Thirty Hours: a semi memoir of psychosis and love

by KL Evans

  Between your lips and your skin, I would’ve had to have been made of stone not to respond to you and I lost control. My hands moved from the couch to your thighs, then your hips, your waist, and finally arrived at the wet, tangled mass of your hair. I told myself it was a reflex. I told myself I would let go in a second. Just a second. I told myself I was in control. I told myself I would stop. I told myself a little fooling around wasn’t crossing the line into unethical journalism—or was it? And if it was, and since I’d crossed that line, what difference would…

  I also told myself you really, really wanted this. You had always wanted it. I told myself I knew you better now; you weren’t just a random stranger at a bar. I told myself you were twenty-three and on your own and very much an adult because of everything that had happened to you. I told myself I hadn’t had sex in more than six months. I told myself a casual, one-time thing wouldn’t hurt two consenting adults. I told myself I wasn’t a sleaze and that I cared about you and that it’s not like I wouldn’t call you again the next day.

  I told myself I cared about you.

  That was a problem.

  I released your hair and pulled my face away, but you didn’t stop. In fact, you kissed my neck harder and reached for the buttons on my shirt.

  “Charlie, I can’t do this with you.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “I really, really can’t.”

  “But you want to. I can tell.”

  The evidence was there. “I can’t.”

  You stopped kissing and hugged yourself tightly against me, and then spoke so quietly I couldn’t tell if you were addressing me or yourself.

  “I don’t want to die a virgin.”

  There’s nothing like the V word to kill the mood entirely. I told myself—with utmost resolve—that was not something I could allow myself to be responsible for or involved in. That wouldn’t be casual. That was not my job. None of what this had evolved into was my job, but I placed my hands on your back anyway. And as my fingers went bump-bump-bump over your ribs and spine, a thought occurred to me.

  “Are you sick?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You keep saying that. You don’t want to die a virgin. You act like you don’t have much time left. You’re so… uh…” Any guy with an ounce of common sense knows you don’t talk about a woman’s weight, so I rubbed your back more firmly in hopes you might get the message. “You just seem like you might be sick.”

  “I’m not sick,” you said, and nobody had ever sounded more unconvinced of something.

  “Really? Then why do you keep talking about dying?”

  You shrugged and your shoulder blades made you look like a bird preparing to take flight. “Anything can happen. People die all the time.”

  “Sure they do, but it’s extremely unlikely that that’s going to happen to you anytime soon. You’re a beautiful young woman, you’re smart, and funny, and sweet, and you’ll meet someone someday who will love you and who you’ll love, and that’s when you should… you know… do this.”

  You squeezed my neck tighter. “But I already met you.”

  “I’m not a guy you’re dating, Charlie.” I tried to be as gentle about it as possible. “I’m just a reporter who’s trying to write about you and because of that I can’t… you know… be that person to you.”

  “But I love you, Seth McCollum.”

  I love you, Seth McCollum, I love you, Seth McCollum, I love you, Seth McCollum, and it will haunt me for the rest of my life.

  That was when I hoisted you off my lap. Gently. Perhaps not gentle enough. I wrapped the robe shut and scooted away from you. “Charlie, you don’t. You barely know me and you only say that when you’re at or approaching shitfaced.”

  You looked at me with an indignant expression and a crinkle between your dark brows. “I know how I feel. I don’t even care that you don’t feel that way, but I wish you could at least consider my feelings enough to do this for me. I trust you. You have no idea how hard it is to find someone I feel like I can trust. I understand why you feel like you can’t, but I wish you would just make an exception this one time. I’m not going to get attached or clingy or annoying. I know that’s what you’re worried about, but I swear that’s not going to happen. Trust me. I just need to do this and I want to do it with you. Please do this for me.”

  “I can’t. I’m flattered, but I can’t. This doesn’t work that way.”

  “Is the only reason you’re saying no because you’re interviewing me?”

  “Well… I mean, mainly I guess. But I also think—”

  “What do you think this story is going to be? You wouldn’t be trading sex for top secret government intel or something. Nothing is hinging on you avoiding some kind of bias.”

  “I just need to do the right thing and this wouldn’t be right.”

  “Why not?”

  I shrugged and sighed loudly. “It just wouldn’t be. I’m sorry.”

  You stared at me through eyes of steely gray. “Fine.” You pulled the robe tighter, tied it, and stood up to go back into the kitchen.

  Rejection stings. Everybody who’s been rejected knows that and I was hit like an aluminum bat to the head this was likely the first rejection of this nature you’d ever experienced. And I was the one responsible for it. And that would surely stay with you forever, which, in my mind, didn’t seem all that different than being the person who took your virginity. So basically, in that moment, we were both fucked without any of the perks of getting actually fucked.

  So I jumped off the couch, followed you into the kitchen, and reconsidered for all of three seconds before you gave me the brush-off.

  “You should go, Seth McCollum. I’m done talking today. I’ll meet you somewhere another day and you can ask me more stuff.”

  That was a smart idea, but I found myself lingering because I noticed your hair; long and damp, but drying in loose waves that reached the small of your back. You stood with your weight on one leg and the curve of your hip bone created an illusion of shapeliness. I saw the profile of your face and the length of your eyelashes while you furrowed your brow and frowned, part of your cheek hidden behind your hair. You were writing on one of the legal advertisements and out of sheer curiosity I stood behind you to glance over your shoulder at it.

  NMWY. NMWY. NMWY. NMWY.

  I told myself it was a highly inappropriate reflex to sweep your hair away from face, but I told myself that after I had already done it. “What does that stand for?”

  You looked at me and smiled widely, but there was that shadow of sadness again. “Nothing.”

  “Really?”

  Steely gray eyes that spoke volumes, but not in a language I could understand. “I’m sure you’ll figure this one out too, Mr. Hotshot Reporter.”

  “Charlie—”

  “Don’t let Grey go near the door. I’ll totally freaking kill myself if he gets lost again.”

  Hour Fourteen

  A couple of days later I was in the newsroom sorting through my notes and outlining your story, and at 3:45 in the afternoon my phone buzzed on my desk with a message from you.

  I’m at the café across the square from the fountain. Corner of the outdoor sitting area. Do you have a few minutes?

  Sure do. Be right there.

  I didn’t recognize you at first because for once you looked like the girl from the photo on Jade’s desk. Charming and put together, you wore a delicate floral sundress, sandals, a pleasant expression, and an aura that screamed BEWARE: LOOKS ARE DECEIVING.

  “Charlie,” I said, pulling out a chair across from you. “How are you?”

  “Fine.” That was a lie because you were not fine. You were neutral. And neutral for you came with a sense of impending chaos, as if you were a bomb and choosing my words was as dicey as choosing the red wire or the blue one. “You?”

  “Good.” A waiter stopped next to the table and set down two coffees. You took a sip and I followed suit. “So, are you going to let me�
�“

  “Jade is my half-sister,” you began. You stared at your coffee while rubbing the sides of the cup with your fingertips and I fumbled for my phone to turn on a voice recorder.

  “She’s my mom’s daughter from her first marriage,” you went on. “Mom married her high school boyfriend right after they graduated and Jade was born shortly thereafter. They weren’t right for each other, I guess. I don’t know. He wasn’t abusive or anything like that. I just don’t think they liked each other enough. They split up not long after Jade was born. I think my mom believed a woman is supposed to have a man take care of her and her first husband was like, ‘you have to work, too.’ I think that was part of the problem. Anyway, Mom met my dad shortly after her divorce and my dad shared the same idea that the man was supposed to be the provider and the woman stayed home with kids. They got married and I was born not long after that.”

  “And that was…” I paused, doing a quick subtraction. “1993.”

  You nodded. “May 15, 1993.”

  “May was when you were in the fountain.”

  “I had to celebrate somehow,” you said with a smirk you were clearly trying to conceal.

  I smiled.

  “My parents were really in love,” you went on. “That was the one thing they had going for them it seemed. We were really, really poor. Everyone in White Settlement is poor for the most part. It’s crazy. On one side of 820—the Fort Worth side—it’s like nice subdivisions and churches and stuff, but on our side it’s a bunch of slummy neighborhoods and crackheads. It’s almost like just being on our side of the highway automatically traps a person in a destiny of misfortune. Maybe it’s because people are a product of their environment and nobody knows how to be anything else. I don’t know. But it’s totally like… like…”

  “Just the wrong side of the tracks,” I offered.

  You met my eyes for only a second and gave a tiny smile. “Exactly. Anyway, so we were poor. My dad was a handyman. He repaired stuff for neighbors and small businesses. But it wasn’t making ends meet and he somehow managed to get his hands on pills and started selling those. I don’t know where he got the pills. It’s possible he or my mom had a prescription at first, but I don’t know for sure. I just know he was selling them. He was charged a few times, I think. I was really young and I don’t remember it. What I remember is being ten.”

  I watched your face expectantly, and you still looked neutral, and the sense of impending chaos was still there. I glanced at your hands and you were gripping the coffee cup so tightly your fingertips were white. Impending chaos indeed and I snipped a wire.

  “What happened when you were ten?”

  “Mom got cancer.” You flippantly spit out the words and then took a large sip of coffee. “Then we got even poorer. Treating cancer is really expensive, apparently.” You laughed and grinned at me, showing me your teeth and the shadow of sadness. “My dad started selling stuff in addition to pills. You know, I think he would’ve ended up doing that regardless of the cancer.” You paused and looked at me in a way that was simultaneously smug and flirtatious. “A destiny of misfortune.”

  “Or a perpetual cycle of poor choices,” I suggested, snipping another wire, and it was the wrong one.

  “Whatever you think, Seth McCollum. You’ve obviously got it all figured out. As evident from your perfect life.”

  “My life is far from perfect.”

  “Pfft. Whatever. The worst thing that’s ever happened to you is your student loan debt.” You cocked your head and lifted an eyebrow. “Poor choices indeed.”

  “That’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  “Then what is?”

  I didn’t have an answer. But I do now.

  “We’re not talking about me,” I reminded you.

  “Right.” You flipped a hand in the air. “You’re just here for the juicy gossip about my pathetically newsworthy life. Lest I forget.”

  “Charlie, that’s not a fair—“

  “He sold pills and various other drugs for a while and then Mom died in 2006,” you continued, your voice staccato and indignant. “He completely lost his shit after that and that was when he got involved in meth. He learned how to cook it. You know you can get all the information about how to cook meth off the internet, right? You can get all kinds of information off the internet. That’s not how he learned, though. Some seedy friend of his taught him. Dad set up shop in the pile of rotting wood next to my house and then—“

  “Charlie,” I interjected, placing my hand on yours and part of my brain said I shouldn’t have done that. But my brain has a tendency to harp on meaningless shit and it needed to shut up right then. “You were thirteen when your mom died. Is that right?”

  “Yeah.” You were suddenly transfixed by our hands, as if holding hands was the most foreign thing in the world to you.

  “What was that like?”

  You shook your head. “It was like ten years ago. I don’t remember.”

  “I think you do.”

  “I told you before she kind of neglected me. Her dying just felt like the next level of that.”

  “Really?”

  You shrugged. “Basically.”

  “You mean you weren’t sad or anything?”

  “Of course I was sad, Seth McCollum. She was my mom. I wasn’t particularly close with her because she was so preoccupied with her parents and then being sick, but she was still my mom. I don’t know.” You pulled your hand away and rubbed your eyes before speaking again in a voice as sharp and broken as shattered glass. “Jade took care of me. She was sixteen and I’m sure she was just as upset and lost as I was, but she took care of me anyway. Jade is… everything.”

  You choked on a sob and clasped your mouth as you stared at something across the street. You stared at it so long and so hard that I glanced over my shoulder a couple of times to see what it was. Nothing out of the ordinary was there; just traffic and passing pedestrians. But you continued to stare as you abruptly went saucer-eyed, dilated pupils and all, and your breath became shallow, and you death-gripped the edge of the table.

  “Charlie?”

  “Help me.”

  You didn’t say it to me. It was more like you tossed the plea into the atmosphere in hopes that anyone or anything would catch it and respond. And I was too bewildered to be the one who caught it, so instead the waiter swooped in like a fucking knight on a white horse.

  “Refill?” he asked us and you gripped his forearm, which caused him to eyeball first you and then me.

  “Help me.”

  He stooped down as you hyperventilated and stared into space with glassy eyes while I sat in a curiosity-gripped stupor.

  “Do you need me to call an ambulance?” He glanced at me questioningly, as if to say, ‘what the hell is wrong with you? Why aren’t you helping her?’ At least, I perceived as much. He looked back at you and the veil of confusion appeared to lift off of him. “Are you having an anxiety attack?”

  You frantically raised and lowered your chin and he held both of your hands.

  “Take deep breaths. It’ll pass. I get those sometimes,” he told you, intermittently cutting glances at me as if wondering why I wasn’t the one crouching next to you, coaching you through the attack. “Just try to breathe. It feels like you’re going to have a heart attack, but that won’t happen. It feels horrible, but it’ll pass. Just keep breathing.”

  You clutched your sternum so tightly that your skin was pink with fingerprints and faint, red scratch marks. Tears welled up in your eyes and then trickled down your cheeks, causing Sir Shining Armor to hold out a napkin toward you, and that finally shook me out of my stupor.

  “Sorry about that,” I told him, taking the napkin and putting on the tone of a boyfriend or a friend or whatever I was supposed to be right then. “It catches me off guard sometimes.”

  He stood. “I’ll bring her some water.”

  “Thanks.” I draped an arm over your shoulders and did not expect the i
ntensity of your trembling. “Take it easy, Charlie. You’ll be all right.”

  You responded with a series loud, shallow breaths.

  “Just breathe.”

  You breathed. Sort of. More tears slid down your face and you clutched my arm. “Help me.”

  I’m trying, I thought. It seems those pills in your medicine cabinet might be a lot more helpful.

  But I didn’t say that because I was still stuck on what you’d told me about your dad mere minutes ago and I had a suspicion the reason you refused to take your meds had something to do with that. Instead, I held your hand and pulled you close to my side. I’d read something somewhere that human contact helps a person suffering from a fit of anxiety. Something about grounding or centering them, which honestly sounded like a bunch of woo and pseudoscience, but it was all I could think of, and it seemed to work.

  Before long, you were breathing normally and you looked at me with a tear-stained face, splotchy with what looked like faint hives. I told myself it was your vulnerable, borderline pitiful appearance that compelled me to dab your cheeks with the napkin.

  “You’re not obligated to be nice to me, Seth McCollum,” you said, brows knitted and chin trembling.

  “I know I’m not obligated. Do you feel better?”

  “Yes,” you said, terse and pushing away from me, and I moved back to the other side of the table.

  “How long have you been dealing with anxiety?”

  “Since Jade’s accident.”

  “Never before then?”

  “Nope. I know you’d never believe it, but I was actually pretty stable and functional. Hence going to school. Hence having a normal job at the brick company.”

  “And all of that went out the window with her getting hurt?”

  “You are such an only child, Seth McCollum. I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “Do you think she’d be happy knowing you’re basically throwing your life away now?”

  “I think she’d understand,” you hissed like a cobra who was showing me her fangs and poising to strike. “And you don’t have to.”