“Are you sure you want us to talk about what happened that night?” the woman on the desk asks.
I take a deep breath thinking about it. I don’t really want to, but I know I must. There are certain things I need to come to grips with and what happened that night was one of them. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
We entered the motel room in silence. I closed the door behind me as Faye walked into the bathroom. I heard water running. She must’ve been washing her face or her hands. I didn’t know why, maybe she just wanted to give me a moment alone. I was still upset from my visit to Mindy Quilter. I sat by the bed and took a deep breath. Minutes later, she came out with her hands wet and her face had been dried out with a towel. She sat next to me, wrapper her arms around me and made me lay my head on her shoulder.
She held me because she knew I needed firm ground to support myself, a rock in the middle of quicksand, a shelter in the rain, and that’s Faye for me. She’s safe; home.
I wasn’t really in the mood for anything, and by that I mean I was giving Faye a really bad time. She asked if I was hungry, I said no. She asked if I wanted to watch TV, I said no. She asked if I wanted to go for a walk, I said no. She asked if I wanted to be left to myself, I said no. She asked if I wanted anything in this world, I said no.
“Really?” she questioned. “Not a thing? Come on, name it and I’ll go and get it for you.”
I thought she was joking, so I went with it. “Really? Anything in the whole world?”
She smirked. “Absolutely.”
I gave her a sad smile and replied, “Alright. I want a brownie, covered in caramel sauce, with ice-cream, raspberries, whipped cream, charred marshmallows and a cherry on top.”
I didn’t actually think she would do it. Like I said, I thought she was joking. Instead, Faye stood up, grabbed her purse and burst out the door. I was left there thinking ‘She can’t possibly be crazy enough to get me that monstrosity, can she?’ As you can imagine, I was hell wrong. An hour later she walked into our motel room with a plastic container. She seemed was breathing rapidly and her forehead was sticky with sweat.
“Here,” she said handing me the container. “There is no store that actually sells something like that, but I found one crazy enough to make it for me for a reasonable price.”
“You’re screwing with me,” I said taking it from her hands. She shrugged and I stared at the container repeating to myself that she couldn’t be crazy enough. But when I lifted the lid there it was. My brownie covered in caramel sauce, with ice-cream, raspberries, whipped cream, charred marshmallows and a cherry on top.
The only thing that was more impressive than her stupid idea of getting me something that was clearly a joke, was that she remembered every single topping I asked. Or perhaps she didn’t, perhaps over time, I forgot the ones she didn’t managed to get. It didn’t really matter.
“Jesus, Faye!” I said closing the container and staring up at her. “I was joking!”
She laughed, “Yeah. I know.”
I gazed at the container again, then at her, and then it happened. The one thing that should never happen when it comes to your ex. You start remembering why you fell in love with them in the first place.
There she was. Tired, sweaty, and smiling. She had run for God knows how long to get me something she herself knew I didn’t want.
Faye sat by my side and asked, “Aren’t you gonna eat it?” knowing eating something like that was diabetic coma on the spot. And I liked to eat, I still do, but Jesus, that thing could kill me.
“I’ll tell you what, I eat it, if you help me.”
“Oh, no. No way in hell I’m gonna eat that. There is no possible way in which you can convinced me to put that in my mouth.”
After the respective ‘that’s what she said’ joke. She eat it with me. Our sugar levels were on the roof, and since we were in Chicago till the next day, we decided to burn all that fat with touring. We didn’t take a bus, we decided to walk. Chicago was huge, building tall and shiny. We went to the Cloud Gate, the BP Bridge and the Lurie Garden. Faye bought a small Polaroid camera that printed pictures just the right size to fit in your wallet and spent the whole twenty shots that day. Four at the Cloud Gate, six at the BP Bridge and the rest taking photos of the Lurie Garden. I can’t say I blame her; it was a beautiful place.
During our walk, she held my hand without saying a word, or even giving it a thought. At least, she didn’t act like it was a big deal. She simply took my hand and kept walking, just like we did when we were kids. There was something soothing about not having to think about the lives we had to come back to. I had to go home to my crumbing family, and she had to go home to her husband.
After seven, we when back to the motel and watched a movie. Or at least she watched the movie, I just stared at the screen and talked with myself inside my head. I turned to look at Faye laugh at the movie’s silly joke and found myself trying to push those feelings away.
“Faye?” I asked. At first I thought I was too quiet for her to be able to hear me, but then she turned to me.
“Yeah?”
“You… Have you ever thought about how our lives would’ve been like if I hadn’t left?”
She seemed to swallow a knot in her throat. She picked up the remote, turned the TV off and settled down, as if she were deciding which thoughts to share with me.
“I used to, a lot. Especially just after you left. It became a problem. Like this idea in the back of my head that never really went away. It didn’t matter what I was doing or whom I was with, I kept thinking about my life with you. I kept daydreaming about us, and the way things would be if you’d stayed. Over time I started thinking about the way thing would be when you got. I remember I closed my eyes and thought about the way we would’ve decorated the apartment.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” she said closing her eyes. “In my dreams, we painted the walls light blue. You wanted green but you lost a bet. We had a dog named Bruno; a Golden Retriever. We fought for the second bedroom. You wanted to turn it into your architect Batcave. I wanted to turn it into a study so I could paint. We settled for sharing the space; even when it looked a bit small, it could fit all of our stuff. We bought that huge fridge you wanted, the one with the hidden compartment on the right door and that had both, a water and ice dispenser. We went to my parent’s for Christmas, and to your folk’s for New Year’s.”
Faye didn’t notice because her eyes were closed, but I started crying. It did sound lovely.
Thing is, when you’ve had a regular life, everything you want is to travel the world, live adventures, get to know new interesting people and fill the photograph album inside your head with pictures of things you’ve been lucky enough to see for yourself; but when you’ve had my life… you just want to be left alone. You want silly little problems that look huge to you. Not finding a parking space, drinking too much coffee, forgetting to pay the electricity bill, standing in line at the bank for half an hour, having a bitchy boss, not finding the right brand of cereal at the super market.
I wished I had those problems.
Instead I had to face the widow of a friend of mine who died in front of me. Instead I had broken my family up. I hadn’t gone to the funeral of a man who was more of a father to me than my father. I had nightmares about the horrible things I had seen and done. I had memory issues and I couldn’t feel half of my left arm.
I rushed to wipe away my tears so she couldn’t see them when she opened her eyes.
When Faye looked at me, my face wasn’t wet anymore. She smiled and said, “But it doesn’t matter. To be honest, right now I’m just happy I got to see you again. Seeing that woman… it made me realize how lucky I am. You came back. That’s what’s important.”
I smiled and she turned the TV back on.
We went to sleep at ten, maybe ten thirty. I had this… dream. Maybe calling it a nightmare would be more accurate. I was standing in the middle of an empty room. It was painted green and there were no doors or windows. I looked down at my feet to find them submerged in water. Sewer water, the kind you can’t see through.
I tried to walk forward but I couldn’t. The water was thicker and heavier than I first thought. I grabbed my leg by the knee hoping I could help myself walk but it was useless. I closed my eyes and put my whole body into moving. Nothing. When I opened them up again, there was a person standing in front of me. They were using the uniform and helmet and their face was covered by darkness so I couldn’t quite make out who they were.
In a quick movement, the person pointed a gun at me, just inches away from my face. I jolted back, but the water covering my feet didn’t allow me to move. She removed her helmet and the darkness moved away from her face to let me recognize her. It was me. Holding a gun at myself.
In my dream, I wasn’t baffled by being standing in front of myself. I was terrified because I knew what she was going to do, and I knew I couldn’t run away from her.
“No, no, wait, please…” I said, in a pathetic attempt to save my life.
She smiled at me and said, “Don’t look at me like that. All of this is your fault.”
Then she pulled the trigger.
I was in fight mode when I woke up and my first instinct was to defend myself, so I immediately lunched against the closest person to me. I wasn’t awake enough to realize that the closest person to me didn’t want to hurt me and wasn’t a threat in the slightest.
I put my hands around Faye’s neck and squeezed.
She jumped into consciousness as soon as she felt the air missing. She tried to say my name, ask me to release her but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.
I squeezed harder until, in a voice barely audible, she murmured, “It’s me… it’s me…”
As her voice reached me, I realized what I was doing. I vaulted away from the bed and away from her. Faye started coughing as soon as my hands left her neck. She couldn’t find her voice, but I believe she was murmuring “What the hell?”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” I said, and extended my hand towards her.
I will never forget the way she looked at me before she jumped back even further away from me. She looked at me like she’d never known me. Like she was sharing a motel room with a perfect stranger. A stranger she was deeply afraid of.
“Stay away from me,” she managed to let out.
I sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’ll just… I’ll go.” I opened the door and before exiting the room I whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“Do you want us to take a break?” she asks. Her elegant voice fills the room with every question she makes.
I shake my head. “No. I need to talk about these things.”
She grins. “Riley Brenan, wanting to talk about something rather than pushing it down until she digs a hole to china. You’ve really come far.”
“It’s not just that. Talking about these things; it helps me understand them.”
She licks her lips and inquires, “What have you understood from that night.”
“Please, don’t judge me.”
“You know I never do.”
“I understood that… I didn’t stop on purpose.”
“What do you mean?”
“I knew it was her. It took me close to a second to realize it was Faye I was choking. And I didn’t stop.”
I look up at her expecting shock. There is none, she keeps her impassive expression. “Why do you think that is?”
“I… Because for a moment, I hated her. It took me four whole seconds, from the moment I realized it was her, to the moment I stepped away from her. And if I close my eyes I can still see her face, terrified of me while I squeeze her neck but I didn’t stop because… because I wanted her to suffer. I wanted her to know what it felt like to believe you could die at that exact moment. That life could end in a second. I wanted her to feel the pain she’d caused me by moving on, by marrying my best friend, by… by fucking forgetting about me. Right now it doesn’t really make sense to me but in that moment, it was like all the rage I had being piling up lunched itself at her. Like every injustice in my life was, for some reason, her fault. I don’t know why I felt that way. Luckily, there was this small part of me that said, “It’s Faye. You can’t hurt Faye, stop it. You can’t hurt Faye”. So I stopped.”
The doctor leaned against the desk to look into my eyes closely. “A lot of people believe that those who suffer from PTSD are sad. They are not. You are not, are you?”
“No.”
“You’re angry. Angry at feeling powerless, helpless, without control, violated by life’s injustice. And you wanted to make someone else feel the same way you felt. Someone who’s physically weaker than you, who couldn’t possibly match you shoulder to shoulder, especially because you are trained.”
“I… I don’t ever want to hurt her.”
“Have you physically hurt her after that?”
“Once. I didn’t mean to.”
“The bar fight?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that wasn’t you fault was it?”
“Wasn’t it though? Because it felt like it was.”
“We shouldn’t even be talking about the bar fight. That happened months after the motel incident. Why don’t you tell me what happened after you tried to choke Faye?”
I sat by the stairs. I couldn’t go anywhere. Since I’d left the room in such a hurry I left my jeans, my jacket and my wallet inside. I thought I’d just stay there for the night and hopefully I could get my things in the morning.
I sat there in the cold for nearly thirty minutes before the room door opened up. I didn’t look up, but I felt Faye sit down next to me.
“It’s cold,” she said. Her voice was still deep and husky, but she could speak clearly.
“Yeah.”
“Well, on the bright side. Since S&M is super mainstream now, I’ve been wondering if I’m into choking. Turns out I’m totally not.”
It was a dumb joke, but I laughed, she laughed with me and her voice made me feel like everything was going to be alright.
“You know, there are people who can help you, Riley. We can get you help.”
“I don’t need help.” As you can see, I did need it, but it would be a long time and more horrible things before I admitted that to myself.
“No? So you get turned on my choking people?” she joked.
I smiled. “No! I just don’t need help.”
“What if you wouldn’t have stopped?”
“But I did.”
“What if you wouldn’t have?”
“I did,” I replied with a sense of hostility to my voice.
Faye sighed. “I just… I just want you to be happy. To be okay… and you’re not. Regardless of how much you want to act like you are, there are things eating you up from the inside and you can’t act like they aren’t forever.”
Faye didn’t know how right she was. It was like she was predicting future that night. Unfortunately for me. I didn’t know how right she was either.
“Fine. I just wanna help.” She stood up and added, “Come on, you’ll freeze out here.”
We went back into the room and Faye offered me my side of the bed, but I was afraid I could hurt her again ―I know, so much for not needing help, so I refused and slept on the floor. She didn’t insist.
Next morning, we drove back and those two days were as quiet and uncomfortable as you imagine them. She tried to speak to me normally, but I couldn’t move past what I’d done. I kept reliving it in my head and the anger I felt towards her, my need to not stop made me feel guilty. We had shared a bed for a few days now and this had never happened, but it’s the kind of things that once it’s happened, you can’t put it aside.
We got home on Saturday morning. She left me at my front door and said goodbye. Her hubby must be worried. I watched her speed away and lost her at the intersection. I grabbed my backpack, hung it from my shoulder and walked towards the door. As I stretched out my hand to open the front door, I heard yelling.
“Enough is enough!” my mother shouted “You’re a good for nothing parasite and I am not standing by watching you turn into this worthless waste of fucking space! You have a week to get a job. I don’t care where, or doing what, but if by next Saturday you’re still a waste of oxygen, you’re out of this house, do you understand!?”
I frowned. Connor try to say something, “But… Mom…”
“‘Mom’ nothing! I’m tired of you! I’ve been patient, and loving and understanding, but clearly that means shit to you! You have one week, Connor. Get your shit together, or get the hell out!”
“What about Riley? She is not doing shit, she left for God knows where and hasn’t gotten back! Why don’t you get in her mess?”
My mother remained quiet for a moment, like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Nothing? Your sister saved you from having to spend four years in the army. She put her life on the line so that you could have the freedom to spend your days getting stoned with this poison, and now she’s back and opening up her own bookstore. What have you done?” Connor didn’t have a reply to that, so my mother ended the conversation by saying. “One week, Connor. Get a job or you are out.”
After that sentence, the environment felt silence. Iwaited ten minutes to open the door and say, “I’m home.”
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