Chapter 34 Larissa
LARISSA
Lexi, can you come over?”
It was the morning after I moved in with Mike. I was crying. I knew she could tell.
“What happened?”
“I just need you to bring your steam cleaner. You have one, right?”
“Yeah, I have one. Are we cleaning up a body? I need to know what shoes to wear because I’m not tossing my kicks again.”
“I’ll explain when you get here. Just come.”
Half an hour later she showed up. I opened the door and I saw on her face when the smell hit her. “What the fuck happened in here? I thought the dog was housebroken.”
“He is,” I said, taking the machine. I didn’t even want to stop to tell her the story. I just wanted the mess off the carpet first.
I frantically shampooed the rug for the next half hour. I felt like I couldn’t go over it enough times. It had to be down in the padding, there was no way I was getting it all out.
The second the tank was empty, she’d grab it and refill it with soap and hot water while I went to the bathroom to dump the bucket and start all over again. When I finally ran out of shampoo, I stopped. I just stood by the machine, the adrenaline I’d been feeling for the last twelve hours pulsing.
Lexi eyed me. “Girl, if you don’t tell me what the fuck happened…”
I did a laugh-cry.
“Sit,” she said.
“I don’t want to sit in here.”
“Let’s go to my car, then. Come on.”
We sat in her Toyota in Donna’s driveway, the heat blasting, looking out at the guesthouse. All my fears had been validated. I tried to organize my thoughts in a way that was coherent.
“I decided to move in a day early. When I got here, Mike was passed out drunk.”
“Drunk?”
“Drunk.”
She blinked at me. “Did he go to a party or something?”
I shook my head. “No. He was just home. By himself. He ate all this junk food and drank a bottle of vodka, Lexi. The whole thing. I found the receipt in his pants. He bought it two hours before I came over. I couldn’t get him up—he was completely blacked out, sleeping in vomit.
I was too afraid to go to sleep, I was worried he was going to throw up again and choke.
I stayed on the sofa so I could watch him, and when I woke up this morning, he was throwing up in the bathroom.
I was going to check on him and I stepped in something wet.
” I paused at this part. I didn’t even want to admit it aloud.
“He peed on the carpet. While he was lying there.”
She looked horrified. “What did he say?”
“Nothing. He got in the shower, then left for the cabin. He just came out with his bag and some sunglasses, told me he’d had a migraine, kissed me goodbye, and left. It was like he didn’t even remember it.”
“He probably fuckin’ doesn’t,” she said. “Did you call Chris?”
“No. I didn’t want to wake him up. It was late.”
“You need to tell Chris. Get his boy down here to deal with this.”
She sat in her seat and stared out the windshield before pivoting to look at me again. “Mike does drink a lot though.”
I pulled my face back. “No, he doesn’t.”
She gave me a look. “Uh, yeah, he kinda does.”
“He’s not an alcoholic,” I said, feeling defensive for some reason.
“You sure about that? Because this”—she gestured toward the guesthouse—“feels like some alcoholic shit.”
My mouth was dry.
“You told me how much he drinks,” she said. “You went on and on about the cabin thing.”
“Yeah, but then he goes months without it. It’s just at parties.”
“Uh, it’s called binge drinking, babe. Clearly you never went to college.”
I couldn’t even respond. I felt too exhausted and traumatized to process it. And it was making too much sense.
I put my head into my hands.
“It could be worse,” she said.
“How?” I mumbled.
“He could have shit himself instead.”
I choked. “Yay for the preferable body fluids.”
I had never been so unattracted to someone as I was in this moment. Not because he had an accident, but because he let himself get like that.
I knew what it was like to live with a man who couldn’t control his impulses.
My dad ruined our lives. The whole thing with Mike catapulted me back to my childhood and the way my dad’s instability made me feel.
I was embarrassed. I didn’t want to tell Mom or anyone what had happened, it was too triggering.
I almost didn’t want to tell Chris for some reason. And Mike and I just moved in together.
“How did I miss this?” I whispered.
“Because men are experts at hiding who they really are? They lie to get you to the finish line and then—BAM.”
I had to muscle down the urge to sob.
“It doesn’t help that we normalize this shit,” she said. “Game day—drink. Wedding—drink. Mow the lawn with a beer, drink on the boat, drink at brunch. It’s so expected he’d get crap for not drinking.”
I cared about Mike and I was worried about him and I wanted him to be okay, but there was another very real side of me that could not do this.
I had already exhausted the part of myself that could nurture a man through his self-destructive era.
I’d already lived that once with my dad, and every single one of my mom’s boyfriends and I was terrified that that’s what Mike was about to make me do.
Over the next two days, Mike texted me quick check-ins from the cabin. He was completely oblivious. It was all business as usual and Hey, babe, Miss you, babe.
I felt like I was going to have to explain to him what happened, like he had been possessed and I had to convince him that he’d done what he’d done.
I needed to talk to him, but every time he called, he was plastered.
Of course he was plastered. Jesse got there early, too, and they were both plastered. Only now what Lexi said ate away at me.
I felt like I was finally seeing what had always been there.
Mike didn’t always drink, but when he did, he drank more than he said he would. Every time. One was always three. Sometimes three was six. It was like he couldn’t just have one. One was a gateway to ten.
And the wildest thing was, he was the healthiest person I knew. He wouldn’t even eat bread. He ran, he worked out, he was in peak physical condition. So when he wanted to drink, I downplayed it in my head because that was his treat.
Lexi was right. I did need to talk to Chris.
Somehow I knew Chris would make it okay. He would have ideas or insight or something.
He was picking me up for the cabin and I could talk to him then. We’d have the whole day for me to tell him everything on the way up. He would know what to do.
The smell was still in the carpet. It was winter, so I couldn’t open the doors and windows and air it out. The whole thing grossed me out.
I couldn’t imagine Mike turning me on after this. The vision of him lying there, snoring in his own vomit and urine. I was disgusted.
I sprayed the rug with a vinegar solution and then dusted it with baking soda and let it sit for two days before I vacuumed it up. It still smelled.
By the time the day rolled around for Chris to pick me up, I was desperate to talk to him. When he pulled in front of the house, I came out before he even put the car in park. But when I got there, someone else was in the front seat.
I stopped on the frozen walkway, holding my bag and staring at the brunette fiddling with her bangs in the visor mirror.
“Hey,” Chris said, getting out. “Why didn’t you wait? I was going to help you with your bag.”
“Are we dropping someone off?” I asked.
He popped the trunk. “I was going to tell you,” he said, taking my duffel. “My girlfriend, Heather, is coming up with us.”
The word girlfriend stuck me in the belly. Knocked all the air right out of me.
“You… you have a girlfriend?”
He threw my bag in and closed the trunk. “Yeah, I’ll introduce you guys. Get in, it’s freezing.”
I just stood there. Dumbstruck.
I didn’t want to get in. The fight-or-flight feeling I’d been wrestling with for the last three days doubled down.
I wanted to turn and run back to the house—the house I also wanted to run from. I didn’t want to be ferried up to Mike. I didn’t want to sit in the back seat while Chris drove me up to the cabin, without being able to form some plan on how to handle what was happening. And he had a girlfriend?
Why didn’t he tell me? He was dating someone and he didn’t even mention it?
“You okay?” he asked, eyeing me.
No. I was very much not okay. I had the weirdest feeling in my chest. Like I was being betrayed.
This was our time. Our car ride. How could he invite someone else to join us?
But it wasn’t our anything. It was just a ride.
I don’t know why, but this truth almost cut deeper than the Mike thing did. Another person I thought I could trust and depend on had failed me and lied to me about the nature of the way things are.
I could fully recognize that this was an irrational reaction. Chris wasn’t my boyfriend, he owed me nothing, especially explanations about who he was dating. But I felt betrayed anyway.
Chris studied me. “Hey…”
It was freezing. The wind whipped my hair around, stung my cheeks. I balked, trying to decide what to do. My bag was already in the trunk. Woofarine was in the car. The thought of going back in that house with the smell and the damp carpet—I couldn’t do it. So I got into the back seat.
My dog was sitting on Heather’s lap. He climbed the console and dove at me the second I got in. I hugged him like I was clutching a life raft.
“Hi, I’m Heather,” the woman said, twisting to smile at me as Chris got in the driver’s side.
“Larissa,” I managed. “Nice to meet you.”
It wasn’t nice to meet her. I didn’t want her here. I hated her and I didn’t even know her.
I felt nauseous.
I’d never had a panic attack before, but I felt like I was going to have one now.
I’d been counting on being able to talk to Chris during the ride so he could tell me what to do about Mike.
Now I couldn’t have the conversation with Chris.
I was going to show up at the cabin with no plan—and I didn’t even want to see Mike.
Tomorrow was Christmas. I was supposed to…
what? Pretend everything was okay in front of everyone?
Open presents and drink hot chocolate and act like nothing happened?
Chris didn’t ask to see my EpiPen the way he always did when he was taking me somewhere.
This was the moment I wanted to cry. Chris not checking my medicine felt like some fatal blow. Like he’d stopped caring if I was okay. And I wasn’t okay.
We drove in silence for half an hour. Or rather Chris and I were silent, and Heather talked nonstop.
Chris’s car smelled like it always did, like him and the leather from the seats and the baby-powder air freshener he always got when he washed his car.
But I couldn’t get the wet, shampoo-laced urine-vomit smell of the carpet out of my nose.
It was like Phil’s cigarette smoke, an olfactory reminder that something had changed and not for the better.
Chris and Heather were holding hands between the seats. I couldn’t look away from it.
“I found a really good place for lunch,” Chris said, looking at me in the rearview mirror. “It’s in Duluth. Can you wait two hours to eat?”
“I’m not feeling well,” I said.
Heather twisted to look at me again. “You okay? I’m a physician.”
I actually laughed. Right in her face. She was pretty and smart and a doctor? Of course he’d date a woman more on his level. What else could I expect? Someone like me?
“I’m just carsick,” I said.
“Do you need me to stop?” he asked, already slowing down.
“No. I just want to get there.”
“We can just do a drive-through,” Heather said to Chris. “Get up there faster.”
Chris went quiet for a moment. “Is that what you want to do?” he asked, glancing at me in the rearview.
“Yes,” I said, looking away.
I couldn’t stand the idea of sitting across from the two of them in a restaurant.
This was wrong. Everything was wrong.
I wanted to fight with someone. I wanted to have a full-blown screaming match.
But not with Mike. I wanted to have it with Chris.
I wanted to throw things at him, demand an explanation.
I wanted an apology, and I couldn’t even tell you for what.
I was more upset with Chris than I was with my own boyfriend after everything that he did.
I looked down at Woofarine in my lap. He had a pink lipstick kiss on his head.
My stomach rolled.
The pungent carpet smell in my nose.
Clasped hands between the seat.
Her Louis Vuitton luggage next to my faded old duffel bag in the trunk.
Worse. Her Louis Vuitton bag in the bedroom they’d share up at the cabin.
The walls were so thin…
I moved the dog, lurched forward to grab Chris’s water bottle from the drink holder, whipped off the top, and threw up.