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I could agree. The orchids were by far the creepiest thing in the house—another of Dec’s pointless collections.
Woody’s door was first, set on the right between Dec’s and the house bathroom that none of us ever used. The dust in there spoke for itself, having conversations with the damp patches growing on the ceiling that I wouldn’t have time to clean in the near future.
A stain splashed the floor, coffee swishing the rim of my cup because Woody turned to me, wrapping tight arms around me. I patted his back with one hand, feeling all the scars on his naked torso. They made me feel like a shitty human being because I remembered how he got them and why he felt like he needed love. I tugged him a little closer, squeezing his chest to mine. I used the other hand to keep my cup—and the drink that would help me not to sleep tonight—out of his reach.
“Come on. Get in bed.” It was no secret I was worn out. It was no secret I felt that way often, and often because of him.
But it didn’t change how much he meant to me.
“Are you mad at me?” asked the intuitive fucker.
“No. Just tired.” I tried to break free, but it took some doing.
“But you still love me, Woodrow, and Hell?”
Him and all his alternate personalities.
I rolled my eyes. “You’re some of the only people in the world I truly care about.” I kissed his cheek softly, and his stubble violently stabbed my lips.
He smiled in response, and perfect teeth showed such happiness, such innocence. My answer was enough for him. He didn’t need the word love. He just needed to know I was there for him, willingly and always.
And I would be, no matter how much it drained me.
He let me go, his fingers wrapping around his doorknob, where they froze.
“Jolie, too?”
“Yeah...Jolie, too.”
His smile grew, and he opened the door, finally ready to leave my side to pester Jolie—the only person he loved more than me—with a million more questions.
She was sitting on their bed, sheets pooled around her waist, a delicate hand tapping the edge of the bed when he opened the door.
“Come on, baby,” she encouraged.
I saluted her as I put one foot in front of the other. “Goodnight, babe,” I replied when she said her usual, “Night, Remi.”
The generic endearment—a word I’d chosen back when I lived another life and went through women so fast, so many Sarahs and Courtneys and Rachels, that I couldn’t remember who was fucking who—still rolled off my tongue often.
Often, in regards to Jolie, whose name I’d never forget because she was all Woodrow and all his alters talked about when she wasn’t around.
I’d heard there were challenges to dating someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder, but she faced them all with a pretty smile on her lips.
I felt sorry for her, knowing how hard her night would be. The temptation to hide Woody’s electrolarynx was strong in order for her to have a peaceful night, but I’d never mute his voice. Dec had done that once to avoid the twenty questions per minute that kids always seemed to have. But it didn’t help. And I’d wanted to beat him to a fucking pulp for the extra stress it caused Woody and me.
I came back to the present, and my soul shuddered as a scream penetrated through the house, so loud I had to adjust my hearing aid.
Of course, it brought Woody back out, but he was no longer Woody. I could tell by how he stood, how he looked at me, no longer with timidness and innocence. One second in that room, and Jolie had somehow managed to drag Woodrow, the adult, back to the surface.
The hysterics continued as the hallway filled. I set my cup on the bookshelf, close to Jolie’s favorite special editions. She didn’t glare my way like she usually would when I even so much as looked their way.
I banged Ollie’s door with a heavy fist, then opened it without waiting for an answer.
His perfect black and white room was untouched, his bed made and not slept in.
“He went to The Clinic,” Jolie told me.
The Clinic was also known as The Shithole because that was how it masqueraded itself on the surface.
