I had just finished a line when she stumbled into the room in just her underwear, laughing, saying they had stolen the rest of her clothes after she jumped in the pool. I remember looking at her and thinking she was hot, you know, regular like that. There was a butterfly tattoo on her hip bone, and she wasn’t outrageously skinny. There were curves, which made her pale skin look like ice against the dark walls.
She glanced around the room frantically, as I stared at her with something like confusion and fascination.
“AH!” Inspired, she ran over to the bed behind me, and tore off the white sheet. It was thin enough to fold in half and tie around, and this is precisely what she did. There she was, in her makeshift dress, damp skin, hair disarrayed; she came and sat down next to me on the sofa. The music from the other room was obnoxious, complimented by the sounds of high-pitched laughs and glass bottles being thrown around.
“You like butterflies?” I asked her, wiping my nose. “Sure thing, I love butterflies. Don’t you?” Her voice was the kind I liked, soft and sincere.
“They’re okay.” We sat on the couch in awkward silence; she could see my eyes and the way my hand was twitching a bit. I began to wonder if she cared. I didn’t really know what to make of it until she put her hand on mine, stopping the twitching; her touch like ice, her fingers still clammy from the pool.
“You’re shaking,” She explained. “Here.” She took my other hand, and pressed them together.
She put her own hands over mine, and blew into them, her breath hot. She repeated this three times, and all the while my head was spinning from the effects of the drug. Still, strangely, I remember every detail, in colors so vivid it felt like a dream. She looked up, in my eyes, and smiled.
“I’m Ellie.” She told me.
“Regan.” I replied.
“Like the president?”
“Yeah.”
We looked at our hands, still pressed together.
“I couldn’t get them warmer.” She surveyed our hands, disapprovingly. “You’re still shaking.”
“It’s not from the cold.”
She looked at me again, our eyes met. She smiled, and I forced a grin. Let go of my hands, and brought her own up, to touch the sides of my face. I’m sure she felt my scruff, I hadn’t shaved in days. Her eyes were violet, a wild sort of blue I hadn’t seen before, electric, wide. I could have swam in them. She arched her neck, and brought her lips closer to mine. I wanted to.
I wanted to; but the instant it appeared it would happen- I turned my head away. Her lips gently brushed my lips before she realized her intentions weren’t executed.
“I don’t want to kiss you like this.” I told her, shortly, the words coming out sharp like knives, a bit heartless and unfeeling.
That’s when Mickey came in.
Well, he was pushed in, right through the door, and landed in a heap before us. Groaning and laughing at the same time, he sat up and turned to the two of us, sitting there staring at him.
“What the fuck you’re lookin at?” He chuckled, jumping up, and sitting between us.
“You were just thrown through a door.” She marveled.
“Yeah, and you’re quite the observer.” He chucked her under the chin like a kid, and pulled out a little pouch from the pocket of his jacket.
“Doing one with me, eh?” He asked me, as he began his set up.
I looked at her, and then I looked at him, and shook my head.
“Should’ve known. You’re high as a kite already.” He chuckled, he turned to her.
“You want some?” He asked her.
“No.” She replied shortly.
“Your loss, it’s the good stuff.”
So began a strange friendship.
As Mickey sat there doing a line, Ellie and I exchanged glances, and eventually locked fingers behind his back.
We started hanging out more and more. She was in college nearby, and Mickey and I didn’t know a damn thing about college. She was sober, but thought we were fun. The three of us became somewhat inseparable, like a Bonnie and two Clydes. Her connection with me was different, though. It wasn’t as platonic as I hoped it would be. I liked her too much too soon, I knew it was real, but I didn’t want to fuck it up.
Then, one day, it occurred out of the blue.
The three of us went down to the beach at night on an impulse, and something happened. Mickey was fucking around in the waves, high, and singing something in Russian. Ellie and I stole away behind the lifeguard cabin. We were laughing and the only light above us was the moon. She took off her shirt, and I took off mine. We gripped each other, tight, the heat making our bodies stick together. Her mouth found mine, there, in the darkness.
In three days time, I had made up my mind.
The trio would be sacrificed.
I wanted her. I wanted her for my own selfish reasons. She was clean and she was pure, the type of love she was offering only came around once in a lifetime. I didn’t want to think about the future, it was nothing to me. All that mattered was the now. All that mattered was the taste of her on my lips, the way it felt, and what it meant. I called Mickey.
“Do what you gotta, man.” He said in his thick southern drone. “Just don’t fall in too deep with a girl like her…she’s the kind that wants to fix things.”
Some time came and went, Mickey and I still got together in his apartment, doing lines and talking about things. Ellie became my girlfriend.
Mickey disapproved in the beginning, especially when he found out I’d told her everything about me. The bad childhood, the innumerable exes, the record for criminal activities, the habit. He didn’t like the idea of being ousted, but he knew she wasn’t the sort. As much as she disapproved, we moved in together. It was the best two years of my life. She continued to give, and I continued to take.
In the beginning it was paradise, coming home, being with her. It felt like a marriage. I felt like a man. I felt like things were the way they were supposed to be. She was happy, I was happy. We both had jobs, we both found completion in being together, a sense of assurance.
The most beautiful thing about it: it was a lie.
She was living with a double me. There was the person I became when I was with her, the person I knew I could be, some guy on top of the world with all the answers to life, happiness was a ball on my string. And; the Hyde to my Jekyll, the animal who needed the healing power that only routine could bring to me. The control I felt when I knocked on back doors and slipped cash in the hands of a fellow reprobate.
She was waiting, lingering, for me.
A lover, a best friend; hurting because she couldn’t change me. I refused to change myself, I wasn’t ready. I was leaning on my inhibitions in the form of anything I could get my hands on at the moment. When things got bad, a fight or a thought of the past arose, and when that happened I reverted. Cookie jar money was wasted on my pitiless habits; I became a victim of my own demons.
I never touched her when I was high. I felt like it wouldn’t be love. I felt like I’d hurt her, I’d be fucking her, I’d be abusing her like I was abusing myself. She began to compare me to how she wanted to be treated. She pinned me up again her ideal portrait of us, and left me there on a noose. I’d hang my head; I couldn’t come to terms with it. I disappointed her with expectations, willingly hopeful that she’d find me useless enough to save herself.
The day came, but it took time.
It took time to get her to hate me. She clung to me like the fixer she was. There was this desperation in her, as if she thought she was failing in her efforts if she left me here to die without her. She knew I wouldn’t change this way, like this, ignoring my hang-ups, ignoring all the issues that had accumulated into one huge self-destructive mechanism.
But the day came.
“Get clean, or I leave.” She said to me.
I tried for a day or two, to see for myself if I could really put away my selfishness in order to keep the woman I had come to love sincerely. But I couldn’t, and I lied to her. I was walking around, living a sober story. At night, when she was asleep, I’d sneak outside and have a line. It went on for a few months, but I knew I couldn’t hide it from her for long. She was too smart for me. So, easily, she found me out again, took her stuff and left.
It was that easy.
It was that hard.
I fell deep again, and realized in the end what exactly I had done to her.
Years have passed, me and Mickey got clean. We never talked about Ellie, except for times when we were talking about others and threw her in there collectively for the sake of remembrances.
“I wonder what she’s doing now…” I said to myself as we stood out near the lake one day, talking again about the past. “I bet she’s married now, with kids. Living in the country someplace, in a house with a loft.”
“You know what makes a woman beautiful, man?” He sighed in reflection, looking out into the water and dangling his hand over the edge of the wharf. “It isn’t the size of her breasts or the way she dresses… it’s that smile you get when you tell her she’s yours.”
I never forgot that.
