35. Cry
CIGARETTES AFTER SEX
Raymond used to say my best love songs came from violent-sad intersections. Where I’m lashing out, crying, screaming please love me underneath it.
“Violent-sad, baby. Do one more for me.”
He’d grin when he'd say it, too.
He liked believing he was the only one who knew where the vein was.
The one who had access to cut it open.
The one with the power to make it cry.
The rest of the world thought writing love songs was just me riding shotgun with Love drunk behind the wheel, Rage and Grief in the backseat—making out, fucking, fighting, smoking weed, Swift or Sheeran playing loud enough to drown out the sound of the rain slashing the windshield.
Nah, the way I love is much more sick and sinister.
And this, Raymond always knew.
For me, Love’s a loaded gun in my own hand, pointed at my own head.
Safety off, cocked, finger on the trigger,
barrel digging into my temple,
bracing and begging not to die.
But before anyone else can pull the trigger, I do it myself.
A bullet into my skull to beat them to it.
That’s my sad truth.
The only way I know how to love is by waiting to get shot.
Then hurting myself before they can.
Bracing. Betrayal. Begging. Barrel.
Bullet—
Bang.
I buzzed myself in,
never bothered to send a text.
Now I’m standing in his building,
knocking on the door again,
my heart gagged with her hands tied behind her back.
The late November chill follows me in as heat pumps high on this floor. The season of the awful in-between—cold breath, hot sweat, body not knowing whether to shiver or faint.
The hallway stinks of takeout and cigarette smoke. And somewhere, a baby’s crying behind the thin-ass walls.
I look down at the screen.
Again.
I read it.
Again.
Today 8:28 AM
973-555-0194
Hey. Thanks for showing up yesterday
Thanksgiving meant a lot
My moms won’t shut up about you
I kill the screen and shove my cell into my jacket pocket.
I’m about to knock again
when the door yanks open.
He’s stunned to see me,
confused stare piercing mine.
My lungs let go first.
My shoulders, second.
Then I look my bullet in the eye.
“Brandon.”
He steps back, opening the door wider.
I disappear inside.
// 24 HOURS EARLIER //
The door clicks shut behind me.
I grip the sink and glance up at Andrew’s bathroom mirror. My reflection’s a ghost—mouth bruised, blank stare, face pale, hair fucked. A girl with his kiss still on her mouth and nothing in her eyes.
A girl who stumbled away from something real, and left herself behind with him.
The nausea climbs up fast.
I try to choke it down,
but bile burns bitter in my throat.
My stomach lurches, everything spins, and I throw myself over the toilet.
My knees hit tile.
I scramble to lift the lid,
grip the edge,
and puke up Thanksgiving.
All of it—the food, the feelings.
My hair spills around me,
no time to hold it back.
It’s in my face,
stuck to my cheeks,
sticking to vomit-tears as they shoot down.
My body won’t stop shaking,
my vision’s blurring.
I’m trying to breathe through it.
I hear his voice surround me.
I feel him beside me.
My head falls into the crook of my arm. I don’t want him to see me like this—wet-faced, body heaving from the inside out.
I squeeze my eyes shut as if doing so can take me away from here. As if turning out the lights behind my eyes will make me invisible or scoop me up and take me home.
“Andrew,” I choke, shaking my head. “Fuck—I’m sorry.”
I’ve never apologized for my trauma, but I barfed all over a moment he’s been anticipating. I took the one thing he built up in his head as perfect, the one thing he’s been replaying in his head for weeks, and smashed it to pieces.
Now he’s seen what’s behind the contract.
I bet he’s thinking,
figures. Fantasy’s over. Girl of my dreams turned out a nightmare.
Bet he’s drafting the exit plan in his head as we speak, titled: How To Back The Fuck Out (Before It’s Too Late).
If he runs? Good.
Saves me from doing it first.
And for one long silent, stretched-out second, I think maybe he already has.
Until the shower kicks on—
pipes rattling, water beating tile.
I lift my head, my throat raw.
All around me, steam rises and swells in the bathroom, and behind the fogged shower glass, he’s a silhouette as water hammers down on his bare back.
“You comin’ in or what?” His voice bounces off the tile, water nearly drowning it out. “Ain’t gonna lie, it’s hittin’ real good.”
I don’t know what to do.
I count to ten to get it together.
Then ten more to challenge myself to stand.
I flush with a shaky hand
and stand on shakier legs.
When I look over my shoulder,
the bathroom door’s shut.
There are two towels on the counter next to the sink.
I glance back at him.
He’s soaked, solid,
backlit by steam.
I can’t think straight.
Hell, I can’t think at all.
That has to be what moves me forward: no brain or useful thoughts, only two legs going into the shower.
Andrew moves aside,
leans against the tile,
keeping his eyes on me.
I tip my head back into the stream, and water crashes down, soaking my hair, flooding my face.
It slides down my skin
as if it could wash away my past.
But it doesn’t. It never does.
This is how it goes, how it is.
Not even Andrew can change that, and I don’t know why I ever thought he could.
When my eyes open again,
they find his.
With his shoulder against the tiled wall, he watches me—face arcane, thoughts cryptic.
I can’t tell what he’s thinking.
The moment breaks. He pushes off the wall and steps in close, his chest brushing mine. I hold my breath as he draws nearer.
Then he reaches past me, grabbing the shampoo bottle behind my shoulder.
I exhale and drop my head, blinking the water from my lashes. “My hair’s gonna be wet ‘til Monday.”
He tilts his head.
“I’ll towel dry it.”
A small laugh slips out pitiful.
It sounds so simple.
After everything we just did,
and everything I just ruined,
simple feels surreal.
I rip my eyes from his, my gaze wandering down his body.
And fuck, he’s—fucking beautiful.
Every inch of him.
Chest broad, cut stomach, skin flushed from the water, tattoo written across his ribcage—my words, his body. A light trail of hair slashes from his navel through the V, between narrow hips cutting in deep.
His half-hard cock hangs heavy between his thighs. One vein running crooked, a freckle stamped on the thick head I never noticed ‘til now.
I skim over the scar on his side with my thumb, too afraid to ask about it, then slip my fingers over his tattoo.
I wonder what he’d do if he ever found out. Would he still love the song if he knew who bled it? Or would it feel stolen, become less his the second he realized it was first mine? Would he ever be able to hear it the same again?
My hand falls down his waist, catching on the edge of his hip.
When I look up, his eyes are already on me, watching me with his hair soaked and pushed back, water dripping from his face—his lashes, the tip of his nose, his lips.
“You’re breathtaking,” I say, barely above a whisper.
The second it leaves my mouth,
I want to throw up again.
But my words flash behind his eyes, and his brows pinch, his breath getting stuck somewhere between chest and throat.
He looks like he’s about to speak,
but the words never come.
Instead, a small, stunned smile takes over—crooked and late, taking the long way up to his mouth.
He moves closer, my nipples grazing his chest, and he smooths my wet hair back and away from my face. “You gonna let me wash your hair?”
He’s looking down at me as if I didn’t just puke up the night.
“You’re not gonna ask me what that was?”
He spins us so I’m out of the spray, his cock brushing soft against my ass, and he lathers his cheap-ass three-in-one boy shit in my hair. “Wasn’t gonna. Unless you wanna talk about it,” he says, massaging my scalp. “But if it’s ‘cause’a my cooking, we might be doomed...”
“Baby…”
Brandon’s voice snags.
“What the hell you doin’ here?”
He rubs a hand over his face,
half-asleep.
In a black hoodie and sweatpants, he stands with his feet apart and one arm across his chest, his hand held beneath his bicep. He’s staring at me, stunned and wrecked and scared. As if I punched a hole through time and stepped out of the past to fuck him up again.
My gaze floats around the apartment, stalling. It’s late—bone-tired late.
His window’s cracked open. The cold’s bleeding in and piercing heat.
The apartment smells like him: dryer sheets, his cologne, a hint of weed always soaked into his clothes.
A big leather couch is backed against the wall facing an even bigger TV.
A Knicks jersey’s framed on the wall.
Coffee table’s a graveyard—
burnt roaches, empty water bottles,
ashtray gasping for a breath.
“Baby,” he says. My eyes cut back to him, and he lifts a pierced brow. “You really here right now?”
His letter’s in my head.
His voice too, reading it and meaning every goddamn word, I fucking love you, Allison. And now I’m standing in front of him, and he’s looking at me—green eyes glassy and teetering on the edge of hope—like there’s still a chance, and he still loves me.
And I’m fucking up his head more by being here. “I shouldn’t have come,” I rush out. “I shouldn’t be here.”
His eyes widen as I turn for the door.
He jumps to my side. “You think I care why you came? I don’t.
I don’t give a fuck. You’re here now, so don’t drive all the way out here, then walk out on me, Baby.
Not tonight.” Our eyes lock, and his are full, raw, and openly begging.
“Whatever it is?” He flattens his hand against the door.
“You came to me. You show up like this, so stay. Please, it’s late. It’s past one.”
It’s past one when Little Death crawls into Andrew’s bed, sliding in between me and him—soft-footed and silent in the middle of the night.
It doesn’t care if I’m buried in his skin, wrapped up inside his arms. It slides down like clockwork, wanting to make sure I’m still loving it,
wanting my hand,
a hush,
a lullaby.
This middle of the night ache doesn’t come from desire, or grief, or from falling apart. This one cries for comfort in the dark.
An ache belonging to a girl