Day 8
“I want to die.”
“Aww, poor Laces.”
I want to yell at Camilla not to ‘poor Laces’ me, but I’m scared the words will rattle around in my brain until I puke.
I did enough of that last night.
“Why does it hurt so much?” I whimper as I throw the hood of Vasily’s sweatshirt over my head to hide my eyes from the sun as I plod into the kitchen.
My feet hurt. The carpet is too scratchy, the wood laminate is too cold. I don’t understand how this was all fine yesterday, but it’s trying to murder me now, I’m sure of it.
“You took four shots of vodka. What did you expect?”
I see the offending bottle on the counter. I’m not even sure it’s vodka. The label isn’t in English. It looks more like BoAKa if the first A had decided to squat down and do a funny dance. Why does it look like that? Is it even legal to sell this in America if you can’t read the label?
Oh right, Vasily’s a criminal. A terrible, horrible, awful, very bad man who does terrible, horrible, awful, very bad things.
Like not coming home last night.
“Aww, Laces, don’t cry again.” I want to tell her I’m not going to cry, that I hate Vasily and this is all his fault and I do need to be really mad at him, but then she adds, “Not until you drink a big glass of water. You sound like you drank sand last night.”
“I can’t even tell I drank anything,” I pout, yet another attempt at punishing Vasily by taking a prized possession from him failing. The first was the cookies. Now, this bottle of vodka. It’s gigantic, so the shots I drank only dropped the level an inch, if that. “I’ve literally watched Tony drink this much at the dinner table and then go out. Why do I suck so bad?”
“Sweetie, it looked like you sucked really well, in fact—oh oh oh, no, I didn’t mean that.”
Too late. Tears are streaming. My best friend saw me suck that stupid idiot’s dick, and now I’m going to be tormented for the rest of my life by her.
And he didn’t even come home.
I don’t know what I was thinking last night. I was mad, I wanted to be reckless and show him how stupid he looked on drugs by being . . . I don’t know, stupid on drugs, I guess. Except everyone talks like drugs are so much worse than alcohol, and I’ve only ever been tipsy on watered-down wine before. I didn’t want to go straight to drugs.
Vodka was a terrible choice.
And then he never even came home, and I had to call Camilla so I wouldn’t feel so pathetic drinking by myself. She did shots with me over video chat, but she’s fine this morning.
Sort of. The phone screen is shattered, another casualty of Vasily’s stupidity last night, so now Camilla kind of looks like she’s shattered, too.
“Tony is an alcoholic,” she reminds me. “And you still drink kiddie wine at holidays. It’s kind of embarrassing, honestly, but in an endearing way.”
“Is that why Vasily never came home? Because I’m embarrassing?”
Camilla sighs. “Laces, sweetheart, love of my life. I know you were very drunk last night, but do you remember what we talked about?”
I set the phone on the counter, as much to free up my hands to get one of Vasily’s big plastic cups from a higher shelf up from the glassware as to keep the camera off me as I whisper, “That he raped me and then imprisoned me and so no matter how nice he is to me, I shouldn’t blame any of his actions on how embarrassing I am?”
Camilla groans. “You were so close. That he did all those things, so regardless of how good of a person he seems to be most of the time, the bad stuff he does? He does because he’s a bad person.”
“And I’m an embarrassing person,” I whisper so faintly under my breath that Camilla doesn’t respond. She probably didn’t hear it. Hopefully.
The fridge has a water dispenser built into it, but it’s loud and I’m scared of loud noises. There’s also a filter pitcher inside — I have no idea why, but I learned my lesson about asking questions last night — so I shut my eyes as tightly as possible, open the fridge, and then the crack them open as slowly as I can.
This is not last night’s fridge.
Last night, there were two boxes of restaurant take-out, three reusable containers of leftovers from my cooking experiments, four packages of cheese, two crisper drawers stuffed full of fruits, veggies, and meat, coffee creamer, and the usual condiments. There’d been some really old containers in there that I threw out after I opened one and thought I was going to perish from the stench, but it’s fairly empty. Or, it was yesterday. Now, there’s a case of cola, several loose energy drinks, a bag of Taco Bell, and a partially-eaten fruit salad.
Vasily came home.
Did he come home after I fell asleep and leave again? Was I smelly from barfing even though I brushed my teeth and took a shower afterward? I look over my shoulder to see if there’s any other proof he’s been here and gone already and notice the guest room door is closed.
He slept in the guest room. He hates me so much he won’t even share a bed with me anymore.
I burst into tears again.
“Talk to me, Laces,” Camilla calls from the counter.
Between hiccups and sobs, I ask, “Who even keeps Taco Bell overnight?” I whine at the end as I pick through the fruit salad. It has blueberries, blackberries, and pineapple in it, a nice blend. I toss it around, looking for telltale red patches in case there’d been sliced strawberries in it, but it looks good. I nibble on first a blueberry and then a blackberry. I gotta work up to the pineapple. “Do you reheat it? Is that even safe? Or do you eat it cold? I was going to marry a man who saves Taco Bell leftovers!”
“You’re not marrying him. You were just cum drunk.”
“I was vodka drunk,” I mumble. “I think I’m still vodka drunk.”
“Yeah, probably. Seriously, Laces, this guy is the definition of red flag. You know what the old Russia flag was? A great big red flag. That’s him. You’re just not used to guys being nice to you, and he’s got that real good dick.”
“Ulk. He does. I think. But maybe not, right?”
“I mean, not to keep reiterating the fact that I watched you get absolutely railed in what turned out to be a homemade porno and coming like his dick was made of solid gold and fairy dust, but . . . I’m pretty sure that was some top-notch dick.”
Ugggh. I scoop the phone off the counter and stomp over to the recliner I know that top-notch dick favors, which happens to also be nearest to the guest room. I can sit here and glare at the door until he comes out and I can start a fight with him.
Yeah, that’s the plan right there. I wasn’t trying to start a fight last night, but this morning? I’m starting a freaking fight.
“Is anyone else freaking about the video?” I ask as worry settles in. If Gino was ready to rescue me, are others? Do I need to do some damage control? I really don’t want to have to personally call every person who saw the video and tell them that not only was I not being forced to do that, I asked for it and loved every second of it. But I also don’t want to start the stupidest gang war ever. I’ve read Romeo and Juliet. I played Anybodys in my high school’s production of West Side Story. I know how this ends.
“Everyone’s been quiet,” Camilla says as I finally brave the pineapple, taking it to the dramatic level of sandwiching it between my lips to suck the juice out of it as it burns the ever-loving heck out of my mouth and lips. “I had Gino call your brother to see if he needed anything. Vasily set the feed up so we could see who was watching it, or who had opened it, at least. So we know Tony did, but Gino didn’t want to just up and say he’d seen it, you know? So he was subtle-like, just checking in, seeing if there was anything big coming up. I think he actually said he was planning a vacation for us,” she laughs, although the sound seems far away. “So now I’m making him take me on vacation.”
I nod and tell her that sounds nice. I think? Weirdly, as soon as I think I say it, I don’t recall if I actually opened my mouth.
“And Tony acted like nothing was going on. He even told Gino you were on a trip and having phone issues so he should let me know not to worry.”
That jerk , I say. Except I don’t. I’m positive I didn’t make a sound this time. And Camilla’s not just shattered, she’s going blurry.
“Which of course had us really worried that there was serious trouble happening.”
I try to wave my hand in a vague shooing gesture to tell her I’m fine, but I tip the plastic container right off my lap onto the carpet I just vacuumed yesterday. Or no? Where did I vacuum yesterday?
“I dropped my fruit salad,” I mumble, and none of the words make sense.
“Laces?” Camilla says, startled. “Hey, are you okay?”
“My vacuum. I need to . . .” I stare down at the pile of fruit, the juice from the pineapple now soaking the carpet, staining it a faint purplish color. In the pink of the berry-stained juice, I see a bit of stained, nondescript pulp I would have thought was pineapple, but now I’m seeing black specks.
Like kiwi seeds.
“I can’t breathe,” I attempt to say, but my lips have gone completely numb.
“Laces!” Camilla yells. “Where’s your epi-pen? Look at me, focus, tell me where your epi-pen is.”
Do I have one? I think we discussed it, but I don’t know. My toiletries came in a giant Balenciaga bag my shampoo leaked into, and I don’t know if there was an epi-pen in the mess.
“Go wake up Vasily! Go get him now!”
I nod at that and attempt to get on my feet, but my legs get tangled in the blanket. I pitch forward.
“Gino!” Camilla screams as my head hits the coffee table. “Gino, you need to call Vasily! You get his number and you call him now!” As my vision goes black, I hear her shrieking for Vasily.