Looking at his glass, he scrunches his forehead. “Not enough.”
“Maybe you should stop.” I’m not used to telling people what to do, it isn’t something I’m comfortable doing, but my gut is telling me that Ryan is headed down a bad path-- one that leads to rancid livers if you’re lucky and death if you aren’t.
“Don’t worry, angel, I only drink once a year.” He taps the table forcefully with his finger, startling me and making me jerk in response. “I fucking hate Valentine’s Day,” he snarls.
My mouth pulls down into a frown, empathy for him chokes me. “What girl screwed you up, Ryan?”
His lips twitch until finally he busts out in a deep belly laugh, knuckling tears out of his eyes.
“Girl!?” He laughs harder, but never explains himself.
***
Ryan
Fuck me.
I meet a girl and terrify her out of her mind.
I see it in her eyes. The way she’d looked at me in the bar.
God she smelled so good.
So I drank and drank, trying to drown out the demons, the voices that singsonged in my head.
So good, so good, so fucking good
.
I hate myself.
Hate everything about me. I want to hit something. Hurt something.
Alex and Liliana are sitting in the living room. My living room. I hear them whispering low. They think I don’t know what’s going on, and maybe I don’t.
I feel so out of it. My brain is fuzzy, fried-- like I’ve been sitting out in the sun too long. In the bathtub, the water’s running on high heat, and my clothes are still on.
The water hurts. Hurts so bad, it’s so damn hot and I know I shouldn’t be sitting here like this. I’ll burn. But it’s not taking the dirty off.
So I keep turning it hotter, my fingers are blistered.
Why isn’t it working?
This is the night, fifteen years ago, my entire world changed.
When will it stop?
At this point, I don’t think it ever will.
Everything inside me is like an exposed nerve. Fucking breathe on me and it brings it all back. They had no idea when I enlisted into the Marines what a nutcase I already was. Because I can lie.
I can smile and pretend and say all the right things.
No one knows. Not really.
Alex knows more than most, but even he doesn’t know everything.
And when I’d gotten a gun in my hand, and was told to kill… it was like breathing again. At first.
When I could pretend that each man I shot was him.
But they weren’t him.
That day, when I’d turned eighteen and had gone to the hospital, I thought I’d finally buried it. But I hadn’t. Not really. I’d only thrown a little dirt on it.
Closing my eyes I start to shiver. Not from cold, but from the sweat pouring through my skin, the panic laying siege to my heart. Running through artillery had been easy. Seeing R.P.G.’s blow up beside me, cake… why couldn’t I stop this?
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?” The 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?”