8. Chapter 8
Chapter 8
Andy
Cas and I are covered from head to toe in blood, so we both take the quickest shower of our lives and throw on whatever we can find in this old house. We get back to my place just under nine hours after we left. It’s basically been a day’s work to torture and kill both men.
Mara is sitting on the couch watching TV, but Chi lies motionless next to her, completely dead to the world. I’m glad that she’s not tossing and turning, but it’s surprising to me that she’s in such a deep sleep. She hasn’t seemed this restful at all in the past couple of days, and I thought, possibly arrogantly, that she’d have an even harder time with Mara than she did with me.
“She’s so out of it,” I say, sitting down next to her and touching her shoulder. Her eyes don’t even flinch. It’s like she senses nothing.
That’s when I notice the smell. “It stinks like booze in here,” I say, narrowing my eyes on the scene. I catch a half empty bottle of Grey Goose, and I finally realize what’s actually going on. “Did you seriously get drunk with a girl who is out of her mind with grief right now?”
Mara’s eyes open wide in innocence. “What? Me? I don’t drink.”
I look at her sternly. “Mara.”
She bites her lip. “I had Gio go out and get us Slurpees. I just offered her some vodka with it because I used to drink that sometimes, and it tastes good! And she was crying so much. I felt so horrible for her. She’s a grown woman and it’s not like alcohol is illegal…” she trails off with a gulp as my eyes turn to steel.
“Listen, I didn’t do anything wrong, okay? I thought she’d have a drink or two, just to take the edge off. But I just went to the bathroom, and when I came back, half the fucking bottle was in her Slurpee. By the time I got it out of her hands, it was too late. She was… very, very, extremely fucked up.”
I look from the bottle of vodka to the petite girl passed out on the couch and seethe. “She could have fucking alcohol poisoning, Mara!”
“She doesn’t. It wasn’t a totally full bottle, and trust me, the girl has a tolerance.”
I pick up the Slurpee cup and sniff it. It’s got to be more vodka than sugar water. The Slurpee is cold but melted. “How long ago?”
She gulps again and looks to Cas for support, and although I’m sure he’d snap my neck if I touched her, he’s definitely not about to get into the middle of this argument. Especially because she’s the one who left a grieving girl with an entire bottle of alcohol.
“Ah… she passed out like an hour ago. And she cried for a while before just staring into space. So she drank it maybe… two to three hours ago?” She meets my concerned gaze with some worry of her own. “Andy, she didn’t drink all of that.” She points to the half empty bottle. “She put half of it in her Slurpee and then drank half the Slurpee. So she’s only had a quarter of the bottle. And it’s been two hours.” She bites her lip. She knows she’s not off the hook, but I need to let it go for now.
I sit down next to her on the overstuffed couch and nudge her shoulder. “Chi?” She groans and turns her face toward the couch. “Chi, wake up.”
She bats my hand off of her shoulder with her eyes closed. She moves her mouth a little, but the only thing that comes out is some slurred gibberish. I look at Mara and Cas, then back at Chi. “Fuck.”
Cas finally speaks. “Andy, we’re all here. She didn’t drink enough for alcohol poisoning, and even if she did, she’d have shown symptoms by now. She’ll probably wake up feeling pretty sick, but Mara didn’t do anything wrong. Like she said, Chi’s a grown woman who drank too much. She’s gonna be fine.”
It feels like he’s downplaying the situation, but he’s right that she’ll be okay later on. I’m still pissed, though.
I slide my arms under her and heave her up against me, striding to the bedroom without looking back at them.
A few hours pass as I camp out in the bedroom with Chi while Mara and Cas presumably wait out in my small living room. We have a lot to talk about with the ladies, which is how I know they’ll stick around.
I sense that she’s awake and look up from my phone. She stares pitifully at the ceiling, tears streaming silently down the sides of her face.
“Hey Chi, are you…” I want to ask her if she’s okay, but she’s clearly not. I wonder if she ever will be. It feels like the horrors of what she saw will be a never-ending battle for her.
“I’m the same, but still kind of drunk. I feel it, even now. I wonder if I’ll be like this forever.” She lets out a strangled sob. “Just miserable for the rest of my life.”
I wipe her tears away for what feels like the hundredth time. “I don’t think so, Chee-Chee.”
“I never knew there were so many different shades of ‘miserable.’ Sometimes it’s hysterical-miserable. Sometimes it’s anxious-miserable. Sometimes it’s numb-miserable. Sometimes it’s silent-horror miserable. I’m the last one right now. Numb-miserable with Mara earlier was better, I think, but I still knew it was temporary, and even that made me miserable.”
I wasn’t aware I still had a heart after the things I’ve done in my life. The things I was forced to do under the guise of “good guy” in the military. The innocence I had to take to ensure that other innocence wasn’t taken. The all-consuming satisfaction I feel after I torture and kill those who deserve it. But it must be rattling around in there somewhere, because it feels like there’s a gaping hole in my chest, bleeding out from what can only be empathy. The only thing I want to do is make her feel better.
“I killed them, Chi. I killed them both.” I swallow and look directly into her eyes. “For you.”
She finally breaks down then. There are so many little pieces, and I don’t know how to put them all back together. I just sit, wondering if I should bring up the men I tortured again. This is all I can think to offer her.
I extricate myself from her slightly and lean back to take the box I brought home with me from the bedside table. I give it to her as she tries to get a handle on her tears. A confounded expression mixes with her grief, and when she opens the box, her mouth drops and her lip almost quirks up in one corner. She ceases crying abruptly as she stares down at the two eyeballs I brought here for her: one brown and the other blue. I can’t imagine the cacophony of emotions running through her right now, because even as she looks vaguely pleased, her face drains of color and her head droops. She falls slightly to one side before I catch her around the shoulders with my hands and shake her back to awareness.
“Shit, I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to make it worse.”
She shakes her head, trying to get a hold of herself. She takes a deep, ragged breath in and speaks. “You didn’t.”
I look at her in confusion. “What’s wrong, then?”
She speaks through staggered breaths. “It’s from relief. From… from some kind of fucked up happiness. But also regret. I’m glad they’re dead, but I wish I had been there to do it. I wanted to see the light go out of their eyes, not just see the evidence in a box.” She gulps, shooting me a lost look. “I’ve never thought anything like that before. I didn’t even want to watch my father kill his rivals. I’m not sure who I am anymore.”
I hug her and say softly in her ear, “You’re Chichi Yano. You’re fucking Chichi Yano, and you’re out for blood. And that’s okay, baby. Ride the wave.”
For the first time since she’s been with me, she takes a deep, centering breath and stops her tears on her own. She doesn’t pass out from crying too much or drink them away. She focuses on her breathing, and then suddenly she’s pulling back and leveling me with a determined gaze. There’s that fire. That’s what I love to see.
“Okay. What do we have to do?”