by S. Massery
When it’s all unloaded, I pay the movers and close the door. Dad had to work, otherwise he would have come, too. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen my parents, but not long enough. I’m just waiting for her to start nitpicking. Now that I’m only two hours away, I don’t have nearly as good of an excuse to avoid them. I slide the area rug to about where I want it, giving it a shove to unroll it. Georgia helps me lift the couch, and we continue setting up the living room in silence while Mom handles things in the kitchen.
“Honey, you’ve done a lovely job,” Mom says. She stands in the center of my living room. It feels borderline claustrophobic in here; her judgement rolls off of her in waves. “If I could suggest moving the couch, though, the feng shui in this room is off a bit.” I glance at Georgia, puff my cheeks for a second, and then nod as I blow out the air. It isn’t worth arguing with her. Mom claps her hands together. “Excellent! Georgia, please help me.” Together they shift the living room until it is to her satisfaction.
Mom comes over and hugs me. We’re nearly the same height and have a lot of the same features. Sometimes I look at her and see how I will look in twenty-five years. I mentally have to add in some wrinkles, of course, because I don’t think I would be able to stomach the Botox.
“Shall we set up your bedroom?”
And so we go. Mom arranges it, crowing about feng shui and energy. It isn’t how I would’ve done it, but it works just fine. I can always rearrange once they’re gone.
It feels like hours later when Mom finally heads out. “I’m sure you want to have the place to yourself for a little while. Unpack your clothes and toiletries,” Mom says as she heads for the door. Georgia is staying on my couch, and I’m grateful that she took an extra day to help me get settled.
Once we’re alone, she says, “Well, should we put everything back to where you wanted it?”
I laugh and shake my head. It’s been a long enough day as it is.
Georgia flops onto the couch, and I join her. “Six month leases aren’t typical, are they?”
I shrug. “They offered a year or six months. I figured it was best to start small. Who knows where we’ll be in January? Maybe Tom will finagle another company takeover and we’ll wind up in Hawaii.”
“Yeah,” she says. “Or you could stumble upon your dream job and leave your boss to get a worker that isn’t overqualified within six months.” I ignore this. “You’re such a pushover.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She has the grace to look sheepish. “I mean it with love, Charlie. But... you do whatever your mom wants, and whatever Tom wants. You’d probably have two-point-five kids if you could, just because she ordered it. And as for your boss, he snaps his fingers and up and moves you to a whole new city.”
I pat her leg. “I love Boston,” I whisper. “It was hard to choose to leave you, but you have Henry…”
She groans. “Does this job even make you happy?”
I consider her question.
“Charlotte. Everyone needs to have something that makes them happy. It can’t just be a boy, work, or a nice apartment. Yes, those things are great. But what do you do when you don’t have those things anymore?”
What makes me happy?
I laugh, suddenly stricken. I swallow my next words: I’m afraid that I don’t have anything. Take away the apartment—which isn’t even decorated how I want—and take away my job, I have nothing. There’s a boy who broke my heart, a city filled with strangers, and parents who wish I was just a little different.
“Painting,” I eventually say.
Georgia grins. “Excellent. And you know I’m going to send you the supplies as soon as I get back.”
Soon after, we settle in for bed. Who cares if it’s only eight o’clock?
I close myself in my room, and I am wrapped in silence. It seeps down my throat and crawls in my ears, and I wonder if I’ll ever hear again. The sound of traffic doesn’t penetrate the apartment. There is no ticking clock on the wall. No loud neighbors.
I turn on every single light in my room. The lights make me feel better, but my heart still beats a chaotic rhythm. I can feel it in my throat, in my fingertips, struggling against my ribcage. It realizes: in a day and a half, I will be alone. Madly, truly alone.
14
Past
Colby transitioned from someone I couldn’t get away from to someone I couldn’t get enough of—and I didn’t notice that I was losing myself in the process. The notebook I wrote to Jared was lost in my closet. Instead of sneaking out to hang out in our tree, I snuck out to meet Colby and his friends.
“Hey, baby,” he said when I climbed into the car around the corner. “Swallow.”
I blinked at him, and he stared until I opened my mouth. He put something on my tongue and handed me a water bottle. I gulped, closing my eyes. A large part of me didn’t care what it was, although I knew I wanted to hold onto my virginity a little bit longer. Whenever he got close to my jeans, fingers toying with the button, I froze up and asked him to stop. He was always vocal about how that wasn’t how he had imagined things playing out; he would pout and growl, and then ratchet up the charm as if that could convince me.
He nuzzled my neck, and I turned my lips toward him.
“You’re a good girl,” he said before he kissed me. I leaned into him, wondering when I’d start to feel the effects of the pill. His tongue swept into my mouth, eliciting a shiver down my spine. Abruptly, he pulled away. “We’re going to Marco’s house.”
I shivered again. Marco’s parents were out of town for a week, celebrating New Year’s Eve somewhere fancy. There was a party at his house the other night, but I was forced to leave early due to a curfew about which my father wouldn’t budge. Colby’s hand settled on my thigh as he drove. I let my head fall back against the seat and closed my eyes.
Seconds later, Colby said, “We’re here.”
I cracked my eyes open and smiled at him.
He smirked at me, looking me up and down. “Damn, you’re hot,” he said. He got out and circled the car, squatting in my open doorway. I fell toward him, and a tiny ripple of surprise ran through me at the looseness of my body. He caught my arms, shifting them around his shoulders, and bit my neck.
I groaned, letting my head tip back again. His hand on my skin felt like fire as it traced its way up my side, palming and squeezing my breast. “Inside,” he grunted. He helped me stand, half supporting my weight until I located my feet. We stumbled up the walkway together, and he opened the door without knocking. In the living room, pairs of people were sprawled on the furniture in various states of undress.
“Colby,” I heard. “My man! You made it!”
“Hey, dude,” he answered. He used his free hand to do a weird fist bump handshake. My own fist tightened in his shirt at his waist, and he grinned down at me. I couldn’t hold his gaze; my eyes kept skating around the room.
“You have her on something?”
“You know how she likes to cut loose,” he said. “I’m gonna take her up.”
“Go right ahead,” his friend answered. I didn’t see his face. “Just don’t do it on my bed, yeah? Virgins bleed a lot.”
I shivered again.
“Don’t psych her out with that shit.”
Colby turned me toward him and backed me against the wall. His mouth landed on mine, nipping at my lips, and that fire came roaring back. I moaned into his mouth. His hands slid down my thighs, and he lifted me up and off the ground. I wrapped my legs around him.
“You need to lose weight,” he muttered, walking quickly toward the stairs. I rested my chin on his shoulder and watched the people in the living room. My eyes felt so heavy. They drifted closed.
I jarred awake when Colby dropped me on a bed. He crawled over me, pushing my shirt up as he went. When he pulled down the cup of my bra and sucked on my nipple, I saw stars. For the first time, I didn’t flinch when he unbuttoned my jeans and pulled them down my hips. There was a trickle of inhibition
, but it blew away when he pushed his fingers under my underwear. He eventually yanked those off of me, too.
His weight disappeared for a second, and my eyes fluttered closed again.
“Open your eyes,” he said from above me. As soon as I did, blinking them open slowly, I felt a pinch and burn in the most vulnerable part of me. My mouth parted, and then slacked. It felt awful and good at the same time.
Colby’s weight was mostly off of me, and he moved quickly inside of me. After a few minutes, he buried his face in my neck. “You feel so good,” he whispered. “So fucking tight.”
I whimpered.
“Relax,” he ordered. My muscles responded before I could process, and I sank back into the mattress.
He continued to make noises above me, but I was checked out.
Inexplicably, I thought of Leah and that day she made out with Jared in the water. I wondered what it would’ve been like to kiss him, to press myself against his chest like she had done. She was now dating a senior—she was moving up in the world, I supposed. It didn’t matter than she had made out with my best friend. She apparently owed me nothing.
Colby groaned and trembled over me, his full weight pressing into my body. He was heavy enough to suffocate me. His hands stilled by my head, forcing me to meet his eyes. The world was blurry, but his green eyes stood out. He kissed me, his tongue immediately taking possession of my mouth. I clenched my muscles, and he bit my lip. I could still feel him in me, but it was mixed with a feeling of being untethered.
After a minute, he pulled out and away.
“Fuck,” Colby said. “You’re fucking bleeding.”
A tear slipped loose and rolled down my temple, into my hair. And then another. Another.
“Stop it.”
I held my breath, wondering if that would smother the black hole within me.
He pulled me upright, roughly dabbing my thighs with a cloth. He touched my cheek. “You need to stop. They’re going to think I forced you.”
I shook my head, disjointed. I was wholly unattached.
He stood and left the room while I sat there and stared at the bloody cloth.
When he returned, I was flat on my back with my eyes closed. “Hey,” he whispered. He pulled me upright again. “Drink.”
I opened my lips when he put the rim of a cup to my lips. Cool liquid burned as I drank. Vodka, maybe. One, two, three swallows.
He pulled it away and kissed me again. I watched him pull my clothes back on me; he clasped my bra on the wrong hooks, and my underwear bunched under my jeans.
“Good job, baby, now let’s go party.”
He lifted me from the bed, carrying me down the stairs and dropping me on a couch. His friends greeted us, but I couldn’t make my mouth function. The room kept swaying—or was that me?
Minutes later, or maybe hours, Colby jarred me awake. “Fuck, baby, you slept like a rock,” he laughed. I rubbed at my eyes, looking around. We were parked in front of my house. “Go on,” he said.
“What?”
He got out of the car and circled it, opening my door and unbuckling me. “You should pretend to have the flu or something.” The way my stomach suddenly rolled, that wouldn’t be a problem. “Go inside.”
He helped me stand, then stood back as I walked unsteadily up the front lawn. I tripped and caught myself on the side of the house, but kept going. Almost to the back, I glanced back toward Colby.
He was gone.
I felt the ache so keenly, it doubled me over.
15
The buzzing is loud, non-uniform, and wholly annoying. Lifting my head from the pillow, I am temporarily frightened of the unfamiliar room I am in. The move comes back to me, as well as last night’s panic. I had fallen asleep without turning any of my lights off and slept through the night.
Getting up, I stalk toward the noise. I haven’t the faintest idea what time it is.
The buzzer to let people into the building is flashing. I press the talk button.
“Hello?” My voice is scratchy.
“Charlotte Harper, you let me up right now,” Georgia shouts.
I wonder how she got outside. The buzzing starts again. I wince, pressing the button to open the downstairs door.
“I forgot a key, and you pick today to sleep in?” Georgia looks very put together this morning. She raises an eyebrow, which makes me want to punch her. In her hands, though, is a drink tray with two cups.
I scramble toward her. Bad mood forgotten, she laughs and hands me my cup, which—yes—is a cafe mocha.
“I love you,” I sighed.
“Are you talking to me or your coffee?”
“Both.”
She stomps into my bedroom, looking for evidence of… something. Bottles of booze? Pills? I wince. “Did you sleep on top of your duvet?” she yells. When she reappears, she looks at me with pity.
I hold up my hand, warding off any more questions. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”
“Babe, you went to sleep with all the lights on? That’s not normal. I was right outside your door… why didn’t you say something?”
No, it’s not normal. There’s an adjustment period. Before I realize what’s happening, I’m tearing up. “I’m the definition of not normal right now,” I say. The tears slide down my cheeks. The sadness comes out of nowhere like a summer thunderstorm.
Georgia looks as shocked as I am. Probably because she can count on her hands the number of times I’ve cried in front of her.
“Okay.” She claps her hands. “We’re going to get you in the shower. I’ll find your clothes and towels, and we’ll get ready and go to a museum or some touristy shit today. Okay? Your mom gave me money.” She forces a cheerful smile. Touristy things are not in her nature, and she has always fought the idea of my mom giving her money. Her family believes in earning their money. But it makes me feel a little relieved, if not guilty, that she’s doing this for me.
I nod, letting her lead me to the bathroom. Despite a spider mishap, and the fact that I was done with my shower long before Georgia found a towel, things were looking better.
“I was thinking the Museum of Fine Arts,” Georgia says once we’re on the street. “Or the Museum of Science.”
We end up at the Museum of Fine Arts. It’s closer, and the building is intriguing enough to entice us in. We stare at different types of art in different sections of the building for what must be an hour before finding our way to a section dedicated to odd paintings and drawings.
There are a few that remind me of my father: they are dark, with pockets of light. John Singer Sargent’s Rehearsal of the Pasdeloup Orchestra at the Cirque d’Hiver, for one, is a whirling mass of dark and light. My father has always wanted the best for me, but his route to get me there has been difficult. There was always a test, and I never had the correct answer.
Worse, yet, were the times when I unintentionally made him angry—the C in Introduction to Economics in college, the lack of boyfriends after Colby, the drawing class. Once I was out of the house for college, he would wait until Christmas break when I was trapped at home for a month before creeping into his anger. It would be brought up at dinner, when my mother was onto her third glass of wine—I guess, after over twenty years of marriage, she could read his moods and medicate accordingly. One minute we would be discussing the latest neighborhood gossip, or what the local politicians were doing wrong, and the next I would be slinking further and further into my seat under Dad’s seething face as, like a judge, he wrought my sentence for the crimes of which I was guilty.
His anger was thunder. It rolled on and on. It blustered. Intimidated. It contained a certain spark of manic glee. But he was not lightning, and no one ever got hurt because of a little noise. The painting, though, was like someone saw straight through me. I couldn’t move, staring at it. Lost.
“Charlotte?”
I break away from the painting, confused. Georgia is just a few feet away, looking at a different painting. Besides her, no one here knows my nam
e.
“Charlotte?”
A handsome man strides across the room in my direction. Short, short blonde hair. Brown and gold eyes that have always held the power to melt my heart.
He nods when he sees the recognition on my face. I start walking toward him.
Behind me, Georgia whispers, “No shit.”
Avery’s hug is better than the last time we saw each other. He crushes me into him, inhaling sharply while his lips are pressed against the top of my head. Peace washes over me, easing the anxiety that has been holding my lungs captive all day. I breathe him in, as well, locking my arms at his back. He feels thinner than I remember. My eyes are squeezed shut, and I would prefer not to open them. Public displays of affection are not my thing. And here I am, having shown him affection in public three times. Three!
“What are you doing here?” he whispers into my hair. “Are you real?”
I nod. My heart threatens to gallop out of my chest.
“That’s a fucking terrible painting that you’re looking at,” he continues, moving back a step to look at my face.
I force a laugh, because I had been drawn to it. Even now, I can see it behind my eyelids. “I know,” I lie. “I don’t understand it at all.”
He grins and then glances at Georgia. “Hi, I’m Avery—”
“I know who you are,” she says. Her voice is cold. “You’ve got some nerve, showing up here after that fiasco of a date.” She looks ready to bite him, which isn’t normal for her. I have the urge to check her for a fever. This type of protectiveness only comes out in her once in a while, and it’s usually reserved for her siblings.
Avery’s smile falters.
“This is Georgia, my best friend,” I say. I don’t try to explain away her behavior. I can’t.
He looks at me with a question in his eyes. I have never been the greatest at reading strangers—it made a life of sales out of the question for me—but I can see him crystal clear.
“Uh.” I thread my fingers together. “You know, I wasn’t in the best shape when I got home after seeing you. So.”
