Chapter 21 #2
He smiles a little before pulling the door closed. I sigh, sitting up in bed, and then grab my phone and finally check the time.
It's just after two in the afternoon.
I take some clothes with me into the bathroom, turn on the shower, and strip down. I take my time washing my hair and scrubbing my skin, fearful of the lingering scent of cigarette smoke or worse—my stepbrother.
I kissed my stepbrother—my fucking monster stepbrother. The one who fucking despises me, but says he likes me pathetic on his bathroom floor.
What is wrong with me?
Then I go to the kitchen, start a cup of coffee, and grab a piece of pizza from the fridge.
Elias is on the couch watching television, and I can feel him watching me.
I wonder what version of him I'll get this morning.
I wonder if he's going to yell at me about how the coffee isn't mine, tell me he's obsessed with me, or threaten to choke me with his dick.
I hear his footsteps behind me before he grabs a beer from the fridge and tosses the bottle cap into the trash can beside me. I guess I'm about to find out.
"I want to talk to you, Saige."
"Okay…" I say as I cover my pizza with jalapenos and stick it in the microwave.
"How's your head?"
"It hurts." I look at him, but just barely. I don't want to appear too suspicious. "Um…somehow, I ended up with your shirt last night. I put it in the laundry."
If I didn't know Elias better, I'd swear he looks hurt.
"What do you mean?" he asks. "What do you remember?"
I shrug. "I remember everything; I just don't remember coming home. I remember getting in the car with you and Blythe. Maybe she gave it to me or something—I don't know."
Nice touch by me, I think—pretending I think Blythe stayed the night with him. And Dax said I was a bad liar.
I think I'm getting pretty fucking good at it.
"Blythe wasn't here. I took her home."
I watch his jaw flex. He's visibly flustered now. I shrug and then grab my pizza and coffee, adding a splash of almond milk to the latter before sitting at the table.
"Coffee and jalapeno pizza. That's a weird combination," Elias says.
"Well, I'm a weird person," I reply dully.
"Do you really remember nothing, Saige? Are you sure?"
His green eyes lock with mine, and I look away, sipping my coffee while my gaze settles on his parted lips, and then on his hands gripping the side of the countertop.
The same lips that were on mine last night. The same hands that wrapped my legs around his waist and laid me down in his bed.
"I remember everything except coming back here and going to bed."
He shakes his head. "Okay, Saige. Whatever."
Elias grabs his beer and goes back to the couch, setting it down hard enough on the coffee table that I'm surprised the glass doesn't shatter. He huffs, running his hands through his hair like he does when something's bothering him.
I know him well enough now to recognize that, too.
I finish my pizza, put my dishes in the dishwasher, and then leave the room.
"Where are you going?" Elias asks, his tone deeper and harsher than it was before.
"Just upstairs…"
I wait at the bottom of the staircase, but he says nothing, so I keep moving. I stop in front of Nolan's bedroom and knock on the door.
"Come in," he says.
I open the door, pausing before stepping inside. While Nolan sits at his desk, Dax lies on his bed, watching television.
"Um…you're still doing homework. I'll come back."
"Now why would you do something like that, Ripley?" Dax asks.
"What do you mean?"
"Is there any reason in particular why you wouldn't want to stay?"
"No…Nolan said maybe we could go somewhere when he's done with his homework, and he's not done. I have some stuff to do, too."
"You should stay, Saige," Nolan says. "I'm almost done."
"Yeah, Saige. Come over here—I'll put our show on."
I close the door behind me and sit on the bed, leaning against the headboard with my arms folded in front of me while Dax opens Netflix.
"Didn't we watch this one?" he asks when the episode starts.
Yeah.
"I don't know."
"Okay," he says, shrugging. "We can watch it again."
I feel him watching me instead, but I stare straight ahead at the television. At least ten minutes pass like this before he finally says something.
"Saige?"
"Yeah?"
"Come here, baby; let me hold you."
"Um…I don't—"
"I miss you. It's been two days. Don't you miss me, too?"
"I'll be right back," Nolan says, leaving the room without further explanation. I can't help but feel like it's fucking orchestrated.
Of course, I miss him. But that's my trauma brain talking. He isn't good to me, and he isn't good for me.
"You know, Nolan thinks you don't love him. He told me. You might want to do something about that."
"Saige, look at me."
My eyes water, and when I try to blink back tears, I lose the battle, and they end up running down each of my cheeks.
You know what, though? I don't even care. If Dax only likes someone until he breaks them, then he can move on. I'm already broken.
He sits up, closing the space between us before wrapping his arms around me. "Baby, you're crying. Tell me what's wrong."
I shake my head. "It doesn't really matter."
"Saige…" He places a hand on my cheek, using it to guide my eyes to his before wiping the tears from under my eyes. "What did he say to you?"
"A lot. He's right, though. I'm just not thinking clearly."
"He doesn't know shit. The last time he thought you might have been interested in someone, he paid someone else to sleep with them. He has a sick obsession with you, Saige. You cannot take anything he says seriously."
I scoff, shaking my head. "That's funny—he actually said the same thing about you. How many people have you promised to take to Paris?"
"…Not very many."
"How many people have you convinced to get your art tattooed on them before you ghosted them?"
"Fuck…I don't know. A few?"
"A few?"
"Maybe…ten."
"That's a fucking lot, Dax!"
"It's not like I told them they had to—they wanted to."
"But you get off on it in some way, right? Manipulating people?"
His mouth gapes, the wheels turning in his head as he tries to figure out how to spin the answer. I decide not to give him the opportunity and head for the door.
"Wait!" Dax jumps out of bed and quickly moves between me and the door.
"Do you force everyone to suck you off like you did me?"
"Saige…no. That was Elias's idea; I've never done anything like that before, and I didn't force you."
"You did, though. You and Elias both did, and then you just…" I choke on a sob. "You fucked with my head."
I try to walk around him and get the fuck out of the room, but he wraps his arms around me, holding me against his chest with my arms locked at my side, immobilizing me.
"Look at me," he says. "You…are different."
"No, I'm not, Dax."
"How do I fix it?"
I shake my head. "It's too fucked. I'm not even really mad at you, you know? I'm just not thinking straight. I can't do it anymore, though. It feels too real for me, and I'm too vulnerable right now."
"It is real, Saige…"
"It feels like you love me." I let myself say that awful fucking word, not just because it's true, but because I know something like that will terrify someone like him, and I want to scare him off. "I can't trust myself with you because I can't tell the difference anymore."
"It doesn't matter how we got here."
"Yes, it does. I—"
"No. It doesn't. You still like me. I like you, too. There are very real feelings involved, and it does not matter why."
"It's unhealthy. It'll only get worse the longer it goes on, and I'm going to get hurt. I'm just a toy to you."
"You're my favorite toy, Saige. That's not an insult. You like that, too."
"Yeah, but…"
"But what?"
"That's kind of fucked, too, given the circumstances, isn't it?"
"No," he says. "You make me really happy.
I know I make you happy, too; that's why you're so sad right now.
You're making Nolan really happy at the same time, and that's never happened.
You are different. You've upset my natural order, and I don't want to let you go.
I like things the way they are. So, I'm going to ask you again—how do I fix it? "
I rest my head on his chest. "I don't think it's a good idea."
"I've been good to you. I haven't hurt you."
"That's not exactly true."
"You're different, Saige," he says, running his fingers through my hair. "Maybe I'm just as attached to you for the same fucked up reasons. Have you considered that?"
"No."
"I missed you so much. I was pissed when Elias wouldn't let me drive home the other night.
I can't stand being apart from you." That's why he didn't come home on Thursday?
Elias wouldn't let him? "I brought you coffee in class yesterday just to see you for a minute.
Does that sound like something someone who doesn't care about you would do? "
"Yeah, if they're trying to trick me."
Dax laughs. "Saige, come on. I wouldn't even go to the trouble of having this fucking conversation with anyone else. If you see anyone with a familiar-looking tattoo on their body, stop them and ask them about my fucking effort levels."
"That's not funny, Dax."
"There's only one person trying to trick you in this house, and I think you know that."
What if he's right? What if it isn't both of them, and it's just Elias who's trying to confuse and manipulate me?
But that's the problem. I can't tell the difference anymore.
"Is everything okay?" Nolan asks when he comes back into the room.
"I don't know. Is everything okay, Saige?"
I sigh. "This was entrapment. You trapped me in here with him."
Nolan laughs. "I told you he isn't so bad."
"I guess you're the only one in this fucking house who has anything nice to say about me. Thanks," Dax says.
"Anytime."
"Are we good, Saige?" he asks.
"I don't know, Dax. We'll see."
But I already know the answer. He sucked me right back in; I can't think when I'm around him. I know it's my trauma brain, and I know part of it is because I don't want to think when I'm around him because it's the only time I feel safe, but maybe he's right.
Maybe it doesn't matter why. Maybe we've already gone too far down that road, and now it would hurt to stop, so I might as well keep going.
"Have you thought about what you want to do tonight?" Nolan asks.
"Not really."
"Let's go to my house," Dax says. "My parents are out of town, and I want to get away from Elias, too, or I'm going to hit him and get my ass beat. You want to go, Saige?"
"Um, I don't—"
"Please, Ripley. I miss you." He cups my face in his hands. "I promise to be on my best behavior. And it would make him really…really mad. I know how you like that."
I smile. "Yeah, okay."