Page 115 of Puppy Love

“These things are fucking useless,” I mutter, tossing the wad into the garbage can. I push open a stall door and wrap layers of toilet paper around my hand, like a pre-teen who just started their period.

“Violet!”

A sigh escapes my lips as I run the wad of paper under the tap. “Mal, you’re fine. It’s just a scrape. I’ll get this cleaned up and you can go—”

“Just a scrape?! My face is ruined!”

“What a tragedy,” I mutter. Mallory shoots me a glare. “Will you just let me clean it please?”

Look, I’m not trying to be a bitch, but Mallory is being insufferable. I press the wet tissue to her chin, careful to dab it rather than swiping it so crumbs of paper don’t get left behind. This might be the only time in my life that I have begged for silence. But it’s taken almost as quickly as it’s granted by a sound I never thought I’d hear again. Especially in these circumstances.

Mallory is laughing. And not a quiet, muffled chuckle. No. Mallory has erupted into uncontrollable, body-vibrating, witch type laughter as she kicks her feet around. She is sitting on a dirty bar bathroom floor, blood seeping from her face, and she’s laughing.

“Did I... miss something?” I ask, pulling my hand away. Mallory only laughs harder. “What?!”

“Did you—” Mallory can barely speak through her intoxicated giggles. “Did you ever think we’d be here again?”

Listening to her laugh, I can’t help but laugh alongside her. “Monsey’s?”

I know what Mallory means, and I know she does not mean Monsey’s. I kind of regret playing dumb, but I don’t know what else to say. I expect Mal to tell me “no,” to elaborate on the situation. To mention the fact that we’re sitting on the floor of a bar bathroom together. Mallory just laughs, and I do too, shaking my head.

“I don’t—I can’t—” The skin on her chin stretches tight with her laughter, and I have to press the tissue paper against it again to stop the bleeding. Her eyes flick up to me, crashing waves shining in the blue depths of them. She blinks, once, before cupping my face, and pressing her thin glossed lips against mine.

They should feel familiar, but somehow, I feel like I’ve never kissed her before in my life. I pull back quickly, heat rushing to my cheeks. Mallory looks like she’s scrambling to construct a sentence, but I don’t even want to hear the next words coming from her mouth. This is wrong. Or at least, it feels that way. I know Cam and I are over. I know that it’s entirely my fault. But still, something about this feels dirty. Boundary crossing, even. I know it isn’t cheating, it quite literally can’t be. Even when we had an agreement, the nature of it ensured that. So why does it feel that way?

“I’m seeing someone,” I blurt out. It isn’t something I planned to say, and really, it isn’t even the truth. “Seeing someone” implies more than sex. It suggests that it’s current, too. And as proven, in the small humid salon, neither of those things are true. But the words flow out of my mouth faster than I can even process them. “She’s great. She’s smart, and really fucking bossy, and she loves dogs, and—”

“That’s awesome,” Mallory cuts in, smiling. I study her face for a moment, deciphering if this is the type of “awesome” that Mallory would go home and rant about. The kind she didn’t really think was “awesome”. But there is no disingenuousness to her look. Pink rises in her cheeks, her eyes are teary but the care in them is real. Her smile is sweet. This may be, I realize, one of the only times Mallory has ever seemed authentic to me.

“It is,” I say back. I look at the woman in front of me. My life, my history. And I know I should be feeling happy that I’ve proved I’ve moved on, in some way or another. There should be warmth swelling in my chest, triumph in my mind. I thought I was going to feel like I won when this happened. Like what she did wasn’t enough to ruin me. Instead, guilt washes over me like a tidal wave on a fragile shore. Cam’s voice echoes in my mind, but I don’t think this feeling has anything to do with her. I mean, how could it? We were never together. It was never going to be something more.

“You don’t let anyone know you.”

That’s what she had said to me. And it stung so badly because it was true. It is true. No, was. It was true. Hayden knows me now, and Cam does too, at least more than anyone else. More than Mallory ever had, that I know for sure. And even with her self-obsessed nature, I can’t say that it’s her fault.

“Mallory I—” I clear my throat. “I owe you an apology. Aht—” I put my hand up when Mallory’s mouth opens, not allowing her to interrupt me. I need to say this, and then I need to leave. “I didn’t let you in. At all. Twelve years, and you knew nothing about me. And that was on me. I didn’t want anyone to know how I felt. It was scary. It is scary. But I recognize that it created distance between us. And I know that probably made you feel just as alone. So, I’m sorry.”

Tears well in Mallory’s eyes, her lip trembling with a soft but genuine smile.

I can’t sit in here with her anymore. I can’t spend another moment reminding myself of what we were, of what we would be if Mal never cheated. If I had just been vulnerable. What we were is in the past, and what we could be? We would have never been what everyone thought we were, as a couple, or as individual people. Everything we could be, everything that everyone saw us as, it was all fake. I know that now, because of Cam.

It’s funny. You can spend your whole life with someone, and never truly know each other.

Her fingers graze against my cheek, cold and thin. “Violet—”

The bathroom door swings open, my head snapping to the opening in the frame. Standing there, between the wooden trim, is Cam.

thirty-six

Hell is a Place on Earth

Cam

The bittersweet flavor of vodka and cranberry juice settles on my tongue. The bar lighting is dim, but the atmosphere isn’t. People talk loudly, about work, and their families, and the weather, not caring who around them hears it. Steady beats send vibrations through the floor, traveling up the bar into my glass. The red liquid inside of it shakes softly, little ripples like blood-soaked waves in my clear cup.

I shouldn’t have listened to Hayden. I knew the second he held up that stupid pink rock, that the entire thing was a bad idea. The signals I’d been sending were mixed, lately. I feel terrible about it, how she became victim to my dependency. Even setting my own rules didn’t work, every piece of that contract broken by the two of us.

What Violet doesn’t know is that I wish it was true. If I had feelings for her, everything would be so much less complicated. I wouldn’t have to explain that it isn’t feelings, it’s attachment. It’s a trauma bond, like what happened with Cody. Except instead of Cody being the person I bonded with, he’s the reason behind it.

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