Bleed Like Me (22 page)

“I
won't
hurt you.”

“Please, baby.”

I nearly buckled at the tone in his voice. He'd given me so much of himself; how could I not give him this?

“Why? Why do you want this?”

“I deserve it,” he whispered.

Tears pushed from my eyes and trailed down my cheeks. The space between us was too wide. Too deep. “You don't,” I choked out. “You don't deserve to be hurt.”

I reached out and touched the wetness on his face. His tears. My tears. It was all too much. My heart collapsed. He pulled me toward him and curled in to my chest, letting me hold him like a small child. I smoothed my hand over his hair.

“What happened to you?” I said.

“The things I did in juvie. The things they made me do. I deserve for you to hurt me. I just wanted to get back to you.” His words stumbled and stuttered, dropping from his mouth
in a strange and low voice. “It was the only thing that kept me going. I would do anything to get back to you. I tried not to be noticed. To keep my head down and just do my time. But they found me. It was like they knew how desperate I was to get out. And they made me choke on it.”

“What are you talking about? What does that mean?” Questions tumbled from my lips along with the desperate desire to know how broken he really was. How broken we were.

He ran his fingers over my palms. “Your hands are so soft,” he said as if he hadn't heard my questions. “So gentle. Your body responds to me and it isn't in anger or hatred or anything beyond just loving me. It's not like that for the guys in juvie. The first time I went in, I was too young and not worth their time. But this time they knew. They shoved me to my knees and told me not to fight. Fighting would just add time to my stay. So I took it. I took it all and I thought of you. I thought only of getting back to you.”

A sob escaped my lips and he finally looked at me. The hole in my heart was large enough for him to climb inside. I wanted him to. I wanted him to feel safe. Guilt at what had been done to him because of my parents' decision pricked along my skin. I kicked the chopstick across the room with my bare foot. I moved my hands over him and prayed my touch could take it all away.

“I love you,” I whispered.

He scrubbed his hand over his face and a tiny smile pulled at his mouth. “I know.”

The door flew open and Gary and Bruce bounded in and dropped onto our bed.

“Guys.
Night of the Comet
is playing at the Riverside Theater. That's like a zombie cult classic. You have to come see it with us.”

I stared at Brooks. He slipped his shirt on and swiped at his face, and the cold, guarded look returned. “We need a lock on our door,” I told him. “I'm installing one tomorrow.”

Bruce scoffed. “Give me a break. We've seen way better than anything you've got to offer.” Brooks growled, but Bruce ignored him. “Gary's got a porn app on his phone. You're a scrawny chick with no tits. I'd have more luck getting off imagining Gary's mom.”

“Dude, I told you to stop talking shit about my mom.”

Bruce shrugged. “What can I say? She totally got hot after she had all that work done.”

Gary slugged him and looked back at Brooks and me. “So,
Night of the Comet
, it's not exactly eighties horror, but pretty close. You guys in? We could barbecue some chicken afterwards.”

“Let's hope they're not using the mop bucket,” I mumbled to Brooks.

“Urine's sterile,” Bruce said. “And we cleaned that bucket with bleach yesterday.”

“By all means, then, put your chicken in it. Barbecue and
bleach sounds like a really appetizing combination.” God, I was living in a petri dish. It was amazing I hadn't gotten an infection on my leg burns.

Brooks pulled out two twenty-dollar bills and handed them to Gary. “Tell you what. You guys head over to the theater and buy us all tickets and we'll meet you out front.”

Gary pocketed the bills and bounced up and down like a toddler. “Okay. But don't be late. The movie starts in like twenty minutes and I hate to miss previews.”

Brooks ushered them out the door, then went to the closet to rifle through some plastic bags he'd stashed there. Bags I wanted to look in, but I stopped myself every time I grew curious. Brooks's business. If he wanted me to know . . .

“What are you doing?”

He turned back to me and held out a bottle of Elmer's glue. “Those guys are assholes to you. I'm not letting them get away with that shit.”

“So you're gonna glue 'em.”

Brooks grinned. Old Brooks. My face cracked into a matching grin. I loved this boy.

“No. I thought of this the other day when they were mouthing off about your hair on the way to the Polar Bear thing.”

I raised an eyebrow. “The guys who blued their chests had something to say about my hair?”

Brooks nodded, then walked out of the room. He returned
with a bottle of moisturizer. “Gary and Bruce's masturbation lotion. The other night when they were totally wasted, they went off on what a quality product it was.”

He unscrewed the glue and dumped it into the moisturizer.

I giggled and he winked at me. Then he screwed the cap back on and returned it to the guys' room. “So are we good?”

It was a loaded question on so many levels, but from the look on his face I knew what he needed me to say. “Of course. It's you and me against the world, baby.”

He held out his hand and led me out of the room.

A week passed before I broke down and called Mom. I only saw Grace Miller once during that time, and I couldn't even meet her eyes when I handed her a slice of pizza. Brooks was gone from the apartment almost all the time. I was glad he was getting out, but I hated the reason for it and hated the risk he was taking.

After a particularly horrible day when the only words I said to anyone were “Do you want something to drink with that?” and “Restrooms are for paying customers only,” I found myself staring at my phone, sliding my fingers over the digits of Mom's number. I dialed before I could change my mind.

“Hello.” Her voice was just the same, and I was struck by
the compulsion to fall asleep to the sound of her singing like I did when I was a little girl.

“It's me.”

“Amelia. Oh thank God. How are you? Where are you? Come home.”

I blinked back tears. “I'm fine. I'm not coming home.”

“Where are you?” I could hear one of the boys' video games in the background and celebratory shouting.

“What is that?”

“Miguel beat some game, I think.” She released a sigh. “You're not going to tell me where you are.”

“It's probably better not to.”

“Better for who? Michael? Why should I care about what's better for him? Is he there? Put him on the phone. I want to say something to him.”

“Mom. Don't do this. He's not here, but even if he were, I wouldn't let you say anything to him. You have no idea what you did to him by sending him to juvie.” I pulled a filtered menthol from the box and lit it.

“Dad left,” she said in a detached voice.

“I heard. How are you?”

“Okay.” She released another sigh. “He sees the boys on the weekend. Takes them out for too much sugar and then brings them home for me to deal with.”

I didn't respond. I couldn't offer anything that would do her any good.

“Will you please come home?” she whispered. I nearly broke in two.

“I can't. It wouldn't help anyway. I'd just be one more thing for you to deal with.”

“That's not true,” she said. “You were always a big help with the boys.”

I blew out a stream of smoke. “Sure I was.”

“Please come home,” she said again. “We're a family. I'm your mother. I'll always be your mother. They'll always be your brothers. Please, please come home.”

“No.” I stubbed out my cigarette. “I love you, Mom.”

“Amelia, don't go.”

I clicked the phone off and curled into a ball on our futon. Tears dampened our blanket and I didn't do anything to stop them. Just stayed that way until Brooks walked in smelling of pot and slipped his arms around me.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he whispered, massaging my shoulders.

“No,” I said, shaking his hands off me. A massage wasn't going to make this go away. And he'd be mad if he found out I'd called my mom.

He pulled me in to him, and before long I heard the soft sounds of his snoring. I slid out from under his arm and tiptoed
across the room. I scrawled a note on the back of a Pizza by the Slice menu and propped it on the coat I'd made him get from Goodwill.
Be right back. Going to get some food.

My feet led me back toward work, and before I was fully aware of it, I was standing in front of the building across the street. Grace Miller's building. It used to be a three-flat, but then the basement had been converted to a seamstress's and the first floor was a small expensive coffee shop. The one time I'd been in the coffee shop, the chatty barista mentioned the top floor was still an apartment.

I scanned the business names outside the door, then saw hers. Grace Miller. My hand hovered over the buzzer next to her name. I took a step back from the building and stumbled. I caught myself and spun around. Four steps down and I heard the door swing open.

“Amelia.” Her voice was a question and an offer all in one. My feet slowed.

“Yeah?”

“Did you come to see me?”

I shook my head.

“What are you doing here?” She stepped closer to me.

I shook my head again.

Her hand touched my shoulder. “Is everything all right?”

“I used to cut.” The words burst from my mouth before I could swallow them back. “I don't anymore, but I used to. Then
I went to the hospital and stopped.” She steered me to the steps and sat down. I liked how she didn't care about dirt on her pants or that she might be blocking other people from getting in.

“When did you get out of the hospital?”

I shrugged and sat down beside her. The steps were cold and I shivered a bit. “A few months ago.”

She nodded.

My body itched and tingled. I rose and walked in a small circle two times to calm myself down. “The thing is, I miss it.”

“Cutting?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe you should talk to someone. Are you still in contact with your doctor at the hospital?”

I squeezed a breath in. “No. And I don't want to cut anymore. I miss it, but I don't want to do it.”

“Amelia, I want to help you. But I don't think I'm the right person . . .”

“Brooks helps me. He tries. But beneath everything, beneath how much I love him, the ache is still there. And I don't know how to make it go away.”

Silence. Nothing between us but Grace Miller's penetrating stare.

“Brooks loves me,” I said.

She stood up, smoothed the light coat she wore, and dusted
her khaki pants. “Okay. But maybe he isn't the right person to help you either.”

I didn't speak. I didn't have to. I knew what she meant. What she thought. Judgment pelted me from every side.

“Forget I said anything.” I spun on my heel. I glanced back as I walked away. She stood with her arms crossed, staring at her feet and shaking her head. What the hell had I been thinking to talk to this strange woman? She didn't get anything about my life. I was an idiot for even trying.

The next day I sat on the couch, watching Gary and Bruce play a game involving a twenty-sided die and a glass bong. There appeared to be no rules other than to take a bong hit every time you rolled more than a three.

“Dudes,” Bruce said, “we gotta have a party.”

I eyed the ten-by-ten living room. “In here?”

Bruce grinned and took another bong hit. “Totally.”

“We could have a moonshine party. The guys at work wanna try our home brew,” Gary said.

“I thought that didn't work out so well last time.” Not that it hadn't been hilarious to see Gary and Bruce blowing chunks all night. There was evidently no end to the uses of the yellow mop bucket.

“It was our freshman effort. I guess we were supposed to
wait two weeks to let it ferment before drinking, not two days. I must've copied it down wrong. My bad.” Bruce gave Gary a “no hard feelings” fist bump.

“I think you guys should wait for warmer weather for a party,” I said.

Gary rubbed his five o'clock shadow. “Nah. We should have it next weekend. But you gotta invite some of your girlfriends over since we mostly just know guys.”

I started to tell them I didn't know any girls, but then thought better of it. With any luck they'd forget about the party idea after half a dozen more bong hits and a night of watching bad porn on Gary's phone. And maybe, just maybe, Brooks and I wouldn't even be around for it if they did remember.

Brooks walked in on the tail end of an argument over whether Gary and Bruce should make fondue on hot plates for the party. He was carrying a plastic bag and wore a giant grin on his face. He nodded hello to the guys and motioned me toward our room.

“You look happy,” I said, sliding my arms around him.

He kissed my nose. “I am.”

“Did you find us our own place?”

“No. But we're close. A few more deals and I'll probably have enough saved for the security deposit on a studio.”

I slid my hands beneath his black T-shirt. “Why the grin, then?”

He held the plastic bag up. “I got you another present.”

“Really?”

“Yes. This is just part of it. The rest will come tomorrow.”

I snatched the bag from him and opened it. “A jigsaw?”

He grinned. “Yeah. I know you've been missing working with your tools. I met a guy at the Home Depot who said I could take some of their scrap wood. I'm gonna pick it up in the morning. I'll get a hammer and nails and wood glue, too.”