semi-inspirational ramblings

Drowning Lessons

I’ve been putting off posting this. It’s gone through an absurd amount of revisions. Pop quiz: where is this title from?

Drowning Lessons

Emily slowly shuts the door behind her, as if trying not to wake anyone, then staggers through the dark hallway. Henry sits on the couch, staring blankly at a notebook, sipping from a half-empty fifth of Jack Daniels. The lights are off, so in the shadowy room Henry has to look twice to make sure he’s seeing correctly.

“Emily? Why’re you all wet?” Henry speaks with a British accent, his words musically slurring together.

A puddle forms on the linoleum beneath Emily’s black wedges. Her golden hair lays limp, dripping off her shoulders. Two patches of wetness marks her breasts through her black camisole, and a heart-shaped smear of water expands on the rear of her denim skirt. Every inch of her is covered in a wet sheen except the dark spot under her eyes, which seems to be bragging that it isn’t damp for once.

“It was raining pretty bad,” Emily mutters. She flings her hair across her shoulder, sending a sprinkle of water onto the cream-colored wall.

Henry tosses his notebook to the side and sits on his knees to see out the window behind the couch. “It’s not raining,” he announces.

“It was. Earlier.” Emily kicks off her shoes to reveal red painted toenails. She tiptoes towards the couch and flings herself backwards with her legs slung over the armrest.

“Anyway,” Henry continues, casually scooting away from the net of wet hair beside him. “Thanks for not killing yourself earlier.” When Emily doesn’t react, he continues. “Really. I wouldn’t be able to pay the rent without you. Also, I threw the rope down the trash chute. Figured we didn’t need temptation lying around.”

Emily remembers staring into the loop of her homemade noose just a few hours ago, pulling up her black desk chair and trying to decide whether she should go out facing the window or the television. She must’ve forgotten to take it down after she changed her mind.

Through her coal-black eyes, Emily sees Henry peering down at her. He has that rare look on his face as if he wants to fuck her. The look usually gives Emily satisfaction, but in this moment his deep blue eyes, scruffy brown mustache, and freckled nose infuriate her.

“Stop looking like him,” she demands, as if Henry can help his own genetics.

“God damn it, Em, you didn’t try to kill yourself over Brad, did you? When are you gonna realize…”

“It’s okay, I’m over him.” Emily sits up, closing her eyes. “I’m over him, I’m over him, I’m over…” The more she says it, the harder she cries, until she’s bawling hard enough to make Henry wonder if she cried herself all wet.

“Emily, come on!”

“No, but really.” Emily opens her eyes to meet Henry’s gaze. “I’m over him now.” She sniffles, and the storm of tears slows to a light drizzle.

“Well, cheers to that!” Henry raises his bottle, takes a swig, and offers the rest to his roommate.

Emily met Brad a little over two years earlier, when she was only nineteen. She went to a rock show with Henry about a month after they moved in together. The supporting musician was Bradley Chorton, a talented man with beautiful bone structure and an acoustic guitar.

“That dude looks just like you!” Emily exclaimed when Brad took the stage.

“I don’t look that sober,” Henry argued. “And, besides, I’ve probably got a bigger cock. So, what do you think of the blonde bartender? I haven’t gotten laid in, like, three days.”

Emily sighed, rapping her French manicured nails against the bar. The bartender was tall and slender, wearing a tiny red dress. “She’s a hottie, if you’re after my approval. Just try to get to her place; I wanna actually sleep tonight.”

Emily returned her attention to the man on the stage. He had the same ocean-blue eyes and chocolate-brown hair as Henry, though his hair was longer and shaggier. He had fewer freckles and a slightly thinner face. They did have the same square chin and full lips, though. Their bodies were similar too, aside from Henry’s extra stomach pudge and tattoos.

The two men dressed nothing alike, however. Henry only ever wore black—black jeans, black boots, black T-shirt and black leather jacket. Sometimes he’d replace the T-shirt with a V-neck, or the leather jacket with a hoodie, but it was always black. Brad looked more like a country boy with jeans, a big brown belt, and a white shirt. He looked like a happier, less self-destructive version of Henry. He looked like the man Emily secretly hoped she could change Henry into.

After the show, while Henry was hitting on mini-skirts with beer breath and watery eyes, Brad helped himself to the empty barstool beside Emily. He was engaged at the time to a short brunette who worked at a hair salon, according to Emily’s Facebook research. He introduced himself, and they discussed drinks and dreams, music and his upcoming marriage, half-hearted flirts and full heart-to-hearts.

“It’s nice to have someone to talk to who doesn’t just wanna sleep with me,” Brad admitted. “Most girls I meet on tour, well, are like that.” He gestured towards a short brunette in a mini-skirt, drunkenly leaning on Henry’s shoulder.

Emily laughed. “It’s nice to talk to a guy who doesn’t like that.”

“I never just hook up with girls unless it’s gonna mean something more. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever bought a drink for a girl at a bar without knowing her first.” Brad paused, eying the tall thin glass in Emily’s hand. “Wait, did I buy you that?”

Emily knew from that night that she’d have to love him. There was no living without him. It wasn’t so much love as a real emotion, but something worse, a desire to love him so intensely that she couldn’t turn back on her decision no matter what.

“Tell me about that ring,” Emily dared.

Brad’s lips parted to reveal two rows of white teeth. “I’ve been dating her for five years, and I think she’s the one. She’s…oh, I don’t know.”

“Do you love her?” Emily asked, secretly hoping the answer was no. She remembered the time she and Henry played ‘Never have I ever.’ It was one of the only two drinking games he’d ever play, along with ‘Who can drink the most without passing out.’ Henry opened the game with “Never have I ever been in love.” Ever since that night, Emily felt tragically lost in that she couldn’t put down a finger. She’d never actually been in love either. Of course, she’d been attracted to men and cared about men, but was that love?

“Of course,” Brad responded, his voice barely audible over the chatter in the room.

Much to Emily’s surprise, this made her want to love him even more. She was so accustomed to Henry’s disillusioned pessimism. “Love doesn’t exist,” he said after the game. “That’s why no one ever puts their finger down. And those who do put their finger down, they’re lying. They’re in love with the sex, or with the sense of security, but never with the person.”

“What’s that like?” Emily asked. She took the last sip of her drink, swirling the ice around in the bottom of the glass as if searching for a hidden last drop.

“It’s like, hmm, like you’re complete, cheesy as that sounds. The finer details of life blur at the edges when you know she’s always going to be there for you. I love knowing that no matter where I am on tour, I always have that comfort to return to. What about you? Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No.” Emily chuckled. “I live with a man-whore who’s slowly convincing me that love is something I was tricked into believing in as a child. Like it’s some sort of fantasy. It does feel like a fairytale when it’s so unattainable.”

“You’re young; you’ve got so much time,” Brad promised.

“And how old are you?”

“Twenty-four.”

The morning after her near-suicide attempt, Emily wakes up with the biggest smile she’s worn in months.

“It’s good to have yah back, Em,” Henry says with a half-smile of his own, his rotten breath escaping through crooked teeth. He can’t help but notice the exceptional cheeriness with which she mixed their Bloody Marys.

“I feel so relieved,” Emily admits. “It’s so nice not waking up and constantly waiting for my phone to ring. There’s no cell service in heaven, you know—only in hell.”

“And you really think that bastard’s gonna end up in heaven?” Henry asks with a smirk.

“God, I hope so. ‘Cause we’re going to hell, and I don’t wanna ever see him again.”

Emily tears her unfinished painting off the easel. It’s a portrait of her and Brad embracing, her greatest fantasy realized only in abstraction. It’s almost complete, just missing a few details on their interlocked hands. It was intended to be the first-prize winner in her school’s annual art contest, but the deadline already passed and Emily saw no use in finishing it. She crumpled the hideous piece into a fistful and tossed it down the trash chute to land on her unused knotted rope.

Henry was the worst best friend Emily could’ve ever hoped for. They met during the rottenest period of their lives, two lost souls clinging onto each other’s misery as a crutch for their own self-pity. Too absorbed in their own elitism, they never agreed on anything. Henry was an elitist for sex, finding satisfaction in every hot body he entered and exited. Emily was a snob for love, determined only to settle for the fairy tale she saw in Disney movies and in her childhood home.

She grew up in an alternate universe, a rich suburb of Detroit, where she lived the only-child fantasy of family vacations, home-cooked meals, and bedtime stories. The first seventeen years of her life endowed her with unreasonably high expectations for the rest of the world—she believed in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, wishing on stars and horoscopes, heaven and true love. Then the only model for life she knew—her parents, proved as impermanent as a nightmare. Driving home from downtown Detroit one Saturday night, their sedan was crumpled by a semi-truck whose driver had fallen asleep. The world collapsed beneath Emily’s feet, and she lived with her aunt for one year before she could legally move out. She got accepted to a community college for painting and supported herself by working at the local library.

Emily lived alone, trudging through days like thick mud. Her inability to see outside herself sufficiently to connect with others kept her constantly on guard, as if at war with the happy couples she saw in the world around her. Sometimes she imagined a machine gun on her shoulder, and she walked around town as if she were in a first person shooter game, gunning down every enemy—every stranger who looked happier than she felt. That girl who checked out a half dozen romance novels went home with invisible bullets penetrating her B-cup breasts and hopeful heart. Emily captured the gore she envisioned in red paint on her canvas at home.

Henry was undoubtedly the sexiest patron Emily encountered at the public library, where he came every Monday and Wednesday to read and scribble ideas for his novel. One day she approached him and asked him to take her out for a coffee. He laughed, and said he’d rather take her out for a beer or six in his entrancing British accent.

“So you’re from the UK?” Emily asked later that night as they drank in her studio apartment. Henry propped up his feet on her wooden coffee table. The walls of the small apartment were plain, save for several of Emily’s paintings she’d hung up—a princess looking longingly out the window of a grey castle, a still life of a wine bottle and two glasses, and an abstract array of blue lines meant to represent the horizon over an ocean. Unwashed bowls, shot glasses, and cups littered the counters, and the floor was spotted with the occasional strand of blonde hair.

“Unfortunately,” Henry said. “I ran away from home when I was sixteen.”

“You’ve got me beat,” Emily sighed. “I wasn’t orphaned till I was seventeen.”

“I was already an alcoholic by then,” Henry bragged.

“My parents died in a car crash,” Emily blurted out.

Unfazed, Henry replied nonchalantly, “My mum left my father when he broke her rib. The only thing he taught me was how to hold my liquor.”

Emily’s face crinkled into a grimace. “That’s horrible! My parents were the happiest couple you’d ever meet. They taught me how to love.” She secretly hoped this would turn him on.

Instead, Henry laughed. “Love? No such thing.”

Emily fell for Henry’s charisma, body, and accent, convinced she’d be able to show him that love did exist. She clung onto the fantasy that they could heal each other’s wounds, change each other for the better, and finally live happily every after. So she invited him to move in with her, and he slept on the couch. Two years later, all he’d taught her was how to solve problems with alcohol and how to give a proper blowjob. All she’d changed in him were his showering and laundry habits.

It wasn’t entirely in Emily’s imagination that she had a deeper connection with Brad. There was a flow when they were together—conversation came naturally—and they felt as though they were old friends getting together after not seeing each other for a few years. They exchanged numbers at the end of that first night and kept in touch infrequently, to politely check in as well as to exchange the occasional drunken rant.

One rainy Thursday afternoon, while Henry had taken over the living room with a harem of blondes and Emily hid in her room, working on landscapes inspired by Jose Cuervo, her phone rang unexpectedly.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Emily! It’s Brad. How’ve you been?”

“Oh, I’ve… I’ve been fine. How the hell are you?”

“I’ve been all right as well. Listen, I’m playing a show in Pontiac tonight. You live around there, don’t you? If you want to come out, I’ll get you on the guest list. We can grab a drink after or something. How’s that sound?”

Hanging out with Brad felt like the first time Emily truly breathed in years. She felt refreshed, renewed, and nearly as wholesome as she’d been as a child, giggling as her crush proposed with a grape Ring Pop at recess.

Emily knew however, that as long as Brad was with another girl, she couldn’t be with him. He was impossible, unattainable, too good to be true. Throughout the night, her thoughts were littered with ideas of what she’d do if he were hers. When he bit his nails, she imagined reaching out to take his hand and tracing the lines of his palm with her fingertips—his life line and his love line. When he sat next to her, she imagined resting her head on his shoulder and synchronizing their breathing—the same air molecules that swam out of his exhalations becoming her inhalations.

“How’s your fiancé?” Emily asked politely, as he bought her Long Islands after the show.

“Oh, we’re actually not together anymore,” Brad said smoothly, as if it were a lyric to one of his songs he rehearsed daily.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Emily meant that she was sorry she hadn’t known beforehand. She would’ve worn a thong instead of briefs. She would’ve brought him a gift—painted something for him perhaps.

“Don’t be,” he said. And so she wasn’t. From that point on it was he who always apologized, and she who thanked. “Thank you for guest listing me,” “Thank you for buying me drinks,” “Thank you for being beautiful,” “Thank you for breaking up with her,” “Thank you for existing,” “Thank you for loving me, if that’s what this is.” And he’d be the one who was sorry. “I’m sorry I live two time zones away,” “I’m sorry I don’t have any minutes left on my phone,” “I’m sorry I can’t spend the night,” “I’m sorry I don’t feel that way about you,” “I’m sorry that you love me, if that’s what this is.”

They became exponentially closer after hanging out, and they’d talk more frequently, and about more personal topics. They’d outline what they’d do if they could spend the night together. He’d explain how he left his fiancé because she made him choose between her and his music, and his love for music outweighed his love for her. He’d tell Emily that for him to play his guitar was like swimming through a sea of notes and melodies, soaking up the feelings like a sponge. She’d send him pictures of herself throughout the day, slowly stripping off her clothes until her smiling profiles had transformed into naked seduction.

“I can’t wait till you come back to Michigan,” she told him one day. She was saving herself for him, a secret she wasn’t willing to reveal until that magical moment she fantasized about when they’d snuggle together under the warm sheets of her bed. Henry would have to listen to their moans through the walls, and restructure everything he thought he knew about sex and love.

“I’m sorry if I’ve led you on,” Brad replied, “but we can’t do anything physical. I’ve just been playing around because I trust you, and I love talking with you, but I’m saving myself for marriage.”

Emily wanted to exclaim, “Then marry me!” and finally begin her life. It was as if she was stuck on the first page of a picture book—the page where the princess is introduced as locked in her tower alongside angst, depression, and a smelly childhood dress that barely fit anymore. She was the portrait of a girl printed in ink, trapped in the introduction to a possible future. There were images of future Emilys with rosy cheeks and crescent smiles on the following pages, but this Emily was two-dimensional, sketched, printed, and published permanently on page one.

“Don’t tell me that,” Emily replied. “It only makes you more attractive.”

He laughed. “I’m sorry, it’s not you, I promise. You’re amazing, Emily, but I’m not looking for a relationship right now. I need some time alone with my music.”

“I’m just glad we’re friends,” Emily said, more for her own sake than for his. “We’re always going to be friends,” Brad agreed.

Always—Emily hated that word. It promised they’d never change into something more.

“I feel like we never talk anymore,” Henry told Emily one Friday morning. They were sitting on opposite ends of the couch, staring silently at their blank pages as if waiting to see whose muse would inspire whom first. “It’s kind of nice, actually.”

“I just want to talk to him endlessly,” Emily mumbled. “I want to talk with him until we’ve exchanged every word in the dictionary, and then made up some more of our own.”

Henry rolled his eyes and said, “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“Ever since I lost my parents, Henry, I’ve felt as if I’ve been drowning. It’s like I can’t breathe, and the world’s just this murky sea I don’t know how to swim in. I don’t even remember which direction the surface is anymore. But Brad, oh, I don’t know. I feel as if he can help me to shore again.”

“Brad’s no good for you, and you know it.” Tossing his notebook to the side with a smirk, Henry turned to face Emily. “He’s an artist, which makes him no different from us. You’re drowning in your own loss and self-pity, I’m drowning in my bottles of liquor, and that dumbass is drowning in some other pool of his own— you just don’t wanna admit it. You can’t hold onto a drowning man and expect you’ll help each other swim again. All you’re gonna do is drag each other under faster.”

“You don’t understand love like I do,” Emily insisted. “You just don’t get it.”

“Or maybe you just don’t understand love like I do,” Henry challenged. “It’ll never work out between us either, you know.”

Emily laughed. “Why would I want you when I could have him?”

“‘Cause you can’t have him, you dumb bitch.”

“Shut up,” Emily snapped. “I know what I wanna paint now.” She picked up her sketchpad and started drawing the outline of her and Brad’s bodies together.

Brad was constantly on Emily’s mind. It was as if he’d packed up his belongings and moved permanently into a corner of her brain, knocking on the inside of her skull regularly to remind her to feed him, clean his room, love him. While Emily was at work, every patron with blue eyes would remind her of Brad. For once, she didn’t feel totally lost when her co-workers would mention their significant others.

“I’m so excited to have tomorrow off!” Mary said one day. She was in her thirties, a tall, thin brunette with wiry glasses. “It’s Josh’s and my second anniversary.”

Instead of becoming nauseated as Emily usually would, she instead heard a reassuring knock come from Brad inside his corner of her mind.

“That’ll be so fun!” Emily said, though she wasn’t thinking of Mary’s celebration, but rather her own. She could almost hear the way Brad would whisper into her ear years from now when they had anniversaries of their own to celebrate, telling her how much she’d changed his life for the better.

Henry kept living as fast as he could, grabbing every one-night stand as if it were the last night of his life. Physically, he experienced more than an average prostitute, experimenting with the sharper edges of life, discovering what his body was capable of. He pressed his relationships to the point of falling over the cliff labeled “Love,” just until he thought he might be feeling something more, then tossed his companion over the ledge and stood at the top waiting for his next victim.

Emily lacked everything Henry had, yet she experienced everything he never imagined. She sweated with lust for Brad, her feelings sticking her skin to her clothes so they couldn’t ever be peeled off. Her relationship with Brad was purely emotional, carried out mostly over the phone and in her mind.

“What I don’t get,” Henry said one day, “is why you’re so obsessed with this dude in the first place.”

“He appreciates me,” Emily explained as she mixed white into her blue paint, swirling them together the right proportions to match Brad’s eyes. “No one’s done that in a long time.”

“I put up with you,” Henry teased. “That’s gotta count for something.”

“When we hang out, Brad opens doors for me. He looks me in the eye when he speaks, the same way my dad used to look at my mom. When you tell a chick you like her shirt, it’s ‘cause you want her to take it off. When Brad talks to me, it’s ‘cause he likes me as a person. This is the first time since I was a kid that anyone has ever made me feel as if I’m more than just a waste of air.” Emily sighed.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, no one’s ever made me feel that way before,” Henry admitted. “But that’s just ‘cause no one bothers to lie to me.”

“God made air for us to breathe,” Emily argued. “Without us around, it’d be pointless.”

“Or maybe we made up God to justify breathing,” Henry suggested with a chuckle. “There’re a million Brads and a million Emilys in the world. You think you two are particularly important, but you’re not.”

“Don’t tell me that!” Emily slammed her brush on the table and stood up. “I’m sick of you saying no one matters!”

“Go pack a bowl and calm the fuck down.” Henry rolled his eyes. “People’ve been busy not mattering for years, and the world’s turned out just fine. No use getting upset over it now.”

Emily stormed out of the room, reassuring herself that Henry was lying. People do matter, and the world isn’t just fine.

Emily and Brad only ever talked at night, when the sky was dark enough and their minds groggy enough to justify their interactions. Emily was usually drunk, and Brad was usually high, and even when they weren’t, they pretended they were, just so they could say the truth without being responsible for what it meant.

“I’m gonna be in Detroit for a week to record my new album,” Brad announced.

“A whole week!” Emily exclaimed. She lay in bed as she talked on the phone, snuggled under pink sheets. She wore nothing but blue panties and a black T-shirt. “I’ll have to show you around. We can go to the lake, and I can show you some of my paintings, and there’s that new romantic comedy out—you like those, right?” She was supposed to spend the week finishing her painting of herself and Brad for the art contest, which would be held on Saturday. But what if she could enact the painting instead? Painting was something she’d been working to master for the past two years, but love was something she’d been searching for her whole life. She was certain Brad would be worth the sacrifice.

There was a pause before Brad said anything. Emily heard Henry cursing to himself on the other side of the thin divider. She could almost hear Brad cursing to himself on the other side of the country as well.

“I’m coming over for work,” Brad reminded her. “We can definitely hang out, but I’m not gonna have time for all that!”

“Yeah, I understand,” Emily said, though it might’ve been a lie. How could he not want to spend every second with her? Sure, work was important, but didn’t he need to live a little in order to gain inspiration for his music? She was willing to give up her work for him! Why couldn’t he do the same?

“I’m sorry, Emily, really. It’s not you; it’s just how I am. I’m just the kind of guy who values his alone time.”

“I love my alone time too,” Emily agreed. “But don’t you ever get lonely? Isn’t it ever too alone?”

“When I’m alone, it’s my sane time. I can finally catch my breath and just be me.”

“For me, it’s my insane time,” Emily said. “I try to be me, but I can’t always remember who that is. When I turned eighteen, I lived alone for a whole year, and I’d lost contact with most of my friends from high school. Sometimes I’d go days without seeing people— just sit at home and paint and think about life. Dishes would pile up in the sink, clothes would carpet my floor, and I’d forget even to close the bathroom door when I’d pee. I felt like I was the last person left on earth.”

“I wouldn’t mind being the last person on earth,” Brad considered. “As long as I still had music to keep me company.”

“Without people,” Emily argued, “you wouldn’t even relate to any of the songs.”

“Maybe,” Brad said. “But without the songs, there’s definitely no way I’d relate to anybody.”

“Sometimes I wonder if I do relate to people at all,” Emily considered, “or if I, I don’t know, experience reality different from everyone else.” She immediately regretted saying it, knowing he wouldn’t understand. She realized how Henry must feel when he tosses out a piece of wisdom and she rejects it as nonsense. For once she understood something about her existence, and not even the man she loved more than her own flesh could comprehend how she felt. How insanely alone it was not to be understood.

“It’s something cool to think about,” Brad agreed. “But I don’t think I’d ever want to experience life as someone else. I like how I see things.”

Emily pulled her pink covers snug over her head and inhaled the fresh laundry fragrance. She saw nothing in the darkness, and she liked it that way.

She wanted to tell him she loved him. She wanted to tell him that she was saving herself for him, that she couldn’t stand having them live apart. She wanted to explain how she’d give up everything—her art, her relationship with Henry, her virginity—just to be his. She wanted to make him realize that’s what he wanted too—whether it’s what he really wanted or not. She wanted to want him so badly it didn’t matter if her desire was illogical or imaginary. She let her mind Photoshop out his imperfections—rounding out the sharp edges of his self-absorption, and smudging the bold lines of impracticalities. She held the phone to her ear as if it were his hand, squeezing the hard plastic until she felt she might break her wrist.

It’s been two weeks since Emily’s suicide attempt. She sits on the couch with her slender white legs pulled into her chest, drinking tequila and staring blankly at the black world on the other side of the glass. A groggy, tipsy Henry stumbles out of the bathroom, the floor creaking beneath his bare feet.

“Em?” Henry rubs his eyes.

“Can’t sleep either?” Emily asks, holding out her glass as an offering.

Henry sits down and Emily extends her legs onto his lap. He runs his fingers up and down their whiteness glowing in the moonlight. Her legs feel silky beneath his fingertips, and he’s surprised she doesn’t stop him.

“You okay?” Henry asks, accepting her tequila.

“I keep dreaming about him,” Emily says quietly, almost choking on her words.

“Em, seriously, that son of a bitch…”

“Henry.” Their eyes meet, stunning blue and coal black. “I gotta tell you…

Brad came to Detroit to record for his newest album. He and Emily had made plans to hang out all week, of course, but Emily couldn’t stand it any longer. She couldn’t make him see that she was the girl he’d been waiting for. She figured, no one ever knew what they had until it was gone, so the easiest way to make him realize how much he loved her would be to kill herself.

She’d been drinking, of course, when she bought the rope and knotted it into a necklace—the two ends tied together forever. She hung it from the ceiling like a new chandelier to decorate the messy living room, and spent a lot of time considering whether she wanted to face the window or the television as her vision faded.

Standing on the chair, she felt very tall, as if she could finally see the world from a new perspective. And as she stared into that tempting loop, the empty space waiting to caress her delicate neck, she remembered something Henry had said. “It’s so stupid when people kill themselves because of other people. I say, just kill whoever’s turning your life to shit, and that solves that.”

Emily stepped down from the chair, and suddenly everything was a race against time. The moments blurred in her flurry of thoughts—calling Brad, changing into her swimsuit, debating between wedges and flip flops, driving to the lake, packing the bowl, taking turns pressing their lips against its smooth tip as if to indirectly kiss each other. They talked about Brad’s passion for music and Emily’s passion for love. It was the same passion, just misdirected. She poisoned him with whiskey, tainted his eyes by stripping down to her stringy pink bikini, and electrocuted his hand as she held it eagerly, leading him into the water.

“How long can you hold your breath?” she dared. And they went under.

One, two, three. The way they smiled at each other through the murky lake water.

Eight, nine, ten. The way her hair flailed out like tentacles.

Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four. The way she placed her pruning hands on his shoulders, so gently at first.

Twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one. The way she put all her weight on him as she came up for a breath, while still keeping him under.

Forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight. The way her hands slid around his throat, as if to lean in for a kiss.

One minute. The way his eyes begged her to save him.

Two minutes. The way she dug her nails into his throat as he struggled to fight back.

Three minutes. The way his body slumped unconsciously.

Four minutes. The way she moaned as she came up for another breath, still grasping his unconscious body.

Five minutes. The way his pulse stopped beating beneath her fingertips. The way she finally was able to take his breath away.

…I thought about killing him the last day I saw him. It was the only way I could let him go. We went to the lake together, and when I asked him how long he could hold his breath, I thought about if I made him hold it forever. And, sometimes, like right now, I wish I’d actually done it. I wish I were strong enough, I wish I were brave enough, I wish that, if I can’t have him, no one can. I missed this year’s competition for him; I gave up everything I’d worked for. He’s dead to me. But I wish he really was dead, I wish…”

Emily paused, waiting for Henry’s belittling remarks—telling her she’d never be loved that way, telling her how she was stupid and weak, telling the truth. Instead, Henry bit his lip, then grabbed Emily and pulled her onto his lap. They let their eyes talk. Henry gave her his ‘I want to fuck you’ face. Emily replied with the ‘seriously, now?’ look. Henry answered with his tongue sliding between her lips. Emily agreed with her hands reaching around his neck. She had no one else to save herself for, anyway.

Posted by iamdisenchanted | April 19, 2012 | Categories: Fiction | 2 Comments »

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