Page 57 of Karma

I also wish I hadn’t left my bottle with them.

In a minute I’ll get a new one from behind the bar. I just need to start breathing right first. I sit down at a sticky table and start willing the vivid memory pictures in my head fade back to shadows that I can live with.

None of that happens before the door opens, the sunlight from outside illuminating me whole, because I didn’t make it all the way to the back of the bar where it’s always nice and dark.

“Just leave me the fuck alone,” I tell Karma and Grim as they walk up to my table.

“No,” Grim says. Figures he’d say that, seeing as he’s completely unable to take that answer for himself. It’s always like that with people like him. They can dish it out, but they can’t take it.

I just wish I didn’t need him as much as I’m starting to. That laser look of his… when it’s on you nothing else exists. And it’s been focused on me a lot. I’ve never had that before with anyone. It doesn’t hurt that lust for me just pours out of him. And that I’ve been encouraging it because I’m still as dumb as I ever was, and I liked it and wanted more. I like him touching me, I like his cock and I like watching him come. I feel safe and complete in ways I never had when we’re all together. Not once in my life. I feel safe enough to drop my guard. But every time I do that, some shit like this happens. I never fucking learn.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean? No?” I say and start to get up.

But Karma prevents it by sliding into my lap and wrapping me in the tightest hug I’ve ever experienced. I didn’t think anyone could chase away the shakes and the nausea the memories always bring, but her closeness and her softness, the sweet, peachy smell of her hair, and the way her arms around menever fail to create a cocoon of goodness, come close. At least my hands aren’t shaking anymore.

“Thank you for telling us your story,” she says. “I understand what you went through.”

“You don’t,” I say, because that cocoon of goodness is just a lie that I need to stop telling myself. “I shouldn’t have told you. Now it’s all ruined.”

I should get her off my lap and leave, but that’s not physically possible for me right now.

She cups my cheek with one hand, holding me tight with the other, and looks so deep into my eyes I get lost in hers. “I know because I’ve been there. Terrible things I don’t want to remember were done to my body too. But not my soul. Just as your soul is still pure and whole.”

I want to sneer at that, I do. But I can’t. It feels too good to hear it.

“Your secret is safe with us,” she adds. “Let us make it all better. Don’t push us away.”

Grim scrapes a chair across the floor and sits beside us, much too close. Or not close enough. I can’t tell.

“That’s what I meant when I saidnobefore,” he says, actually smiling at me. “I’m just not very good with words.”

“Yeah, I noticed that about you,” I say.

He smiles wider and that smile is revealing yet a new level of how much belonging I’ve managed to forge with them. And when he wraps his arm around us, the circle is complete. We’re all in the cocoon now. We’re back on the train and it’s not speeding anymore.

“I just threatened to kill you,” I say.

I don’t want to remind them of that, but the sooner I admit to myself that all this goodness is just a lie, the easier the landing will be. It’ll still be bloody and brutal. But maybe not deadly.

Grim chuckles. “Yeah, you’re not the first. We can handle it.”

I don’t want to leave this hug. It’s making me feel all warm inside where there was only dust and ice before. But…

“This won’t do,” I say. “If Joker sees us like this he’ll flip out. We’re not supposed to be friends.”

“Oh, I think we’re more than friends,” Grim says. “But if that’s what you want.”

He releases me and Karma stands up too. Just because I asked. That’s new too.

“How about we go back to the room now?” Karma asks.

“No,” I say, and they both look incredibly disappointed.

“OK,” Grim says and pulls the bottle of bourbon they brought in with them closer. “Let’s have a drink then. You probably need it.”

I’m not sure I do. Which is a weird thing for me to think, since I never not need it, so I take a swig anyway. It doesn’t do much to calm me, because all that’s already been taken care of.

“What I meant when I said no, was more like, let’s go somewhere else,” I say and smile at them. The glint in Grim’s eyes tells me things are on their way to going back to normal. To before what just happened. Nothing I want more.

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