Okay! One of our very favorite chapters! We've been waiting to post this one for a LONG time... enjoy! ;D
Part IV: Chapter 5 - Outside Your House
I've been home for three days and I don't really even remember if I've eaten anything. What I know is that I've tried to use whiskey as a jet-lag cure; I've tried to use beer as food; I've slept all afternoon and watched infomercials all night and when I woke up after my most recent weird semi-sleep delirium, my living room smelled and looked like a frat house. I haven't bothered putting anything away. My luggage is in a state of half-packed and half-unpacked chaos and there are empty beer bottles strewn about. This is not me. I'm clean and neat and this slovenly mess belongs to a stranger that I don't even want to meet.
I wonder how long I will stay alive if all I ingest is whiskey and beer. It's an experiment. I'm Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas except that I don't get to fuck Elizabeth Shue. I'm wondering now how low I can get. I made the mistake of looking in the mirror; I look like a crack whore. I can't tell if I'm hungry. I'm so tired, I feel only capable of sitting in a corner and drooling. Anything else is too much.
All the alcohol helps with the thoughts, though, which is the main thing, actually, because never in my life has thinking about someone made me want to die but I can't even bear to recall the look on Tegan's face the last time I saw her. If there is any such thing as reincarnation, and if karma is real, I will be reincarnated as a fucking dung beetle for what I said to Tegan because if I'd brought it to an international think tank and asked them to come up with something that I could say to her that would just fucking tear out her heart, they could not come up with anything more effective than what I said to her. But that helps with my overall plan of drinking myself to death because even if she forgives me, I don't think I will ever forgive myself.
Remembering Tegan's face just brings me back to the big bed in our bus which was our space. . . it was the only time and place in our lives where we were able to be together, for a time, and not have everything stained with fear and panic. It was our oasis for a while and I fucking soiled it with that vapid slut. And then, to top it off, I left the strap-on there on the floor for Tegan to deal with.
I can't think of it anymore. How drunk do I have to be to wash these thoughts away? I'm conscious that my phone has been ringing on a pretty regular basis since I got home, but I don't even look at it. There's nobody who could call me that I would want to talk to. Unless someone is calling to tell me that they have perfected time travel and can now go back into the past and fix my life. The question is, how far back would they need to go, to be sure that they caught it in time? I'm afraid that the answer is forever. They would have to go back to forever ago, before we split in two, and make it stop. We would be one complete person and not two people so hopelessly broken that we should never have been born at all.
So if I hadn't been ignoring my phone, I would have known she was coming but I didn't check. I don't know how long she was knocking before I opened the door; it could have been a minute, it could have been an hour. But I have the feeling it had been a while, judging from the insistent sound of it. So I stumble to the door and look through the peep hole and she's there. God, no. I just need to be alone. I need everyone just to let me drink until I can't drink anymore. I don't need someone to come and fix me. I just don't deserve it.
"Sara, open the door. I know you're there," she says, and I hesitate. Once the door is open, she'll be in. And that's it. "Sara, either open the door or I'll go to the manager and tell him you're ODing. . ." She means it, too. I can hear it in her tone that someone has said something to her and she is worried and she isn't going to take any of my shit. Part of me wants to call her bluff, but she's gone from knocking to pounding. "Sara!" she shouts.
"Fuck, okay," I mutter, unlocking the door and opening it a crack. She pushes her way in and I step back, suddenly conscious of how disheveled I must look. I wonder if she can smell me. A sudden wave of shame overcomes me and I look down at my cuticles as she comes in and takes a look at me.
"Good God, Sara. . ." she says, looking around. "Have you run out of beer yet?" She looks at me, worried, disapproving.
"Not yet," I mumble, as she steps closer and hugs me.
"You're drunk now," she points out as she releases me and hangs her jacket on the back of the door. I shrug, shuffling over to the sofa and flopping down. She comes in, makes a point of pushing one beer bottle aside with her foot. She scans the mess and her eyes settle on me again. I can't stand the scrutiny so I turn on the TV as she sits down next to me.
"How long have you been wearing that t-shirt?" she asks, her eyes on me making me feel small. I shrug.
"Don't know." I flip through the channels listlessly, my head weighing as much as my heart.
"When is the last time you took a shower?" she asks, and to my surprise, she touches my hair, gently, and I think I might fucking cry so instead I bite the inside of my lip.
"Uh. . . I don't know. What day is it?" I try to laugh but it comes out as a snort. She sighs a little.
"How about food? Have you been living on beer?"
"And whiskey," I say flippantly and she's quiet for a minute.
"You look like hell," she says.
"Thanks."
"Sara, what happened?" she asks, the loving concern in her voice making me feel more sick, more small, more lost because I don't deserve loving concern and she doesn't know it yet. I don't know how to answer. I put my head back and close my eyes. I'm drunk and jet-lagged and so, so tired and I feel like I might puke because of all the alcohol sloshing around in my empty stomach. "I saw a couple of things on YouTube that worried me."
"Oh, you did?" I say, and that fear and shame are rising up again. "So I guess you want all the, like. . . the fucking, like. . ." I can't speak coherently and I don't even know how to finish.
"Oh, Sara. You're so tired," she says and it's true. I am. "You need a shower, food, and sleep. In the morning, we're going to talk. Okay?" Part of me feels relieved to have someone take over. Another part of me wants to push her out and lock the door because how can I slowly kill myself with my caregiver ex-girlfriend here? She just won't allow it.
I sigh heavily because it's all I have the energy for. I really do need a shower. And food. And sleep. I'm so light headed now that I really just want to lie down but I feel like I've been living behind a dumpster.
"Why don't you get in the shower and I'll make you some soup. Okay?" God, soup. Emy's soup makes being sick seem like a good idea. Okay. I nod, drag myself up and go to the bathroom. I'm hazy. I don't know what I want, don't know what I feel, other than sick. I look in the mirror. I look like shit. I have dark circles under my eyes. I'm all pasty, my hair's oily. I'm getting a big fat pimple on my chin. But suddenly my head and my body are not connected; I grab the bathroom counter but the walls and ceiling no longer form right angles. Things get foggy and then dark.
I hear Emy's voice first, saying my name. She's gently smoothing my hair back. I know I'm on the tiles of the bathroom floor but my head and shoulders are in her lap.
"Sara," she says, as I open my eyes and see her face above me. "Did you hit your head?" I'm not sure. Her fingers are moving through my hair, checking my head for damage. She finds a bump and I wince. "Yeah, you did. Are you okay? Can you see okay?" I nod against her lap. Can I just sleep here? I am suddenly feeling overwhelmed because her touch is so comforting, so familiar. But she doesn't know I'm a sick freak. She's too good, too sweet to touch me like this, to care for me like she does. When people care about me, they get broken. Tegan's face again, God. "You scared me," she says. I guess I can't stay on the bathroom floor with my head in her lap forever. I drag myself to a sitting position, and my head spins. I hold the edge of the tub for a minute.
"I don't think it's safe for you to take a shower right now," she says, frowning with concern at my ridiculous state. I'm ashamed to be seen like this, by her, by someone who has seen me at my best and at what used to be my worst until the bottom fell out.
"God, I smell homeless," I moan a little. I feel nauseated now.
"You do, a little," she laughs, and touches my face in this kind of tender way she has but I need to keep it together even though she kind of makes me want to cry. I can't let her take care of me, comfort me, make me feel better. I hope someone is doing that for Tegan. I hope she isn't alone.
"I think I'll try again," I say optimistically, pulling myself shakily to my feet, and as soon as I'm upright, my knees start to give way and I half-fall, half-sit on the edge of the tub, with a thump, and start to keel over head first into it until Emy catches me.
"Whoah! Jesus!" she cries out, pulling me upright and holding onto my shoulders. "Sara, you can't do this by yourself. Let me help you." I look at her. My head is so heavy.
"How?" I ask groggily. Can I just maybe lie down on the floor and pass out? Would that be okay?
"Maybe you sit in the tub and I'll help you wash," she says and I am suddenly uneasy, embarrassed.
"No. . ." I start to protest, stupidly. I feel like an idiot, a fucking out of control head case, a train wreck.
"Sara, come on. I've seen you naked five thousand times," she says. She's right. What difference does it make? And what does it matter? As things start to slip away, why bother clinging to pride or dignity? It's all going down sooner or later. Sooner, most likely. I nod, and she helps me pull my t-shirt over my head. It's hard work just to raise my arms. When it's off I remember the first time Tegan pulled my t-shirt off in daylight. I tried to hide. And she did the same. She helps me off with the plaid shorts I've been wearing since the flight. They're Tegan's, the shorts she was wearing when I woke up the other night to a gentle rocking of the bed and found her there with her hand inside of them. I can't forget how she turned her face to me and opened her eyes, too far along to stop, but flushed and embarrassed at the same time. God, it made me want her so badly I could hardly stand it. Will she notice they're missing? Will she realize I've taken them? I'm never going to see that look in her eyes again, that look that shocked and scared me at times because it meant that we felt the same and so we were in trouble. But in those rare moments that I was able to escape from that fear, that look in her eyes made me feel like I was real and I mattered and I was to her what she was to me. Everything, the only thing. Sometimes when looking at her fills me with the most overwhelming kind of. . .want. . . and when she looks at me and I see that same thing looking back at me. . . well. . . I will never see it again. So it will never matter again if anyone else wants me because that perfect synchronicity cannot ever happen to me with anyone else so there is no point even trying. No point of anything, at all.
Emy helps me out of the rest of my clothes and I sit in the tub with my knees drawn up. I feel less exposed that way, under these bright lights, as my former lover helps me wash. I notice her trying to put the shower attachment thing in my hand but I can't keep myself upright. She takes it from me as I lean against the cold porcelain, bathroom sounds get echoey and distant. With my eyes open, everything is blurred, indistinct, overexposed in the harsh bathroom light. A wave of nausea comes over me and I realize Emy is talking to me but I can't keep my head up.
"Sara, how much did you drink today?" she's asking me and I don't even know, because I don't know when today started. "Sara, seriously. . .". She's holding my head up because I can't, I don't think, and on top of it I'm going to be sick. I shake my head in reply. She has the shower wand and the warm water running over me is a relief. Then she's putting it in my hand.
"You take this for a minute," she says, finally putting the wand in my hand, and then noticing my purple knuckles. "What happened to your hand?" she asks, alarmed, taking hold of my wrist and taking a closer look at the discoloration over my knuckles.
"Tegan. . ." I start, and it's so hard to speak, to be coherent. "Some fucking, like. . .he was grabbing her. My sister!" It's suddenly almost funny. I snort and Emy is not amused.
"Sara, did you get in a fight?"
"People can't grab her, it's. . . not okay," I mutter and she agrees, and then she's sponging my neck and shoulders and all I can do is try to stay upright. Her touch, so warm, so tender. Hands don't lie. The whiskey I drank in the last hour or two is really hitting me. I am going to throw up or pass out or both. She finishes washing my back and I lay back against the end of the tub, crack my head on the faucet pretty hard but I'm feeling numb all over. "Ouch!" Emy says for me, touching my head where I hit it. "You're going to have another bump. Jesus, Sara. I wish you'd talk to me. . .". Her voice is so sad because she loves me. It's been a year and a half since she broke up with me, telling me she loved me but she felt like I was never really hers, that she needed someone who could give her their whole heart and I couldn't. What did she know? Why did she say that? I'd tried so hard and I loved her too, the best way I could. She cried and I couldn't believe that she was actually leaving but I couldn't blame her. I just never thought it would really happen.
"I'll talk to you, Emy," I say, lying back in the tub. She's taking the wand from me again because I'm useless. "What do you want to talk about?" I smile at her. I'm not here, my head is floating on the end of a string, I'm under water, I'm lost. If she weren't here I could so easily drown myself.
"I want to talk to you about what you're doing to yourself, for one thing. And what happened to the tour," she says, running her fingers back through my hair as she wets it with the wand. It's soothing, the warm water, her fingers in my hair. I'm drunk to the point of not caring that I'm a mess, that I'm wasted and naked, that my ex-girlfriend is helping me wash my hair.
"I got. . . on stage I was just. . . had a bit too much, um, to drink and. . . and lost it. . . Piers called it off. . . called off the. . . the last three weeks of the tour," I slur, and suddenly it's funny, the whole thing.
"I saw it," she says sadly, gently massaging the shampoo into my hair with her fingers. I close my eyes.
"What did you see?" I wonder, but what does it matter?
"I saw the video from Amsterdam. . . ". she answers. It's funny, though, when you think about it. I laugh. "Sara, it isn't funny. You're talking about having sex with Tegan. . . she leaves the stage in tears. . ." Don't describe it to me, fuck.
"They pushed. . . shouted things at me. . . they wanted a Courtney Love train wreck and I fucking gave it to them." She sighs, directing the flow from the wand back over my soapy hair, gently running her fingers through it as she rinses it, careful not to get any in my eyes. Her fingers, the water flowing over me, the warmth, all of them are so soothing. I could sleep right here. When she's finished rinsing my hair, she puts the sponge in my hand.
"Here, you try to take care of the front bits." I do a lackluster job of washing the rest of myself as she holds the wand.
"That must have been pretty upsetting," she says, and I nod.
"People just. . . they believe everything. . . I mean. . . the barn video," I ramble, and she's quiet as I put the sponge down and she rinses me off and then turns off the water. She's holding a towel open for me so I try to stand up but I almost keel over again. She puts an arm around my waist, quickly, and I can't quite get my balance. I fall against her, all wet, and she's holding me up and wrapping the towel around me.
"Yeah, well. . . we can talk about the barn video after you've had some sleep. . ." she says softly, helping me dry off. And there was almost no warning; one moment, I was swaying, trying to stay upright, and the next I was throwing up down the front of Emy's shirt.
"Oh fuck," I moan, sitting down hard on the lid of the toilet. "I'm sorry. . .". My eyes are watering like they always do when I throw up. I need to lie down but not here. Emy doesn't even look upset about the vomit.
"Okay," she says, pulling her shirt off and dropping it in the bath. "Let's get you to bed. . .". She pulls one of my arms over her shoulders and then helps me stand. Together, we stagger to the bedroom. I flop down on the bed but she's trying to dress me. I can hardly cooperate but I try.
"It's more fun when you're helping me out of my shorts," I say as she pulls the shorts up for me.
"Well, I can't argue with that," she says with a little smile, standing there in her bra and pulling a clean t-shirt over my head.
"You look good, shit. . .". I say, because she does. "Sorry I had to puke on you to find that out. . ."
"Well, I'm going to take a shower too. You lie down.".
I do as she says and I'm out in seconds.
