Slow Agony (31 page)

So I began to think of other little things I could do to punish myself for the things I’d done wrong.

I wore shoes that were too tight, got blisters on the back of my ankles.

I wrapped rubber bands around my wrists, kept them tight so that they cut off the circulation.

I forced myself not to sleep, to stay up all night and to suffer through my exhaustion.

Each little thing seemed to work at first, but it was never enough to really assuage the guilt. I had to keep escalating.

By the time I was cutting myself, it only seemed rational. After all, I had cut others. Surely I deserved to be cut as well. The pain, the blood, the sharpness of it—it made it better for a few minutes. When I was in pain, I was at peace. And it never left any marks. The serum made sure of that.

I didn’t even think about Griffin, or about the fact I’d told him I’d call. It was mid September, and I was thick into my first semester of classes. I didn’t do much except go to class, do my work, light candles, and find ways to punish myself. I had no room in my brain to think about anything except my guilt and my obligations. Griffin simply didn’t register.

Sometimes, I looked down at the ring, and I thought about taking it off.

But I didn’t.

Chapter Nineteen

I liked to do it in the bathtub. I had an array of various knives that were good for it. Some I used to puncture, others to slice. I didn’t have a schedule when I did it, but I usually cut at least three times a day. Right then it was evening.

And someone was knocking on the door of my apartment.

No one knew where I lived.

I stayed still. Maybe they’d go away.

“Leigh,” yelled a voice.

A male voice. Griffin? I looked down at the ring on my finger.

“I know you’re in there. I saw you come in. Open the door.”

There was blood streaming down over my arm in ruby-colored rivulets. I set down the knife I was using on the edge of the bathtub. “One second,” I called. I hauled myself out of the bathtub and washed the blood off in the sink.

More banging on the door.

“Hold on,” I yelled.

I went to the front door and pulled it open.

Griffin stood there, looking haggard and unshaven. “I thought it was you.”

I backed away from the door. “What are you doing here?”

“I saw you, and I followed you,” he said. “Why haven’t you called me?”

I couldn’t look at him.

He staggered into my apartment, shutting the door after himself.

“Are you drunk?” I asked him. “You don’t
get
drunk.”

He laughed a little. “I’m not drunk.”

But he was slurring his words.

“Maybe you should go,” I said.

His eyes narrowed. “What’s on your arm?”

I tried to hide it. “Nothing.”

He snatched my hand, pulling my arm forward. “Is that blood? Did you cut yourself? It looks like a pattern...” His fingers dug into my wrist. “Did you do this to yourself on purpose?” I could smell liquor on his breath.

I wrenched my arm away. “Go away, Griffin. Get out.”

“No,” he said. “I’m not leaving you alone if that’s what you’re doing.” He pushed past me and stumbled into the bathroom.

“Griffin, you’re drunk, and I don’t think—”

“What the hell is this?” He was holding up my knives.

I clutched my own elbows. “I have to do penance, okay? I have to do
something
, because I can’t handle living with myself. Not after what we did, Griffin.”

He winced as if I’d cut him. He set down the knives. “Is that why you left me? You’re afraid of me, aren’t you? Doll, I never meant to hurt you. I know that night after we left the basement, I just
took
you. But I didn’t mean it. I shouldn’t have...” He turned in a circle, fumbling for something to hold onto. He ended up collapsing on my futon.

“It’s not about you,” I said in a quiet voice. “It’s about me.”

He looked up at me with vacant eyes. “Why didn’t you call?”

“When did you start drinking?” I said.

“What are you talking about?” He hiccupped. “I’ve drunk alcohol since you’ve known me.”

“But you never got drunk,” I said. “Not like this.” Only once had I seen Griffin drunk. The night he’d found me in a strip club in Boston. Never since then. I sat down next to him. “Is it because of me?” I’d been wallowing so deeply in my own guilt, I hadn’t thought about how he was feeling. I hadn’t worried about him. I remembered that before I left, I’d thought I needed to help myself before I helped him. But, if I was honest with myself, using a knife on my own body wasn’t actually helping anything.

He shook his head. “I started having a few shots before bed. Sometimes it helps with the nightmares. But lately I’ve been starting earlier.” He pointed at me. “I’m not drunk.”

He was. He smelled like bourbon. “Nightmares?”

“They can be bad,” he said. “I dream about him. About Marcel.” He lurched off the futon. “He does things to me.”

I got up after him, steadying him. “He’s dead, Griffin. We killed him. He can’t hurt you.”

Griffin laughed bitterly. “He’s not dead. Not in here.” He tapped his temple. “That’s where he wanted to be, doll. And that’s where he fucking is. I could kill him over and over and over again, and he’d still own me.” He pushed away from me.

I put a hand to my mouth. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have left you alone.” I sank down on the futon.

“Why didn’t you call?”

“I...”

He looked at me. He started to take a step towards me, but he stumbled and fell in front of me. He laughed again. “Fuck. Maybe I’m a little drunk.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“I don’t want you to hurt yourself anymore, doll.”

I studied my hands, feeling ashamed.

He touched my finger. “You’re still wearing the ring.”

I met his gaze with my own. “I never took it off.”

“Doll...”

I touched his face. “Oh, God, Griffin, we’re really fucked up, aren’t we?”

He pushed himself up onto his knees. He leaned in close. His lips met mine.

I opened my mouth to him. He tasted like a bar, but his tongue was vital and skilled and familiar, and I felt myself melting. He was my Griffin, and I loved him.

He tugged me off the futon, and my limbs got tangled with his on the floor.

I put my hands inside his shirt, felt him hot and firm and a little sweaty under the thin cotton.

He pulled the shirt over his head, giving me free access. My hands found the places his muscles fit together. I placed my palm over his ripples and dips and swells. I ran my fingers over his shoulders, his chest, his biceps.

His eyes were closed. “You make me feel strong.”

“You are strong.”

“I’m not.” He kissed me, but then he pulled back, concerned. “Do I make you feel weak, doll?”

“No,” I said. “Safe, sometimes. Protected. But never weak.”

“Oh,” he mumbled. “That’s good.” And he put his mouth on my neck. My earlobe. My jaw.

He made me gasp and sigh.

“You did protect me, you know,” I said. “From Marcel. You turned yourself over to him so that he wouldn’t hurt me.”

“I couldn’t let him hurt you,” he said. “I wouldn’t let him have you.”

“Thank you.” I kissed his chest. I kissed his chin. “Thank you.”

He made a small, soft noise. “Can we take off your shirt too?”

I giggled. “I guess I could handle that.”

“Only if you’re sure.” He was looking into my eyes. He was very serious. “I never want you to feel—”

“I never have.” I looked back into his eyes. I wanted him to understand that. No part of me blamed him. And without breaking our gaze, I slowly tugged my shirt over my head.

He let out an appreciative breath. He broke the stare first. His gaze flicked down over my bare skin and then back to my face. “You’re so beautiful.”

I unsnapped my bra.

He pulled it away from my body. “So, so beautiful.” His hands found my breasts, fingers teasing my nipples.

I shut my eyes. I let the sensation take me. It felt good. I hadn’t felt good in a long time.

“Why are you hurting yourself?”

I was confused. He was still touching me, his hands expertly making my nipples tighten and harden. Hurt myself? What?

“The knives, doll. Why are you doing that?”

“We...” I gasped. “We tortured a man for pleasure. I killed my own father. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

His hands went still, but he was still cupping my breasts. “You’re cutting yourself over
him
? Marcel? That bastard?”

“No. Over me. I can’t live with myself.”

He was quiet. Thoughtful. And then he lowered his face to my chest, and he put one of my nipples in his mouth and sucked.

And the world blanked out, because it felt so blissful that I couldn’t think.

He stayed there for a while, his lips and tongue darting from one nipple to the other, and I wriggled under him, moaning out half-words of delight.

When he stopped, he put my hand on his crotch, and I could feel how hard he was through his jeans. His voice was husky. “I want to be inside you.”

“I want that too,” I whispered.

We made love with our faces inches apart and our eyes wide open. I could feel every movement he made inside me, every gasp, every breath. It was desperate and intense. We were swirled up in a whirlwind of tantalizing pleasure. We were joined. Connected. Together.

I made love to Griffin, and I was part of him. He was part of me. We were something beautiful and exquisite together. We were touching the stars. Whatever we’d had to do to be together, it was worth it.

When we were done, when we’d each found ecstatic release in the other’s body, when we’d fallen from the heights of outer space back down onto the floor my apartment, he didn’t move out of me. We stayed joined, both gasping, sweating, touching.

He entwined my fingers with his. “Doll, I don’t think that darkness was inside us.”

“What?” I didn’t know what he was talking about. I was still in the afterglow, and I couldn’t think what he meant.

“What we did to him. Marcel.”

I could feel myself shrinking from him.

He grasped my hands tightly, keeping me close. “No, listen to me. I think
he
put that darkness in us when he hurt us. I think when we killed him, we gave it back to him. I think we poured it out into him, and he took it. We buried it with him. And it’s gone.”

I could feel Griffin starting to soften inside me. I brought my thighs tighter around his hips, keeping us as connected as I could. “Do you really think so?”

“Yes.”

I kissed him hard.

I wish it was easy after that. I wish that we planned out our wedding, and that we started popping out babies left and right, and that we lived happily ever after, and that we rode into the sunset on a pale, white horse or some shit.

It wasn’t easy.

For one thing, I couldn’t stop all my little rituals. I wanted to cut myself. It made me feel at peace. When I cut myself, for several minutes, I had no guilt. It was a very scary thing to try to leave behind. Griffin wouldn’t let me out of his sight, yelling at me when I tried to take the knives when he wasn’t paying attention. He made me leave the door the bathroom open when I used it, which was a heretofore unprecedented level of intimacy between us. But he couldn’t trust me not to cut. And it took a long time before the urge went away.

Even after it did, I still lit candles three times a day for months on end. I had to scale it back, lessening the amount slowly until I could completely stop.

It had taken me only four months to get myself stuck in the rituals. It took twice as long to give them all up.

And Griffin woke up with nightmares almost every single night for the first few months we were back together. He’d be wild with terror, clinging to me in bed. He woke up screaming sometimes, and those screams were so hollow and horrible they tore out my insides.

They got better with time too, but it was a lot of time, and they never really went completely away. Sometimes, he’d go without one for months and then wake up with a particularly bad one.

When he had those nightmares, he couldn’t always go back to sleep afterwards. He and I would sit up together somewhere where the light was bright. He would shake. Sometimes he let me hold him. Other times, he would shriek at me if I tried to touch him.

It wasn’t easy.

But I think it was easier because we were together. I’m not saying that Griffin’s presence magically healed me or something. And I sure as hell know that I didn’t make him okay just by being around. I guess what I mean is that I worked harder to keep myself together because I knew he was depending on me. Like I was more important because he loved me.

I’m not sure if that makes me pathetic. I think it makes me human. When I was trying to fix myself so that I’d be able to help him, I just wallowed in my own fears. I didn’t make any progress. I slipped deeper and deeper away from reality. Griffin was like an anchor. I cared about him, and because I knew he needed me, I cared about me. Maybe that’s twisted. Maybe I should have found my own well of strength deep down someplace, like the women in those Oprah book club novels always do.

But that wasn’t Griffin and me. We were too damaged and screwed up for stuff like that. We made it together, and we were stronger together, and we depended on each other.

Maybe we found some time in there to plan a wedding too. Well, maybe
I
did.

Griffin himself didn’t seem particularly interested in the kinds of flowers we’d have in the bouquets or the colors of the bridesmaid dresses. I had to rely on Sloane and Beverly for insight.

The wedding was going to happen. Someday soon. Someday when we felt like we weren’t struggling just to scrape through the days.

And that was getter better.

Every day, it was.

And every night, I fell asleep next to him, our bodies twined together, his lips against my skin, murmuring that he loved me, that he needed me. Every night, I whispered it back.