by Hall, Marie
I’d worked my entire life to forget, to fight and forget. To become a man, to never look back. But I’m stuck in a revolving door, no matter how many times I push, all I ever really do is stay in place. I’d flown halfway across the world, but could never outrun Texas. Could never get away, because the dog is always on my heels, always there to remind me who I really am.
My teeth are clacking, I look at the straight razor beside me.
Squeezing my eyes shut, a terrible sound draws from my mouth. One I’d never heard before. I can’t do this anymore. Can’t pretend. Can’t keep lying that it isn’t hurting, isn’t killing me a little every day.
He wins, but I think in the end he always knew that.
Picking up the razor I hold it to my wrist and count slowly to ten.
Chapter 5
Liliana
I keep looking at the door. Alex is on the couch with his arms crossed behind his head, eyes closed, snoring softly. But something feels wrong. In my heart and soul I feel something is off. But I can’t very well go knocking on the door and ask “are you all right?” I don’t know him.
How would that look?
Especially with Alex not looking in the least bit concerned.
At the club I’d managed to convince Ryan it was time to go home. Alex had had to help me get him up. He was a lot bigger than he looked, solid muscle with legs like jelly.
We’d flagged down a cab. On the way home I’d called my mom, told her where I would be, trying to ignore the guilty feeling I’d had leaving Javi without me for so long.
But Ade had laughed and said Javier was reading his books. He loved his comic books, once he got started it could be hours before I got them away from him. They’re one of the few things that keep him calm, so I don’t normally mind, but I wish he’d miss me sometimes.
Shaking my head, I try to gather my thoughts.
“Alex,” I whisper. “Hey,” I say louder, touching his shoulder this time. “Wake up.”
Squinting open one eye, he takes off his baseball cap and lifts his brows. “Wazzup.”
The water’s still running. We’ve been here an hour already. “Is that normal?” I point behind me to the closed bathroom door.
“He drank too much, that’s his way of sobering up. Gets totally shit-faced, comes home, and vegges beneath the spray until the bubble guts sends him running for the toilet. He’s fine. Relax.” He pats my knee and then resumes his position on the couch. Head back, fingers steepled on his chest and eyes closed.
Mouth thinning, I try to believe him. This isn’t my business.
But I can’t stop my knee from fidgeting, eventually Alex groans and smiles.
“Look, if you want, I’ll take you home. Though I’m not gonna lie, it’s kind of nice having a girl around I actually like talking to. But I know you have a kid, so it’s up to you.”
Biting on the tip of my thumbnail I shake my head. “No, it’s cool. Javi has a babysitter and he’s doing good.”
“So you can stay?”
Not like anyone’s missing me at home. “For a bit.”
“Good. Then I think…” he slaps his palms on his jeans, “I’m gonna walk toward the convenience store and get us some sodas. Maybe rent a movie. Sound good?”
It’s all I can do not to twist around and stare at the door. An awful feeling slinks through my gut. “Yeah, yeah,” I say distractedly, not really hearing him just waving him off.
Standing, he walks to the door and grabs a jacket. “It’ll take me about fifteen minutes. Gonna jog, helps burn off the alcohol. You like comedies?”
“Actually horrors.”
His eyes widen. “Really?”
“Makes me feel like my life doesn’t suck so bad.”
Laughing and shaking his head, he shrugs on his coat. “Fine.” Pulling out a cell from his pocket, he rattles off the numbers. “Call me if our boy starts puking his guts out, K?”
Punching his number in, I nod. “Yup.”
Then he’s gone.
I sit on the couch for two minutes longer before I can’t take it anymore. What if I’m wrong? Maybe all the stuff at the bar had just been the result of a drunken binge and nothing more.
But that doesn’t stop me from walking up to the door and pressing my ear against it.
I hear the spray, but everything else is silent. One of those eerie silences too. The kind where all you can hear is the sound of your heart beating and the ticking of a clock somewhere.
“Lili, what are you doing?” I mutter under my breath maybe as a warning, or even encouragement… I’m not sure, but I knock. “Ryan?”
I wait.
No answer.
I knock again.
“Ryan?” This time I say it louder.
There are moments in life when a sixth sense spurs you on to consider something you wouldn’t otherwise. Like the time I’d been watching a show and Javi had been a baby. I’d laid him in his crib and he was quiet-- nothing out of the ordinary, just our typical routine.
But a nagging feeling kept pressing in so hard I couldn’t ignore it any longer. I’d walked upstairs feeling stupid, knowing once I got there all I’d see was a sleeping baby. But that hadn’t been the case at all. Javi had turned completely blue. I’d placed a stuffed toy into the crib with him that morning and forgotten to take it out later. I’d not slept much the night before, I’d forgotten. The doctors said if I hadn’t checked then, if I’d left him like that even another minute, I would have lost him.
I’ve learned never to ignore the feeling again, and I’m having that feeling right now.
“Ryan, if you don’t open the door I’m going to have to come in,” I call louder. “Look, I’m training to be a nurse, so I promise no funny business, but you drank too much tonight and I’m worried. Please, if you’re okay let me know.”
Waiting and waiting for what feels like forever, I finally turn the knob. To my surprise it isn’t locked.
“Ryan?” My voice sounds unnaturally loud, even above the din of the water.
The curtain is fluttering; I sneeze and then pinch my nose shut as the heat and fog tries to curl its way into my head. It’s hot in here, like walking through a wet sauna hot.
“Ryan?” I say again, fearing he must have passed out.
I didn’t think he’d had so much that he’d enter alcohol poisoning, I’d been monitoring his intake.
Somewhat.
Steeling my nerves and squeezing my eyes shut, I grab hold of the curtain and shove it aside, hoping maybe the action will get him to yell or swear at me, anything to let me know he’s okay. I expect to hear him growl any minute now.
But when he doesn’t, I open them and am stunned into silence by what I see.
Every molecule in my brain works furiously to try and process the sight before me.
There’s so much blood.
Oh my God, and now that I see it I can smell it. The metallic, sharpness of it infiltrates my olfactory and I gag.
I can’t move, can’t reason through this.
Ryan is still dressed, wearing the same clothes he’d worn to the club, the white shirt molds to his body. But it’s no longer just white; it’s stained a viscous red around the sleeves and edges. The water crashing over him washes away most of the blood. His skin is so red it’s nearly purple.
Then it all comes crashing back to me, and where I’d been frozen before, I’m now moving on autopilot.
Turn off the water. Crawl into the tub with him. Press my fingers to the side of his neck.
Pulse is there, slow, but still steady.
I slap his cheek.
“Wake up, Ryan!” I shake him roughly. “Wake up.”
He doesn’t respond.
But he’s breathing, though it’s very shallow. He’d cut himself deep, but not deep enough to kill. I hope.
Leaning back against the tub, I cradle his body between my legs and pull my phone out of my pocket, punching in 9-1-1 immediately.
“911, what’s your emergency?” T
he woman’s voice sounds bored and robotic.
“Please, please, come quick,” I choke back the sob, “my friend’s bleeding everywhere. He cut his wrists.”
“Okay, ma’am,” she instructs patiently, “do you know where he’s injured?”
I pat his body, looking for the source, finally seeing the thick slashes across both wrists. “He slit his wrists,” my voice stutters.
“It’s okay,” she soothes, “now, what I want you to do is to apply some pressure, can you do that?”
“Yes,” a sob rips from me. Grabbing his hands, I take them between my own, but he’s so big and slippery and I’m already holding onto the phone, so I mush them against my breasts. “I did it.”
“Good. Now where do you live?”
“Oh my God, I don’t know. This is their house. Oh please, hurry.”
“No problem, ma’am. What’s his name?”
“It’s Ryan. Ryan Cosgrove.”
***
Ryan
I hear things. Strange sounds. Beeps and whooshes.
That’s the first thing I remember.
The second thing is the pain that’s running like fire across my body, but mostly through my wrists. It hurts to move too much, but I do manage to peek. They’re bound and wrapped with hospital tape. Red spots dot the center of each.
“He’s waking up.”
I recognize Alex and I moan.
“Ryan?” A soft voice, it’s gentle, but the touch against my arm is even softer and it feels so good. I don’t ever want to wake up; I just want to stay in this place, this safe and warm place that doesn’t hurt.
But I can’t, because I’m awake now and I have to see who’s touching me.
It’s the girl from the club. Liliana. Her eyes are so green and huge in her small face. Her skin is more pale than I remember and there are purple spots under her eyes, like she hasn’t slept in a while.
Grunting, I glance down at myself.
There are tubes and wires attached all over me, a heart monitor is hooked up to my chest, and when I flex my hand I feel a needle beneath it. Swallowing with a throat that feels like someone shoved a melon into it, I look at Alex.
His face is grim and his eyes are pissed.
“Damn,” I mutter.
“You damn ingrate,” he grits out, then turns and walks out the room.
Liliana glances over her shoulder, to where he left. I hate that she looks worried. And it bothers me why she’s even here. Does she know what I tried to do?
Turning back to me, she grabs my hand and her fingers are so small I can close my entire fist around them. “He doesn’t mean it, you know. He’s just worried about you.”
She bites her bottom lip and something inside me wants to sooth the frown from between her brows.
“Angel?”
She smiles and it’s breathtaking. Literally takes mine away. I could get used to that smile.
“What are you doing here?”
She cocks her head, a spill of hair falls around her face like a curtain. Thick and brown, it’s gorgeous, a part of me wonders what it smells like. I love women’s hair, love the way it smells so good and looks so pretty and hers is the nicest I’ve seen.
“I’ve been here every day.”
Every day? My heart stutters at that. “How long have I been here?”
She crosses her legs and taps her finger on mine. I noticed her doing that at the bar the other night. She does it when she’s nervous. Is she nervous now?
“Five days.”
I frown. “What?”
“The doctors had to give you so much blood.” Her voice breaks and I have a terrible thought.
Please God tell me she wasn’t…
“When I found you,” she continues, “you lost so much. You needed a lot, Ryan.”
I focus on only one thing. Closing my eyes, I pull my hand out of hers. It is one thing to try and off myself, it’s another to have a stranger know one of the darkest secrets about you.
She wraps her hands together and clenches them to her chest.
“You found me?” My voice is dead, flat. But inside I’m angry.
I can’t even die right.
“Why would you do that?” she asks me, as if she has a right to know.
And maybe she does. Maybe the person who brings you back from death has the right to know why they did it in the first place. But if she knew the truth, she’d have let me die. Nothing like me deserves to live.
I roll my face to the side.
Sighing, she gets up from her chair. I can hear her pacing. I’m so aware of her every move. I can close my eyes right now and describe her down to exacting detail.
From the tiny cleft in her jaw, to the green eyes, to the thick dark hair, even to the three freckles she’s got scattered across the bridge of her nose, and how when it gets cold in a room, her nipples bead up into tiny points. Points I try hard to not get caught staring at, but I can’t help it. They’re perfect. She’s perfect.
Fuck.
I’m a mess.
“Alex told me you’re going to have to go under psychiatric evaluation.”
I laugh. Been there, done that. Got the t-shirt. It’s why I got politely booted from the damn Marines to begin with.
Too much baggage. Not worth saving. Get the hell out.
Of course the military could have gone the route of a dishonorable discharge, but I’d had a sergeant who cared. Told me it would have gone on my records and screwed up any chance I had on the outside to get a decent job. So, they did everything they could to make sure I didn’t walk out with that mar against me.
Because even though I’m a fighter, no one likes to spar with a psycho nut job. Who knows what they’ll do next? Right?
“Yeah, I figured,” I finally say, knowing I’m in for twelve weeks of psychobabble shit that won’t fix a damn thing. It never has.
She walks back to me and when she stares down I can’t explain it, but I feel longing and hope and so damn confused I want to suck my thumb and cry like a baby.
Then she runs her fingers through my hair. “Get better, Ryan. He really loves you. You have one life, whatever happened to you, whoever did that to you… don’t let them win.”
I still, every ounce of oxygen in my body literally seems to seep out my pores. She’ll never know just how close to home she’s hit.
“You’re worth so much more than this.”
With those last words, she exits my life.
I know I’ll never see her again and that thought is crippling.
Chapter 6
Liliana
Everything’s changed since the night I found him. And yet, things stay the same.
It’s been three months.
I know because I count them down on the calendar. I’m not obsessed with him.
Or maybe I am, but I don’t really think that’s it either. Ryan and I had had a convergence; we met in a place and time that would forever leave an indelible mark in the road map of my life.
It’s more than just my attraction to him. He’s mentally unstable, that’s clearly obvious and not something I need to bring into my life, or Javi’s. But I haven’t been like this about anyone. Ever.
Not even Javi’s dad-- which at fourteen, feelings can be pretty intense.
I thought I’d loved him. And he sworn he’d loved me. Until the baby came. Then it was hasta luego, it’s been good knowing ya. I’d cried rivers for nine months straight. I’m sure the pregnancy hormones hadn’t helped. But with time and age I realized what a little loser I’d slept with and am now happy he’s no longer a part of our lives.
I haven’t even been back to Chai Time. Maybe that makes me spineless. But that night haunts me. Seeing him in the tub, slumped forward, all that blood everywhere.
And then that morning in the hospital room, his voice soft, his eyes troubled and I’d asked him why. I’d seen the flash of hurt, the agony of a memory that plagued him still.
I don’t think it’s a girl.
&nbs
p; A broken heart doesn’t do that to a person.
When Javier’s father had finally dumped me, I’d cried and wouldn’t eat and hid in the dark room, but I didn’t want to kill myself. When I’d crawled out of there, I’d come out stronger.
