan shrugged, letting out a breath. “I think they’re just embarrassed since I’m going to Georgetown and that’s where they went. I dunno.”

  My brows furrowed. “What does that have to do with anything? They were the ones that made you decline Yale and Harvard. How stupid can they be?”

  “Very,” he said, laughing.

  I laughed along in agreement.

  “Don’t you have that thing tonight?” Ryan asked.

  “Shit,” I said, looking at the time. “My mom’s gonna kill me. I’m supposed to be there at nine.”

  My mom had signed me up to attend some type of party for a popular magazine since she couldn’t make it. I agreed because I knew if I didn’t, she would try to cancel my trip with Ryan by canceling my credit cards. When my mom asked me to do something, I did it, not because I wanted to be a good daughter, but because there was a stringent catch attached to it.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked, feeling bad that I couldn’t take him as my date. Mom had already set up for me to go with some guy I didn’t know.
He was supposed to be picking me up at my hotel half an hour before the event.

  “Eh, I dunno, I’ll find something,” he said, shrugging.

  We went back to the hotel and hung out there for a while, talking crap and flipping through magazines, making fun of the men and women’s faces. The front desk called when my date was downstairs waiting, and I groaned at having to go.

  “I’ll be back soon,” I said with a pout, throwing my arms around him and kissing him soundly on the cheek.

  “Yeah, yeah, have fun,” he joked. “Love you, Bumble Bee.”

  I rolled my eyes, laughing. “Love you too, Rye face.”

  Sprinting to the elevator, I cursed when I realized I forgot my phone and went back to the room. When I opened the door, I saw Ryan stretched out on the couch, watching TV, typing away on his phone.

  “Forgot my phone,” I said in response to his questioning look.

  He nodded and went back to his phone. I went downstairs, smiling at my date when I saw him. He was wearing a suit and a pair of Chucks, which I thought was cool. He had long black hair that tucked behind his ears, pale skin, and black eyeliner around his blue eyes. I instantly liked him and hated myself for it because that was one of the things my mother had said to me.

  “You’re going to love him, he looks all rocker and gross like those guys you like,” she’d said.

  His named was Bryant and he was the drummer for a band that had been signed with a rival record label. My mother, once again, feeding me to the fish and knowing that I was the shark to catch them, took the opportunity and paired us together for that event. By the end of the night, I had Bryant and the rest of his band members dying to sign, not because I did much pitching, but because I got drunk and high with them and they thought I was the “coolest chick they’d met in a while.”

  Bryant and I ended up hooking up in the limo on our way back to my hotel, which I informed Shea of on my way up to my room. Shea’s words were, “Why would you do that to me? Why would you hook up with another artist knowing I’ll have to see him at parties? What the fuck, Brooklyn?” Shea never called me Brooklyn, only when he was beyond mad at me. “Don’t call me again,” he’d said and hung up the phone. The funny part was that the reason I called Shea to tell him was because I wanted him to get jealous. I wanted him to care that I hooked up with somebody else and leave all the groupies he was hooking up with. I wanted him to look around and decide that I was worth more than them. I was an idiot for thinking he would.