Chapter 21 Tainted Love
TAINTED LOVE
“Cati? Cati?”
My mind gripped the far-off sound of Mei’s voice like a rope pulling me back to consciousness. My eyes flickered open, my vision straining against the brightness. Mei’s concerned face came into view. Snow flecked her black hair, tied in bunches with neon-coloured scrunchies.
“Where am I?” I rasped.
“You’re awake! Good, that’s good.” She disappeared from my field of vision.
I tried to sit up, but a sharp pain speared my side. I rolled back, turning my head to follow Mei’s voice.
“Oi, you!” Hands in the air, Mei charged after a dishevelled man wheeling a bicycle. “Where are you going? You need to apologise.”
The man turned and scowled. “Look what she’s done to my bloody bike. Not to mention my jacket. She owes me an apology.” He held up a shredded sleeve. “It’s ruined.”
“You can’t just run someone over and walk away.”
“The mad cow ran out in front of me on the bicycle path.”
Mei looked around with narrowed eyes. “Where is this bike path?”
The man pushed thick-rimmed glasses up his nose and huffed. “Granted, you can’t see it now because of the snow, but she should bloody look where she’s going in the future.” He strode off, the wheel of his buckled bicycle squeaking as he went.
Mei paced back to me, tutting and shaking her head. “What a tosser! Come on, my friend. We don’t need that bastard, anyway. Can you stand?”
“I… I don’t know. I’ll try.” Breathing through the agony, I tentatively sat up, hissing as pain snagged in my side.
Mei planted her feet and thrust her hands down to me. “One, two, three.”
I squeezed my eyes shut as she heaved me onto my feet. I appraised my injuries. I was able to stand, so my legs were okay. My arms were grazed, but fine. Aside from a splintering headache, the pain was local to my left-hand side.
“Okay, you’re freezing. We need to get you home.”
Mei wove an arm around my back and helped bear my weight as I limped alongside her, flinching with every step.
“So, how come you skipped your lecture, huh?”
The cold had numbed my extremities, and the shock of the bicycle crash had temporarily numbed my senses, but as we moved across the green — now white — it all came crashing back.
Francesca, naked in Jeremy’s bed.
My stomach lurched, and I doubled over, losing my grip on Mei and expelling a mouthful of bile into the pristine snow.
“Oh, I guess that answers the lecture question,” Mei said.
A chorus of disgust erupted from a huddle of passing girls. Mei brandished a one-finger salute at their departing backs.
I wiped my mouth with my hand, and we resumed our slow hobble.
In my room, I got out of my wet clothes while Mei went to make tea.
I lifted my T-shirt, fingering the tender flesh over my ribs.
A colourful bruise was already blooming.
Gooseflesh prickled my skin, so I pulled on my pyjamas and eased myself into bed, nestling under my duvet but still shivering, my body clenching every time I convulsed.
Mei softly called through the door before entering, “You decent, Cati?”
“Yeah,” I said.
She pushed into the room with a steaming mug in one hand, a glass of water in the other and half a packet of cream crackers tucked under her elbow.
“They’re not mine,” I said.
Mei shrugged. “You need something in your stomach. Drink some water first.”
Red-hot pain seared in my ribs as I tried to sit up, so I rolled onto my good side instead and sipped the water. The wetness softened the parched edges of my mouth, and it felt so good I gulped some more.
“Whoa, not too much, too quick. You’ll be sick again!”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Oh, I found some ibuprofen, but you need to eat some crackers too.” Mei rolled two tablets into my open hand. “Should I call a doctor, or a hospital? Or your dad?”
“I’ll be okay. No need to worry my dad.”
“I could send for your friend, Jeremy.”
“No,” I said a bit too loudly. “No, please don’t do that. I’m fine.”
Mei blinked, crossing her legs as she lowered herself onto the floor. “Okay, I’ll stay for a while.”
“You’ll miss the rally.”
Mei shrugged. “It’s fine. Now eat!”
The next time I opened my eyes, it wasn’t to Mei’s kind face, but to Francesca glowering at me from the doorway. She cut an eerie figure against the stark hallway light behind her.
“Oh, you’re finally awake.” She stepped into my room and closed the door. She wasn’t wearing her usual ripped goth-girl getup, but clothes akin to those she’d worn to meet the Daltons last Christmas. She wore softer makeup and even had a different scent. Is this who she is for him?
Get out — I wanted to scream at her — of my room, of my head, of my life. I swallowed the little saliva left in my sour-tasting mouth, but the words wouldn’t come.
Francesca shifted onto the edge of the bed, and the movement sent pain coiling through me. I gasped and clutched at my side.
“That’s right, your little friend said you’d gone and hurt yourself.”
“I didn’t hurt myself. Some lunatic on a bike knocked me over.”
Francesca shook her head as if disputing the fact.
“Where is Mei?” I asked.
“I knew that’s who you’d go running to.”
“What? No, don’t try to twist this around,” I hissed. “I hope you weren’t awful to her, Francesca.”
She shrugged.
“How long have you been sleeping with Jeremy? He already knows about you and me, doesn’t he?”
A smirk played on Francesca’s lips, and I wanted to smack it off her face, but it hurt too much even to sit up properly, let alone to inflict a wound on someone else.
“It must have been a shock for you earlier.”
Tears prickled my eyes. “A shock? You’ve been sleeping with both of us!”
“I never said that you and I were exclusive, did I?”
Her question landed on me like a bucket of ice water.
“I, I thought you… you said that… it was me…” I frowned because I couldn’t grip hold of the evidence I was looking for.
No, she’d never said we were exclusive. I couldn’t fight my corner, because I was already on the floor, her boot pressing into my back whilst the referee held up her arm and declared her victorious.
How on earth had I lost this fight when I’d had the upper hand?
Pain throbbed in my head, and it became harder to pull air into my lungs as my chest tightened.
Francesca cupped a cool hand around my burning face and swiped her thumb across my cheekbone.
Anyone else might have mistaken the look on her face for concern, but it was a thin mask.
I could see right through it now, because I’d read about people like Francesca.
“You look terrible,” she said. “You should get some rest.”
I nodded, blinking away stinging tears as she pushed the damp hair back from my forehead and kissed it.
“I’ll come by to check on you later. Maybe then we can smooth things over properly.”
I watched as she left, clicking the door closed behind her.
I might be a heaped, broken mess, and she might have won this round, but I wasn’t going to lose myself to her. No, she’d never said we were exclusive, but that doesn’t make it right.
I listened until the shuffling stopped next door, and Francesca left her room.
I waited until I heard the door along the hallway creak to a close.
I cursed through the effort of sitting up, my breathing rapid and shallow because it hurt to breathe too deeply.
Blood rushed from my head and the room tipped sideways.
I gripped the edge of the bed and pushed myself to my feet.
In my current state, I could hardly achieve stealth mode, but I needed to hurry before she returned.
The next time I faced Francesca, it would be on my terms.
I stood under a hot shower, blinking through fresh tears and gulping around the smarting lump in my throat. The water stung the grazes on my hands, but I relished the steam and finally felt warm again. I wished I could rinse Francesca away with the soapsuds, but she wouldn’t wash off that easily.
Before pulling on fresh pyjamas, I carefully assessed the crimson bruise on my ribs, exploring the tender area with my fingertips and hissing at the touch. There isn’t much they can do for bruised ribs anyway.
I rooted around in the bathroom cabinet and found a packet of ibuprofen. I cupped cold water in my palms and swallowed a couple of tablets, pocketing the rest for later. I would replace them, and anything else I’d borrowed, but first I needed to rest.
Now that the nausea had passed, my empty stomach growled for food. I made a mug of tea to accompany some buttery toast — my favourite comfort food. But even that didn’t fill the hollow inside me now that the bubble had been burst.
When I returned to my room, I did something I hadn’t done in months: I locked my door.
I’d taken to leaving it unlocked because I enjoyed finding Francesca in my space, even though she usually left a mess in her wake. But right now, I needed to keep her out.
The rapid rattling of the door handle startled me awake. Hours must have passed as my room was dark aside from the soft glow from the lamps in the quad, four floors down.
“Are you in there?” Indignation wrestled with the concern in Francesca’s voice. Her knuckles rapped on the wood, and the handle rattled again. “Why is your door locked?”
I drew a breath and mustered my strength. “I don’t want to see you.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Catherine. Stop fooling around and let me in.”
“I’m not the one who’s been fooling around, Francesca.” I sounded as bitter as I felt.
“It’s not my fault you made assumptions about how things were…”
I blinked in disbelief. I’d been so stupid. Why did I let myself trust her after what had happened at Christmas?
Francesca lowered her voice. “As I said before, I never denied that Jeremy and I were… look, this is complicated. I don’t really want to stand in the corridor airing our dirty laundry.”
“Maybe you should’ve thought about that before you fucked my best friend,” I screamed. So much for staying calm and keeping my power.