Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 71698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
She doesn’t see the world like other people.
So when she sits there and tells me that I can change if I want to, I listen.
She tucks a curling strand of hair behind her ear. I notice the way her hand trembles, but even as sick as I am, my gaze goes straight to her earlobe. She wears little crescent studs, two in each ear, that look like tiny twinkling moons. Carissa doesn’t wear any perfume, but she always smells good. Fresh. Like laundry soap, floral shampoo, and fresh air, even when we haven’t been outside. She’s a nurse, but she doesn’t work out of a clinic or hospital, so there aren’t antiseptic smells that cling to her. Nothing carbolic.
Nothing like how he used to smell when he’d come over to see my mom.
Usually, I can push those memories to the dark corners of my mind. I’ve given them their time, and I can’t let them take over.
But my mind conjures the smell like it’s real. My stomach rebels, cramping and surging up my throat.
Carissa has the trash can there for me to bend over. I gag repeatedly, straining until my muscles all lock up and I feel like my head is going to explode and my throat is going to tear open, but nothing comes up. Just a few strands of saliva that hang from my mouth, foul and sticky.
I collapse back onto the bed, curling into myself the same way I used to curl up under my bed, behind the couch, and in the dark and dank closet. Anywhere I could hide.
Fuck.
It hurts.
My body. My head. My heart.
Carissa sets the trash can down. She has a cold cloth that she bathes my face with, wiping my mouth like I’m a kid.
Except my mother never did that for me when I was sick. I had to take care of myself. I was nine years old before I went to live with my grandma and knew what a caring, selfless touch was.
Carissa shakes a piece of gum out of one of those plastic containers. It tastes glorious when it hits my tongue. The mint takes over, eliminating the foul bitterness coating my mouth.
If I were going to write a song about this experience, I’d compare myself to a cretin. Something slimy, sweaty, and completely disgusting. Oh, and a total class A dumbass.
Carissa’s hands are warm, soft, and capable. She finger combs my hair away from my face, stroking my forehead and then smoothing the damp strands back. I want to weep when her fingertips brush over my pounding temples and circle the shell of my ear.
It’s been a very long time since anyone held me.
Back when I’d have a nightmare, my grandma would come into my room. She wouldn’t switch on the light. Even as a malnourished nine-year-old, I was almost taller than she was, but she’d curl her body around mine. She smelled like a grandma. Like cookies and knitting, powders and strong perfume, and even a little bit like mothballs.
She’d just hold me, just be there. In the morning, she’d still be right behind me, keeping guard while I slept. She’d tell me that I could let the dark take me, or I could acknowledge it and turn it into something beautiful. She told me there was nothing wrong with me, that nothing that happened was my fault. She said the most beautiful art comes from the darkest places. I didn’t have to be afraid of being up in my head. She helped me believe the world had a lot of beauty, and if I didn’t ever go out in it and open my eyes to it, I’d miss the best parts of living. She was the reason I made it through. She promised me there were other people out there just like me, struggling, even if they hadn’t lived the same life.
She was right about all of it.
The impulse to ask Carissa to take the space behind me on the bed and put her arms around me is so strong that I have to clench my teeth against letting it out.
It would not be work-appropriate. There has to be a line somewhere, but fuck me if I know where it starts and ends. I’m not in any sort of right headspace at the moment. Not when my head is aching so badly and the rest of me resembles a twisted-up towel right before it’s wrung out.
Her hand travels up my arm and over my shoulder before smoothing a small circle on my back. It’s so good that I close my eyes and just let myself fall into her touch.
I guess this is a particularly unguarded moment because I find myself saying words I haven’t spoken out loud to anyone. I might have told Matt in the past, but not recently, and the pain of that bites deeper than I expected. Well, it’s in the open now, at least between the two of us in this room. I can speak my truth now.