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And there it is, the chain that binds me to him. The steel restraints that have pulled us back together despite my best efforts. He doesn’t usually lord it over me. But he’s too drunk to care about the consequences of his disregard right now. He’s too far gone to know that some wounds can’t be stitched closed.
“Get. Out.”
His blue eyes focus on me for a fraction of a second before they splinter off in a dozen different directions. “You know what? Fuck it. Fine. I’ll let you cool down,” he says, stumbling to the door. “I’ll go… find a… motel…”
Motels.He only ever mentions them like this when he’s drunk. When he’s sober, every motel is beneath him, cesspools for STDs and bad choices. (His words, not mine.)
But when he’s drunk, it’s the refuge he seeks out. He told me once that motels raised him. I’d assumed, based on the little he’d told me, that they were just personal containers for bad memories.
But every now and again, I wonder if maybe he’s only told me about the bad things that were donetohim—as opposed to the bad things he’s done to others. After all, it’s easier to forgive someone broken. Someone who’s suffered at another person’s hands.
But what if it’s his hands that caused the suffering?
I stand at the threshold as Adrian stumbles away from the house and staggers down the street. His silhouette melts into the shadows. Then he’s gone.
I close the door and turn to my dark, empty house. It still reeks of booze.
All the pride and accomplishment I’d felt walking home today feels like ancient history. It’s funny how the painful emotions always feel so tangible and visceral, whereas the good ones feel like hazy dreams that you can’t quite catch hold of.
Here’s a memory: we went to New York once. Adrian and I bought one dollar hot dogs from the halal cart and sat under a tree in Central Park. He kissed me and it tasted like mustard. I knew then that I loved him.
Before then, he was just the man behind the piano. He came out of nowhere one day, filling in as a favor to the theater owner when our regular player was out sick. But even then, part of me loved him, even if the rest of me hadn’t quite caught up to that realization yet. He played and I danced and it just fit together, it just worked, it was just beautiful.
Whenever I recall those memories, I feel like I’m seeing them through sepia-colored glasses. They’re grainy. Blurred. Just faded enough to make me feel like I’m missing essential parts.
Contrast that to the first time I realized Adrian had a drinking problem. Everything aboutthatmemory feels sharp, like a thorn hiding beneath the petals of a rose, waiting to cut you when you least expect it.
I remember the smell of vomit. I remember the clothes he was wearing. I even remember that feeling of doom that hung in the air like the last ringing note of his piano.
This is the end. Not the one you hoped for, but the one you deserve.
I fall asleep on the brown couch I’d bought with my first paycheck. I fall asleep trying to catch my sepia-tinted memories and the hope of possibility. I fall asleep praying that when I wake up, things will be right.
I fall asleep knowing they won’t.
2
JUNE
I wake up to the flashing of a red and blue light right outside my window, a banging on my front door, and a dull pain across the left side of my face. I know I haven’t slept for very long because it’s still dark outside and I can still smell Adrian’s dried drool on the sofa cushion.
BANG-BANG-BANG.
BANG-BANG-BANG.
The noise is loud and insistent. It’s enough to make me feel like I’m the one with the hangover.
“Jesus,” I groan, forcing myself to my feet. “Adrian, I thought I told you to fu—”
I pull open the door and the expletive on my lips freezes against my tongue. It’s not Adrian, that much is certain. For one, it’s a woman, and for another, she’s dressed in uniform. My eyes go right to the gun holstered on her hip. It catches the red and blue lights whirling on top of her patrol car and swallows them up like it’s saving them to unleash later.
“What happened?” I ask.
“Ma’am, I’m very sorry to wake you at this time, but—” She cuts off abruptly. “You’re bleeding.”
Oh. Duh. The slap. The ring. The cut, right in the same spot and shape as the last one and the one before that. “I, uh… I walked into a wall earlier.”
The cop looks perplexed, but she falls back into her script. “Right. Well, ma’am, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but there’s been an accident.”
