"The Beginning After the End" Part 3
The evening was out of sorts from the start.
It began with the walk to the club. Effy and Naomi chatted amicably, as usual, while Emily tried to engage Katie in conversation. Katie remained obtuse, having decided secretly while accompanying Effy to Naomi’s that Emily ought to be punished for not believing her.
How dare she, Katie thought. Think I’m a fucking liar, yeah? Fuck her. And after everything I did, accepting her and Naomi, she can’t even do the same? Hypocrite. Fucking cow hypocrite stupid bitch twat...
Then, while on line to pay the cover, Naomi saw Cook across the way and said, “Oh, there’s Cook.”
It wouldn’t have meant a thing to anyone, but Katie picked up on the strain in Naomi’s voice--the struggle to keep a sense of amusement down for the sake of a secret, and that was when she knew Emily had told her. She turned on her sister and fixed her with two cold, burning brown eyes. Emily opened her mouth to defend herself.
“Save it,” Katie hissed, dropping the cover into the bouncer’s hand and storming inside.
They split up from there. Katie went straight to the bar for a drink, followed by Emily, who had Katie’s drink on her face before she’d even begun to speak.
Katie stalked off to the bathroom to fix her hair and take a few deep breaths. Effy trailed in after a few moments, wrapping her arms around Katie’s waist from behind.
Everything--the music, the shouts, the breaking bottles, the bustle of girls in the bathroom--it all went away. It froze, and Katie was left staring into the mirror, engulfed in Effy’s scent and arms. Effy kissed her on the neck chastely and grinned at their intertwined reflections seductively. She leaned into Katie’s ear.
“Come dance with me,” she said in a low voice.
She bit Katie’s earlobe, then was gone. Katie gripped the edge of the sink, trying to keep her legs from giving in.
That just happened, she thought, staring at her white knuckles over the polished marble finish of the countertop. That definitely just happened.
She took a deep breath. She fixed her hair. She made sure she didn’t look like she was coming apart at the seams with disbelief. That had just happened. She took another deep breath, and then left the bathroom.
She made a beeline for the bar, deciding she wasn’t drunk enough for the night’s festivities, and ordered three shots to do in rapid succession. She kept her eyes on Emily, making sure to avoid her. Emily was sipping at a drink, looking like she was trying to keep her composure, and dabbing the stickiness away from her face with a napkin. Katie could not pretend to care anymore about Emily believing whatever it was she believed about Cook. Her fierce determination was taking over, spurred on by the anxious itch that had appeared between her thighs the moment Effy’s lips brushed her neck. This was happening. That had just happened. This was real.
Katie didn’t care anymore about what loving Effy would mean, or when loving Effy started. She didn’t care about what Emily thought or didn’t think, what Emily believed or didn’t believe. She wanted Effy. She would have Effy. Kissing her neck and nipping at her ear was enough of an invitation, wasn’t it? She turned towards the crowd and began pushing, searching, digging with all five senses at rapt attention. She would have Effy tonight.
Effy was ghostlike on the dance floor, there for a moment, then vanishing, then reappearing somewhere else. Katie couldn’t keep up with her. The second she got close, the crowd would thicken around her as though they, too, were magnetically drawn to Effy’s presence. Katie would get pushed back, and Effy would be gone again.
Naomi saw Katie knock back the shots, one after the other, and saw her leave. Naomi kept one eye on Emily at all times, mulling over their conversation from earlier. Having finished her drink, Emily caught her eye and approached her.
“Buy me a drink, then?” she said in her ear, touching the collar of Naomi’s blouse flirtatiously. “You owe me.”
“Do I?” Naomi replied, pulling back a bit.
“Yeah. For mucking things up with me and Katie.”
“I didn’t muck up a thing.”
“Really? ‘Oh, there’s Cook.’ You might as well have been saying, ‘Oh look Ems, there’s Cook, that boy your sister is in love with and I know that because you told me earlier.’”
“Katie already wasn’t speaking to you when she and Eff showed up, don’t act like you didn’t notice. That’s got nothing to do with me. If Katie didn’t want me to know, you should have kept your mouth shut.”
“I’m sorry. Thought I could tell you everything. Thought we didn’t keep secrets anymore.”
Then came that look, the one Naomi hated. Every nightmare she had about Emily had that look in it. The sort of cold glare Emily would fix her with ever since that day on the roof, with the box and Sophia’s brother and the tears and the screaming, those eyes boring into her every day, daring her to try so she could be shot down. There was no love in that look. There was no sympathy. It was the hard contempt of a punishment.
The hair on Naomi’s arms immediately stood on end. The music pounded against her body, the bass throbbing in her skull, and she was already shaking her head before she realized she was moving at all.
She’s upset is all, Naomi thought, trying to calm herself down. The music was loud, too loud. She doesn’t mean it, she’s just upset is all. I’d be upset too if I’d just got rum and soda thrown all on me. We’ve sorted this.
But that look was still there, and Naomi was suddenly very tired of still being punished. After that night in the shed, after Goa, after everything, she was tired of the moments, however rare now, where she was still being punished for a mistake.
“Here,” she said, handing Emily a few notes. “Buy a drink, if it’ll make you feel better. I don’t know what else you want from me. And just so you know, you’re acting like Katie did when we first got together. If she’s in love with Cook, then let her alone. Don’t make her fucking change because you can’t deal with it.”
That made the look go away. And then Naomi was gone too, and Emily was standing at the bar with money that wasn’t hers--a lot of money, probably more than Naomi had meant to give her--and then Emily was standing at the bar with three shots lined up, and she took one after the other, wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, and turned around again, her head spinning.
Why do I still do this?
That’s when she saw it. It was like a light shone down from the ceiling and parted the crowd. It haloed around Effy’s dark hair, matted with sweat against her face. Her lips, tongue, teeth all over the face of some bloke who could have been anyone but was probably no one, least of all to Effy herself.
The light expanded and suddenly Katie was engulfed in it too. She had one arm raised slightly, as though she meant to touch Effy’s shoulder before realizing what Effy was doing. She watched Katie’s eyes follow the trail of Effy’s hand from the boy’s neck down to his trousers. Katie took a step back as if slapped. Her expression went from one of shock to pure despair, as though she had just realized something that shattered her entire soul.
Emily felt something inside her constrict down to the size of a pinprick, then explode suddenly. It could have absorbed the club and all the people in it, the city, the country, the world and all its oceans. It was too big for Emily to contain, this awful, terrible feeling of being destroyed from the inside. She fell back against the bar, and in a moment, the feeling was gone and so was the light. She could barely make out the outline of Katie’s figure fighting towards the exit.
Oh my God.
The feeling came back again, worse this time. Emily thought she might be sick all over the floor as lights sprung up before her eyes, bright huge balls of white light appearing and disappearing. She felt someone’s hands on her shoulders as she sank down to her knees, the blackness of the floor pushing through her eyes and into her head.
Naomi, having retreated back to her previous spot, saw Emily’s face constrict into a look of horror as she fell back against the bar. She was beside her in an instant, gripping her shoulders as she slipped down underfoot.
“Emily!” she shouted in her ear. “What’s wrong?”
Emily moved her lips as if to speak, but no sound came out. She looked completely dazed. Naomi tucked her head under Emily’s right arm, gripped her by the waist and pulled her upright. She moved towards the wall, where the crowd was thinner, and trekked towards the door.
“Ems?” she kept saying. “Ems, what’s happened? Emily?”
In the flashing lights, she could make out the wet trails running down Emily’s cheeks. Once at the door, Naomi ignored the bouncer’s questions and pushed out into the street. She half-carried Emily two blocks down before stopping to catch her breath.
Emily lurched forward a bit, taking in a big heaving gasp of air. The life returned to her eyes and for a moment she looked confused. She touched her face, then looked at her fingers as though she had not realized that she’d been crying.
“Emily?” Naomi said, loosening her grip on her waist.
Emily looked at her, blinking, and said nothing. Naomi took her by the shoulders and shook her gently.
“What’s happened?” she demanded. “Are you all right? Did someone slip something into your drink?”
“I’m fine,” Emily said, slightly dazed. Then she seemed to regain herself and pushed Naomi’s hands away. “Stop shaking me. It’s just...I...where’s Katie?”
“Katie?” Naomi said incredulously. She took Emily by the wrist. “She’s probably back there with Effy. Come on, let’s go home. You’re not well.”
“I’m fine,” Emily insisted. “I have to find Katie. I was wrong. I was wrong.”
“Wrong about what?” Naomi said anxiously. “I don’t know what you’re talking about Ems, you’re not making any sense.”
Something passed over Emily’s face. It was quiet and resigned, blank. It reminded Naomi of her mother’s expression on the day that marked her father’s departure so many years ago. Every year that look, however brief, was there.
“Emily?”
Emily knotted her hands over her chest, staring down at the pavement, then loosened them almost immediately afterwards. She let them fall to her sides.
“Nothing,” she said quietly after a moment. She looked very sad. “It’s nothing. Never mind. Let’s go home. I feel a bit dizzy.”
Naomi took her hand gently as they began walking. “You scared the shit out of me. What happened?”
“I don’t think I can talk about it,” Emily said. Her voice was a near whisper. “It’s Katie. It isn’t me. Something happened with Katie.”
“Did you two have a row?”
“No. She...she had a row with Effy. But she’ll be all right.”
“I’ve never seen anyone nearly faint over watching two people have a row.”
Emily seemed to hesitate. “It was a bad row. But she’ll be all right. Katie will be all right.” She looked at Naomi, her eyes tired. “I’m sorry about earlier. It isn’t your fault. I shouldn’t have been a twat to you. It was horrible of me.”
Naomi squeezed Emily’s fingers in her own. “You were upset.”
“Yeah,” Emily said, looking at her feet. “I was upset.”
~ ~ ~
Ms. Hannah Smith awoke the following morning at six, went for a jog around the block, did her morning meditation, took a shower, ate an omelette (broccoli, onions, and swiss cheese), had a cup of tea, and arrived at the office half an hour before her first appointment. Hannah liked to arrive early so she had time to read the paper over a second cup of tea.
“Your new client is here,” her secretary informed her. She was a bit younger than Hannah, probably nearing thirty. Her name was Victoria, and Hannah had not yet been able to figure out whether or not she was a lez-be-friends. She rubbed sleep out of one eye while sipping her coffee. “I sent him in already, hope you don’t mind.”
Hannah stopped and looked at her. “He’s here already?”
Victoria sipped her coffee again and shrugged sympathetically. “Sorry.”
Hannah’s new client, according to the information afforded her by his mother the previous day, was eighteen. His mother expressed concern regarding her son’s increasing withdrawal and isolation from every day activities since his girlfriend had thrown him out of her flat, following the death of his best friend. He had been diagnosed with high-functioning autism nearly two years prior, and had recently stopped taking the mood stabilizers prescribed to him.
Normally Hannah would have kept this information clear in her mind, but since her morning routine had been thrown off by his early arrival she forgot nearly all of it. She fumbled for his chart as she set her cup of tea on her desk. She wondered if it was obvious how much he had shaken her.
She glanced over the information, took a deep breath, sipped her tea twice, and finally turned to take him in.
He had curly brown locks and a handsome, young face that was pulled taut with sleeplessness and anxiety. His flannel shirt was neatly pressed, and his jeans, though well-worn, seemed quite clean. He was meticulous. The entire time, he had not spoken. His face seemed to be made of strong marble that had been rubbed with a thin layer of charcoal.
“Hello, err…” Embarrassed, she glanced at his chart again. “Jonah.”
“Call me JJ, please.” His curt tone negated all pleasantries. “I don’t want to be here.”
Hannah was a creature of habit. She did not like when her routine was thrown off. It made her feel like she was losing control. Hannah hated losing control. If she had no control, she had nothing, and she had worked hard her whole life for something. Receiving guff from a client normally would not phase her--she was treating Effy Stonem, after all--but she felt out of sorts, starting her day without her second cup of tea and the news. She pressed her lips together and drew in a deep breath, her nostrils flaring. JJ stared her down. It annoyed her even more.
“Well,” she said after a moment. “What are you doing here, then?”
“My mother made the appointment. She wanted me to come because she thinks I’m mental.”
“Do you think you’re mental?”
“No,” JJ said coldly. “I think I’ve been fucked.”
~ ~ ~
Effy was standing knee-deep in the ocean. It was the Atlantic, off the shores of California. Having never visited the west coast--or any part of the States, really--she didn’t know how she knew this.
She felt strong arms encircle her waist, holding her tightly from behind. Something hard pressed into the small of her back, slowly rubbing up and down. She knew exactly what it was, but for a moment she believed it was a gun.
She touched the hands gently. They were smooth, soft hands that had never seen hard work before. She reached up without looking behind her to feel the lips hovering an inch away from her ear. They were moving, but no sound came out.
Effy started to cry. She felt her tears drip off of her chin and into the water.
“Why did you do this to me?” she whispered.
He ground himself up against her back and groaned quietly into her ear. She slid her fingers through his dark hair, curled them, and began pulling slowly. Her arm felt weak. His face moved down to her neck.
“I only ever wanted to save you,” he murmured, kissing her gently. He flicked his tongue out three times, and on the third time Effy realized it was a snake. She turned her head slightly, enough to see the head protrude from his mouth and slither down her collarbone.
It traveled across her sternum, its warm scales making her shiver. For a moment, it seemed nothing at all would happen--it would be her, and him, and his snake in the water. But then, before she could so much as blink, it wrapped itself around her neck twice and began to squeeze.
“I only ever wanted to save you,” he said again, louder this time. Only his snake-tongue was sticking out, so it sounded more like: “Ah onleh eva wanteh to thaf you.”
Effy woke with a start. The side of her face was numb with cold. She lifted her head slowly, ignoring the pounding in her ears. She was laying on the grass, one hand tucked under her body, the other stretched out to touch something smooth and cool. Like his hands.
She blinked at it. It was carved marble, new looking. It had his name on it, and his birthday, and that other day she tried so hard to forget.
She narrowed her eyes, wanting to spit, wanting to vomit, wanting to scream. She stood up on shaky legs and did nothing, just stared and stared and stared.
~ ~ ~
Katie was awake for three terrifying minutes before she realized where she was. She looked down at the large hand that cupped her hip and remembered.
Oh no. Oh no, no, no.
It was bad enough she had done it at all, but the fact that she hadn’t put her clothes back on afterward made it worse. Now she was awake, sober and hungover, and she was naked. She was naked and sober and in bed with an equally naked Cook. Just as she began trying to figure out how to move without him noticing, he planted a kiss on the back of her head.
“Mornin’,” he said cheerfully. “All right, Katiekins?” Before she could answer, he chuckled, and it was just as well he did because she had no idea how to respond to a question like that. “‘Course not. I tried to give you water last night, but you wouldn’t have any of it. You were pretty set on one thing.”
Katie blinked, refusing to turn to him. She opened her mouth to disagree, but then she felt his hands slide up the back of her neck gently and remembered him behind her the night before, tugging her hair as she begged him to keep going, her face in a pillow as she forced her sobs to sound more like moans.
He kept telling me to squeeze his balls, she remembered, and was nearly sick all over his floor when she realized she had. With her lips.
“Do you want breakfast?” he asked, moving his hand away from her hair to lay it comfortably across her waist. It was as if they’d done this for years. “Haven’t got much, but we can grab coffee and a bite at the cafe round the corner or somethin’, yeah.”
I can’t believe I sucked his balls.
“Or I can run out and pick up some eggs.”
How many other girls have sucked his balls?
“Katie?”
Oh God. Did Effy suck his balls?
Then she remembered Effy, her hands sliding down the chest of that boy down to the front of his pants, how, even in the pulsing club lighting, Katie could make out how they were tented. She remembered Effy’s lips on his neck, seeing the pink of her tongue against his flesh, seeing his eyes roll back a bit, and she remembered how her world froze and then shattered into a million tiny fragments.
She finally turned to Cook, who had his head propped up in his palm. He was watching her expectantly, waiting for an answer. She pursed her lips slightly, studying him.
He does look quite different. Sobriety has made him less...repulsive. And I...I don’t think it was bad. I don’t remember it being bad.
“Cook,” she said pointedly. Her voice cracked slightly, and she cleared her throat. “Did I come last night?”
His eyebrows raised and he let out a sort of self-conscious laugh, then pressed his lips together. Katie realized he was worried about his morning breath. “Come?”
“Orgasm,” she clarified flatly. “Did I--”
His face between her thighs his tongue flicking in and out one finger two fingers three fingers her fingers in his hair her hips grinding he groaned she groaned her tears seeping down into her eardrums her eyes slid shut she pretended his hair was longer and there was no stubble and he did not smell like Cook she made him smell like Effy and she--
“Oh,” she said, blinking.
He grinned like a little boy, pleased with himself. She was too busy being surprised to grin back. In all her time sleeping with men--she lost her virginity at fourteen and had at least five sexual partners every year after, so that meant about twenty men to date--not one had ever gotten her off.
“So,” he said, licking his lips. His face looked gentle. “Breakfast then?”
Katie touched his chest gently with her fingertips, studying his eyes. Since Cook had gotten sober, he was better at...well, everything, really. He had shown up to take care of her. He was more polite, more gracious. He wasn’t tossing her out on her ass. He was offering her breakfast. And he had this sort of twinkle in his eyes, this genuine spark, that meant he cared about her. Something inside of her softened and she realized she could easily begin to regard him as a friend.
That was good enough. After the night before, after Effy, after Effy and that boy, after everything, this would be good enough for her. And it would take care of Emily as well.
“Sure,” she said, smiling slightly. She wondered if it reached her eyes. “Breakfast.”
~ ~ ~
“Fucked?” Hannah repeated, crossing her legs. “Go on.”
JJ eyed her suspiciously. Why wasn’t she holding a clipboard? Why wasn’t she sitting behind a desk? Where was the drawer full of pills? Wasn’t she going to take notes? She couldn’t prescribe him medication, but shouldn’t she at least be taking notes? They all took notes, like he was a textbook they were studying instead of a human being.
“My mate Freddie died,” JJ began cautiously. A flicker passed through Hannah’s eyes so quickly, JJ didn’t even notice it. “He was offed a few months ago. It was in the papers.”
“The John Foster case.”
“Yeah. He was my best mate. Then my other best mate Cook offed Foster and he went to jail, and he got sober, and then Thomas and Panda fucked off to university in the States and Naomi and Emily decided they’d still go to Goa even though I fucking needed them, and Effy’s a twat and it’s all her fucking fault and my girlfriend Lara left me, she fucking left me ‘cos I was angry, I’m so f-fucking angry and Cook got s-s-sober and no one g-g-gi-gives a sh-shit how I feel or wh-wh-wh-what I think.”
Hannah waited for a moment, as though she was giving him time to say more if need be. He let a gust of air out in a whoosh. No doctor had ever let him finish a complete sentence before. He couldn’t believe it.
“Tell me more about Lara,” Hannah requested quietly. “You got quite upset when you started talking about her.”
“Lara,” JJ said. Her name used to feel like a butterfly floating up from his throat. Now it felt like a weight on his chest. “I...I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone as much as I love Lara.”
~ ~ ~
Emily woke up curled in a ball. She blinked her eyes open and felt something shift on the other side of the bed.
“I woke up and you were like that,” Naomi said. Emily rolled over and saw her sitting up with her feet on the floor. She was still in her pajamas. Even with her back to her, she’d known Emily was awake. Smoke curled up about her hair. “Curled up like that, not touching me.”
Emily reached out for her. Without looking, Naomi shifted her body away, out of Emily’s reach.
“I haven’t woke up to that since…”
“I’m sorry,” Emily said quietly. She sat up, reached for her again. “Naomi, come here. I’m sorry. Last night was just--”
“I wish we’d never gone to Goa.” Naomi turned to her, and her eyes were swollen, the whites bloodshot. Emily’s mouth went dry. “I wish we’d gone to Mexico instead, or Canada, or anywhere else.”
Emily tried swallowing, but the muscles in her throat wouldn’t move properly. She felt something inside of her flutter, a butterfly stuck in a chrysalis, struggling to be free. She tried swallowing again, and managed it this time. She cleared her throat.
“Last night was just…” She trailed off where Naomi had once interrupted her, realizing she didn’t know what she wanted to say.
“You weren’t just upset,” Naomi said, fresh tears spilling over her cheeks. “You weren’t just upset, were you?”
And the butterfly was still, its dead wings fluttering in a hot, hellish wind.
~ ~ ~
Naomi had been nursing a sunburn for days, and chose not to join Emily on their nightly walk down to the beach.
“I’m sorry babes,” she said, managing a small smile. “It hurts to move.”
“I’m the one who dragged you around in the sun all day,” Emily replied amicably, kissing Naomi’s scarlet cheeks. “I’m certain that didn’t help. More aloe, love?”
“The smell is making me nauseous,” she groaned.
“Kisses, then?”
“If they’re gentle.”
Emily kissed her forehead softly, then her nose and cheeks and chin. She fought the urge to nip at her neck, compromising by licking a smooth path from Naomi’s earlobe down to her collarbone. Naomi gasped and arched her back instinctively.
“Ouch, ow...fuck.” She grimaced. “Could you stop being so fucking hot, please?”
Emily smiled sympathetically. “Sorry.”
She skipped stones across the smooth glassy surface of the ocean and wished Naomi could join her. She sat down on the sand, watching the tide come in. It kissed her toes and she curled them away, the water growing chilly as night fell.
Someone sat down beside her. She knew who it was immediately, and was too stunned to turn her head. She could smell her--the faint trace of patchouli oil floating up off mocha skin.
“Well,” Mandy said. “Fancy this.”
Emily looked at her. Mandy’s hair was shorter, shorn in a bob that stopped at an angle at her chin. But all her features were the same. She kept her dark eyes trained on the water.
“Hey,” Emily said, trying to manage a friendly smile. “What brings you to Goa?”
“Family,” Mandy replied, turning to look at her. Her brow knitted together as she narrowed her eyes. “She brought you, then? Made good on it?”
“Yeah. She did.”
Mandy stretched her long legs out, letting the tide wash over her bare feet. She pulled a bottle out of her bag and uncorked it, taking a sip. She pressed her lips together and didn’t offer any. “Where is she?”
“Back in the hut.”
“Left you to walk the coast alone,” Mandy said, then scoffed humorlessly. “I don’t get you.”
“She didn’t leave me,” Emily protested defensively. “Shit, she’s got a sunburn is all.”
“Sunburn, or rugburn?”
“Excuse me?”
“Come off it.” In the dying light of the sun, Emily could see Mandy’s strong jaw clench. She took another swig from her bottle. “How much did it take? Plane tickets? Is that what it takes to buy you back?”
“I don’t know what--” Emily’s voice died away when Mandy laughed angrily.
“Haven’t you heard?” she said, turning towards her. Her lips curled up into a smirk, and Emily realized the nastiness she was trying to convey could not cover the hurt in her eyes. She dipped her head slightly, so that their faces were uncomfortably close. “Once a cheater.”
Emily shifted back. “Mandy, listen...I know you got hurt, and I’m sorry. Honestly. But I love her, and she loves me. I want to be with her. That’s all I ever wanted.”
“No, that’s what you used to want,” Mandy spit, and the hurt fell over her entire face like a shadow. “Then she cheated on you. Or did a trip to Goa make you forget all that?”
Emily frowned, but didn’t reply. Mandy laughed again, shorter this time, and tipped the bottle up to her lips.
“Stupid,” she said, shaking her head. “I never would have. I would have brought you here myself, introduced you to my family. I would have made love to you here, like I said I would. You never would have had to worry about losing me. I would have stayed with you.” Mandy looked at her, her eyes taking in all of Emily’s features as if for the first time. “You haven’t forgotten at all. I can tell, looking at you. You’re faking it.”
Emily began to shake her head hard, as if she was trying to get Mandy’s voice out of it. “You don’t know a thing about it, and I’d advise you to shut the fuck up.”
“Because taking advice from a blind, stupid twat has always been a priority of mine,” Mandy said hollowly, looking out to sea.
They sat in silence. Emily could not move, though her muscles ached to run from the beach, back into the hut and the heat of Naomi’s arms, her burned skin. Everything inside of her seemed frozen.
“Want to know what’s most fucked up?” Mandy’s voice made it obvious that saying no was not Emily’s option. A smile played on her lips, faint and sad. “I knew all along. From the moment we first went out together, I knew where I’d end up. Your eyes when she’d come up in conversation always gave you away. I knew all she had to do was figure out the right words and you’d run back to her. Stupid,” she muttered again, then took a long swig and corked the bottle. She put it back in her bag. “Bet you believed it for a few days, didn’t you? Thought things would be fine. But she shattered you. I knew. I could feel it when I kissed you that day in her room. That doesn’t just go away.”
Emily finally found the strength to press her palms down against the sand and get to her feet. As she turned to leave, Mandy stood and grabbed her wrist firmly.
“Look me in the eye and tell me you’ve forgotten it,” she demanded. “Look me in the eye and tell me, Emily. Tell me you really forgive her.”
Her thick, dark eyebrows were drawn together, her lips parted as her teeth clenched. The sun was gone, giving way to stars and lights from the street. Two tears traced their way down her cheeks. Instinctively, Emily reached up to touch them. Mandy jerked away, squeezing her fingers around Emily’s wrist painfully.
“Tell me you don’t think about what I could have given you if you’d been smart enough to take it.”
Emily opened her mouth, but could not find her voice. She remembered the night at the club, Sophia’s crumpled body, she remembered Naomi’s eyes, hard like ice, telling her not to interfere. She remembered the locker, the scrapbook. She remembered standing over the edge of the building and staring down, thinking it would have been so easy, thinking she understood why Sophia had done it, wondering why she could not do it herself. She remembered how her chest felt as if it had been split in half. She remembered meeting Mandy for the first time, and knowing she would keep her promises, that she would tell the truth, that she was not a risk.
Mandy smirked at her, blinking back the rest of her tears. Her eyes moved from Emily’s face to a place behind her shoulder, then back to her face again. She released her wrist as Emily turned to see what had caught Mandy’s attention, and there was Naomi.
Emily could hear Mandy’s feet crunching against the sand as she strode away. Naomi was wearing a t-shirt over her swimming costume, one arm crossed across her stomach, the other dangling at her side, holding a cigarette.
“Having a lovely chat with Mandy, I see,” Naomi said evenly. Her smile was thin, the same smile she wore so often when they would fight afterwards, when Naomi was trying not to say what she wanted to say.
“What did you hear?” she asked. Her voice was a whisper.
Naomi’s nostrils flared slightly as she sighed slowly through her nose. She walked up to Emily and kissed her gently on the forehead. “I came in when she was listing all the ways she would have fucked you on the beach.” She pulled away slightly, letting her hand trail down the back of Emily’s head before curling around her neck. “She’s still burned over you, eh?”
“S’ppose so,” Emily said hoarsely.
Naomi’s smile grew into something less thin, more genuine, but there was something in it Emily couldn’t place. “What a heartbreaker.”
“That’s me,” she said weakly. She smiled a little, relieved the moment for arguing had passed.
In the hut that night, Naomi fell asleep trying to pretend she hadn’t seen Emily unable to say she could trust her. Emily fell asleep pretending there wasn’t something in her stomach Mandy had awoken, and it was screaming to be heard again.
~ ~ ~
“JJ, I want you to try something,” Hannah said as she penciled in the time for their next appointment.
JJ was wiping his face with his wrist. He noticed his hands were shaking. He hadn’t been expecting this--it didn’t fit into his calculations. In forty-five minutes, he’d told her everything. He felt shredded to pieces.
“I understand that things are very difficult right now,” she said, opening one of her desk drawers and fishing around. “You have a lot of anger towards your friends. You feel very abandoned. I want you to know, everything you’re feeling is normal. It might not seem that way because of everything those other quacks have told you.” She muttered the last part under her breath, but JJ heard her. “It’s very difficult, dealing with the death of a friend, especially when you feel like you have no one to go to.”
She finally produced a black Moleskine notebook from her desk. She rested it in her lap. “I want you to phone Emily. She’s just gotten back, hasn’t she?”
“Yeah,” JJ replied, eyeing the notebook.
“Good. You seem comfortable opening up to her.”
“Guess so. Lost it to her, didn’t I?”
Hannah smiled slightly. “I want you to tell her what’s been going on in your life while she’s been away. I think she’ll be able to help you.”
“Why?”
“Call it…” She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, searching for the proper term. “Call it shrink intuition.” She met JJ’s gaze and held the notebook out to him. “And I want you to take this.”
“Why?” he repeated.
“Because you need an outlet for your anger,” she replied. He blinked at her. “I know you don’t want to be on medication again, but you can’t bottle things up inside. I think that’s why you’ve been getting so locked on, especially recently.”
JJ blinked at her again, then looked about the room as though he’d been sitting in the dark and someone had just flicked on a light. “Is that it? Is that why?”
“Well, I’m not certain, but it’s very possible. We’ll have to see.” She grimaced. “Could you take the notebook, please? My arm’s getting a bit tired.”
“Oh,” JJ said quickly, realizing she was still stretching her hand out towards him. He took the notebook from her, running his fingers over the smooth cover. “Sorry. This is...wow.” He looked at her. “This is quite possibly the most effective therapy session I’ve ever experienced.”
Hannah smiled warmly, crossing her legs. “I’m quite happy to hear that.”
“So...I just...I’m supposed to write in this when I’m angry?” He looked down at the notebook again, turning it over in his hands. He opened it, flipping through the lined pages.
“You write in it whenever you feel the need. You’ll know when that is.”
“Thank you,” JJ said, standing. She stood with him. “Thank you. Really. Thank you.”
“I’ll see you next week,” she said.
“Yes. Next week.”
He reached his hand out to shake hers, then gave in to a sudden overwhelming feeling of gratitude and embraced her instead. She stiffened in his arms as though she wasn’t sure how to react, but he pulled away before she could remind him of patient/therapist boundaries.
“Thank you,” JJ said a final time, smiling broadly. He left her office with such an intense feeling of excitement, he could barely contain himself.
After he was gone, Victoria poked her head into Hannah’s office. “What, did you blow him or something? I haven’t seen anyone leave your office looking so happy in ages.”
“I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or not,” Hannah said sardonically, but took it as one regardless.
It began with the walk to the club. Effy and Naomi chatted amicably, as usual, while Emily tried to engage Katie in conversation. Katie remained obtuse, having decided secretly while accompanying Effy to Naomi’s that Emily ought to be punished for not believing her.
How dare she, Katie thought. Think I’m a fucking liar, yeah? Fuck her. And after everything I did, accepting her and Naomi, she can’t even do the same? Hypocrite. Fucking cow hypocrite stupid bitch twat...
Then, while on line to pay the cover, Naomi saw Cook across the way and said, “Oh, there’s Cook.”
It wouldn’t have meant a thing to anyone, but Katie picked up on the strain in Naomi’s voice--the struggle to keep a sense of amusement down for the sake of a secret, and that was when she knew Emily had told her. She turned on her sister and fixed her with two cold, burning brown eyes. Emily opened her mouth to defend herself.
“Save it,” Katie hissed, dropping the cover into the bouncer’s hand and storming inside.
They split up from there. Katie went straight to the bar for a drink, followed by Emily, who had Katie’s drink on her face before she’d even begun to speak.
Katie stalked off to the bathroom to fix her hair and take a few deep breaths. Effy trailed in after a few moments, wrapping her arms around Katie’s waist from behind.
Everything--the music, the shouts, the breaking bottles, the bustle of girls in the bathroom--it all went away. It froze, and Katie was left staring into the mirror, engulfed in Effy’s scent and arms. Effy kissed her on the neck chastely and grinned at their intertwined reflections seductively. She leaned into Katie’s ear.
“Come dance with me,” she said in a low voice.
She bit Katie’s earlobe, then was gone. Katie gripped the edge of the sink, trying to keep her legs from giving in.
That just happened, she thought, staring at her white knuckles over the polished marble finish of the countertop. That definitely just happened.
She took a deep breath. She fixed her hair. She made sure she didn’t look like she was coming apart at the seams with disbelief. That had just happened. She took another deep breath, and then left the bathroom.
She made a beeline for the bar, deciding she wasn’t drunk enough for the night’s festivities, and ordered three shots to do in rapid succession. She kept her eyes on Emily, making sure to avoid her. Emily was sipping at a drink, looking like she was trying to keep her composure, and dabbing the stickiness away from her face with a napkin. Katie could not pretend to care anymore about Emily believing whatever it was she believed about Cook. Her fierce determination was taking over, spurred on by the anxious itch that had appeared between her thighs the moment Effy’s lips brushed her neck. This was happening. That had just happened. This was real.
Katie didn’t care anymore about what loving Effy would mean, or when loving Effy started. She didn’t care about what Emily thought or didn’t think, what Emily believed or didn’t believe. She wanted Effy. She would have Effy. Kissing her neck and nipping at her ear was enough of an invitation, wasn’t it? She turned towards the crowd and began pushing, searching, digging with all five senses at rapt attention. She would have Effy tonight.
Effy was ghostlike on the dance floor, there for a moment, then vanishing, then reappearing somewhere else. Katie couldn’t keep up with her. The second she got close, the crowd would thicken around her as though they, too, were magnetically drawn to Effy’s presence. Katie would get pushed back, and Effy would be gone again.
Naomi saw Katie knock back the shots, one after the other, and saw her leave. Naomi kept one eye on Emily at all times, mulling over their conversation from earlier. Having finished her drink, Emily caught her eye and approached her.
“Buy me a drink, then?” she said in her ear, touching the collar of Naomi’s blouse flirtatiously. “You owe me.”
“Do I?” Naomi replied, pulling back a bit.
“Yeah. For mucking things up with me and Katie.”
“I didn’t muck up a thing.”
“Really? ‘Oh, there’s Cook.’ You might as well have been saying, ‘Oh look Ems, there’s Cook, that boy your sister is in love with and I know that because you told me earlier.’”
“Katie already wasn’t speaking to you when she and Eff showed up, don’t act like you didn’t notice. That’s got nothing to do with me. If Katie didn’t want me to know, you should have kept your mouth shut.”
“I’m sorry. Thought I could tell you everything. Thought we didn’t keep secrets anymore.”
Then came that look, the one Naomi hated. Every nightmare she had about Emily had that look in it. The sort of cold glare Emily would fix her with ever since that day on the roof, with the box and Sophia’s brother and the tears and the screaming, those eyes boring into her every day, daring her to try so she could be shot down. There was no love in that look. There was no sympathy. It was the hard contempt of a punishment.
The hair on Naomi’s arms immediately stood on end. The music pounded against her body, the bass throbbing in her skull, and she was already shaking her head before she realized she was moving at all.
She’s upset is all, Naomi thought, trying to calm herself down. The music was loud, too loud. She doesn’t mean it, she’s just upset is all. I’d be upset too if I’d just got rum and soda thrown all on me. We’ve sorted this.
But that look was still there, and Naomi was suddenly very tired of still being punished. After that night in the shed, after Goa, after everything, she was tired of the moments, however rare now, where she was still being punished for a mistake.
“Here,” she said, handing Emily a few notes. “Buy a drink, if it’ll make you feel better. I don’t know what else you want from me. And just so you know, you’re acting like Katie did when we first got together. If she’s in love with Cook, then let her alone. Don’t make her fucking change because you can’t deal with it.”
That made the look go away. And then Naomi was gone too, and Emily was standing at the bar with money that wasn’t hers--a lot of money, probably more than Naomi had meant to give her--and then Emily was standing at the bar with three shots lined up, and she took one after the other, wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, and turned around again, her head spinning.
Why do I still do this?
That’s when she saw it. It was like a light shone down from the ceiling and parted the crowd. It haloed around Effy’s dark hair, matted with sweat against her face. Her lips, tongue, teeth all over the face of some bloke who could have been anyone but was probably no one, least of all to Effy herself.
The light expanded and suddenly Katie was engulfed in it too. She had one arm raised slightly, as though she meant to touch Effy’s shoulder before realizing what Effy was doing. She watched Katie’s eyes follow the trail of Effy’s hand from the boy’s neck down to his trousers. Katie took a step back as if slapped. Her expression went from one of shock to pure despair, as though she had just realized something that shattered her entire soul.
Emily felt something inside her constrict down to the size of a pinprick, then explode suddenly. It could have absorbed the club and all the people in it, the city, the country, the world and all its oceans. It was too big for Emily to contain, this awful, terrible feeling of being destroyed from the inside. She fell back against the bar, and in a moment, the feeling was gone and so was the light. She could barely make out the outline of Katie’s figure fighting towards the exit.
Oh my God.
The feeling came back again, worse this time. Emily thought she might be sick all over the floor as lights sprung up before her eyes, bright huge balls of white light appearing and disappearing. She felt someone’s hands on her shoulders as she sank down to her knees, the blackness of the floor pushing through her eyes and into her head.
Naomi, having retreated back to her previous spot, saw Emily’s face constrict into a look of horror as she fell back against the bar. She was beside her in an instant, gripping her shoulders as she slipped down underfoot.
“Emily!” she shouted in her ear. “What’s wrong?”
Emily moved her lips as if to speak, but no sound came out. She looked completely dazed. Naomi tucked her head under Emily’s right arm, gripped her by the waist and pulled her upright. She moved towards the wall, where the crowd was thinner, and trekked towards the door.
“Ems?” she kept saying. “Ems, what’s happened? Emily?”
In the flashing lights, she could make out the wet trails running down Emily’s cheeks. Once at the door, Naomi ignored the bouncer’s questions and pushed out into the street. She half-carried Emily two blocks down before stopping to catch her breath.
Emily lurched forward a bit, taking in a big heaving gasp of air. The life returned to her eyes and for a moment she looked confused. She touched her face, then looked at her fingers as though she had not realized that she’d been crying.
“Emily?” Naomi said, loosening her grip on her waist.
Emily looked at her, blinking, and said nothing. Naomi took her by the shoulders and shook her gently.
“What’s happened?” she demanded. “Are you all right? Did someone slip something into your drink?”
“I’m fine,” Emily said, slightly dazed. Then she seemed to regain herself and pushed Naomi’s hands away. “Stop shaking me. It’s just...I...where’s Katie?”
“Katie?” Naomi said incredulously. She took Emily by the wrist. “She’s probably back there with Effy. Come on, let’s go home. You’re not well.”
“I’m fine,” Emily insisted. “I have to find Katie. I was wrong. I was wrong.”
“Wrong about what?” Naomi said anxiously. “I don’t know what you’re talking about Ems, you’re not making any sense.”
Something passed over Emily’s face. It was quiet and resigned, blank. It reminded Naomi of her mother’s expression on the day that marked her father’s departure so many years ago. Every year that look, however brief, was there.
“Emily?”
Emily knotted her hands over her chest, staring down at the pavement, then loosened them almost immediately afterwards. She let them fall to her sides.
“Nothing,” she said quietly after a moment. She looked very sad. “It’s nothing. Never mind. Let’s go home. I feel a bit dizzy.”
Naomi took her hand gently as they began walking. “You scared the shit out of me. What happened?”
“I don’t think I can talk about it,” Emily said. Her voice was a near whisper. “It’s Katie. It isn’t me. Something happened with Katie.”
“Did you two have a row?”
“No. She...she had a row with Effy. But she’ll be all right.”
“I’ve never seen anyone nearly faint over watching two people have a row.”
Emily seemed to hesitate. “It was a bad row. But she’ll be all right. Katie will be all right.” She looked at Naomi, her eyes tired. “I’m sorry about earlier. It isn’t your fault. I shouldn’t have been a twat to you. It was horrible of me.”
Naomi squeezed Emily’s fingers in her own. “You were upset.”
“Yeah,” Emily said, looking at her feet. “I was upset.”
~ ~ ~
Ms. Hannah Smith awoke the following morning at six, went for a jog around the block, did her morning meditation, took a shower, ate an omelette (broccoli, onions, and swiss cheese), had a cup of tea, and arrived at the office half an hour before her first appointment. Hannah liked to arrive early so she had time to read the paper over a second cup of tea.
“Your new client is here,” her secretary informed her. She was a bit younger than Hannah, probably nearing thirty. Her name was Victoria, and Hannah had not yet been able to figure out whether or not she was a lez-be-friends. She rubbed sleep out of one eye while sipping her coffee. “I sent him in already, hope you don’t mind.”
Hannah stopped and looked at her. “He’s here already?”
Victoria sipped her coffee again and shrugged sympathetically. “Sorry.”
Hannah’s new client, according to the information afforded her by his mother the previous day, was eighteen. His mother expressed concern regarding her son’s increasing withdrawal and isolation from every day activities since his girlfriend had thrown him out of her flat, following the death of his best friend. He had been diagnosed with high-functioning autism nearly two years prior, and had recently stopped taking the mood stabilizers prescribed to him.
Normally Hannah would have kept this information clear in her mind, but since her morning routine had been thrown off by his early arrival she forgot nearly all of it. She fumbled for his chart as she set her cup of tea on her desk. She wondered if it was obvious how much he had shaken her.
She glanced over the information, took a deep breath, sipped her tea twice, and finally turned to take him in.
He had curly brown locks and a handsome, young face that was pulled taut with sleeplessness and anxiety. His flannel shirt was neatly pressed, and his jeans, though well-worn, seemed quite clean. He was meticulous. The entire time, he had not spoken. His face seemed to be made of strong marble that had been rubbed with a thin layer of charcoal.
“Hello, err…” Embarrassed, she glanced at his chart again. “Jonah.”
“Call me JJ, please.” His curt tone negated all pleasantries. “I don’t want to be here.”
Hannah was a creature of habit. She did not like when her routine was thrown off. It made her feel like she was losing control. Hannah hated losing control. If she had no control, she had nothing, and she had worked hard her whole life for something. Receiving guff from a client normally would not phase her--she was treating Effy Stonem, after all--but she felt out of sorts, starting her day without her second cup of tea and the news. She pressed her lips together and drew in a deep breath, her nostrils flaring. JJ stared her down. It annoyed her even more.
“Well,” she said after a moment. “What are you doing here, then?”
“My mother made the appointment. She wanted me to come because she thinks I’m mental.”
“Do you think you’re mental?”
“No,” JJ said coldly. “I think I’ve been fucked.”
~ ~ ~
Effy was standing knee-deep in the ocean. It was the Atlantic, off the shores of California. Having never visited the west coast--or any part of the States, really--she didn’t know how she knew this.
She felt strong arms encircle her waist, holding her tightly from behind. Something hard pressed into the small of her back, slowly rubbing up and down. She knew exactly what it was, but for a moment she believed it was a gun.
She touched the hands gently. They were smooth, soft hands that had never seen hard work before. She reached up without looking behind her to feel the lips hovering an inch away from her ear. They were moving, but no sound came out.
Effy started to cry. She felt her tears drip off of her chin and into the water.
“Why did you do this to me?” she whispered.
He ground himself up against her back and groaned quietly into her ear. She slid her fingers through his dark hair, curled them, and began pulling slowly. Her arm felt weak. His face moved down to her neck.
“I only ever wanted to save you,” he murmured, kissing her gently. He flicked his tongue out three times, and on the third time Effy realized it was a snake. She turned her head slightly, enough to see the head protrude from his mouth and slither down her collarbone.
It traveled across her sternum, its warm scales making her shiver. For a moment, it seemed nothing at all would happen--it would be her, and him, and his snake in the water. But then, before she could so much as blink, it wrapped itself around her neck twice and began to squeeze.
“I only ever wanted to save you,” he said again, louder this time. Only his snake-tongue was sticking out, so it sounded more like: “Ah onleh eva wanteh to thaf you.”
Effy woke with a start. The side of her face was numb with cold. She lifted her head slowly, ignoring the pounding in her ears. She was laying on the grass, one hand tucked under her body, the other stretched out to touch something smooth and cool. Like his hands.
She blinked at it. It was carved marble, new looking. It had his name on it, and his birthday, and that other day she tried so hard to forget.
She narrowed her eyes, wanting to spit, wanting to vomit, wanting to scream. She stood up on shaky legs and did nothing, just stared and stared and stared.
~ ~ ~
Katie was awake for three terrifying minutes before she realized where she was. She looked down at the large hand that cupped her hip and remembered.
Oh no. Oh no, no, no.
It was bad enough she had done it at all, but the fact that she hadn’t put her clothes back on afterward made it worse. Now she was awake, sober and hungover, and she was naked. She was naked and sober and in bed with an equally naked Cook. Just as she began trying to figure out how to move without him noticing, he planted a kiss on the back of her head.
“Mornin’,” he said cheerfully. “All right, Katiekins?” Before she could answer, he chuckled, and it was just as well he did because she had no idea how to respond to a question like that. “‘Course not. I tried to give you water last night, but you wouldn’t have any of it. You were pretty set on one thing.”
Katie blinked, refusing to turn to him. She opened her mouth to disagree, but then she felt his hands slide up the back of her neck gently and remembered him behind her the night before, tugging her hair as she begged him to keep going, her face in a pillow as she forced her sobs to sound more like moans.
He kept telling me to squeeze his balls, she remembered, and was nearly sick all over his floor when she realized she had. With her lips.
“Do you want breakfast?” he asked, moving his hand away from her hair to lay it comfortably across her waist. It was as if they’d done this for years. “Haven’t got much, but we can grab coffee and a bite at the cafe round the corner or somethin’, yeah.”
I can’t believe I sucked his balls.
“Or I can run out and pick up some eggs.”
How many other girls have sucked his balls?
“Katie?”
Oh God. Did Effy suck his balls?
Then she remembered Effy, her hands sliding down the chest of that boy down to the front of his pants, how, even in the pulsing club lighting, Katie could make out how they were tented. She remembered Effy’s lips on his neck, seeing the pink of her tongue against his flesh, seeing his eyes roll back a bit, and she remembered how her world froze and then shattered into a million tiny fragments.
She finally turned to Cook, who had his head propped up in his palm. He was watching her expectantly, waiting for an answer. She pursed her lips slightly, studying him.
He does look quite different. Sobriety has made him less...repulsive. And I...I don’t think it was bad. I don’t remember it being bad.
“Cook,” she said pointedly. Her voice cracked slightly, and she cleared her throat. “Did I come last night?”
His eyebrows raised and he let out a sort of self-conscious laugh, then pressed his lips together. Katie realized he was worried about his morning breath. “Come?”
“Orgasm,” she clarified flatly. “Did I--”
His face between her thighs his tongue flicking in and out one finger two fingers three fingers her fingers in his hair her hips grinding he groaned she groaned her tears seeping down into her eardrums her eyes slid shut she pretended his hair was longer and there was no stubble and he did not smell like Cook she made him smell like Effy and she--
“Oh,” she said, blinking.
He grinned like a little boy, pleased with himself. She was too busy being surprised to grin back. In all her time sleeping with men--she lost her virginity at fourteen and had at least five sexual partners every year after, so that meant about twenty men to date--not one had ever gotten her off.
“So,” he said, licking his lips. His face looked gentle. “Breakfast then?”
Katie touched his chest gently with her fingertips, studying his eyes. Since Cook had gotten sober, he was better at...well, everything, really. He had shown up to take care of her. He was more polite, more gracious. He wasn’t tossing her out on her ass. He was offering her breakfast. And he had this sort of twinkle in his eyes, this genuine spark, that meant he cared about her. Something inside of her softened and she realized she could easily begin to regard him as a friend.
That was good enough. After the night before, after Effy, after Effy and that boy, after everything, this would be good enough for her. And it would take care of Emily as well.
“Sure,” she said, smiling slightly. She wondered if it reached her eyes. “Breakfast.”
~ ~ ~
“Fucked?” Hannah repeated, crossing her legs. “Go on.”
JJ eyed her suspiciously. Why wasn’t she holding a clipboard? Why wasn’t she sitting behind a desk? Where was the drawer full of pills? Wasn’t she going to take notes? She couldn’t prescribe him medication, but shouldn’t she at least be taking notes? They all took notes, like he was a textbook they were studying instead of a human being.
“My mate Freddie died,” JJ began cautiously. A flicker passed through Hannah’s eyes so quickly, JJ didn’t even notice it. “He was offed a few months ago. It was in the papers.”
“The John Foster case.”
“Yeah. He was my best mate. Then my other best mate Cook offed Foster and he went to jail, and he got sober, and then Thomas and Panda fucked off to university in the States and Naomi and Emily decided they’d still go to Goa even though I fucking needed them, and Effy’s a twat and it’s all her fucking fault and my girlfriend Lara left me, she fucking left me ‘cos I was angry, I’m so f-fucking angry and Cook got s-s-sober and no one g-g-gi-gives a sh-shit how I feel or wh-wh-wh-what I think.”
Hannah waited for a moment, as though she was giving him time to say more if need be. He let a gust of air out in a whoosh. No doctor had ever let him finish a complete sentence before. He couldn’t believe it.
“Tell me more about Lara,” Hannah requested quietly. “You got quite upset when you started talking about her.”
“Lara,” JJ said. Her name used to feel like a butterfly floating up from his throat. Now it felt like a weight on his chest. “I...I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone as much as I love Lara.”
~ ~ ~
Emily woke up curled in a ball. She blinked her eyes open and felt something shift on the other side of the bed.
“I woke up and you were like that,” Naomi said. Emily rolled over and saw her sitting up with her feet on the floor. She was still in her pajamas. Even with her back to her, she’d known Emily was awake. Smoke curled up about her hair. “Curled up like that, not touching me.”
Emily reached out for her. Without looking, Naomi shifted her body away, out of Emily’s reach.
“I haven’t woke up to that since…”
“I’m sorry,” Emily said quietly. She sat up, reached for her again. “Naomi, come here. I’m sorry. Last night was just--”
“I wish we’d never gone to Goa.” Naomi turned to her, and her eyes were swollen, the whites bloodshot. Emily’s mouth went dry. “I wish we’d gone to Mexico instead, or Canada, or anywhere else.”
Emily tried swallowing, but the muscles in her throat wouldn’t move properly. She felt something inside of her flutter, a butterfly stuck in a chrysalis, struggling to be free. She tried swallowing again, and managed it this time. She cleared her throat.
“Last night was just…” She trailed off where Naomi had once interrupted her, realizing she didn’t know what she wanted to say.
“You weren’t just upset,” Naomi said, fresh tears spilling over her cheeks. “You weren’t just upset, were you?”
And the butterfly was still, its dead wings fluttering in a hot, hellish wind.
~ ~ ~
Naomi had been nursing a sunburn for days, and chose not to join Emily on their nightly walk down to the beach.
“I’m sorry babes,” she said, managing a small smile. “It hurts to move.”
“I’m the one who dragged you around in the sun all day,” Emily replied amicably, kissing Naomi’s scarlet cheeks. “I’m certain that didn’t help. More aloe, love?”
“The smell is making me nauseous,” she groaned.
“Kisses, then?”
“If they’re gentle.”
Emily kissed her forehead softly, then her nose and cheeks and chin. She fought the urge to nip at her neck, compromising by licking a smooth path from Naomi’s earlobe down to her collarbone. Naomi gasped and arched her back instinctively.
“Ouch, ow...fuck.” She grimaced. “Could you stop being so fucking hot, please?”
Emily smiled sympathetically. “Sorry.”
She skipped stones across the smooth glassy surface of the ocean and wished Naomi could join her. She sat down on the sand, watching the tide come in. It kissed her toes and she curled them away, the water growing chilly as night fell.
Someone sat down beside her. She knew who it was immediately, and was too stunned to turn her head. She could smell her--the faint trace of patchouli oil floating up off mocha skin.
“Well,” Mandy said. “Fancy this.”
Emily looked at her. Mandy’s hair was shorter, shorn in a bob that stopped at an angle at her chin. But all her features were the same. She kept her dark eyes trained on the water.
“Hey,” Emily said, trying to manage a friendly smile. “What brings you to Goa?”
“Family,” Mandy replied, turning to look at her. Her brow knitted together as she narrowed her eyes. “She brought you, then? Made good on it?”
“Yeah. She did.”
Mandy stretched her long legs out, letting the tide wash over her bare feet. She pulled a bottle out of her bag and uncorked it, taking a sip. She pressed her lips together and didn’t offer any. “Where is she?”
“Back in the hut.”
“Left you to walk the coast alone,” Mandy said, then scoffed humorlessly. “I don’t get you.”
“She didn’t leave me,” Emily protested defensively. “Shit, she’s got a sunburn is all.”
“Sunburn, or rugburn?”
“Excuse me?”
“Come off it.” In the dying light of the sun, Emily could see Mandy’s strong jaw clench. She took another swig from her bottle. “How much did it take? Plane tickets? Is that what it takes to buy you back?”
“I don’t know what--” Emily’s voice died away when Mandy laughed angrily.
“Haven’t you heard?” she said, turning towards her. Her lips curled up into a smirk, and Emily realized the nastiness she was trying to convey could not cover the hurt in her eyes. She dipped her head slightly, so that their faces were uncomfortably close. “Once a cheater.”
Emily shifted back. “Mandy, listen...I know you got hurt, and I’m sorry. Honestly. But I love her, and she loves me. I want to be with her. That’s all I ever wanted.”
“No, that’s what you used to want,” Mandy spit, and the hurt fell over her entire face like a shadow. “Then she cheated on you. Or did a trip to Goa make you forget all that?”
Emily frowned, but didn’t reply. Mandy laughed again, shorter this time, and tipped the bottle up to her lips.
“Stupid,” she said, shaking her head. “I never would have. I would have brought you here myself, introduced you to my family. I would have made love to you here, like I said I would. You never would have had to worry about losing me. I would have stayed with you.” Mandy looked at her, her eyes taking in all of Emily’s features as if for the first time. “You haven’t forgotten at all. I can tell, looking at you. You’re faking it.”
Emily began to shake her head hard, as if she was trying to get Mandy’s voice out of it. “You don’t know a thing about it, and I’d advise you to shut the fuck up.”
“Because taking advice from a blind, stupid twat has always been a priority of mine,” Mandy said hollowly, looking out to sea.
They sat in silence. Emily could not move, though her muscles ached to run from the beach, back into the hut and the heat of Naomi’s arms, her burned skin. Everything inside of her seemed frozen.
“Want to know what’s most fucked up?” Mandy’s voice made it obvious that saying no was not Emily’s option. A smile played on her lips, faint and sad. “I knew all along. From the moment we first went out together, I knew where I’d end up. Your eyes when she’d come up in conversation always gave you away. I knew all she had to do was figure out the right words and you’d run back to her. Stupid,” she muttered again, then took a long swig and corked the bottle. She put it back in her bag. “Bet you believed it for a few days, didn’t you? Thought things would be fine. But she shattered you. I knew. I could feel it when I kissed you that day in her room. That doesn’t just go away.”
Emily finally found the strength to press her palms down against the sand and get to her feet. As she turned to leave, Mandy stood and grabbed her wrist firmly.
“Look me in the eye and tell me you’ve forgotten it,” she demanded. “Look me in the eye and tell me, Emily. Tell me you really forgive her.”
Her thick, dark eyebrows were drawn together, her lips parted as her teeth clenched. The sun was gone, giving way to stars and lights from the street. Two tears traced their way down her cheeks. Instinctively, Emily reached up to touch them. Mandy jerked away, squeezing her fingers around Emily’s wrist painfully.
“Tell me you don’t think about what I could have given you if you’d been smart enough to take it.”
Emily opened her mouth, but could not find her voice. She remembered the night at the club, Sophia’s crumpled body, she remembered Naomi’s eyes, hard like ice, telling her not to interfere. She remembered the locker, the scrapbook. She remembered standing over the edge of the building and staring down, thinking it would have been so easy, thinking she understood why Sophia had done it, wondering why she could not do it herself. She remembered how her chest felt as if it had been split in half. She remembered meeting Mandy for the first time, and knowing she would keep her promises, that she would tell the truth, that she was not a risk.
Mandy smirked at her, blinking back the rest of her tears. Her eyes moved from Emily’s face to a place behind her shoulder, then back to her face again. She released her wrist as Emily turned to see what had caught Mandy’s attention, and there was Naomi.
Emily could hear Mandy’s feet crunching against the sand as she strode away. Naomi was wearing a t-shirt over her swimming costume, one arm crossed across her stomach, the other dangling at her side, holding a cigarette.
“Having a lovely chat with Mandy, I see,” Naomi said evenly. Her smile was thin, the same smile she wore so often when they would fight afterwards, when Naomi was trying not to say what she wanted to say.
“What did you hear?” she asked. Her voice was a whisper.
Naomi’s nostrils flared slightly as she sighed slowly through her nose. She walked up to Emily and kissed her gently on the forehead. “I came in when she was listing all the ways she would have fucked you on the beach.” She pulled away slightly, letting her hand trail down the back of Emily’s head before curling around her neck. “She’s still burned over you, eh?”
“S’ppose so,” Emily said hoarsely.
Naomi’s smile grew into something less thin, more genuine, but there was something in it Emily couldn’t place. “What a heartbreaker.”
“That’s me,” she said weakly. She smiled a little, relieved the moment for arguing had passed.
In the hut that night, Naomi fell asleep trying to pretend she hadn’t seen Emily unable to say she could trust her. Emily fell asleep pretending there wasn’t something in her stomach Mandy had awoken, and it was screaming to be heard again.
~ ~ ~
“JJ, I want you to try something,” Hannah said as she penciled in the time for their next appointment.
JJ was wiping his face with his wrist. He noticed his hands were shaking. He hadn’t been expecting this--it didn’t fit into his calculations. In forty-five minutes, he’d told her everything. He felt shredded to pieces.
“I understand that things are very difficult right now,” she said, opening one of her desk drawers and fishing around. “You have a lot of anger towards your friends. You feel very abandoned. I want you to know, everything you’re feeling is normal. It might not seem that way because of everything those other quacks have told you.” She muttered the last part under her breath, but JJ heard her. “It’s very difficult, dealing with the death of a friend, especially when you feel like you have no one to go to.”
She finally produced a black Moleskine notebook from her desk. She rested it in her lap. “I want you to phone Emily. She’s just gotten back, hasn’t she?”
“Yeah,” JJ replied, eyeing the notebook.
“Good. You seem comfortable opening up to her.”
“Guess so. Lost it to her, didn’t I?”
Hannah smiled slightly. “I want you to tell her what’s been going on in your life while she’s been away. I think she’ll be able to help you.”
“Why?”
“Call it…” She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, searching for the proper term. “Call it shrink intuition.” She met JJ’s gaze and held the notebook out to him. “And I want you to take this.”
“Why?” he repeated.
“Because you need an outlet for your anger,” she replied. He blinked at her. “I know you don’t want to be on medication again, but you can’t bottle things up inside. I think that’s why you’ve been getting so locked on, especially recently.”
JJ blinked at her again, then looked about the room as though he’d been sitting in the dark and someone had just flicked on a light. “Is that it? Is that why?”
“Well, I’m not certain, but it’s very possible. We’ll have to see.” She grimaced. “Could you take the notebook, please? My arm’s getting a bit tired.”
“Oh,” JJ said quickly, realizing she was still stretching her hand out towards him. He took the notebook from her, running his fingers over the smooth cover. “Sorry. This is...wow.” He looked at her. “This is quite possibly the most effective therapy session I’ve ever experienced.”
Hannah smiled warmly, crossing her legs. “I’m quite happy to hear that.”
“So...I just...I’m supposed to write in this when I’m angry?” He looked down at the notebook again, turning it over in his hands. He opened it, flipping through the lined pages.
“You write in it whenever you feel the need. You’ll know when that is.”
“Thank you,” JJ said, standing. She stood with him. “Thank you. Really. Thank you.”
“I’ll see you next week,” she said.
“Yes. Next week.”
He reached his hand out to shake hers, then gave in to a sudden overwhelming feeling of gratitude and embraced her instead. She stiffened in his arms as though she wasn’t sure how to react, but he pulled away before she could remind him of patient/therapist boundaries.
“Thank you,” JJ said a final time, smiling broadly. He left her office with such an intense feeling of excitement, he could barely contain himself.
After he was gone, Victoria poked her head into Hannah’s office. “What, did you blow him or something? I haven’t seen anyone leave your office looking so happy in ages.”
“I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or not,” Hannah said sardonically, but took it as one regardless.