8. Jolie
JOLIE
Jarvis's arm is heavy across my waist, and Jett's breath is warm against the back of my neck. The room is dark and quiet except for their slow, even breathing. They think I'm safe and that I listened, that the fight is over because I stopped talking about leaving and let them hold me while I cried.
They're wrong.
I don't let myself cry now. Crying makes noise, and noise wakes them up. I press my lips together and hold my breath until the pressure behind my eyes fades.
I slide out from under Jarvis's arm, and it's the hardest thing I've ever done. His hand twitches, then settles. I hold my breath and count to thirty in my head, slow and steady, before I move.
My bag is already packed. I did it while they were downstairs talking to the staff. I stuffed jeans and sweaters and my laptop into the old duffel bag I brought from the city and hid it in the closet behind the winter coats. I told myself I was just organizing. I lied.
I pull on leggings and a hoodie. My breasts ache immediately, heavy and tender, already leaking a little against the fabric of my bra. It's been six hours since Jarvis and Jett fed from me, and my body knows it.
The note is in my pocket. I wrote it at the kitchen table while Jett was in the shower. Three sentences.
I'm sorry. I can't watch you all lose everything because of me. Please take care of the restaurant.
It's not enough, and it will never be enough, but I don't have more words. They took all my words when they looked at me like I was worth keeping.
I tiptoe to the door. The hallway is dark. I pass the guest room where my grandparents are sleeping, and my chest cracks open. I press my palm against the wood. I'm so sorry. Then I walk away.
The stairs creak on the third step, and I freeze, waiting. Nothing moves above, so I keep going.
The kitchen is cold. I leave the note on the counter, weighted down by the salt shaker, and see the new calendar on the wall that Jarvis bought yesterday. He was joking about it at breakfast, saying we should mark every day I choose them.
I can't look at it, so I grab my car keys from the hook by the door and leave.
The night air is sharp and bites through my hoodie. My car is parked behind the restaurant with a bag I threw in the trunk earlier. I didn't let myself think about what I was doing then, and I'm not letting myself think now.
I drive.
The highway is empty, my headlights cutting through the dark as the white lines blur together. I don't know where I'm going. I just know I need to cross the state line and be far enough away that they won't follow or can't follow, that they'll realize I'm doing them a favor.
My phone buzzes at 4:15 AM, then again at 4:30. I don't look. I know it's them, or my grandparents, or Rudolf somehow already spreading rumors.
I turn the phone off.
At 5:45 AM, I cross into the next state. The sign is green and ugly, and I want to cry when I pass it, but I don't. I keep driving until my eyes burn and my breasts throb with a deep, heavy pain that makes me nauseous.
I find a motel, the third one I see, a cheap place with a flickering neon sign that buzzes and hums VACANCY. The clerk doesn't look up from his phone as he takes my cash and slides a key across the counter—Room 114, ground floor, back corner.
The room smells like bleach and old cigarettes, the carpet is stained, and the bedspread is a color that might have been orange once. I lock the door, slide the chain, and push the desk chair under the knob.
Then I open my bag.
The cotton strips are at the bottom. I didn't pack them—I don't remember packing them—but here they are, folded neat and cruel, waiting for me like an old friend or an old enemy.
My hands shake as I lift my hoodie. My breasts are swollen and hard, leaking in slow, steady drips that run down my stomach.
They need to be emptied, need mouths on them, need Jarvis's deep, rhythmic pulls and Jett's hungry groans.
They don't have that. They have me.
I start wrapping.
The first strip goes around my ribs, and I pull it tight, tighter than I used to. I'm punishing myself, I know, and I deserve it. The cotton digs into my tender flesh, and I gasp at the pain. I should have never stopped binding, never let myself believe I could be normal.
The second strip goes higher, wrapping across my chest to flatten my breasts and compress the ache into something dense and manageable.
Milk immediately soaks the fabric, warm and wet against my skin.
I wrap another layer, then another, until I'm dizzy from the pressure.
It feels like my chest is trapped under concrete, but I'm contained and managed, back to being the girl who handles things alone.
I lie down on the bed, the scratchy bedspread rough against my skin and the pillow smelling like someone else's hair. I stare at the ceiling, which has water stains in the shape of a country I don't recognize.
My phone is off, and I have no intention of turning it on.
I try to sleep, but I can't. The bindings are too tight, my breasts screaming and heavy with milk that has nowhere to go.
I can feel it building, pressing against the cotton, looking for release.
I press my palms against my chest, trying to relieve the pressure, but it doesn't work.
It never worked, and that's why I needed them.
I roll onto my side, and the pain shifts and deepens. I roll back, but nothing helps.
At 7:30 AM, I give up. I go to the bathroom.
I turn on the light, and the fluorescent bulb flickers, making my reflection look green and sick. My eyes are hollow, my hair tangled, and the bindings are stained with milk, wet circles spreading across the front. I look like a disaster. I feel like one.
I turn on the shower, but the water is only lukewarm. I step in still wearing the bindings because I can't stand to look at myself naked. Not now. Not without them here to tell me I'm beautiful.
The water soaks the cotton. It gets heavier, pulling down on my chest, and I finally let myself cry.
It starts as a whimper, then a sob, and then I'm sliding down the shower wall with my knees drawn up as the water pounds my shoulders while I cry so hard I can't breathe.
I see my grandmother's hand pressed to her mouth, my grandfather's voice whispering "Is it true?
" like he couldn't believe I'd fallen so far.
I see Jarvis's face when he told me my real life was here, and Jett's forehead against mine, telling me to learn how to stay.
They wanted me, and I couldn't even hold onto that.
I ruined it. All of it. They were going to fight for me, and I ran. I proved them right. I proved I'm not worth the trouble.
I try to express milk by hand, but it's messy and painful and wrong. My fingers are clumsy, and the milk sprays everywhere, thin and wasted, running down the drain with the shower water. It doesn't relieve the pressure. It just makes me feel broken.
I stay in the shower until the water runs cold, then get out without drying off. I sit on the edge of the bed in a towel, shivering, and stare at the phone.
I turn it on.
Forty-seven missed calls. Thirty-two texts. Most of them are from Jett and Jarvis. A few are from numbers I don't recognize.
I read the first text from Jett. It came at 4:20 AM. "Where are you? Answer me."
Then at 4:45: "I swear to God, Jolie, if you ran..."
At 5:10: "We know you left. The note is not enough. Call us."
At 6:00: "We're coming for you. Wherever you are. Don't do this."
I can't read any more. I drop the phone on the bed like it burned me.
They know. Of course they know. They're probably already looking. Jarvis has connections, Jett has resources, and they could find me if they wanted to. Maybe they already have.
The thought should scare me, but it doesn't. Some sick, broken part of me hopes they do, hopes they break down the door and drag me back, hopes they prove me wrong about being someone who gets left behind.
But the other part, the part that watched my grandfather's face crumble, knows I did the right thing even if it feels like dying.
I lie back on the bed, the bindings wet and cold against my skin and the pain a constant, throbbing drumbeat. I press my forearm across my eyes and breathe.
I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I know, the room is brighter with the cheap curtains barely blocking the afternoon sun.
It's 2:15 PM.
I've slept for hours, but I don't feel rested.
I feel like I've been hit by a truck. My chest is on fire, the bindings tighter from the dried cotton or more swelling, I can't tell.
I sit up, and the room spins as I catch myself on the nightstand.
I need to eat, but the thought of food makes me sick.
I stand up and walk to the window, pulling back the curtain just enough to see the parking lot. My car is the only one in front of my room, and beyond the fence, the highway stretches with cars zipping past, people going places and living their lives, not thinking about me.
I let the curtain fall.
I pick up the motel phone, an old rotary style, beige and sticky. I dial my grandparents' number from memory, because it's the only number I know by heart. My finger hovers over the last digit.
I shouldn't. I know I shouldn't. But I need to hear their voices, even if it's the last time.
I dial.
It rings once. Twice. Three times.
"Hello?" My grandfather's voice is rough and tired, like he hasn't slept either.
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out, my grip on the receiver so hard my knuckles hurt.
"Jolie?" my grandfather says again. "Is this you?"
I hear my grandmother in the background. "Who is it, Henry?"
"I don't know. There's no one..."
I hang up.
The click is loud as I stare at the phone, my hands shaking so badly I have to set it down twice before it stays in the cradle.
I just heard his voice, and he sounded sad, not angry. Just sad.
That might be worse.