Chapter 7
Eris
And over the course of the last week,
safe had ceased to be a place for Sydney,
and had become a person.
― V.E. Schwab, Vicious
If there was any such thing as polar opposites, that was what she and Denny were.
Eris had never been close enough to anyone to clash with them over living conditions, except for those times she got called weird and problematic—rightfully so. Co-habiting just wasn’t for her.
It was different with Denny, though not necessarily for the best. Just… different. Denny may not be like her, but she wasn’t like anyone Eris had met before either.
The only way to describe her was a conundrum.
Denny talked. A lot. All the time. To people, to herself, to every inanimate object she came across.
She talked and talked and talked, but whenever she noticed signs of distress from Eris she always tried to contain herself.
This didn’t mean she always succeeded, but she made an effort, and that was important to Eris, who had gone twenty-five years swallowing her discomfort to avoid draining arguments.
Deep down, she was aware that something inside her was wired wrong, that she was the problem. But Denny respected her instead of constantly accusing her of being deliberately difficult and that was completely new to Eris.
Nonetheless, Denny’s natural speed gave Eris vertigo.
She was the living embodiment of a sugar rush: one moment she was so deeply engaged in an activity she didn’t even hear the phone ring, the next moment she dropped everything, whether she’d finished or not, to pursue another task.
It irritated and confounded Eris, who couldn’t stand leaving a job undone, let alone multiple jobs in a row.
That mad rhythm, however, seemed to work for Denny: after a chain of distractions, she always circled back to the original activity when the time was running up. Eris and her anxiety could never.
Where she was inflexible order, Denny was swirling chaos.
Where she was ice, Denny was fire.
Where she was dark and dull, Denny was blindingly bright.
It didn’t seem possible that they could coexist. And yet, when Denny’s energy suddenly ran out (it always did, at some point), she underwent this astonishing metamorphosis that turned her into someone who was almost relatable—someone calmer and more introspective. Someone more like Eris.
Living with her often tested Eris’ fragile mental balance, but it wasn’t as unbearable as she had initially reckoned, either.
Against Denny’s vehement protests, and more for her own peace of mind than anything, she’d spent the better part of the last week doing all the little chores around the flat that Denny tended to procrastinate: cleaning up after cooking, tidying up the kitchen, hoovering the floor, writing down what they ran out of…
Eris couldn’t understand how one could have such a lovely home and not want to take proper care of it.
It was a pleasure for her to keep her living place clean and tidy.
Besides, Denny really needed a little help: the flat was way too large for just one person and understandably gruelling to keep in check.
The debate on who should shoulder the house chores, the overworked flat owner or the unoccupied freeloader, had accidentally unlocked a secret feature of Denny’s psychology: it was much easier for her to carry a task to term if someone was hovering nearby.
In fact, Eris often sat with her in the shop office, supervising as Denny did her accounting with the same grieving attitude of a child forced to do homework.
“Well, look at this!” Denny stood by the dining room table, proudly admiring the piles of neatly folded clothes that covered the entire surface. “Can’t believe I did a whole cycle of laundry all in one sitting!”
It wasn’t exactly true, but a win was a win.
Hours before, Eris had raked the house for every stray piece of clothing and had thrown it into the washing machine along with a bunch of other garments that had long awaited a spin.
Denny, however, had done the rest, tumble-drying and folding, all by herself during her lunch break.
With just a smidgen of help. It was starting a chore, Eris had realised, that stretched Denny thin; once she got kick-started, she could do pretty much anything.
They’d dubbed it ‘vulture motivation’. Or, Denny had, and Eris had approved it.
She nudged Denny with her hip. Well done, Sunshine.
A coy grin took over Denny’s lips, aglow with child-like contentment. At least one of them was feeling accomplished.
* * *
When Denny went back to work, Eris wouldn’t have minded keeping her company, but she and Rocco had beef. The boy was very protective of Denny and openly displayed mistrust in Eris’ regard. Eris, on her own part, was as hostile with him as she was with everyone who treated her patronisingly.
She liked the shop. Now that she was getting used to the smell of the flowers, she felt much more at ease among them.
Denny was deeply passionate about her job and her enthusiasm and knowledge for everything concerning plants was kind of endearing.
Eris was learning something new every day: why certain petals had a specific texture, which flowers were most durable and which were most susceptible to temperature changes.
What she didn’t like was the customers. The majority of them, anyway. But she was fascinated by how skilled Denny was with them, so polite and charming, that radiant smile of hers always in place, casting its dazzling spell on whoever walked in.
“It’s tiring,” Denny had admitted at the end of a particularly busy day. “There are times when all you want to do is yell at them to shut up and sod off, but their money pays your bills, so you swallow it all down and keep smiling. But it can be so draining.”
That had been the first time Eris had truly sympathised with her, the moment when she’d thought that maybe she and Denny weren’t completely different, after all. She knew how that felt: the burden of constantly keeping up a mask behind which you couldn’t breathe.
“Alright, time for me to go,” Denny sighed. “Want to come downstairs for a while?”
To answer the question, Eris went to the fridge to get the shopping list she’d been filling up. It was getting long, and the longer it got, the more consistently Denny ignored it.
Denny’s freckled nose scrunched when she saw it. “You want to take care of that?”
Since you won’t do it, I might as well do something productive with my time.
“That’d be lovely of you.” Denny’s eyes brimmed with gratitude.
Eris was still working on figuring out their colour.
Most days she was sure they were hazel, other days they were moss green, but then the sun came out and a halo of gold appeared around the pupils. She couldn’t wrap her head around it.
Denny told her to take the trolley. It was an awfully girly pink bag on wheels, with a bow on the handle and tacky daisies printed all over. It made a comical contrast with Eris’ attire.
Denny gave her way more cash than was necessary and insisted that she got whatever she may need or want. Risky of her, because Eris wanted an awful lot of things and needed even more.
Headphones on, she walked to the supermarket, her heart rate increasing as soon as she was out in the street. It happened every time she left the house. It dwindled, if she could keep herself distracted. Music, daydreaming, counting her steps… Denny’s presence, when she had it.
It was less than one mile, but the area around Marble Arch was noisy and crowded. She never put herself through that kind of stress if she could help it, but Princess Denny shopped at Marks & Spencer and Selfridges, so here she was.
She got some suspicious looks when she walked in. The bruises and the cuts certainly didn’t help.
It was hard to ignore all the oblivious shoppers who weren’t minding their bags and their pockets. She could’ve gone home with easily 5K in cash and phones.
Aisle after aisle, she scanned her items and placed them in the trolley.
When she got to the bottom of the list, she was still quite far from the budget Denny had given her, so she added a few extra items: a mango, a couple of chocolate bars filled with raspberry yoghurt cream, and a pack of pads because her period was around the corner.
Two wants and one need. Could’ve been worse.
She added the last few items separately on Tricount as a personal purchase so that it’d show that she owed Denny the entire sum.
Denny had told her not to do that, but Eris was determined to pay back every penny as soon as she managed to get her hands on some money.
Ideally through a job. The two things weren’t strictly related, but she’d made a promise and didn’t want to betray Denny’s trust.
Her CV was less than impressive: she’d been an average student at school, but university had been beyond her financially.
She was sure it’d have been wasted money, anyway: she wasn’t intelligent enough for that.
All she had was a collection of temp jobs and one stable one that didn’t really qualify her for anything other than heavy weightlifting.
Social skills? None. Mental flexibility? Inexistent. Team work? She’d rather die. She didn’t even look hireable, and not just because of the scars on her face.
And then there was the mutism thing. It didn’t take a genius to know it’d probably take a shrink to fix it, but who could afford such a luxury?
She couldn’t even buy herself a coffee as of now.
It didn’t help that Denny was such an enabler.
Claudia, Pilar, and Wen had always taken her non-verbal spells as rudeness and had responded accordingly, forcing her to snap out of them one way or another.
Denny just rolled with it and kept guessing until she got it right.
Or didn’t get it right, as sometimes she missed the point completely, but it was okay: with her Eris felt like she didn’t need to be understood to be understood.