Chapter Text
Something brushed against me and my surprise turned to horror as I realized that Maureen had returned. Fuck – she was early!
I whipped around, spluttering out some half-assed explanation for what I was doing, but she was oblivious to the notebook lying open in my lap, my heart spilled on the pages. Her full lips were drawn into a pout, fingers lightly tugging at my sleeve.
"Pookie, take me out tonight? Clubbing?" She flashed a smile.
I was taken aback; for months now, Mo and I had been drifting. I knew that she was cheating on me with any male with breath in his body, and she knew, I was sure, that I could hardly bring myself to care. It wasn't what she knew that scared me, though – it was what she didn't know.
"Clubbing?" I repeated, looking down at myself doubtfully. A sweater and corduroy pants were hardly proper club attire, and the big, boxy frames of my glasses only served to prove my point. I was a tech nerd. A filmmaker. My friends described me as “surgically attached” to my camera. I didn't go to clubs. Maureen knew this. But… Well, we hadn't gone out for weeks and the last time hardly counted, what with the way she had been flirting with the waiter the entire time. Right in front of me.
I had a hard time saying no to her, though, and especially when I was feeling guilty. And wow, was I. "Well… I guess, but –"
"Great! I'll go get dressed!" Her luscious, dark hair bounced behind her, seeming to ripple as she skipped merrily off to my room to sift through her wardrobe, which had been steadily eating up my closet space for months. I watched her go in a state of wary bemusement.
Whatever had gotten into her, at least she was happy.
Maureen’s happiness was something that I’d dwelt on quite a lot lately, guilt warring with ugly resentment, warring with periods of startling apathy. In the back of my mind I knew that this was wrong, we were wrong – for each other, to each other – and staying together was only making things worse for us both later in the game. Inevitably she would find someone that could really love her the way I didn't, couldn't; or who was better in bed; or even who bored her maybe a little less. And she'd run off with them with a hasty goodbye, leaving me alone with Roger and the dark, silent, lonely loft because Roger was never home anymore. He was out with April, out with his band, shooting up in an alley where he thinks I won't know. She'd leave me with all of that to deal with and no one to rely on.
But this was what we had, and it was convenient. Nobody would suspect me if I was dating this gorgeous, wild girl, just this side of my high school sweetheart with a city twist. They wouldn't have a reason to. No one would worry about my mental well-being, my happiness, for as long as I had someone to wrap my arms around at night.
I hated it when Roger worried about me. Sober or not, he always found time to worry about me, and it ate at me. Without Maureen around, I was afraid that that was all he'd ever do.
Sighing, I snapped my notebook shut, concealing the secrets and scraps of half-finished stories and sketches once more. I packed it away in my satchel just in time to witness Maureen's return. Her lips were deep red now, her hair shinier, and she had changed into something a little more revealing – uh, sluttier, as Roger would say.
Maureen would probably say that, too. She really had no shame. Why couldn’t I be like her?
"Come on!" she exclaimed, eyes wide and brown and lit up like I hadn't seen in so long. Summoning a slight smile, I allowed myself to be dragged out the door, still in my corduroys.
For now, for this night, I would just relax. Let Maureen lead me by the hand into the neon dark, sweet-smelling, like a playful faerie in a story about a boy who got lost in an unfamiliar wood and vanished. But despite all of the secrets and the lies and the deepening chasm between us... I knew that I could trust Maureen, trust her with this. With being my distraction, for now. Irresponsible, yes; self-centered, of course, but she had the right idea and I wasn’t so stubborn that I couldn’t admit that. My favorite haunts were, in order, the park, the café, and my own bedroom, but I could easily lose myself in thought in any of those places… start pining, as I tend to do. What use was sulking? It wouldn’t change anything. Besides, I’d read somewhere recently that worrying – well, stress – could cause all sorts of unpleasant health problems. Psychotic breaks, ulcers, cancer even.
If I ever came home with a godforsaken cancer diagnosis, Roger would worry, and we wouldn't want that.
In hindsight, I should have known. It was stupid of me, not to have predicted this.
There was no rush for me to return to bed now, not when Maureen was curled up under the covers with her head hanging over the side, moaning and nauseous and mumbling that she was going to vomit into the bucket I'd placed on the floor beside her. I had no desire to climb in with her now. Not that I ever really did, lately; not for weeks now. Longer, if I were honest with myself.
I was supposed to be forgetting all of this tonight. So much for my mental vacation.
"It's your own fault for letting her drink so much."
The voice, drifting to my ears from somewhere close behind me, was low and amused. I turned and gave Roger my most exasperated glare.
"I didn't buy them. The jerks at the bar did," I sighed. Here it was again, out in the open – somehow it stung that our crumbling relationship was so transparent. That Roger could see what a pushover I was, not that he didn’t already know that about me.
I only hoped he couldn’t see the other thing.
"And you didn't punch them out?" He raised an eyebrow, tilting his bleached-blonde head curiously. I felt the accusation burning in his gaze, but his expression relaxed in sympathy when all I offered was a terse, slightly ashamed nod. "It's easy," he said, grabbing my hand and turning it over in both of his, green eyes still trained in my blue ones. I felt the back of my neck turning red. Why, why did Roger always have to be so handsy?
"See this?" He curled my fingers, wrapping my hand into a fist. "Use it to hit them. Like this."
Lightly tapping my fist to my own face, he chuckled and brushed past me on the way to his room. He smelled like sweat, and I could never tell if he’d just neglected to take a shower or April must be sprawled out on his bed, naked. I tried not to think about things like that – I’m not a pervert, or, I don’t think I am? – but “obsessive” did not even begin to describe my mind, sometimes, and the one time I’d walked past and caught a glimpse of them like that, lazy-naked, sweaty-sated, lived in my memory like a snake, sliding through my brain at will, keeping temptation alive. It was too easy to cut April out of that picture and place myself in those rumpled sheets. Too easy to imagine Roger’s eyes on mine in another, more intimate context.
As soon as he was gone I slumped against the wall, staring at my hand. I held it up, open now, to watch it tremble; it still tingled from his touch. Maureen’s incessant moaning was practically incoherent now, and I knew she’d be asleep in minutes. It was probably safe to leave her here… It was late, but Roger had always been a night owl, might even welcome my company if I slipped out now and followed him, sat gingerly on his bed and watched him pluck aimlessly at the strings. He seemed like he was in a good mood. Maybe he’d even be willing to show me some –
I heard April’s low, sultry laugh from the next room, and my heart plummeted eight floors down to the pavement. It rolled around in the broken glass.
I closed my eyes, abruptly exhausted.
Sometimes I tried to forget the hard truths. Like how Maureen and I weren't in love, and Roger and I weren't either. Like the fact that I was a college dropout, a failure in my parent's eyes. Like the fact that my films were never going to take off…
Like the pathetic, heartsick laments that I wrote in my journal, for anyone to read.
It's just so hard to forget a lie you live every day.