Void

by Cassy Roop

  Andris didn’t say much as I backed away from him. Or was it Link I had just lost my shit in front of?

  “The entire fucking time it was you?” I asked calmly. Almost so calm, that you could never tell that I was damn near in the full stages of a panic attack only seconds before. I felt the familiar mask I had worn for so long voluntarily slip back into place. I felt my emotions once again fade away, just out of my reach.

  “Yes. Nicola, Link has helped me in ways I cannot describe to anyone. Like your parents ignored you, my father did also, except when he was telling me what a worthless piece of shit I was or how I didn’t deserve the air I breathed. Link was the one who helped me feel like I was worthy, even if I had to pretend to be him for a while.”

  “So, everything is just pretend with you, is that it, Andris? You can only fuck girls who don’t have the liberty of seeing you? You get to pretend to be someone else and hide behind the image of another persona? Were you pretending the whole time with me?”

  “In the beginning, yes. But you changed something within me, Nicola. You gave me the strength and the confidence to step out from behind Link. You are the first and only woman that I have made love to as Andris.”

  He stepped closer to me, as if needing the connection between us, but I stepped away from him. I didn’t want him to touch me. I wanted to be angry with him. I wanted him to feel how stupid and worthless I felt.

  “So, should I get a special prize for that? You have had plenty of opportunities to tell me the truth. So is that why you always had me use the headphones?”

  He nodded.

  “I made the girls wear them. I picked them up at whatever destination that Lexie told me to and blindfolded them, just as I did you. The headphones were so that they couldn’t hear my voice and put two and two together. I needed the anonymity of Link to be able to even have sex. My father drilled some seriously sick shit in my head, Nicola. Shit that no one should ever have to go through.”

  “Huh, imagine that. A psychiatrist who has mental issues. That isn’t one that I have heard before.”

  “It’s the truth, Nicola.”

  I walked up to him and jammed my finger into his chest. I felt my emotions slowly beginning to shut off. I wanted to still be angry. I wanted to hate him for what he had done to me and I needed to show him that before I lost every shred of progress I had made over these last few weeks.

  “You lied to me. You played me, Andris. And I’m supposed to be okay with that? I’m supposed to say ‘Come here baby. Let me hold you’ after the shit you just laid on me? For weeks, you have let me think that I was falling in love with two men. You let me believe that it was because of both of you that I could finally function as a human being. Was I some sort of experiment, Doctor? Was I some kind of research you thought you could do to report?”

  I was damn near spitting in his face and he never flinched. Never moved a muscle, instead, he just stood there and accepted my wrath.

  “I never knew you were a patient, Nicola. Fuck, I was supposed to meet Kiki that first night. She was supposed to be the one I fucked and let go until the next time that I needed a fix. I work in a field where people medicate to get rid of their problems. Well, this is my medication. This is the sanctuary I come to when I feel pressure or tension. This is how I unwind and get my dickhead of a father out of my head,” he said as he gestured with his arms around the room.

  “The arrangements with the escorts were my way of feeling normal. They were my way of feeling like I was worthy enough to be with a woman, even if I had to pretend to be someone else to do it.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why you continued to lie to me! God, I don’t know what to feel right now,” I said as I laid my face in my hands.

  “Tell me what you feel.”

  “Don’t. Don’t you dare try to analyze me, Andris. You knew this was wrong. You knew that there was a possibility that I could get hurt from all of this. You of all people should have known how this would affect me. Fucking hell! I just learned how to process all of these feelings and emotions that I never had before and now they are all swarming me at once. You should have been honest. You should have told me the truth when we started our relationship! I feel so stupid!”

  My voice began to rise the angrier I became.

  “You don’t think I wanted to? You don’t think I wanted to step out from behind the wall of Link I put up between us and be the man I thought you wanted and needed? You think it was easy for me to hear that you had feelings for Link, when I was him the whole time? It tore at me every fucking day, Nicola, but I knew if I told you…”

  “You knew what?” I asked impatiently. Sweat had formed a soft sheen upon my skin, and even though internally I felt the heat rise, on the outside I was cold.

  “That this would happen,” he said, gesturing between us with his hands. Lifting them up, he ran both of them through his hair. The motion pulled the hair that normally fell just over the top of his brows away from his face and it was then that I could see the anguish in his features. Momentarily, I softened towards him. I knew deep in my gut that it had to take him an abhorrent amount of time to get the courage to confess this to me, but dammit if I wasn’t hurt.

  It’s strange really, how the body reacts to certain things. Some emotions can bring on the same types of physical reactions within the body. It was insane how physical pleasure could heat me from the inside out. How it could make me think irrationally, or to do or say things that I didn’t mean in the heat of the moment. But at the same time, anger could do the same thing. Or like how when you are really happy, you were brought to tears, but you also cry when you were sad or depressed.

  “What do you expect from me, Andris? You knew that the inevitable outcome would be something along these lines, yet you still continued to lie to me. You made me believe I was in love with someone who doesn’t exist.”

  “I’m sorry, Nicola. I wish I could make you understand.”

  “Understand? That is all people have tried to get me to do my entire life. Nicola, do you understand anger? Nicola, do you understand pain? Pleasure? Sadness? I’m so sick of people trying to constantly push things on me. But when I was with you and Link, I didn’t feel pushed. It felt natural—effortless. It was like my mind and my body just knew what to do. Are there some things I still don’t quite understand? Yes. But you and Link made it better.”

  He let out a long sigh once again, running his hands through his hair before placing them in his pockets. I wondered if he did it to try and control himself. Did he want to stop himself from reaching out to me? As much as his touch would anger me even more, at the same time I craved it. I needed comfort. I needed to know that we were going to get past this. I needed to know that I could survive the torture my heart was feeling at the moment. I hated the unnatural way my heart banged within my ribcage or the staggered breaths that were being forced from my body. For the first time since my emotions were switched on, I no longer wanted to feel anything so that this awful feeling would go away.

  “All I can say is I’m sorry, Nicola. I love you. That’s why I told you the truth. That is why I brought you here and confessed everything. I wanted to put all of this behind us so that we could move on together. Have a normal life. I want us to not have any secrets between us or any hidden agendas. I want nothing but love, honesty and trust with you. If that means I have to face my demons head on in the process, then so be it. You are worth it to me. I’ve never imagined that would ever happen with anyone.”

  Secrets. I had a big one. Andris had no idea that I had stolen the prescription pads from his desk. Even though he was honest with me, I couldn’t tell him what I had done because he would try to go after Cardinelli. As much as I hated him at the moment, that didn’t mean I didn’t care about him. I didn’t want to see him going to jail for helping Cardinelli with drug trafficking. There was only one thing that I could do. I needed him to hate me. I needed his love to go away, then maybe, just maybe, mine would too. My emotions were turned
on when I met him and Link, how hard could it be to turn them off if I put distance between us.

  Sucking in a deep breath, I walked towards him and stood toe to toe. Not quite close enough to touch, but enough that we could feel the warmth from each other’s bodies. What I was about to do would no doubt destroy him, but I needed to get the point across that I didn’t want this anymore. I thought I could handle the stipulations that went with having a normal relationship. I thought I could easily process all the new emotional shit that I would be experiencing, but I was sorely wrong.

  Looking directly into his eyes, I said, “If you were a man, you would never have had to hide behind the image of a make believe person. Did you not have the balls to give it to a woman without the help of your imaginary friend? Sucks to be you.”

  Then I stepped around him and walked out of the room, straight down the hallway and into the elevator without looking back. As the elevator descended, I felt the tiny breaths of air that blew against the flame of my emotions, so that by the time I had reached the bottom floor, the flame was out. All the new emotions and feelings that had begun to smolder within me were now gone and I was once again left feeling void.

  GETTING USED TO WORKING at the cafe was a whole new beast. No stranger to being in the service industry, this was customer service not on any level that I had ever been on before. People were rude, the tips were horrible, yet I chose to come back here instead of going back to work at the agency. Did I think about it? Yes. Yet, I felt almost compelled to work at the café, like it was meant to be. Plus I really took a liking to Letta.

  She was hardcore, gave as good as she got. Her laugh was contagious and I was hit with the threat of getting “fattened up” nearly every day from her. If I continued to eat all the delicious bread that I fed myself with, instead of having to allow my body to feel, I would be there in no time.

  If I thought trying to understand emotions was hard, trying to turn them back off was even harder. How people lived through heartache every day was beyond me. It felt as if a piece of me was lost. I wanted to feel numb. I begged my mind to once again become the vacant parking lot of emotions like it had been nearly my entire life, but when it came to Andris, I found it nearly impossible.

  “Table four is ready, Nicola,” the short order cook, Henry, yelled from the kitchen. I lifted my hand in acknowledgement as I jotted down another table’s order. Our lunch rush was just getting underway with the café getting louder and more crowded every minute. I heard the bell above the door ring as I walked to the counter to pick up table four’s food. When I turned around, I saw a dark haired girl take a seat at one of the only empty tables left in the far back corner of the café. There was a familiarity about her that I couldn’t quite catch on to, yet this was New York City. Nearly everyone had two or four doppelgangers running around.

  I delivered table four’s order. Two business men who barely acknowledged my presence before placing the other table’s order with Henry. Then, I grabbed the pad of paper from my apron and made my way back to the back table where the dark haired girl sat.

  “Hi. What can I get for you today?” I asked as I poised the pen above the pad of paper, waiting for her answer.

  That is when she looked up at me and recognition set in. Her normally bright eyes were dull and the luster in her skin was gone along with the glimmer of her dark hair. She looked thin. Very fragile. Her sunken, hollowed-out cheeks and the dark circles under her eyes told me she wasn’t well. She had red chipped nail polish on nails that were clearly bitten down to the quick of her skin. Her lips were pale and cracked, in need of serious moisture.

  “Kiki?” I asked not believing it was her.

  “Well, when Lexie told me you quit the agency, I thought she was just jerking my chain,” she said with a hint of disdain in her voice. “Guess not, huh?” She asked, looking me up and down, taking in my uniform.

  “Yeah, well, I thought I would try a service of a different kind,” I said light heartedly, trying to get a smile out of her.

  Nothing. If I would have said that the Pope died, I probably wouldn’t have even got as good as a reaction as I was getting right now.

  “Trying to go legit or some shit, Jericho? I never took you for someone who played by the rules.”

  “I guess sometimes people change.”

  “Yeah, I guess they do. Bring me a triple expresso. I’ve been up all fucking night. I need a caffeine jolt,” she said, reaching into her purse and producing her electronic cigarette and taking a large draw from the contraption.

  “Expresso. Got it.”

  I walked away to place her order with the barista behind the counter and checked on a few of my other customers before returning to Kiki’s table. I took a seat in the other chair and placed my elbows on the table, just looking at her.

  “What?” She asked, not looking up at me and irritation in her voice.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, Kiki, but you look like shit.”

  She looked up at me then, and I saw the redness in the white of her eyes.

  “Well, I feel like shit. Thanks for pointing that out.”

  “Is everything okay?” I asked, continuing to prod her.

  “I’m just fine and dandy. No offense, Nicola, but when the fuck did you start caring about someone other than yourself? How’s my client working out for you? I bet you are living the high life now with the bank you made from that man.”

  It stung for her to bring up Andris, but I wasn’t going to let it get to me. She was clearly in more need than my desperate desire to shut off any and everything when it came to him.

  “That’s over and done with. Obviously, I’m not living the high life, Kiki. I’m working in a fucking café for Christ’s sake.”

  She tried to laugh and erupted into a dreadful coughing fit. I noticed a slight tremble in her hands as she tried to bring her hair more over her face as if she were trying to hide her face from the world.

  “When was the last time you ate? Can I put an order in for you?”

  “I don’t need your fucking charity. Can you just bring me my fucking coffee and leave me the hell alone?”

  I could tell she was getting irritated with me, and the café was starting to get busier so I stood up and pushed my chair in.

  “If you need anything else, just let me know. I’ll be right back with your expresso.”

  I busied myself taking new orders and delivering others. I helped one of the bus boys clear tables, all the while keeping one eye on Kiki. I watched as she stared vacantly out the window as people walked on the streets. Every once in a while I caught her gaze, but then she would just return back to looking out the window. After about thirty minutes, she stood up, threw some money down on the table and walked out, never saying another word to me.

  I COULDN’T FUCKING THINK straight. They only thing I could hear was the incessant voice of my father saying to me over and over how much of a failure I was. I couldn’t even hang on to my first and only real girlfriend for longer than a few weeks.

  I was on robot mode when it came to my patients. I nodded my head and answered them when necessary. If they could tell a change in my mood, they didn’t let on. For the first time in my career—my life—my heart wasn’t in it.

  Why?

  Because the day Nicola walked out of the apartment, she took it with her.

  “I still can’t seem to focus on my studies. My thoughts bounce around in my head like a kangaroo on crack, doctor. Will it ever stop?”

  “It’s hard to tell, Jacob. ADD is something some people find themselves being able to overcome, others aren’t so lucky. I guess it is all about finding methods that work for you. If you’re easily distracted by things like the TV or people, go somewhere quiet. If music is distracting, leave the iPod off. Maybe what you need is somewhere neutral where there aren’t any outside influences to grab your attention while you study. How do you do when you are in class?”

  “Sometimes I can do okay, if the subject is interesting to me
. But when the professor starts going on about the cardiovascular system and valves and ventricles, my mind starts shifting to her appearance or I study the other students instead of the material.”

  “Well, take my advice, but until then, I can give you something that might help you be able to concentrate more. It is a time released capsule, so it should last about eight hours. I suggest you take it in the morning before you go to class, and not after three pm in the afternoon. Otherwise you will have a hard time going to sleep at night.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Gunn.”

  I reached into my drawer to retrieve one of my prescription pads to write out the young college student his prescription. When my hands came up empty, I thought it odd, but shrugged it off. I write so many prescriptions per week, I could have easily ran out and not even known it. I stood up from my chair after telling Jacob I would return in a moment and left the office to go to our locked closet where we kept the sample products from drug companies as well as our supply of prescription pads. After retrieving two, I returned back to my office where I wrote out the prescription and bid Jacob good luck on his studies.

  Lunch time found me sitting at my desk, staring out the window at New York. I often found myself doing that during the day, wondering where in the city Nicola was.

  It had been nearly three days since I saw her. Kissed her lips. Told her I loved her and held her. My body missed her like it missed oxygen when I held my breath. My heart ached in my chest when I thought about how we could have possibly had a full and happy life.

  I guess now, I’ll never know.

  IT WAS THURSDAY at the café and I was really starting to get the hang of things. Letta had taken a real liking to me and even began to show me how she made some of her famous bread. I enjoyed spending time with her in the kitchen, kneading dough and enjoying our conversations. Strangely, I felt like I could confide in her. If I had had a grandmother, I would hope that she would have been just like Letta.