Fuck.
We really were mustard gas.
“Are you serious?” She practically laughed. “The only time we talk anymore is at therapy, and even then you’re miles away. You know I’ve been taking pills, Vic. I don’t hide it.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of pills. “These aren’t my only pills. This isn’t the first time!”
“Why?” The question, the word, it had become my crutch.
Her eyes widened, but she answered me. “Because I don’t feel right! Okay? I don’t know how else to describe it other than it fucking hurts to just be me.” Lennox bit her lip, looking away.
“What do you mean? Can you elaborate?” I took a big breath and closed my eyes. The smell of garbage drifted in, so I opened them, focusing on Lenny. “I’m trying here, I’m really trying.” I held back every other thing I wanted to say. I wanted to admonish her and yell. I wanted to make her feel bad because I felt bad. Somewhere, on some level, probably right alongside creepy sex stuff and mannequins, I felt that wasn’t the best course of action.
“My brain is just rough, Vic.” Lenny grabbed fistfuls of her auburn hair as she spoke and I noticed how dull it looked. My lovedrunk brain always made her shine, but it was dull. It was dirty. She was breaking. Distantly, like a bugle call made to warn old soldiers on hills, I remembered Lissie telling us why she had to end it with her old friends.
They were nice. They were helpful. But were they? She’d told us it felt like they were great and friendly and wonderful, but it was those same friends who were taking her out every night to get high. When she was trying to get sober, that wasn’t exactly idea
l.
I saw Lenny as shining, and the soldier kept calling on his hill. I tried to smother his call, but distantly I wondered.
“I love you,” she continued. “I love being with you, but I just need a break from me. My brain never stops spinning and the pills the psych prescribed weren’t enough. They’re never enough. I recognize what I’m doing is scary and probably harmful but I just…” Lennox choked on her words. I never knew what to do when she cried. I felt like a fucking bear trying to hold a petal in my hand. She was fragile. She was my Lenny.
She lowered her head and the only way I knew she was crying was by the small drops of water that fell to the concrete. Fuck. This was not how it was supposed to go. I was supposed to save her, keep her safe, and I was failing completely.
“Do you know what it’s like to never shut off?” Lenny said, lifting her eyes to mine, glassy and big. “To constantly be running? I’m exhausted. There are times when I feel like if I have just one more thought I will literally drop dead from the weariness, but I can’t stop racing. It doesn’t matter, though!” Lennox laughed, sounding crazed. “I don’t control it! I don’t control the thoughts. They come, tumbling like a fucking avalanche despite the fact that I don’t have space for them inside my brain. My thoughts are so fast it’s like…it’s like…” Lenny struggled to find the words. “It’s like trying to pick out a star in a meteor shower.
Time passed. Neither of us spoke as Lenny breathed heavy, fast, and raspy. I heard the sound of thunder in the distance, and wasn’t that just perfect? I had a thought that we should leave and get in the car before the rain started, but I didn’t want to stop whatever was happening. For the first time in months we were having a real conversation.
“I know I shouldn’t take these…” Lenny looked at the white capsules in her palm. “I should talk to my doctor. All of that. But I’m terrified. I’m terrified they’ll take them away and have me try yet another med. I’ve found something that works. I’ll probably get used to the drugs in a month, but right now I have a break.” She shoved the capsules back in her pocket and looked up at me expectantly. And fuck if I didn’t just wish I had a “For Dummies” manual or some shit. What was I supposed to do in that moment? Seriously? What?
On some level—I think you know what level by now—I got where she was coming from, but did that mean…
“I’m supposed to just be okay with this? Am I supposed to just stand by while the woman I love becomes an addict?”
Lenny sighed, and with that sigh I knew the calm was over. “I don’t know, Vic.” Eyes creased, lips heavy, she looked away. Her arms shrank inward, her chin met her chest, and I knew she was looking for the quickest exit, whether it was through the pills or through the opening in the alleyway behind me.
Water started to fall, big tears crashing over our heads. Soon a curtain of watery beads masked everything, making objects appear like shadows. Lenny’s shadow started to move, so I snatched her by the arm and dragged her to the car.
Wasn’t it just so fucking poetic that it was raining?
I don’t know; I’m not a poet.
I threw her in the shower, not caring if the water was too hot. When I heard her yelp, I realized it probably was. I shut the door, put a chair under the knob so she couldn’t get out, and started rummaging through her things.
Halfway through scouring her thongs, I stopped myself. I held up her pink, lacy thong and instead of looking at the thing with lust, I was looking at it with distrust. I shut the drawer and sat on the bed. I wasn’t sure how to handle this, but I could be sure this was the wrong way.
I heard the water turn off ten minutes later while I was trying to decide what to watch. There wasn’t a damn thing that could distract me. In my head I was still pulling out drawers, lifting up the mattress, and kicking over furniture.
When she opened the door, the chair fell to the floor. She looked at it with mild amusement. Yeah, I hadn’t realized the door opened from the inside. Whatever, I had other things on my mind—like where my pill-head girlfriend kept her stash.
“Just so you know, today was an accident.” She glared at me as she toweled her head. “I forgot all about your birthday.”
“Whatever.” I kept my eyes glued on an empty screen, not wanting to incite another argument. I knew it hadn’t been entirely an accident. For her to have pulled off the party, complete with everyone attending, the cake, the decorations, all that shit, she had to have been planning it for some time.
Lennox had a unique style of fighting. She liked to wound. She liked to pinpoint your weaknesses and make you bleed your heart’s blood. It was fucked up, but I wouldn’t lie, it turned me on. She was good at it—not many possessed the ability to pinpoint a target’s Achilles heel. I know, I’d gone through training and even I still couldn’t do it.
I don’t even think she realized what she did, because Lennox was also very compassionate. She was a lover, and if I’d told her that she was also the most fucked up, psychopathic fighter I’d ever met, I was sure she’d throw herself out the window before she hurt another soul.
I’m also pretty sure I couldn’t convince her it was okay based on the fact that I got off on it, based on the fact that I was just as twisted as she was.