Chapter 29
The pass hanging around her neck
seemed to cut into her skin and weighed more than it should have. It was hot, deathly hot backstage, like a
massive oven. She used to dream what
would happen if the story of Hansel and Gretel turned out different, if the
witch really got them inside her oven. Would their skin fall off first? Would they just sweat so much they’d
drown? Or would they slowly, from the
feet up turn into liquid; would they feel themselves painfully melt into a pool
of swirling colors? People swarmed past
her, running in every direction, some laughing, some on cell phones, some
shouting frantically. She heard people
mentioning his name, that name that filled her heart and made her smile.
The show had been amazing. She was proud of her man, proud of the work
he had done, and the success he had accomplished. She was happy to have been a
part of it and to be able to watch from her confined, lonely room in one of the
VIP sections of the stadium. She was
amazed no one was up there with her, none of his friends or family, not Trace,
not any one who had paid a lot of money for plush seats. She remembered when she had sat down front,
in the midst of fans, in the middle of the heat and the claustrophobia,
screaming her head off. Now, here she
was, weaving her way backstage, not just another face in the crowd, but
special.
Special to him.
They had been through a lot in the
few months they had been together and she was happy they had found a way to get
past it, to stick together, to be with one another. Issues she didn’t even want to think about
had vanished. Finally, they were
blissfully happy again. Nothing could
stop them now, and nothing was going to slow her from seeing him. He had warned her that it might be a hassle
getting backstage through all the crowd and the fuss, and that finding him and
getting to be with him might not run super smoothly. He had explained to her that after shows
things were sometimes rushed and hectic, frantic. But she said she understood and would try her
best. She was almost there, she could
feel it, sense him getting closer. The pass
that dangled in front of her still itched and scratched her neck, the rope burned
her skin raw.
Then it was there, the door to his
room. No one was guarding it, which she
found odd, but she didn’t mind and turned the handle to get ready to be with
her man. It was insanely heavy and a
rush of icy air blasted her as the door creaked open.
The world slowed its turn and she
blinked as the heaviness of the door fell from her and it slammed against the
wall. He was there, there with his arms
raised, hands tied together against the wall.
He stared at her, stared at her hard, those blue eyes hitting her like a
fist in the chest, like someone performing CPR.
But instead of giving her life, this made her breathless.
He was looking at her like she was
a stranger. She realized in that moment
that she was a stranger, especially when the woman who was naked, straddling
his lap, turned her head and stared back at her.
“Who are you?” She smiled and then laughed, turning back
around to kiss Justin’s neck.
It was strange to watch it, to
actually watch this figure, this person, this woman have sex with him. That’s what they were doing. They were having sex right in front of her
and he didn’t seem to care.
And it was even more strange to
know that she was watching herself do it.
It was her. At least she thought it was.
But how could she be in the
doorway and still see herself on top of him?
Those blue eyes pierced her body as this twin, this clone of herself worked
him good. She was working him good and
even though he stared at her his face was in pleasure.
And he was laughing, laughing
hard, laughing bitterly.
She wanted to vomit.
“Get out.” His voice was laden with want, splashed with
hatred. He hated her.
She tried to speak, tried to
scream, but she couldn’t. Nothing would
come out of her mouth, not even a squeak or a gasp. Her body wouldn’t move. She shut her eyes and shook her head “wake
up, wake up!” but she wouldn’t. She
opened her eyes and she was still there, still watching them fuck, watching his
body tied up for this woman.
And then she saw this woman turn
and stare at her again. This reflection
smiled at her and said in a venomous tone, “Leave Darcy, he doesn’t want you
here.”
She felt the sting, felt it seep
in, felt her blood boil and her lungs shrivel.
She felt herself dying and she heard him yell for someone and she
couldn’t move. She wanted to run
away. She wanted to run to him. She couldn’t move. The pass was holding her back, weighing her
down. Someone grabbed her from behind
and she was glad for it, glad they were taking her away from this scene, but
they just kept pulling her back and back and back so she could still see them,
but she was getting farther and farther away.
She could see them move in a bundle of limbs and moans and rocking
bodies.
She cried.
She cried so hard she choked.
And whoever was holding her
started to squeeze and she couldn’t breathe.
She wouldn’t wake up. She just couldn’t wake up. She shook and screamed and hit at whoever was
behind her, telling them to let her go, to let her live, to stop this, to tell
her what was going on. But she kept
gasping and gagging.
All she could hear was his
laughter, his bitter laughter, telling her without words that she wasn’t the
one that he wanted, that she never could be, that it was fake, all of it was
fake.
That he never loved her.
She cried and cried and hit whoever
was holding her some more, squeezing her eyes shut hoping it would squeeze out
the images she was seeing.
“Owe...damn.”
Her body stopped, and her eyes
slowly opened and she was met with a bare chest in a dark room. Her heart was racing and her mind felt like
it was bleeding, unable to comprehend or understand anything that was going
on.
“Darcy…”
It was him, it was his quiet
voice, his concerned voice.
The bed moved, his chest moved and
she looked up to his face. Her fist was
on his stomach. It slid off and hit the
mattress as he turned to flip on the lamp beside the bed. She stared.
It was really him, really him beside her, with no one else on top of
him, no hatred filled stare. It was
really him.
She clobbered him in a hug and he
laughed a bit and held her against him.
“Are you ok?” He rubbed her bare back and she realized she
was only wearing a pair of underwear and his skin felt comforting and warm
against her own. “I woke up and you were
making these weird whiny noises and hitting me.”
“Yeah…” She sighed, feeling his heartbeat underneath
her cheek, happy he was alive and real and really, actually there with
her. “Yeah, just a bad dream.”
She could feel his body tense. “Oh.”
It seemed like the “D” word had
become this forbidden, vulgar thing to them. She hated the fact she had let it
slip so easily. It seemed every time a
“dream” was mentioned he would tense up, she’d called him on it, and they’d
fight. They were a mess, a horrible
mess, but they were trying. They were
trying hard. Classes had been going
alright for her and he had been in town more than she expected. Promoting a new album kept him never more
than two weeks away from her. He was
always in
But then she would be reminded of
her horrible decision to disappear from him.
Right now was what mattered, just simply being with him. It was great to have him with her and she
made a point not to talk about her dream with him, to let it stop, and to lay
with him and kiss him and forget all the problems and be happy. She couldn’t remember at the time why he was
there, what he was doing in
“You ok?”
“Yeah, it’s nothing. I’m glad you’re here.”
It was quiet for a while and she
felt her eyes become tired and droopy.
She hadn’t been sleeping well on account of these dreams she’d keep
having. It wasn’t anything out of the
ordinary, not all of them were scary or made her upset like this one, but now,
now that all this had happened, now that she knew about his own experience with
dreams, she seemed to be unable to shake hers.
She’d wake up each morning remembering them, trying to analyze them,
she’d spend her day trying to figure it out and when it came to nighttime, she
almost didn’t want to rest, afraid that they’d come back and confuse her more.
“Darcy…”
“What?”
“What was it about?”
She tensed and felt it turn cold
in the room. She could feel his body
trying to work out from under hers, trying to get her away so he could look at
her. Her head was turned down, her cheek
stuck against his skin. She couldn’t
just look at him. She knew she’d see those blue eyes and was afraid it’d be the
same look that was in her dream.
“What was what about?”
She felt him forcibly pull her
from him and pin her back against the mattress with his hands holding her
shoulders. He wasn’t being violent by
any means but the strength in him surprised her a little bit. The eyes she was terrified of were staring at
her, but they were concerned, not cold, searching her own, not vacant. “Stop that, you know what I’m asking.”
“Why does it matter?” She said back to him, moving her eyes down to
her hands that were searching for the sheet so she could pull it over her cold
chest. “I don’t want to fight.”
“I just want to know.”
She licked her lips and pulled
back from his grasp, tucking the sheets under her arms and sitting against the
headboard and pillows. “I thought we
were trying to get past this and get over it?”
He mirrored her position beside
her and she sighed when he said, “Well bottling it all inside isn’t going to
help.”
“That’s what you do.” She bit her lip. She really was trying, but then every now and
then something like that would slip and she’d have to brace herself for the
aftermath. She wished she could just
shut her brain off and be with him and be happy and forget everything. She kept trying to do that and kept being
unsuccessful.
He ran a hand through his hair and
let it fall back to the mattress with a thump.
His head hit the wall behind them and he rolled his neck so that he
could look at her. “You were just
hitting me in your sleep, Darcy!”
She looked away from him and
pulled up her knees. “Why can’t we just forget it?”
“Fine…” His arms crossed over his chest and she could
tell by his tone that she had just ruined their night. They were having an ok time, they were almost
naked in bed together and that was a good sign for her. It meant they hadn’t been completely closed
off that night, that they were still comfortable to an extent. And now she had ruined that. “What do you want to do?”
The blame was starting to pile up
on her end and she wondered if he felt the same way.
“I can’t sleep now.” She mumbled, not expecting him to hear. But he did and he pulled the covers off his
legs and stood up off the bed.
“Neither can I.”
She watched him leave the room and
after a moment, got out of bed as well and threw on a t-shirt, and followed him
into the den. He was there already with
a glass of water, flipping through the channels, bored beyond belief, ignoring
Jingles as he rubbed his head against his bare shoulder. Her legs took her around the couch and her
body perched itself on the end of it, away from him, but still close. He didn’t look at her, finished his water in
a large gulp and turned the TV off.
“What are we gonna do?” He looked at her. He was pleading. And she knew what he was asking. She knew he was asking what they should do
about their relationship. They were a
mess. They kept trying to hide it and
fake it but they were falling apart, and neither of them knew what to do to
pull them back together again and keep them that way.
“I don’t know.” She didn’t know what to say and he was
begging her to find the answers. Why was
it all up to her? It was his problem,
his dreams, his fucking lie that had made them this way. She sighed to herself. She knew that it wasn’t a lie. She knew that if he had told her everything
right up front they wouldn’t even be here, she wouldn’t even have had the
memories she had with him. Nothing, not
a damn thing would have happened.
They needed a vacation, they
needed to just get away from the world and go somewhere and just be them. She licked her lips, they needed to get
out. “Wanna go for a walk?”
He stared at her for a good while,
those eyes fluctuating as his mind worked and thought this through. Finally he began to smile, “I guess that’d be
nice.”
They dressed quickly and silently. She wanted to decipher what that meant. She wanted to pick apart their every moment,
she had been doing so lately. But
something held her back this time.
Something told her to just enjoy it, to take his hand and leave and see
what happened. It was just a walk, it
wasn’t a leap of faith or a risk that could change her life, but it was
something they hadn’t experienced in so long: normalcy.
She just wanted to be normal with
him.
She assumed that was a silly
thought, there was no being normal with him.
His life was different than most, even her life was different than
most. They were the exception and they
had found each other. She just didn’t
know if they really had found one another, or if he had forced himself to find
her to get over his problems, to get over himself. He was trying to be normal, too. Maybe that was the whole reason he was with
her.
It was getting cold in
The late hour seemed too quiet in
the city. The noise of cars, distant
horns, an occasional siren, all those typical city sounds melded into the
background, but she concentrated on him as he led her down the sidewalk,
humming some song she didn’t know. It
was ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous for them to be out here at this hour with
no security. She assumed they had a
better chance being mobbed by psychotic fans in the daylight than at two in the
morning. Her place was close to the park and soon they found themselves on a
bench, looking towards it, the glare of the lights behind them kept them from
being able to see much more than a dark mass of trees, spotted with an
occasional flickering lamp light.
This, this was what she
needed. Being here with him, wrapped in
his arms, listening to him hum, not saying a thing, their minds shut off,
content with each other, it was what it was all about. She shifted in his lap and leaned her head
against his shoulder, kissing his neck softly.
“I love you, Justin.” She whispered, her hand around the back of
his neck, playing with the short curls. And she did, despite the doubts she had
and the fears that always echoed in her mind, she loved him.
His hand covered hers and pulled
it around and he shifted. He kissed her
cheek and said to her softly, “But you can’t.”
The street lamp above them burned
out and made a screeching sound.
She blinked.
“What?”
She felt his hand against her
face, felt his fingertips weave in her hair.
This, this was real. It had to
be. What was he saying? “You know this isn’t going to work for much
longer.”
“What?”
“You know what you’re going to
have to do, right?”
She screamed at herself to say
something else, something more. To slap
him, shake him, make him explain this. “Justin…”
He started to cry. “‘Cause I’m not
strong enough to do it for us.”
“I don’t understand.”
But she did. She understood and she didn’t need him to
explain. She knew everything that was
going on right now. Another light
somewhere burnt out and made another screeching sound. Distantly she could hear the sound of a train
approaching.
“Yes you do.” His eyes bore into hers and she felt herself
start to cry with him. “You know this
isn’t real. Stop pretending that it
is. You need more time, Darcy. And I’m just a mess, either way. With you I feel guilty, without you I feel
lost. There’s no getting around it.”
She shook her head and pushed him
away, standing up and staring at him. A
light was approaching and he stood up with her and touched her face. “I can’t…”
“I do love you…” He said and dropped his hand and turned
toward that light. The train was right
behind him, street lights kept bursting and popping and screeching all around
them. The whistle of the train pierced the cold air and made her cringe.
“No! Come back!”
She said, only being able to see his silhouette in the bright light of
the train. She screamed at him. “Come back!”
“Darcy….” She thought it was him,
turning to beg her to come with him, but this voice was behind her and she
turned her head sharply not seeing anyone there. “Darcy, wake up.” She turned back around and was met with piercing
blue eyes, widened in concern shaking her shoulder gently. “Wake up.”
She sucked in a breath and focused
on the man in front of her. “Oh my God…”
“Whoa…” He pulled her up slowly into a sitting
position and touched her forehead for a moment.
She blinked and looked across the room to the other couch there, seeing
her friends Anna and Leigh giggling on the couch together, looking at some
magazine. The coffee table was littered
with glasses and liquor and wine bottles and a couple of cans of beer. She felt him sit beside her and he was still
staring at her. “You ok there?”
Darcy’s stomach started to churn
and she knew she was drunk and she knew that the dreams she had just had were
going to kill her. Eventually those
damned dreams were going to kill her. “I
think I’m gonna throw up.”
The guy beside her rubbed her back
for a second and then stood up, calling out, “Jess?”
Moments later she heard someone
say in a loud voice, “What’s up, hoe…”
She felt Jess pat her head and then she looked up at her. Jess’s eyes widened and she turned and
smacked her boyfriend in the arm.
“What’d you do James?”
He shrugged and picked up a couple
beer bottles and went to toss them in their trash. “Nothing, she was moaning in her sleep so I
woke her up.”
She
kept her forehead plastered in her hand and felt Jess pull up on her arms to get
her standing up. She wobbled a bit and
Jess kept her arm around her. “Come on,
slowly…” She held onto her stomach and
started to gag. She knew this was
bad. But maybe if she just threw up it
would all be better. It would throw up
all her insecurities, too. She could
purge herself of all the bad shit that had been plaguing her mind and her relationship.
They got to the bathroom and she
started to feel her stomach convulse.
She broke from her friend and kneeled down on the floor, opening the toilet
up just in enough time to puke into the porcelain base. Jess pulled her hair back and held it there
and after a few gags and a couple sniffs she pulled away. She immediately fell down on the floor and
started to cry.
She couldn’t stop it either. She kept thinking about how this had been the
6th night in a row for these dreams.
He was always leaving or she was always being pulled away. They never ended up together and she’d always
wake up in a fright.
She couldn’t do this forever. She couldn’t deal with this the rest of her
life. It was tearing her apart. She had been late for classes, forgotten
assignments and slept through a test.
And that was just school. She
couldn’t do this anymore. She couldn’t
lie in her bed, crying all the time forever.
She was tired of being depressed.
Even her friends had noticed.
That’s what that night was about, it was about getting her out of her
house, having a good time, partying.
But all that had happened was she
got way too drunk, way too fast and passed out on Jess’s couch.
And now, now she knew there was no
going back.
She felt she was in prison, being
tortured, with no hope of escape, and everything that once made her happy was
only a trick. It would please her for a moment
and then she would be reminded of everything that had happened. He wasn’t with her. He wasn’t really in love with her and no
matter what he said or how he pleaded with her to believe him, she knew the
truth. She could see it in his
eyes. She wasn’t the one he wanted.
She felt like he was cheating, but
oddly enough he wasn’t cheating on her.
She felt like the other woman.
She felt like the running into each other, the kissing in her brother’s
apartment, the late nights they stayed up talking in LA, the trip to New York
and to her parents house, making love all night, she felt like that was all an
act. That really, the whole time, he was
with someone else. They weren’t
real. They’re relationship wasn’t real.
His fucking dreams were real.
Her friend flushed the toilet and
sat down on the floor with her, smiling. “I told you not to do those shots.”
Darcy sniffed and pushed herself
off the floor and sat up against the wall.
She looked at the ceiling. She
didn’t care that her mouth tasted like vomit and vodka and she didn’t care that
the bathroom was too cold and her body was sweating. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered because she knew she had
lost him. She wondered if she had ever
really had him.
And she knew it was over.
It had been over. They’d just been dragging it out. “I can’t do this, Jess…”
She wondered if she should have
just stayed missing to him. She wondered
if calling him that day she found out he was searching for her, if that had
been her big mistake.
Jess tilted her head and leaned
forward, putting a hand on Darcy’s knee. “What the hell is going on with you?”
“I’m gonna have to leave him.”
Her friend sighed and came over
and pulled her into a comforting hug. “Come
here, you’ve had a lot to drink tonight.
Just take it easy.”
Darcy shook her head. She couldn’t take it easy. Nothing was easy anymore. “You don’t understand. I’m going to, Jess. I have to.”
“We’ll talk about it in the
morning. Shh…” She started to cry harder
and harder, hoping it would all just blur away, but it only made her stomach
hurt more and her eyes ached and her whole body wanted to shut down and shut
out everything that was happening.
How could something like what they
had, something so pure and fun and perfect and loving become so corrupted by
just a small thing? She realized now
what he must have been through. She
herself was having dreams and problems.
It had infected her, too. And now
that she knew what it was like, she knew she had no other option.
She had to leave him.
“Where’s my phone?” She
whispered. Jess stopped from where she
was running her hands through Darcy’s hair in a soothing, maternal manner.
“What? I don’t know girl, just...”
She sat up. “Where’s yours?”
Jess pulled her phone out of her
pocket. “Right here, but…” She snatched
it from her and started to dial. Jess
sighed and got up from the floor, “Darcy, don’t do anything rash. I’ll be out here if you need me.”
She walked out of the bathroom and
closed the door almost all the way behind her, leaving just a bit cracked.
Darcy only received his voice mail
but it was enough. She sniffed and when
the phone beeped she said quickly into the phone, “Hey, it’s me.” She let out a deep breath and continued, “I’m
calling on Jess’s phone. I need to know
when you are gonna be in town or if there is a time I can come see you. We…we need to talk.”
She shut the phone closed, placed
it on the cool linoleum floor and leaned down, crying some more, numb to it,
numb to everything. The alcohol was
making her irrational and more emotional, but of everything in her mind that
was blurred, one thing was clear. One
thing was perfectly clear.
It was over.