Page 49 of Gilded Fake

“You were just saying you’d fuck her at prom last week.”

“Yeah, it’s called beer goggles,” he says with a shrug, then starts cackling again. “Exactly how many beers did you have on the roof?”

The others are laughing aloud now. “No offense, but a ring?” DeShaun asks, shaking his head. “At least wait a month until graduation.”

“Yeah, it’s one thing to have a preference,” Cotton says. “No judgment on that one, man. I got my own. But marry her?” He shakes his head and looks at me in this pitying way that makes me want to put his teeth through the back of his head.

I hate him. I hate DeShaun. And most of all, I hate Duke fucking Dolce.

“You should have done me that favor,” he breathes down my neck, so the others won’t hear.

“Why?” I demand, not bothering to lower my voice. “You want me to fuck you for the next forty years instead? Is that what this is about? You’re pissed that someone locked me down, because you’re so fucking in love with me you can’t see straight. Is that what you’re going to say next?”

“Whatever, gaywad,” he says, glaring at me and shoving my shoulder. “You drunk or something? You’re usually not this much of an asshole.”

“No, I’m not fucking drunk,” I snap, shoving my chair back so hard the legs scrape shrilly against the tile. “I wish I was.” I throw my chair back into the spot and stalk out. I want to punch something, someone. The whispers have turned to pleas have turned to roars in my head, my guts, my chest, and I think I’m going to fucking kill someone before the day is done.

Maybe, just one pill, to get me through the day…

I hurl the door open so hard it rebounds back, then stomp across the fresh green grass under the cheerful blue sky with the bright happy sun, all of it mocking my foul mood. I want a storm, something to reflect the doom and gloom of my present state… And my future.

I sit on the empty bleachers and light a cigarette. Closing my eyes, I try to summon the excitement of a game, the full body chill that would rise up inside when the fans started screaming and stomping these same bleachers under the lights, the announcers voice ringing out over the field as he announced the team, the uprights beckoning, the scoreboard set to zero for the game, each one a fresh start. I try to call up the smell of the fresh grass and mud under our cleats, the sweat, the detergent Mom used on my uniform. I try to feel that magic that holds together a really good team, the brotherhood, knowing your teammates have your back not just when you line up along the line of scrimmage or bust out of a pocket and race for the endzone, counting the white lines that mark each down, your whole body electric and alive and unstoppable; but also when you’re dragging yourself through two-a-days in the brutal August heat, feet pounding these bleachers with dogged, exhausted determination when someone fucked up and the whole team had to run them together.

But that world feels as far away as Destiny, as unreal. There’s no excitement, not even when I try to go back. My own body feels heavy and claustrophobic, and I want to crawl out of my skin. There’s no chill, no thrill. The only smell is the cigarette smoke clinging to my mouth and hands. There’s no brotherhood, no team that has my back on the field and off. I’m alone, and I’m so goddamn sick of it.

I haven’t been allowed to attend a football game in three years, and now I’m supposed to act like I’m cool with the guys who cut me out of that life, cut me down, reduced me to this nine-fingered golem hunched over in misery, an addict itching for the only fucking thing that made me forget, that made being alone bearable for a while. I wasn’t truly alone when I had the pills at my fingertips. When I lost everything, they were there for me, as constant and comforting as a well-worn baby blanket.

Football is nothing but a memory from a different life, the life before I lost my memory. It was someone else on that field in that freshly laundered uniform, some dumb kid with hardly a care besides securing a win in a meaningless game, maybe scoring a meaningless night with a cheerleader afterwards. It couldn’t be me. It was a movie, a dream, a show I watched in the bed of a girl who chose me while I washed down pills with a bottle of Jack to stifle my anger that I didn’t get to choose for myself.

That’s my life.

I remember the way it felt when Destiny’s skull cracked while I held her hand, but I don’t remember the way her fingers fit between mine when we held hands while lying on the treehouse floor. I don’t remember the taste of her lips, the softness of her body against mine.

I only remember the taste of bitter pills melting on my tongue, the softness of my fiancée next to me in the bed, the tightness of her grip on my neck that strangles me when she clings on, refusing to let me go even when she sees that her hold is slowly suffocating me. She won’t stop until she’s choked the life out of me, and then she’ll mount me on the wall like a fucking trophy to show off to her friends when they come over the way she’s been showing off the ring all week.

How could I have asked her to marry me?

I don’t even know if I ever want to get married. But the ring on her finger is proof that I did. That somehow, in some fucked up, pill-fogged corner of my brain, I thought this would be the solution—giving in, giving her what she wanted, getting her off my back. I can see myself doing it, saying, “Fine, if that’s what you want, I’ll get your fucking ring.” Driving to a jewelry store, dropping the cash, then shoving the box at Dixie. “Happy now?”

I can’t see myself doing what she said I did. Getting on one knee and saying all that sappy shit.

But I can’t prove I didn’t.

I walk off campus and climb into my truck. It’s Friday anyway.

Maybe, just one pill, to get me through the day…

I shift roughly into drive and pull out, roaring away from Willow Heights. Fifteen minutes later, I’m sitting outside the very back wing of Cedar Crest. There’s a tasteful wooden sign swaying in the breeze, the kind you’d see at an inn, but instead of “Cozy Cottage Bed & Breakfast,” it reads, “Long Term Residential Care.”

I sit there staring at the entrance. I’ll go in after a minute.

Ten minutes.

Thirty minutes.

A nurse in cheerful pink scrubs gives me a curious look as she climbs into her car and drives away, her shift over. I tip my seat back and stare at the ceiling.

Maybe, just one pill, to get me through the day…

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