Chapter 18
AMELIE
PLAYLIST: LOVE CHAINS – BOYY, MALI, ST FRANCIS HOTEL
“Did anything happen with him?” I ask Alex the moment we’re back in the car.
“She was at your place all day,” he says. “I couldn’t reach her, she said she wanted to go to uni, but I couldn’t reach her. I accessed your apartment, no worries, already replaced the door, but I had a very bad feeling. Found her on the bathroom floor, barely breathing.”
“I don’t care about fucking the fucking door,” I say. “Shit. Did you tell her dad?”
“I haven’t,” he says. “I felt it wouldn’t be the appropriate measure and only add to the tensions.”
“How bad is it?”
“On what scale?”
“One to ten,” I say.
“Eleven.”
“Fuck,” I breathe out as my stomach clenches.
“Where is she right now?”
“At your place. I took all the drugs. She wanted to sleep and ordered me to get you.”
“And you left?” I ask incredulously, because leaving her alone after she almost overdid it is kind of reckless.
“She wanted me to get you,” he says. “You are important to her. I took the drugs.”
“I bet you didn’t take everything. Did you know about her bathroom storage? The alcohol in the nightstand? That survival kit in her bag?”
“No,” he says, and I roll my eyes.
I call El.
“Hey,” I say when she answers. “We’re on our way. Are you home?”
“Yeah,” she says in a distant tone.
“Good,” I say. “We’ll be there in thirty. I got you something.”
“See ya,” she says, and we hang up.
“Here,” Alex says and hands me a set of keys. “The new door. El has one; these are the others.”
I take the four keys, remove one from the band, and give him one. “You’re free to enter whenever in doubt. Only when in doubt.”
He nods.
I have a heavy rock in my stomach, and every red light makes me more nervous by the minute.
When we’re finally home, I grab my bag and run up the stairs instead of taking the elevator. I need to move my body.
I don’t even register the new lock and door, because all I want to see is El.
I enter my studio, don’t see her immediately, and rush into the bedroom.
There she’s lying curled up in the bed, staring into nothingness.
I slip off my shoes and crawl into bed with her.
“Hey,” I say softly when I lie down on my side in front of her.
She looks at me. I can see there is a storm raging in her. I don’t dare ask what happened.
Tears run down her cheeks. El doesn’t cry. But today she does. So I grasp around her and pull her close.
We lie there until the day becomes a night. I stroke through her hair, kiss her forehead, and hold her.
“Okay,” she says finally, a while after her sobs have died in the darkness of the room. “It’s okay. You can let go of me now.”
“I don’t want to,” I say.
“Okay,” she says and adds dryly, “But I really have to pee though.”
I laugh and let go of her.
“Go,” I say.
She laughs and gets up. She does not close the bathroom door. She never does, something I have gotten so used to. With her, there is just nothing weird or strange, because she doesn’t care.
She takes a very long time in the bathroom after flushing the toilet. So long, I am getting concerned. I get up and walk to the open door.
“Are you alright?” I ask without looking inside.
“Yeah,” she says so unconvincingly, that I stick my head into the room. She’s sitting on the floor, leaning against the glass wall separating the shower, staring at the floor.
I grab the small stuffed turtle I bought for her as a gift, get in the bathroom, sit down in front of her with my legs crossed, and hold it up to her face.
“For you,” I say.
She looks at it and smiles.
“How do you know?” she asks.
I smirk. “There were three turtles in your room in Sagaponack.”
She takes it from my hand and presses it against her chest.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “I’ll name her Libby. She looks like a Libby.”
“Whatever floats your boat,” I say and laugh, before I get serious again. “Tell me what he did,” I say, putting my hand on her free hand.
“I can’t—“ she says and pulls her hand away. “If he ever finds out, I am dead.”
“El,” I say and grasp her legs as I move closer to her. “Listen to me very closely. He will never find out anything from me. I promise. I am asking because I need to know if I am in need of an alibi for what I am going to do with him.”
She looks at me, bewildered.
“Tell me what he did,” I say again. There is anger in me. Rage, and it stirs in my chest like a roaring fire.
“You wouldn’t—“
“I would, without a blink,” I say, and then something fundamentally stupid slips out of my mouth. It slips, because the anger I feel is rooted in my own disdain for my father, for the world I was brought up in, and it connects me to the person I once was. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
My hand slaps in front of my mouth, and El looks at me with wide eyes.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“You killed someone?” she asks in a whisper, and the moment she does, I panic. I jump up and run from the room.
FUCK!
Panic consumes me, and I walk up and down the bedroom, nervously brushing through my hair as I realize what just happened. I blew everything up.
EVERYTHING!
Suddenly, hands grasp my arms. Her hands. She stops me and stands in front of me.
“Amy,” she says. “Look at me.”
I can’t. I need to run. I am not Amelie right now. I am back in my past life, where I had to protect Sophie—
“Look at me,” she says forcefully. And I do.
My eyes meet hers.
“I am not going to tell anyone,” she says. “I will be your secret keeper, just as you are mine. Do you understand?”
I nod.
“Whatever you did, you had your reasons.”
Yes, I had all the reasons.
“Tell me what he did,” I breathe out. “I need to know.”
Her eyes widen as she opens her mouth. Her voice shaking, detached, horrified. She draws back her shoulders and then physically detaches.
“He ordered me to join him and his friends if I want to keep my trust and everything. I told him to fuck off and that I don’t want it. But he doesn’t take no for an answer. He ordered Alex to bring me to him, and he locked me in and he and his friends—“
She bursts into tears and screams at me. Words just vomit from her soul. Words that needed to be said. And every word she said makes me sick to my stomach.
“He just takes whatever he wants. He always has. Why do you think I don’t do feelings or relationships?
Because I have a father who fucks me any other day, because that’s why he has a daughter.
To have young flesh to fuck. Wanna know what he said?
I’m getting too old and used now. I should get a baby, and he had one of his friends—“
She shakes uncontrollably, while murderous rage consumes me.
The last sentence was the one thing pushing me over the edge.
I snap into a self I have buried, a self my father trained me to become in case something threatened Sophie. I run to the door, in dire need to hit the life out of Alex’s face and then go kill her father.
“Amy!” she screams after me as I am already barefoot on the staircase. I stop in my tracks. “Amy, you promised!”
You promised.
Amy promised.
I am not Amy right now.
El runs after me down the stairs to where I stand in the dark staircase.
“It will land with him,” she says. “He will know I talked.”
“Not if he can’t speak anymore,” I say, dangerously cold.
“Amy,” she says and grasps my face. “I love you. I love you for wanting to protect me, but I won’t let you risk anything for me.”
I love you.
She said I love you.
“You love me,” I repeat, and the tension in my body vanishes, replaced by warmth spreading through me.
“Yes, for fucks sake,” she screams at me. “I love you. I loved you from the moment I met you, I loved you in every moment we had together, and I love you even more now.”
I am too flabbergasted to say anything.
There is this rage.
And there is she.
Who needs me.
Who loves me.
“Come back inside,” she says, grasps my hand, and pulls me with her.
She pulls me back into the studio, to the couch, pushes me on it, and lies down on me.
And while my outside is calmly brushing over her hair, my inside is not. My inside is a wild storm of messy thoughts, emotions, and the deep desire to kill everyone who dared to touch her.
“I won’t allow him to ever touch you again,” I finally say. “I won’t leave you alone anymore. Promise.”
“You can’t promise that, and you know that,” she says, her head resting on my chest.
“I can,” I say.
She lifts her head and looks at me.
“I am always alone, Amy. Always.”
“You’re not,” I say, wrap my arms around her, and kiss her hair. “Because I love you, too.”
The moment I said it, the moment I realized what I just said, heaviness appeared in my chest. How can I love her when I was just in bed with another woman?
Gods, this is such a massive fuck up.
“You do?” she asks.
“Yes, I do,” I say and add, “Shut that pestilent fucker of a voice in your mind that tells you crap. You know I do.”
She laughs as she rests her chin on her hands on my chest and looks at me.
“And what’s with the prof?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s fucked.”
“Did you fuck?” she asks, and I swallow. Telling her about it in this volatile moment seems as wrong as lying.
“Yeah, kinda,” I say hesitantly.
“Was it good?”
“Yes,” I say even more hesitantly.
“My dear Amy, you can always tell me about it, you know that, right? I am not going to implode. On the contrary.”
“I just told you I love you,” I say.
“Yeah, and? Just because you love me doesn’t mean you can’t love anyone else.”
“I don’t love her,” I say.
“For fucks sake, Amy. Get the hint, seriously,” she says, almost angrily.
“Seriously, I mean it,” I say and sit up a bit, causing her to get off my chest.
“Listen,” she says. “I don’t care who you fuck with, love or pretend to not love, I. Don’t. Care.”
She says it, but her body language tells me something very different.
“You say you don’t,” I say, “But you do. You do care. So much you have to convince yourself you don’t. because the simple thought of feeling the pain is intolerable to you.”
She stares at me, and I feel horrible for even saying it.
“I’m going to celebrate my birthday next week. Invite her,” says El.
“I am not going to invite her,” I say.
“You will, or I will,” she threatens me.
“Why would you do that to yourself?” I ask her incredulously.
A part of me wants it, the other part is horrified. I don’t want both of them to be in the same room with me. I have created two different versions of Amelie, and I can’t be two versions of me at the same time.
“Because you’re wrong. And I will prove it to you.”
I roll my eyes at her.
She stands up and stretches out her arm for me to take her hand.
“Let’s take a bath,” she says.
“A bath?”
“Yeah, are you stupid today?
“Sorry for not being able to follow your wild train of thoughts today,” I say.
“I need you to wash away some awful memories,” she says. “I also need you to tell me everything that happened in Florida.”
“Why would you want to hear it?” I ask.
“Because it’s hot and takes my mind off things.”
It takes her mind off things. So she does mind. She uses it as a distraction from the pain she is in.
A pain I can do nothing about.
Except for doing what she wants me to do.
So, I grasp her hand.
We get into the bubbly bath together, and she leans into me.
“El,” I say as I squeeze the sponge with hot water over her chest. “If you want to be free of him, I will be with you every step of the way. And I mean every step. What is mine is yours, you understand? Take whatever you need, and if he cuts you off, you just take my cards. If you want him gone, you tell me, and he will be gone.”
“I know,” she says, turns around, and kisses me. “But I won’t let you jeopardize your life for mine.”