The sun was hot and gradually dragging me out of the sheets, the open curtains a few feet too far from the edge of the bed for me to reach from where I laid, immovable. The TV at the foot of the bed was only entertaining enough as far as I could understand it, which was very little as the program was entirely in Spanish. Regardless, the chattering voices stereotypical of any reality show drifting over the thin blanket managed to keep me in a constant state of mild distraction from the bile leaking into my mouth, or the sweat coating my forehead, and my inability to even attempt to find a cool spot in the sheets. It may have just been the oppressively humid, shrinking room that was making me this way, but regardless it was not my choice to lay there suffering while the hours and days ticked away unaccountably on the alarm clock beside me, the TV rattling through commercial after commercial advertising something no one would buy, just wasting my time and keeping me distracted while they blended together as the days into one incomprehensible mass.
The familiar thumping of work boots on vinyl made their way into my consciousness let me know he was finally home. I turned towards the bedroom door dazedly, weakly pulling the tangled mass of pillow and sheet closer, the back corner of the bed. My throat burned and the hand to my forehead made no difference as the sun painted the backs of my eyelids red.
There's more noise, some muttering about another two days off, nothing to do. I'd have some sordid part of his plan in a few hours, likely. Putting the thought off for later, I didn't pay any attention to the creak of the bedroom door until there was the sudden pressure against my shoulder, and I jolted to my senses. "Ge'out," I mumble.
"Baby, you have to at least drink something." His hands were wrapped around my bare arms. I reached for the sheets again. A quiet, stern, "Hey."
"What," I whined, my breath catching in my throat when I spoke. "Don't want it." He sat me up on the edge of the bed and the world pitched in sharp, disjointed circles like the sky was collapsing inside out, my stomach with it. It's either the medicine or he was right and I needed to drink something.
He moved across the room, back again, and as he sat down again I crawled into his lap - an attempt at clinging to some consistency in the offensive room - ignoring the sun. There was a plastic bottle in one hand, the other holding me to his middle as he shifted. "Drink," he ordered in such a way I knew there'd be a reason soon enough. That it wouldn't be a choice. My fingers fumbled at the cap until his hand came down and unsealed the bottle so simply. Insultingly. Water, cold. Not nearly enough. Not until this episode was over. If ever.
After a fleeting minute of peace, the empty plastic was forgotten on the nightstand and we were making our way away from the bed, and I was pressed close and away from the tauntingly immovable walls. Somehow I was nestled in his arms, carried, weightless as he lifted the worry from my mind. He let me drop to my feet a second before the cold tile bit into my skin.
The thoughts would hit as soon as the chill, racing to my brain like an ice-hot brainfreeze until I thought it would burst. Stupid. Stupid tile, stupid kitchen, stupid tiles in a stupid kitchen, stupid-
His voice was level, words direct as he told me to drink the orange juice slowly. We were sitting here in this hateful kitchen in some ugly tourist town in a missable apartment, and he's telling me I'm pale. I'd obviously been spending too much time in that god forsaken room, haven't I? Was it really all my fault? The chill of the glass against my hand felt out of place in the room. He had told me this would work out. The stupid medication, this apartment, these weeks apart from everything that caused me pain.
Fifteen months, now. In this shithole.
Before any of this started, he seemed so put together, mature. Wiser and organized and smart. Not like any older man I'd ever known, although being eighteen didn't make me quite an expert. But, he certainly fell into the stale box of authority – to command respect through intimidation alone. He just did it a little more attractively than the rest. I believed him when he said he knew the way around this, but now I'm starting to see the pattern. Everything was just temporary, a way to cover bases. The routine was just part of it. But obviously, if there's any sort of routine, there's going to be a slip up at some point, it's inevitable. That one saying about how if something can go wrong, it will.
That day is a haze in my memory, and not because it's nearly two years out. It was the slip itself. It's come back to the surface like one of those silly films over and over again until it's stuck in my head, running in an endless track. Those kinds where you have to keep pausing them, going back a frame, watching a moment over and over because you keep getting distracted. Eventually, you throw it aside and let the dark empty screen finish collecting dust before you pick it up and try again. You'd stop every few seconds while the plot digressed to explain the previous few minutes like a poor director with an entirely too complex idea. The flashbacks. The dialogue. A few out of context excerpts. The random fluff thrown at the last minute to pad the actual content and make everything seem more substantial than it was. Anyway, time slips easily out of reach when you spend so much time trying to ignore the bigger picture. Focusing extensively on the parts that don't matter almost makes it harder to remember what hurt you in the first place.
So, with no motivation or reason to keep track of the passing time, he made the choice for me. That or the pills did it for him, but it didn't matter anyway. They either made me sleep endlessly, or wasted the day away to a blur of binge drinking and violent outbursts over minor mistakes on my part. All revolving around the same issue. It was an itching tension under my skin that turned into a white-hot static between my eyes, the constant knowledge that it had only been days since the last time and the walls were closing in. It was irritable pacing and biting nails and feeling just close enough to the edge to push and let go and tumble from that cliff only to realize at the last second that the ravine was too deep and the rocks below too sharp to possibly be the right ending, but you were already hurtling over without a trace of restraint.
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