Page 82 of Dark Ink

I sucked back a gasp when I saw him, bent over the vein in his elbow. A sick feeling washed over me as my eyes shifted to the suitcase I’d lugged from Rian’s apartment. There it was: opened, rifled through, a zipper, unzipped. I’d brought it. Rian’s bag wasn’t for a last-minute vacation or an impromptu business trip for Dublin Ink. It was a getaway bag. A getaway from real life bag. A getaway from your problems bag. A getaway from everything that hurt in this godforsaken world bag.

A getaway from me bag.

Was that why he’d been so docile, so friendly, so seemingly unaffected by his reunion with his estranged family? Because he had his escape plan? His way out? His secret weapon? Had he fucked me knowing he was going to do it? Had I been an obstacle along the way? My orgasm like passing Go to collect $200?

I knew if I kept watching I would be sick and I knew I was sick, because I couldn’t stop. It made me paralysed the ease with which Rian worked. The familiarity with the rubber strap round his bicep pulled tight but not too tight with his teeth. The dexterity of his fingers over the needle. The exactitude with which he flicked the vein in the crook of his arm. I thought I’d feel better if he trembled. If he hesitated. If he dropped the needle and considered for at least a moment or two whether it was right, whether it was good to pick it up. To continue. To do this to himself. To do this to me. I thought I’d forgive him if he at least glanced over toward me, out there in the dark, alone. If I at least saw something like remorse. Or sadness. Or regret.

But Rian worked on himself like he worked on his paintings, on his tattoos, on me: confident, quick, determined, practised, well-practised. I didn’t have to wait long for him to be ready. For the needle to slip effortlessly into the vein. For the plunger to send whatever poison was loaded into Rian’s body.

I should have closed my eyes then. I should have spared myself the rest. But I needed to be punished. So I watched. I watched as Rian’s face, pinched with pain and anger, contorted with years of heartache, softened, smoothed. I watched as the tension that made stone of his shoulders and back eased away as he sank against the edge of the old claw-foot tub. And I watched as pleasure drew a smile to his lips, a real smile, a true smile, a smile dissimilar in every way, I was sure, to the ones he was giving me all night long in front of his family, in front of my naked body.

Perhaps I should have been happy for him. He’d clearly found peace when he’d had none, relief when there hadn’t been any to find. Perhaps I should have been happy for him, because it was really me I should have been loathsome of.

I’d been the fool who once again believed she could save someone with love. I’d been the idiot who fell into the trap again of thinking, “If I just gave more…if I just gave a little more…” I’d been the stupid little girl who convinced herself she’d healed her drug addicted, broken, obsessive professor. And I’d been the one who fell in love with the idea of being needed, of being necessary, of being worthy.

I watched Rian’s eyes close, his body go limp. The needle rolled from his open palm. It clattered gently on the tiled floor. He moaned slightly from the bathroom and the sound drew fresh tears. He hadn’t moaned like that in my ear, our bodies rocking as one. He hadn’t moaned with such abandon. There was always something held back. Something hidden from me. An armour I couldn’t cut through. Rian moaned and I thought I could die.

And he was oblivious to it. The hurt he’d inflicted on me with his escape.

He didn’t even know that he’d left me behind.

I should have cried for myself. Hot, fast, unstoppable tears. I should have cried for the little girl who got disowned by her father when she stood up for her brother. For the little girl who’d been trying and trying and trying again just to make things right. I should have cried for that little Raglan Road girl, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But I cried for Rian. For Professor Merrick. For the man I hated. For the man I so desperately loved.

How stupid of me to think he had ever been there with me. That I’d been anything other than alone. When he wrapped his arms around me, it was the drugs in the bloodstream that held me. When he looked into my eyes, it was only ever my own reflection that I saw in those wide, artificially dilated pupils.

When he told me he loved me, was it really anything he could say sober?

Rian

The trees were swaying. The rain slanted across the rolling hills that rippled with lashed wild grasses. Eithne’s dress trembled about her as she hugged her goose-bumped forearms across her stomach. Her hair whipped across her pale cheeks, veiled her eyes that seemed to look everywhere but at me. As the words of the priest droned on into oblivion hands clutched at black umbrellas that thrashed to escape, to be carried far, far away. The wind and rain were ice. I was sure of it. But I felt none of it.

My face was hot, burning. My clothes seemed to grate against my inflamed skin, prickled and irritated like my father had risen from the grave to drag me across the carpet one last time. Even the air I inhaled in panicked sips scorched the back of my throat while all around me the mourners’ fingertips turned purple. The cemetery was wide, vast even. There was more than enough room for the dead in this godforsaken land. And yet I felt an oppressive claustrophobia. I swore as the priest began to pray and heads bowed all around me that they all shifted closer, tighter around me. Even Eithne herself. Just the tiniest brush of her arm against mine felt like a mound of dirt dropped atop me, a coffin lid nailed shut as I pounded against it.

The drugs coursed through my veins and each pulse of my heart felt like a betrayal against her. I thought maybe she could hear it, the poison killing me. I’d been weak the night before. The mask weighed too heavily. The promise of a healed family felt too far out of reach and I’d fallen short, because I was always going to fall short. I wanted to tear at my wrists as the casket bearing my father was lowered into the ground. I wanted to drain it out of me. I wanted to tell Eithne what I’d done, that I was sorry, that I wanted to go back, to let the press of her body, the warmth of her embrace, the strength of her love for me be enough.

But it all felt too late. I was a rotted floor waiting to cave in, taking everyone down with me.

I’m not sure exactly what started it. Probably nothing at all. It was fated, so if it wasn’t a glancing shoulder or an innocent glance, it was going to be a benign comment or a passing remark. I was going to fight with Alan. I was going to self-destruct in a way that no one else had ever self-destructed before. What the fuck does it matter how it started?

“Jaysus fuck, let’s not do this here,” Alan whispered harshly, his eyes scanning the gathered people who were ignorant to the true nature of the man they were there to cry over. My brother obviously wanted it to stay that way.

Alan tried to guide me toward the line of black cars stretching along the cemetery. He wanted to “do this” where no one could see us, where it wouldn’t embarrass the family, where he could show his true colours, his rage, his violence. He wanted to “do this” just as much as I wanted to. It was as inevitable for him as it was for me. He just wanted to bloody my lip one last time in private.

I wrenched my arm away and hands curled into fists. This time, I would fight back. Show him all the things I learned in all those boxing sessions with Conor.

In an instant Liam was there.

“Come on,” he said in that calming voice that shocked me like electricity. “Easy, easy.”

My muscles tensed, constricted, went so taut I thought they might snap. My jaw locked, trembled. It was an unbearable pain. An unimaginable pain. And I just had to stand there. Take it.

“Let’s keep it together for Pa,” Liam said, hand at the small of my back.

I shoved him away, hard, and I was free. The current of electricity his soft, calming words had sent through me was gone. I could move again. I felt my blood pumping fast. My hands curling and uncurling. Adrenaline shooting through my veins, the most intoxicating drug there was.

“You never could stand up for me, could you?” I said, not bothering in the slightest to keep my voice low.

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