Page 22 of Euphoria
Orion nods. His mother is a sensitive subject and I don’t bring her up much. I want to feel what he feels. The way he was attached to her. The pain that he must’ve felt when she was gone right in front of him. The way he held her dead body in his arms for days before our father could get the door open. Even when he did, I stood my ground for the only woman who learned to love me. At nine, I was ready to die for her and my brother. If she were alive, maybe I would’ve learned to love her right back. She didn’t give me the chance.
The elevator doors open and I walk in leaving Orion. I’ll meet him in a while. I walk to the room and Bambi is there just staring off into space, her messy bun looking like the true definition of one. She’s gorgeous.
“Do you love me?” I ask.
Bambi gasps. I scared her and I wonder when she’ll ever start paying attention to her surroundings. “You scared me.”
“Do you love me?” I repeat myself.
Bambi’s brown eyes take me in from head to toe. She’s a sight to behold. I watch her as she doesn’t answer me. I check for indications, signs that show me what she’s going to say next. She’s upset with me from the way she crinkles her nose as if she smells something foul. Her big brown eyes are searching for something as she looks into mine. I don’t know what but I need her answer.
“Why?” She tilts her head, studying my actions being intrusive.
“Because I asked?” I place my hands in my pockets and lean on the doorframe.
“Would it be wrong for me to say I don’t know?”
“How can you not know?” I ask.
“Do you love me?” She asks.
“Yes,” I answer without hesitation.
“How do you know you love me, Phoenix? If you love me, how can you do this to me, huh?” She shuts her eyes.
I take a deep breath in and release another one. “How can I not love you, Bambi? How? Every time you’re around me, I draw nearer to you. I study everything about you. From your mannerisms to how you look at me, whether or not you’re upset. I can’t love anyone else. There’s no such thing for me…” I pause. “Do you love Bowie? Do you want to choose between the two of us?” I’m not feeling insecure or anything, I’m just trying to understand like Orion just told me to.
She stares off on a random spot on my bed. “I don’t know,” she mumbles. “But I would never choose between either of you. I can’t get one without the other. It wouldn’t make sense. Being with one, while the other isn’t here, would feel…” She doesn’t end her sentence.
“Would feel like what?” I ask her. “Like a missing limb? Like you’re in a Tango and have no one to lead you? Your partners make the first step. They do that for you and you’re uncertain of us as your partners. But I want you to know this. That we will figure this out. We will figure out how to make you love us again. It doesn’t feel good that you don’t love us.”
“I never said I didn’t love either of you, I said I didn’t know.”
“Feels like a no to me,” I say.
“It’s not,” she states once more.
We stay quiet for a bit and I hear the elevator ding. I know it’s Bowie; I saw his text. He never left.
* * *
Bowie
Something tells me I’m walking into a crazy moment!but I don’t know how to leave. I stayed outside parked in my car and even though my damned driver kept asking me where to, I just couldn’t do it. I can’t leave. The text from Phoenix saying we need to talk and that Bambi might not love us anymore caused me to race my ass upstairs. I have no desire to tell anyone that I hiked up the steps and needed to take a moment to breathe before I came in. The Bishops men let me up when I reached the floor and didn’t care to say anything to me.
I walk, following the voices, and catch the end of their talk. “You don’t know if you love us?” I ask her.
Usually, I’m hot-headed but seeing the look on Bambi’s face. The way she’s ready to cry, I can’t even be mad. It makes me sad that she has that expression with us, her men. I don’t care if we never met again, but I would have always loved her until my last breath. Maybe that’s why I always told people I would be single for forever.
She looks up at me. “You came back too.” she says it with confirmation.
“I never left, Bams. I couldn’t leave but now I don’t know whether to be sad or mad that I didn’t leave. To hear you say you might not love us anymore makes me want to break some shit, yet I want to work double time for that shit. I want to prove to you, you love us. That you suffered just like us. You made yourself emotionally handicapped the moment you left us. A woman without her soul because we took that and split it into two for us to share.” I say with conviction.
Phoenix speaks up as she watches us both. “When you moved, we moved. We were three dancers who found an odd rhythm and dance that worked for us despite others telling us we were too young for that. Too young to understand what it is we were dancing to. What we were creating. Before, you used to lead, and we followed, but not anymore, my little deer.”
“Now,” I continue finishing Phoenix’s sentences as though we never felt out of our pattern. “We lead, and you follow. Do you understand what the fuck we mean? Do you know what you mean to me, to us?” I ask Bambi.
She shakes her head. “No.”
