Paper Dolls

by Emma Chamberlain

  She came back to the doorway and stood there, looking at me.

  “I can’t leave you,” she said.

  “Do you want me to take you?”

  I didn’t mean for this conversation to happen. I didn’t ask for it. She started it earlier. She’d been reading my mind and begging me to open up about these things she already knew I thought because I’d told her before. And now we were here and that really wasn’t fair…

  The whole time we were in Napa it was a fairytale and I couldn’t just accept it as life. That hurt me, especially knowing how much I fucking craved it to be true.

  “No, I want to hold you,” Avery said.

  I sighed heavily and walked toward her. “You’ve gotta go home, baby… You haven’t seen them all week. These fears of mine aren’t new. I’ll always be here.”

  I pulled her in for a hug and felt how perfect her body naturally fit with my own.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you too,” I whispered, hating myself. I knew I’d probably fucked everything up and made her feel bad but she hadn’t really given me much of a choice. She called me out basically.

  I was always telling her things she just didn’t know.

  She leaned back and looked at me before leaning in. “I’m never gonna leave you,” she said and then she kissed me soft and sweet. My mouth was so loose when she kissed me, like every piece of her could control me and I’d love it. She was my everything.

  I felt my arms naturally tighten around her body. I did want to keep her. I didn’t want her to go.

  “Thanks for touching me,” I said, knowing I’d feel her once she’d actually gone.

  “You don’t have to thank me, you know. I get as much out of it as you do. I love to love you.”

  “I feel like an asshole right now,” I confessed.

  “Stop that, please. You’re not an asshole. You have fears and insecurities based on scary things. I do too. We’re not exactly normal.”

  “I could never think you’d intentionally want to hurt me,” I said. That was the most important thing. I did trust her. I wanted her, I loved her, and I trusted her.

  “Yeah, I know. That wasn’t fair. I wish I didn’t have to go but I should so I can come back but will you walk me out?”

  “Sure,” I said, dropping my arms a bit to let her move. I didn’t know why she thought her parents wanted to talk about the trial. She always kept important things from me. I really hated that.

  There were just so many things I could never know and it wasn’t my fault. It was the opposite I guess… It wasn’t that I wasn’t paying attention. She didn’t want me aware…

  Oddly, I knew enough now to see that half of the reason for all that was that Avery didn’t even want to be aware of these things herself because it hurt her to be aware. She had healing to do from all the things that had happened to her and healing wasn’t at all easy. Naturally, she’d been putting it off. And I aided in that, accidentally, some times.

  I walked back to the closet and threw a dress on so I could walk her out.

  Avery was always telling me things like I was her fantasy or I was her religion…

  In my solitude, I found I couldn’t feel comfortable in those truths… Religion, although mainly about routine and a set of unwavering beliefs, was a complicated and dangerous prescription. And fantasies could never be real.

  I pulled the fabric of the dress down and dodged my reflection in the mirror to hurry and follow her out.

  My right wrist was sore from fighting to touch her and I heard myself sigh extra loud on accident as a result of being touched by her like that.

  Outside, the sun was working its way down. It’d be a long journey, it was much too early for that now.

  I took Avery’s hand and walked her silently out.

  I knew I’d done wrong in telling the truth. I just hated that we still had secrets. I hated that more than anything else.

  It was just that sort of day where I already knew I’d fucked everything up. When things happened like this it was usually because I’d sort of given up on trying to hide from her.

  She stood next to her car and tugged my hand to get my attention. “Baby, when I look at you now I just feel more. I’m aching because I love you, all of you. It makes me crazy when you tell me this stuff but it’s good because I want to know. I feel closer to you.”

  I could tell I made her sore inside with all of my words. She hugged me again and pulled back to kiss me. “I’ll be back soon.” She kissed me and then got in her car and started it up. She waved and blew me a kiss before she backed out and drove off.

  Once she left, I felt instantly lonely. I knew I’d made too many mistakes in an important string of days.

  I hugged myself and turned, walking toward the house instead of the guest house. I wanted to see my room again and feel what it was like to be in there again.

  Avery’d be gone for a good while. It was bad timing though. She’d made me say all that fucked up stuff.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about that Plato myth or that stupid lecture I went to that was far too basic to even be worthwhile.

  Oddly enough, the last thing on my mind was that stupid fucking Ben letter.

  I walked into the house through the back door and ran into my mom.

  “My mystery daughter returns,” she teased. She was standing over the kitchen island and eating some fancy prepared meal. Vegetables, speckled mystery rice, and perfectly grilled fish. She had probably just gotten home. “How’d Avery like the house?”

  “Oh God,” I laughed, feeling the strangeness in my face. To smile so big after so much worrying, it was unfamiliar. “She loved it,” I said, remembering Avery in the yard and on the grass.

  “And yet, you seem sad,” my mom called me out, referencing my expression when I first saw her just now. Like most parents, she was always good at seeing things I didn’t want her to see. I kept playing with my wrists, fingering the places where the thin earbud cord had wrapped itself tightly. I had to tell myself to stop fiddling. I dropped my hands and pushed into the island, trapping one of my arms to keep it in place.

  “Mr. Bradford sent me a letter today.”

  “What?!” My mom scoffed, bothered, and naturally so.

  “Yeah,” I scoffed back waaaay lighter. It was my fault it happened. I was the guilty party. “I had sent him one a while back. After all this time, I wasn’t really expecting him to respond.”

  “I’d ask you why you did that but I’m pretty sure I’ll just be angry with you,” my mother said.

  “For whatever reason, I wanted to tell him I dreamed of killing him.”

  “That’s dark Olivia,” my mother scoffed. “And childish.”

  “I know,” I said, feeling crazy.

  What would she think of that letter he sent back?

  “He said he’s in love with me.”

  “Was he joking?” She asked darkly.

  I laughed, despite myself.

  Only my mother could ask a fucked up thing like that.

  That was the kind of comment that made me think she didn’t love me at all.

  At least now I knew, that was just her humor and nothing more.

  “Well?” She asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Jesus…” She huffed out, throwing her fork down onto her plate. The silver clanked hard against the china. I watched her get that look about her, that unraveled look. I knew she wouldn’t be eating anymore tonight. We were exactly the same.

  “He’s just a stupid man,” I said, eyes flickering off to the side of the room for lack of a better place to focus.

  I felt heavy and strange after Avery. It was starting to sink in how horrible I probably made her feel without meaning to.

  She was away now, on her own. It felt stupid to fear about her sanity in that short span of time between her waving goodbye to me and her saying hello to her parents.

  Yet...

  “Avery opened the letter and r
ead it first. She shouldn’t have done it. The way he talked about her made me sick.”

  “I’d like to read it,” my mother said.

  “Oh…”

  I hadn’t really given much thought to that option.

  When Avery said she and Sky had decided my mother should read the thing, all I really thought was: Oh, how nice of you to include me in this decision.

  Back then, I was annoyed, I saw red.

  She’d done that at the last moment. She’d taken the letter to Sky and they’d talked about it and then come back. It all upset me. It all wasn’t fair.

  And now she was gone and thinking she was horrible.

  And now my mom was here and I was telling her things I wouldn’t have said six months ago.

  Avery had completely changed my life. She’d made me more open and I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

  “I’ll go get it,” I said.

  Things with my mom had been better.

  The letter was crumpled up on the nightstand where Avery had left it. I picked it up in my hand and felt how light it should feel, like a feather or a flower.

  When I gave it to my mom I felt strange but I knew it was right to give it away.

  “You can keep that,” I said. “I don’t want it.”

  There was silence as she started to read.

  “Oh, Olivia…” She’d been hovering over the damn thing and looking down at it as if it were some priceless ancient tablet or some crucial document that could save my life. When she’d laid it out flat she treated it like she was scared to touch.

  “What?” I asked, turning back to her. I’d taken a water from the fridge and unscrewed the lid to drink just a bit.

  “This is the man you knew,” she said solemnly, noticing.

  “Minus the cruel barbs at Avery… Yes,” I confessed.

  “Do you think it’s true?” She asked. That he loved me?

  “I do… But Avery made me feel strange long ago. She made me think he had always been playing a game with me. I can’t erase that thought now. It’s possible.”

  The letter seemed like proof of the contrary but Avery planted a well-needed seed.

  “He doesn’t confess in there,” I said, beating her to the chase. “He sort of confessed in person.”

  “He’s smart,” my mom noted. “His wording more than absolves him. This letter won’t help much unless we can use it to get him to talk.”

  “I’ve no problem testifying.”

  “This is very personal, Olivia.”

  “Who’s Natalie?” My mother asked.

  I felt the water get all stuck in my throat as if it were a solid cube of ice. Once I swallowed my throat throbbed.

  “Uh-Natalie was my girlfriend once.”

  “For how long?” My mom asked.

  “Not too long,” I said. “Maybe 6 months.”

  That was longer than I’d known Avery. I’d be married to Avery soon and we’d still only have known each other less than that.

  “That’s a long time to date someone,” my mom said.

  And not tell you…

  I knew what she was thinking.

  “It wasn’t like this,” I said, looking off toward the guest house to imply. “Things with Avery are a lot different.”

  “Different how?” My mom asked. She asked questions like I did. I was starting to see how intense that could be on the receiving side. Unlike Avery, I think I naturally wanted people to ask the right questions so that I could come clean and confess. It couldn’t be similar, how she felt when I prodded.

  “Natalie and I mostly just had sex,” I said frankly.

  “Oh,” my mom seemed a bit startled by that.

  “Ben saw us I guess,” I said. “I didn’t know he did but he told me.”

  “He watched you?”

  “I guess so,” I confessed. “It wasn’t normal sex either.”

  “What do you mean, not normal?”

  “We didn’t just go to a room. She didn’t just politely kiss me. It wasn’t puppy-love,” I said uncomfortably. “Sometimes it was intense.”

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me,” my mom said, at a loss.

  “I’m trying to tell you I asked her to hurt me.”

  “Olivia.” She queerly and she seemed shocked.

  “I had stress and I didn’t know how to get rid of it. When Natalie touched me it went away. Apparently Ben saw all that.”

  “And you didn’t know?”

  “About him watching? Hell no.”

  “Why haven’t I met this girl? Did she really hurt you?”

  “Natalie’s wonderful,” I laughed. “We’re still friends. I really like her. I was just too scared to bring her home.”

  “Scared?”

  My mom still didn’t know how alone she made me feel for several years.

  “I wasn’t ready to tell you I was gay,” I said, ready now.

  “Oh,” she said, swallowing. Nothing was as simple as it seemed.

  “Do you remember that dinner last year with Ben?”

  It had been this thing we’d both just decided not to bring up or talk about… Until now.

  “Of course I remember…” She muttered sadly.

  I’d been honored by the school. There’d been a private party. After that though, Ben and I broke off into the night since he wanted to congratulate me in person and alone. My family found us and invited him out. We’d all sat down at a table together. We talked like family. My mother loved him. Ben was so charming and handsome. He kept looking at me in that way he did that made me think:

  Why do you like me?

  “That night I kept thinking… If only Olivia could meet a nice boy like this…”

  Boy…

  I knew…

  “I know,” I confessed. She said as much to Ben’s face on that night. And now I knew she remembered.

  He was a wolf in sheep’s clothing and Avery had been his delicate prey.

  “Do you still want me to meet a nice boy?” I asked, sort of nervous.

  “No,” she said grumpily, looking up at me with a scornful glare. As soon as she saw that I was mocking her she softened instantly and let out a small laugh. “Avery’s wonderful,” she said.

  “Avery’s damaged…” She wasn’t just: a girl...

  I couldn’t decide if that was a mean thing to say or not. Unfortunately it was really true.

  “Most people are,” my mother said, a bit of sadness in her eyes.

  I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. I hated not knowing if she was talking about me or her. She could’ve just been sad about the whole thing. She loved Avery so much.

  I watched her turn her eyes down again to the letter as she kept on reading.

  “He’s nice to you,” she said.

  “I know,” I sighed. He had always been nice to me.

  I didn’t want to think about stupid Ben.

  Nice or not. He fucked our lives up: mine, his, Avery’s. He even told me he’d fuck some future girl’s life up too. That may have been the only thing in the letter that actually incriminated him.

  Still, in a way, I really sympathized with that sentence of his. Avery could be with someone simpler and they could be laughing right now and having a normal life and not overthinking every single thing they thought or did.

  I mean, it’s no wonder to me, the second she and Skylar make up she’s back to Sky’s room doing secret things...

  It was hard to feel like I was the right person for her.

  I realized again, I’d been playing with my wrists.

  “He doesn’t even say her name,” my mom noted.

  “I wish she hadn’t read that,” I said.

  “It’s okay,” my mom comforted. “I’m sure it helped her.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s not going to want him free if the first thing he’d want to do is find you and propose marriage.”

  “That certainly is true,” I laughed.

  “It’ll give her something to m
otivate her,” my mom said, surprising me.

  “She’s at dinner with her parents,” I explained. “She hasn’t seen them all week.”