Chapter 18
eighteen
Cramping My Style
Iwake to a sharp pain in my lower belly.
“Fuuuuuuuuck,” I groan pathetically.
My mattress is still mostly inflated, so I roll off the side and crawl toward the bathroom.
“Cait?” Bastian calls in the darkness from inside his circle of books.
“Nothing, just, ugh…go back to meditating or whatever,” I grunt out.
“You’re in pain,” he says, suddenly standing beside me.
“Uh huh.”
I take a few more crawling steps toward the bathroom where my pain killers and electric heating pad are tucked away in a clear storage tub. I should’ve gotten them out tonight. I knew I was close enough—
“Uhhhnggg,” I growl at the pain and curl in on myself from another contraction.
“You’re bleeding! Where are you hurt?” he asks, crouching beside me.
“My vagina,” I groan. “Period.”
“Period?”
“Cycle. Woman cycle,” I say between stilted breaths that thread the eyes of agony.
“Your fertility process. I understand,” he says. “What can I…how do I help?”
His hands hover over my body like he’s afraid to touch me.
I point a shaky arm into the bathroom. “Bring the bin. Clear box.”
He gets up and marches into the bathroom, turning this way and that as his hands search for the tub.
“Lefter, beside toilet,” I manage through clenched teeth as another wave of pain hits me, bringing nausea with it.
He grabs the container and brings it to me.
“Water. Water bottle.” I point at the kitchen island.
I open the container and get the pain killers as Bastian grabs my bottle. I guzzle down two pills with way more water than I need, trying to quell the sickening sensation growing in my stomach. I set the bottle aside and grab the heating pad, then crawl toward the closest wall with an outlet.
“Now what?” he asks, his voice taut with worry.
“Heat pad,” I say, plugging it in.
I lay it over my tummy, then crank the power to max. A blue zap emits from the outlet with a loud pop that makes me scream. The light on the heating pad controller goes out, and I wail out a long curse in pained frustration.
My heating pad. Possibly the wall outlet. Maybe the breaker. Fucking great!
I throw the pad off me and ball my fists against the burning in my eyes. Bastian leaves me and I hear water running a moment later. He returns, picking me up off the floor in a fluid movement. I lean against him as I sob from helplessness. The meat grinder of my guts doesn’t improve things, either.
He sits on the side of the bathtub that’s swiftly filling with hot water and sets my feet down, balancing me on his leg.
“I’m getting you bloody,” I cry, trying to stand up in the bath.
“Like I care about that,” he says, pulling me back down.
His hand slides over my lower belly and I recoil from the touch, pushing his arm away on instinct.
“Am I hurting you?”
“No, just—”
“Then stop fighting me,” he snarls.
His palm covers my tummy and I battle back more tears at the shame.
The shame of a swell of skin where it was once flat.
The shame that no matter how hard I’ve tried, it remains.
The shame that this mound of unwanted flesh cost me an engagement.
That the underlying reason for this pudge has made me practically infertile.
I can never have the family I’ve always wanted, and that made him no longer want me.
“What are these horrible thoughts?” he murmurs against the shell of my ear, pressing me back against his chest.
Dark, inky magic glitters around his arm in the moonlight, and a script I don’t recognize scrawls across him like a tattoo. His palm warms against my belly, and the pain eases a little.
“It just hurts,” I say, placing my hand over his to hold myself steady.
“No, that’s not what this is.”
His other arm comes up to my neck, forcing me to lean all the way back into him.
“Tell me,” he whispers.
The water pounds from the faucet into the tub, dampening our voices. Maybe I could say it out loud, and he wouldn’t hear, but then…it would be out.
“I’m fat,” I declare.
“No, you’re Cait,” he says.
I chuckle, despite the pain and tears streaming down my cheeks.
“I didn’t used to be this big, and my ex let me know just how much he didn’t like the change. He told me I wasn’t the woman he used to love, and—I mean—he wasn’t wrong. A lot changed with my illnesses, and more than just my weight. But I didn’t think…”
My lip trembles as fresh tears spill over my eyes.
Bastian’s hand strokes across my neck to my shoulder. He brushes my hair away and hugs me tighter.
“Tell me.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. “I didn’t think I’d become…unlovable.”
My composure breaks and I sob. Bastian sighs into my hair and rocks me gently as his hand warms my belly. He holds me in silence as I let out my frustration. My tears splatter on my arms and roll down to my elbows, dripping into the tub.
The water reaches my mid-shin, and Bastian lifts a clawed foot to twist the bath controls. The gushing faucet slows to a trickle and so do my tears.
He grabs my chin and turns my head over my shoulder. “You are the quintessence of lovable.”
I search his face for any hint of a lie, but there’s none.
His lips press against my temple in a featherlight touch before he pulls back. Then he stands, leaving me on the edge of the bath.
“Now, strip off your clothes and get in.”
Protests die on my lips as he turns away and closes the door.
I look at myself in the mirror. My bloodied shorts and rumpled night shirt. My tear-stained face and red eyes. The moon illuminates it all. There’s nowhere to hide.
I push my shorts and underwear down, then step each dripping foot out of the leg holes. I straighten up and tug off my shirt, leaving myself totally bare.
Quintessence of lovable.
I grab the swell of my stomach in a rude way, pinching it in my hands and jiggling it.
“Stop it, Jerry!” Bastian yells from the other side of the door.
I chuckle despite my tears and release myself. I grab my dirty shorts and wipe the excess blood from between my legs—they’re ruined anyway—then sink into the tub. The hot water envelops me like a hug, and I groan in relief.
“Tell me about this ex,” Bastian says.
“Tell me about where you come from,” I retort.
He grunts. “You first.”
I let out a long sigh. “We met because of Oscar.
He was just a cute little kitten at the adoption place and we both wanted him.
We argued about who had better resources to care for him, who needed him most…
it was a really funny sort of ‘enemies to lovers’ meet-cute.
There was energy in the air. I think we both felt it.
“After arguing for a few minutes, he challenged me to a ‘care off.’ It was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard of since, how can a cat tell you which house he prefers to live in, but he had so much heart and seemed to love Oscar at first sight like me.
I signed the adoption papers with the caveat that if Oscar preferred his house, I would hand him over. ”
“You’ve taken everything from me! You’re not taking him!”
I pinch my eyes shut.
“Anyway, we ended up going on a few dates and we had some real chemistry. We moved in together after six months. He joked that it was like Oscar had divorced parents and we should fix it so he had one whole household. He had been so charming.” I laugh at myself for falling for that charm.
“We lived together for two years and on the surface, I told myself it was great, but there were things he would do or say that just felt…cruel. I waved them off because I was in love, and they were infrequent enough to be written off as a bad day.
“He proposed to me on the third anniversary of getting Oscar, a few weeks before my thirty-third birthday…and then my diseases started to show. Little at first, just some cellulite on my legs. I’d heard that my skin would get thinner as I aged, and I’d never been skinny like a model, so I accepted it as just a change my body was going through.
“Then I started to get bad acne. No matter how much I cleaned my face, I’d still get pimples at every part of my cycle. I was putting on weight even though my diet hadn’t changed, and I was getting the worst cramps of my life on my period.
“He kept telling me all the things he hated about my changing body, telling me to fix it, and I tried.”
I splash my face and wipe my fingers across my eyes, hiding the tears that no one can see.
“I went to a dietician who told me to cut out meat, so I did. It helped a little with my acne, but my weight got worse. I didn’t know how to eat a vegetarian diet, and I just ended up binging chips when I was really hungry.
I exacerbated my own problems because I was uninformed, but nowhere along the way did any of my doctors ever tell me that this might not be a natural part of aging.
“I started going to the gym obsessively even though I was exhausted, and I was getting stronger, but not leaner. I put myself on a strict caloric diet…and then my hair started falling out.”
I rub the smooth skin of my scalp. I always part my hair differently when I wear it down now, so no one can see my bald spot.
I scoff. “Well, anyway, it wasn’t just the physical. I was having major depressive episodes, and my sex drive tanked. When I finally stopped forcing myself to put out even when I didn’t feel like it, Jeremy had had enough of my illnesses, and me.”
“Jeremy,” Bastian says each syllable with a deadly growl.
“Yeah, people used to call him Jerry sometimes and he hated it. That’s why I call my bad thoughts Jerry thoughts. They belong to a person who doesn’t love me, who never loved me. I was a convenience and a pretty thing to show off, until I wasn’t.”
I wiggle my toes against the edge of the tub, sending ripples out in every direction.
“He’s an imbecile, and not worth the air he breathes,” Bastian says and it sounds strained, through gritted teeth.
“I know,” I say.
“But you don’t believe it,” he says. “I can feel your heart, Cait. You shame yourself for a disease you could not control. You judge yourself so harshly when you’ve taken every step you could to find healing.”
My throat tightens and tears sting my eyes again as I whisper, “Yeah, I know.”
“You deserve so much better, and not because of your weight, or your hair, or whether you’re happy enough. Those things have nothing to do with it.”
The water splashes around me as I quietly heave my sorrows into my cupped hands.
“Do you want me to kill him?”
I gasp. “What? No!”
“I think it would be best if I killed him.”
I roll over and grab the edge of the tub. “Why?”
“Well, if I kill Jeremy, your Jerry thoughts can die with him,” he says so plainly, as if it makes perfect sense.
“I don’t think it’ll work that way.”
“Hmm, you’re right. The magic can persist even after death. We’ll have to reverse his incantations first, then kill him,” he says, sounding way too into this idea.
“Let’s not talk about killing people, alright? It’s illegal.”
He grumbles. “If I mustn’t…”
I smile. “Thank you.”
The quiet stretches between us as I let his words soak in.
I should believe I’m worth more than what Jeremy told me I was.
I shouldn’t let someone who never loved me spoil my opinion of myself.
Bastian doesn’t want that for me. Oscar doesn’t either.
I bet if Renee knew, she wouldn’t want me to feel like this.
I deserve better.
I deserve better.
“There’s my Cait,” Bastian says, and it warms me through to the core.
“What, have I become part of your hoard?” I ask.
“Yes. You’re a living story I’ll consume every day, and now you’re mine,” he says, his voice soft but confident.
“Tell me your living story,” I say on a yawn.
He hums. “Not tonight.”
“Why not?” I ask indignantly. “You said you would tell me.”
“I don’t want you to drown.”
“What?”
“My story is long, and you’re tired.”
“After I bared myself to you, you’re trying to get out of being vulnerable with me?” I say with a scowl.
He chuckles and I can tell he’s uncomfortable. “Maybe a little bit.”
I stop my selfish line of thinking in its tracks. He’s ashamed, too. He’s scared and not ready yet.
“Okay…” I mutter. “I can wait.”
He sighs, the sound of relief overcoming him. “Thank you.”