14. Audrey
AUDREY
PLAYLIST: WAY DOWN WE GO – KALEO
“You are fucking mental,” I say as I stare into Cass's eyes. My brain is so fuzzy I can’t sharpen my vision, and little lights dance around her head. I feel nothing and everything at the same time.
“I have it all planned,” she says.
“Then go do it,” I say. “Sounds like you don’t need me.”
“Gods, you are such a stubborn idiot,” she says.
Whatever.
I don’t even know why I let her come up.
“Then leave,” I say and point to the elevator.
“I’m not leaving here without you,” she says, and it is the one thing that pushes me over the rails.
“Who’s the idiot now?” I round on her. “You come here, one moment you tell me stuff and then call me shit, you lie to your fucking self, hide behind that poor girl from the street who’s against the world while you do nothing about it,” I shout, taking a step closer to be more intimidating.
I need her gone. I need to be alone and forget about this world.
“I don’t want to see your face,” I say from above as much as I can, channeling the last role I had. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say. Go fuck off and live your life where I don’t have to hear what a fucking problem I am.”
I pant heavily as I look down at her.
She stares up into my eyes.
“You’re not a problem,” she whispers.
A wave of her scent trails up my nose.
Goosebumps spread over my arms.
“Liar,” I say. I need to drive her out. She needs ot be gone.
“You are not a problem,” she says again, emphasizing every single word.
I close my eyes for the briefest of moments.
Open them again.
“LEAVE!” I shout at her.
But instead of leaving, she just stands there and looks at me with her dark eyes, daring me.
I shake my head slowly, fighting the inner demon that always wins as I am about to do the one thing I have perfected over the years: driving everyone who comes too close away.
“Cass, the untouchable girl from the streets,” I say in a derogatory tone, pursing my lips. “Hiding the scratched ego and broken dreams in a purpose for a girl who’s fucking dead. Desperately trying to make things right because she can’t handle feeling the guilt. Pathetic.”
I see the hurt happening in real time in her eyes. As it should. I want to hurt her so much it pains me.
I have to hurt her because otherwise I’d have to acknowledge that she is right.
And I am not strong enough to do that.
“You’re trying to drive me away,” she says, closing the little distance that was between us.
She is too close.
Has seen too much.
Knows too much.
It is too close.
Too tight.
Too suffocating—
It is exactly what that part in me, the one I buried deep within me, wants. And because it can never get what it wants, I am longing for the only thing I know solves the problem:
Violence.
Crossed boundaries.
Fucked up shit.
“Because I am the problem,” I say darkly. “Because the only thing I can think about right now is that I want you to hit me until I bleed, choke me until I can’t breathe anymore, destroy me until I can’t feel all the pain I have in me.”
And because she doesn’t react, I lean in on her, my fingers trailing over her neck as I whisper with a dangerously silent voice, “You better leave, because I am this close—“ I lean in until my lips are half an inch from hers, “to doing the same to you if you don’t get your ass out of here.”
She doesn’t say a word.
Doesn’t move.
Doesn’t avert her eyes.
The only thing that happens is her chest breathing getting deeper with her chest heaving up and down.
Her lips part.
Her warm breath caresses over my skin.
No.
I slowly shake my head as I realize that instead of driving her away, I have turned her on.
This cannot be.
It cannot—
I stumble back.
Crash into the wall behind me.
I can’t breathe properly.
It’s too close.
The world around me zones out.
The only thing I see is a long tunnel.
I squint my eyes.
I can’t catch my breath.
And then her fist hits me.
I react without thinking.
I push her away; she grasps my arm, and I hit into the wall opposite.
“Sure you want this?” she asks as she pushes up my arm behind my back. The pain in my shoulder is exactly what I want.
I try to catch her leg, but she is fast, and I rush to the floor as she pulls my stand away.
But I have gotten into many fights.
Before she even lands on me, I kick back and hit her knees. My two-second window to get up.
I kick her again.
She grabs my leg and holds it.
What the fuck!
How does she have so much strength?
I am back on the floor, and she’s on me with her entire body, pressing her forearm into my throat.
Hard.
So hard, my breathing slows down.
I close my eyes and bare my throat to her, because the rush of adrenaline shoots through my system and I finally feel something other than the pain. Something like relief. Something like feeling alive. Something like being myself again.
I flap my arms to the side onto the cold marble.
I am here.
I am alive.
I am feeling myself.
She lets go of me.
I just feel what I feel for another moment.
My head falls to the side as I open my eyes.
She sits and leans against the wall.
She made me remember who I am.
“I’m in,” I say out of the blue.
She scoffs out a chuckle of disbelief as her head falls back against the wall.
“You’re so fucked up,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say. “You too.”
And suddenly, we both start laughing. It starts as a snigger, and turns into a belly laugh.
A laugh I haven’t laughed in forever.
Because I have finally found someone to meet my crazy.