Stronger (12 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

SALT IN THE WOUND

The shadows don't leave, even with the morning light.  I spend the night doing less sleeping and more twisting myself up in the sheets, trying to figure out how to handle what's just happened.  Every trip to the bathroom, I glimpse the greenish spots on my neck and it punctuates how unmanageable my entire life has become. 

I make deals with myself, to prove that I'm not as bad off as I seem. 

That I'm not really a drunk.

Not a whore.

If I could just remember the first night with Aidan--

Or any of the men's names, besides Eric--

I should know names of at least a few of the men I've brought home over the past couple of years.  The shadows linger and the only thing that comes to me is bottles, clinking together in my brain as if the shadows are hosting some sick celebration over my demise.   

And just when it seems like it can't get worse, my phone rings.  I pull myself out of my bed to find the thing and answer with a grumble.

"Lyddle, I'm outside your door," Des says on the other end.  "I've been out here knocking for the last five minutes.  What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm sick.  Can you come back some other time?"

His tone turns to cold steel.  "Is there someone in there with you?"

"No."

"Then open up.  You're fine," he says.  "Hurry, before that kook across the hall comes out here and rapes me."

Of all mornings to say that.  I straighten up what I can of his shirt that I'm still wearing, wrap myself in a blanket that covers my neck, and pull open the door.  He's standing out there with the phone still at his ear. 

"You don't have to worry about Mrs. Lowt.  She doesn't want you.  She doesn't even like you."

Des, dressed in a dove-gray business suit, gives me a tolerant grin as he clicks off his phone and slides it into his coat pocket.  He adjusts his lavender tie as he inventories the entire mess of me.

"
Everyone
wants me," he says, as he strolls in.  I throw the door shut behind him.

"What do you want?"

He pulls back from craning his neck to peek into my bedroom and cocks a brow at me instead.  He's got a thing about me speaking disrespectfully to him.  He stares, waiting for an apology.  I'm too tired and tangled up in the after-effects of last night's shadows to give a damn about apologies.  He finally gives up, even though his back stays stiff as he tucks his hands in his front pockets.

"I came to see my wife.  Is that okay?"

I used to melt when he called me his wife.  Now, I just ease down onto the couch and wait for him to tell me what he wants.  I feel him walk behind me and the hair on my neck stands on end.  My throat goes too dry to swallow.

Des comes around the side of the couch and sits beside me.  "What's wrong with you?"

He reaches out and moves closer, his eyelids drooping as if he's going to caress me, kiss me.  His fingertips travel down my neck and I go rigid.  He glances down and his eyes bulge.  He pushes back the blanket I've got hooded around me. 

"Who the hell did this to you?" he seethes.  I'm silent.  Des clutches my jaw, twisting my face to look at him.  His eyes slice into my dull gaze.  "Was it that son of a bitch next door?"

I yank out of his grip.  "Of course not."  

"Who then?  Tell me who did that to you, Lydia!" He jumps up, his eyes wide and crazy.  "No one lays a hand on my wife!  I'm going to kill the bastard!"

Fury wells in my throat, burning away the pain that's already there.  My words bubble up and burst out of my mouth. 

"Stop it!  Just stop it, Desmond!  You do the same thing to me all the time, just in different places!"

"I have never choked you like that!  That is what happened, isn't it?  I can see the sick, son of a bitch's hands, for Christ's sake!"

I yank the blanket back up around my neck. 

"So it's the
location
of the bruises that matter..."  I sneer.  His nostrils flare and I know to back off.  "Just tell me why you're here and what you want, so I can get back to dealing with my own life, okay?"

The skin jumps in his jaw as he grinds his teeth.  I've never called him out on what he's done to me, especially not with such pure and focused anger.  It takes him a moment to regroup, finally standing tall and plucking at the front of his suit coat.

"You expect me to just stand by and take it when someone disrespects what is mine?"

"C'mon Des..." I whisper.  "I stopped being yours a long time ago."

He swoops down on me so suddenly, I press my back into the couch.  The tip of his nose nearly touches mine.

"Watch your mouth, Lyddle," he growls.  "You are
mine,
got it?  You always have been and always will be.  I will let this slip
once.
  Do you understand me?  Once.  If I see so much as a scratch on you ever again, I will hunt down the man that did it and I will kill him."

He backs off an inch, but still hovers over me, and it kills me that I do little more than cower in the shadow he casts.  I'm so sick and tired of it all, but I'm too exhausted to stand my ground right now.

"I came here to give you your Christmas present and I was going to spend the afternoon with you, Lyddle, but I don't think you deserve it now."  All I can do is glare up at him, but my hatred for him has finally caught spark inside me.  I hope he can feel the flames of it, licking at him through my eyes. 

His brow jumps, as if what he's sees on my face startles him.  He takes a bigger step back. 

"Don't you dare forget who you belong to, Lydia," he says, but his tone has thinned.  He clears his throat.  "Claudia and I are going on a cruise to Belize for the holiday.  We'll be returning after the New Year.  I expect you to get yourself straightened out by then.  Oh, and have a very merry Christmas."

He turns to go, pausing at the wobbly little table near my front door.  He removes something from his breast pocket and throws it down on the table top.  He yanks open the door and he's gone with a slam.

I'm left sitting on the couch, unsure if I just won or lost that battle, but fairly certain I've just started a war to knock all other wars right out of our history books.

<<<<>>>>

It's not until the afternoon that I finally pick up the fat envelope that Des left on the table beside the door.  Of course, it's money, but what I didn't see coming is how much that is in there.  Twenty thousand dollars.  It takes me a few minutes to count it out to be sure, but there it is, in cash.  Big bills.  There is a note tucked in the front of the envelope, but it's not in Des's writing.  It's in Claudia's.

Merry Christmas, Lydia.  You've made our house a home.  Our dreams would have been nothing without you.  Happy Holidays and have a drink on us!

I crumple the note in my hand. 

Their
dreams
. 

Have a drink on us.
  My entire body is raked with nausea.  I am flooded with visions of every time I've seen Des with his arm around Claudia, playing the good husband.  She has no idea what he's doing to her.  My ears want to close out every lie he's whispered to me.  My hands want to throw away the feeling of his skin on mine and my mouth on--

I run to the toilet, throw open the lid.  I heave and the bitterness in my mouth burns.  The acid Des has tried to leave in me is the kind that slowly dissolves a woman, until there is nothing left of his crime against her.

The worst part of Claudia's note is that anything I'd buy with her money wouldn't be for just my pleasure, but her husband's.  Des will be expecting some lingerie, some new, leather accessories out of my little windfall. 

No, the deception isn't the worst part.  It is the last part. 
Have a drink on us. 
In lieu of everything that's happened, that line is the one that sticks in my head like an ice pick.  I imagine Claudia repeating the line, with her emotionlessly-Botoxed brow and her surgically, Jolene'd lips forming a smile. 

God help me, I hate her.  And the very worst part of hating her is knowing that I'm hating the wrong person.

My heart is filled with empty bottles that I've been stuffing with rescue notes, but I've never sent off even one.  I've always believed there was no hope in being saved.

I've known for a long time that I have no husband.  I don't, maybe never did, and probably never will. 

I have no high school diploma, no job, and no skills that would qualify me for anything more than flipping a burger or wiping up hair bits at a salon.  I don't even know how to work a pole at a club. 

The only thing I have left inside me at all is this inane need to drink, and even as I'm considering how fucked up that is, all I can think about is pouring a fifth down my throat of whatever I can get my hands on. I can't get numb enough anymore. 

God, how bad does my life have to get before I can't take it anymore?  I'd swear I'm at my breaking point now. 

I've got to stop.  Everything.  And I still feel like I can't.

<<<<>>>>

I wake in the morning to nausea squirming in my stomach like maggots.  My hands are shaking as if I'm being electrocuted.  I poured all my liquor down the sink last night.  I've really put the screws to myself and I can't take it.  But I can't go out like this. 

I'm enraged with how I can't get comfortable on the couch cushions, with the stupid beer commercials on TV, and with the way the rain sounds like needles rattling against my window.  I'm livid that I can't hear Aidan moving around at all next door and I'm furious with how I want a drink so fucking bad, I could scream until the entire world hears my need. 

But the most terrifying thing right now is thinking of what will happen if I let any alcohol past my lips.  I'll have to keep on living like I have been--in hell.

I can't live like this.

Godammit!

I can't live without a drink.

The itch in me is so aggressive that I fantasize about turning myself inside out and exposing my addictions in a way that God, or maybe just the critical eyes of the world, can burn this misery away. 

I pace back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, behind my couch. 

Ants crawl on my skin and I swat them away even though they aren't real and I know they're not.  But their skittering legs feel real. 

TV doesn't interest me. 

Food doesn't distract me. 

Showers

and shopping

and make-up

and all the pretty shoes in the world don't interest me. 

All I want is one goddamn drink.  A sparkling glass of red, a rugged shot of Jack, a wide, salty rim with an umbrella.  I'd take any one of them.  

I just want one.

I stuff my feet into a pair of my boots, drag on my coat, and grab my keys off the counter.  I've got to stop this insane itch inside me and the only place with a cure is the liquor store.

It's only one drink.  One lousy sip and then--

Who am I kidding? 

I could drink an ocean.

I want to.

My hand on the door knob--

I get a glimpse of someone down the hall, in my room.  A flash of another entity.  I freeze, squint.  No, wait. 

It's me.  It's just my reflection in my bedroom mirror.  I almost left tonight without consulting it.  That's how messed up I am right now. 

But the woman in the mirror down the hall catches my eye and hangs onto it.  First, it's her hair that I notice.  Her
dreads swing with her passion to leave.  Then, it's her body, thinner than it's ever been.  The baggy yoga pants and the man's shirt she wears nearly swallows her whole.  And then, I see the eyes of that woman in the mirror.

When did I get so sad?  When did I start wearing it up on the surface like this?

My hand drops off the door knob and the keys slip from my grasp. 

The woman in the mirror can't go on living like this.  She's so fragile, she doesn't have the ability to handle one more drink.  Not even one.  One more might send her to the medicine cabinet, rutting through anything that can be taken in bulk, something that can finally stop all the pain.  The misery is so sharp, it's like a cheese grater on my nerves.  Pouring the idea of a drink over them makes my eyes sting.

She's at the bottom.  This is what it looks like--dirty, desperate, depressed.

I leave the woman and go to the couch, laying down on it.  All I want is to pour some numbness down my throat, but it terrifies me that I can't even feel who I am anymore.  I can't keep living like this and I can't get relief from my life. 

All I can do is cry.  Dammit.  It's all I can fucking do.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

REAL HELP

Aidan's knock starts soft, but swells to an all-out beating on my door.

"Lydia!" he shouts.  Pounds again.

"What's the matter?" I hear Mrs. Lowt join in.  Aidan mumbles something about not having seen me for a couple days and Mrs. Lowt's tone escalates to a panicked chipmunk kind of pitch. 

"Well, you get in there then!  Lydia!  Are you okay?  Open up!  It's Eleanor Lowt, your neighbor!"

Now there's two of them beating on the door. 

The first two days, I wasn't sure I could hang on, the way my heart was beating like it was organ-donered by a caffeinated gerbil.  My hands are still a little quaky, but I don't believe that I'm going to die anymore.  At least, not completely, but I still don't feel up to answering the door.  I've been sitting on the couch--a little afraid to leave it--in the same shirt and yoga pants from two days ago.  I've been drinking water, eating crackers, and watching TV.  I'm soaked through with sweat.  It's safe to say that I'm not ready for company.

But Aidan and Mrs. Lowt aren't letting up.  If anything, the way they're pounding, they might just break the door right off the hinges.  I stand and wobble like a newborn calf, as the blood tries to climb back up into my brain. 

"Lydia!" Aidan's voice is demanding, angry, panicked. 

"I'm calling the landlord if she don't open up," Mrs. Lowt sounds the same.  I shuffle to the door and grip the knob.  It's cool in my palm, surreal, as if I've never noticed the texture and temperature of a doorknob before. The beating from the hall side stops the moment I twist it.  Thank God.

I drag the door open to the two angry faces of my neighbors, but the instant they get a look at me, all of the worry and rage and panic disappear from their expressions.  What's left are the faces I'd expect to see on the last two human survivors in a zombie apocalypse.  The ones who are toe-to-toe with a zombie.  Mrs. Lowt takes a step back.

"Oh Lydia," she gasps.  "What are you doing to yourself in there?"

Aidan jumps to action.  He steps between me and Mrs. Lowt, shielding me, I think, as he simultaneously shuffles me backward into the apartment.  I sway and catch myself, leaning against the wall as he rushes in.

"Looks like the flu,
Eleanor.  I'll take care of her from here," he says.  I must look like more than Mrs. Lowt can handle, since she doesn't protest.  Aidan latches the door and turns back to me, muttering a curse between his teeth.  "You should have called me...told me you were going to do this...it's not safe to go it alone like this."

I raise my chin, even though it makes my vision float.  The wall is stable.  "I'm doing fine."

"You don't smell like it."

"Go home, Aidan.  I just have the flu."

"Really, Lydia?  You've gotten this far and you still can't call it what it is?" he says, but when I turn my head away from him, he softens.  "Come on.  Let's get you in the shower."

He starts down the hall, but turns back when I don't follow.  His footsteps return slowly and he takes my hand, giving me a little tug.  If he does it again, I know my legs are going to give out.  I'll splash down on the floor.  My body is so unreliable.

"I can't," I whisper, still clinging to the wall.  The shakes make my fingertips tap a faint S.O.S. against the door frame.

"That's why I'm here."  He eases himself under my arm and grips my waist.  We go down the hall as if I'm a life-size rag doll.  Tucked in so close, I shut my eyes and breathe him in.  He stops walking.  "Come on now...don't pass out on me, Lydia."

"I'm not," I say.  "I was smelling your cologne."

"Oh."

"It reminds me of the bar."

"I'll wash it off."

"You don't have to."

"I'm still going to."

"Aidan?"

"Yeah?"

"I think I'm going to puke."

"Now?"

I can't answer; I'm too busy letting it rip down the front of me.  When I'm done, Aidan just walks me over the puddle and into the bathroom.  He gives me water to wash out my mouth.  We're both a stinking mess.

"Sorry," I say.  "I don't know why that happened.  I've been okay for the last couple days."

"It's probably from moving around." He plants me on the toilet seat and peels off my shirt before flipping on the shower.  He pulls off his own soiled shirt and tosses our clothing in the sink.  "They say some people get sick the first day, sometimes it's the third or fourth."

"Sorry."

"It's alright.  I was sick like this the very first day." He's trying to breathe through his mouth.  He smiles between breaths, holding his hand under the stream of water until he's happy with the temperature.  I hang onto the counter and waver onto my feet again.  He helps me undress the rest of the way, and though I'm surprised when he drops his own soiled pants to the floor too, I'm too weak to argue. 

If he's expecting payment for his help, I'll do it.  I don't know how, but I will.

His arms float at either side of me, safety nets, as I climb into the shower.  I get hold of the towel rack and hang on with all the strength I've got left.  My back faces the stream of water.  Aidan steps in behind me, blocking and unblocking the flow with his movements, so the water hits me like a spastic storm.  My grip tightens on the rack, but I bend over slightly, my rear end thrust out behind me in offering.  I hope I don't puke again while he does it.

But instead, soap glides down my back.  Aidan moves my hair over my shoulder and the tips weep down my breasts.  I wait for his hands to grasp my hips.  To pull himself into me. I brace for the impact. 

But his knuckles, clutching the soap, sweep over my spine, into my right armpit, and down my ribs.  He repeats the process on my left side.  A delicate lather slides from my shoulder, down my breast, and gathers on my nipple like a tiny cluster of grapes. 

Aidan slides the soap down my back, the suds spilling over my rear and down my legs.  His knee caps crack as he squats to wash me, the full force of the shower finally scattering across my back.  I close my eyes, enjoying the tenderness of his soft, slick hands and the pounding massage of the water.  His knees crack again when he stands.

"Can you turn around?" His voice is husky.  I draw close to the towel rod and turn slowly.  Aidan takes my hands and threads them underneath, palms out, so my fingers grip the rod.  My shoulders press back against it.  Aidan blocks the stream again and I grow cold without the constant crash of the water on me.  My nipples rise.  I feel the heat of his body, inches from mine, and I've never felt so vulnerable.  I can't even bring myself to look below his waist. 

"Just try to keep yourself up, okay?" he says.  I do as he tells me.  There's a horrible comfort in this simple act that sits in my stomach like a soggy blanket.  Des has always told me what to do and I've always done it.  I've relied on it.

Aidan cleans me carefully from head to toe.  The scent of vomit is quickly replaced with cranberry soap.  The steam thickens to a fog and my fingertips prune in the humidity.  I just hang onto the towel rack, swaying out and pressing back, focusing on the feeling of his fingers as they gently working over my skin.  He touches every inch of me, gently, as if my body is something holy and valuable.  No man has ever touched me like this.  Not with such care and such reverence.  It is...humiliating.

When I open my eyes, Aidan's looking directly into them and my gaze plummets in shame.  Unfortunately, what ends up in my line of vision are his hips and the long, heavy weight of his sex, dangling loosely between them.

I expected, from all the soap and all the touching...something more.  The one power I have and it has abandoned me too, along with my hope.  Aidan's physical indifference to my naked body is just another brick of despair, tied around my heart.  A mournful laugh dies in my throat.

"What?" he asks, seemingly amused and curious, as he turns off the water.  He reaches out for a towel from the stack I keep on the back of the toilet tank.  My eyes sink to his feet.  Another attempt at a laugh fails.

"I don't turn you on."

I keep my head down, my eyes shut.  I don't need to be staring at that monster of a failure.  He takes my naked hand and deposits it on the hard crest of his right shoulder.   His skin is moist and firm beneath my shriveled fingertips. 

"You need my help," he says lightly, "and that wouldn't be helping, now would it?"

He places my other hand on his other shoulder before opening the towel and wrapping it around me.  Help or not, he shouldn't be able to control his body's reaction to mine, unless there wasn't one to control.  I don't need a savior, I need to be loved.

I feel the sting of building tears and try to hold them back beneath my closed lashes, but his touch tips up my chin and one of the tears escapes in a reckless trail down my cheek.  The tears pile up, acrid and burning, until I am forced to open my eyes and release the sting.  Aidan is distorted in the blur and while I'm grateful that I can't see his expression, I am humiliated that he's staring at mine. 

His fingertips suddenly drift over my neck with a small groan.  They move to a different position than where the tender bruises still ache, and Aidan's fingers don't grip, but lay softly on the surface of my skin.  The swell of his thumb braces my jaw, holding it high, so that when the tears finally drain out of me, all that is left is Aidan's gentle gaze, locked on mine.

"Would it help?" he whispers.  The question forms another tear in the corner of my eye.

Aidan brings his mouth to mine, grazing the skin so softly that my lips split apart like a waiting, baby bird.  His breath is sweet and warm as his tongue sinks into my mouth.  My body responds to his kiss with muscle memory, taking over and piloting my way toward this fix of bliss by pressing my breasts to Aidan's chest, tightening my grip on his shoulders, and rolling my hips toward his.  My body knows the way to make a man moan, but as Aidan's interest in me surges up against my thigh, I'm the one who releases the first sound of pleasure.

Aidan breaks our kiss slowly and I sway back, my shoulders hitting the towel rack.  He steadies me and I wait for another kiss, but it doesn't come.  Instead, Aidan reaches out and re-adjusts my towel, dropping it like a curtain between my body and his.  His awakened, throbbing beast twitches against the fabric like a scenting animal searching for my soft cave.   

Aidan's eyes scan my face and flick across my neck like a checkmark.  He slides back the shower drape.  I stand like a carving that hasn't been finished.  What he's given me was not enough, but he steps out and turns to offer me his hand.  I am still frozen in place, a mixture of confusion and embarrassment.  I don't know why he halted what was starting, when it's obvious that part of him so clearly wants to continue.

With his hand still extended, he closes his eyes and takes a deep, full breath.  He lets it out slowly and, as if by sheer determination, opens his eyes again and smiles at me.

"I want to give you what you actually need, Lydia," he says.  "Help."

<<<<>>>>

He makes food that I don't want to eat.  He sits at the opposite end of the couch from me and when I drift off to sleep, he's still there when I wake up.  Since sitting up still makes me feel sick, he posts a bucket beside the couch and puts glasses of smoothies, with straws poking from the top, on the coffee table beside me.  He rubs my feet as we watch TV. 

But most of all, Aidan just talks to me.  He tells me about how he grew up with a mother who blamed Ila and him for their father not wanting to come home from the bar.  He tells me about what happened when his father did.  But he doesn't just tell me the bad things.  He tells me about a pet guinea pig he had named Norman, how he used to shovel snow for the neighbors to buy himself and Ila tickets to the movies, he fills the hours with stories of his past and questions of mine, until I'm talking as much as he is.  I confess to an obsession with Good & Plenty candies, to loving the Beatles over Elvis, to wanting to travel the world.  I tell him that I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.  I admit that I thought I'd be married with a big family by now.  And when he asks why Des doesn't live here, I grow quiet and resistant to answer, so he gracefully reverts the conversation to the deep, gray sky outside my window.  A commercial with a zip lining pig comes on.

"How about that?  Have you ever tried that before?" he asks. 

"Zip lining? No," I say, rubbing my temples.

"Me either.  I had the chance once, but I backed out."

I don't know why, but the image of an ice cold Mojito just crashed into my head.  It shouldn't be there. It can't.  I rub harder as my temples are buttons that will turn off the vision. 

"How come?" I ask him dryly. 
Focus. 
Or,
unfocus
.

"I was at a really shabby resort and the line was strung between trees that looked like they were half dead.  With my luck, the thing would snap as soon as I got half way down."  He laughs, but all it does is jiggle the drink in my head, slop some of the deliciousness down the edge of the glass.  I actually open my mouth, as if it's a real thing that will spill onto my tongue. 
Holy shit.