Page 1 of Say You Love Me

chapter one

NOW

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FINITY

I roll the cigarette between my fingers and take a final puff before tossing it and grinding it into the gravel with the toe of my shoe. It’s my last. It feels good to throw it away, as though I’m releasing the final thread attaching me to this place.

Smoking was the only addiction permitted at the wellness center. I suppose they had to allow us something. Still, it seems odd,antithetical of everything they claim to stand for.

Six weeks I’ve been here. Six weeks of sitting on hard chairs and listening to bitter women moan about whatever high they used to make them forget their miserably perfect lives. They are the same as me. Only, I’m not an addict. At least I wasn’t. Not before.

My life had been perfectly perfect.

Until it wasn’t.

I didn’t know how to exist with the knowledge of what had happened, so I didn’t. I stopped. Stopped everything. Moving. Eating. Talking. Living. I blocked out the world, shielding myself from everyone and everything until the people who cared about me were left with no other option than to send me here.

I despised it. I despised the organic, dairy-free, gluten-free, flavor-free food they set before us. I missed the taste of alcohol, the buzz of caffeine and the freedom of choice. I rolled my eyes at the essays they made me write and the crafts they insisted I construct. I hated the library filled with reality rather than fiction, the self-help books and memoirs of people who swapped their fucked-up lives for boring ones.

But at least this place helped me start again. It was like slowly waking up, bit by bit, day by day, until I almost felt myself. Almost. There was nothing here that could bring back the memories. No familiar sights or sounds. No one smiling sadly in pity. Of course, after what happened I will never be the same. No one could. This place helped me accept that.

“He not here yet?” Rylee strolls over and sits on the bench, his thigh pressing against mine. He is one of the few people I actually like at the center. He’s what they call a ‘frequent flyer’. As soon as he overcomes one addiction, he’s back with another. This time he’d been admitted for an addiction to pain killers. Tramadol to be exact, though I suspect that’s because it was the only one he confessed to. He looks young, just a boy, but he’s in his late twenties and better company than most of the women here. Women who cry themselves to sleep each night because their husbands no longer want to fuck them, no matter how much fat they’d had removed from their stomach and injected into their ass. He was also better company than the men who had hit some midlife crisis when it suddenly dawned they’d wasted their lives. And with his curly dark hair, easy smile, and prominent freckles he was prettier than most of the women could ever dream to be too. Most of them looked at me with jealousy when we became friends. I knew what they were thinking. I knew they thought I was fucking him, only because that was what they wanted to do. But he was nothing but a boy in my eyes. He didn’t compare. He couldn’t.

Instead of answering him, I peer down the road. There are no approaching cars even though he was supposed to pick me up over half an hour ago.

“Don’t worry, he’ll come.” Rylee pats my knee and I give him a grimaced smile, hoping he’s right.

We’d tried talking on the phone, but at the beginning it was too hard, and near the end it was too awkward. Each of our conversations had been strained and brief, neither of us knowing what to say to the other. Both of us were hurting, but it was as though our hurt was too great for it to be a possibility of offering any comfort to one another. Things would be different now though. I’m different. I’m not the same woman who lay in bed for days on end, letting the tears roll down her cheeks until the blissful state of sleep took me away from reality. My dreams were the only place I’d found peace because my dreams were merely that. Dreams. They weren’t stained by reality.

Taking a packet out of his shirt pocket, Rylee flicks open the lid and rattles the contents until a cigarette pops out. I shake my head, but even as I do, my hand extends to take one. Rylee just laughs and holds out the lighter, the flame quivering in the slight breeze. The tip of the cigarette burns red. I inhale then blow out a stream of smoke, relishing the rush of nothingness that assaults my head. The first time Rylee had offered me one was the first time I’d ever tried. Previously, I despised the things. I still do. But I can’t deny the rush, almost a high, that placed a smile on my lips for the first time since—

I shut off my thoughts and wink at Rylee. “Last one.” I hold the cancer stick up as though declaring it out loud will make it so.

Rylee inhales deeply and leans back, propping his shoulders against the bench. “Yeah,” he mimics my wink, “me too.” His voice is tight from holding his breath and he lets it out in a rush. The smoke drifts over my face as he turns his head. “If it makes you feel any better, my ride is late too.”

I shake my head. “Doesn’t make me feel any better.”

Rylee shrugs and his dark curls bounce with the movement. “Well, I tried.”

A vehicle appears in the distance. It’s just a faint speck of reflected light, but regardless, my heart starts to pound. I get to my feet, straining to see the approaching vehicle against the brightness of the sun. Flicking the cigarette to the ground, I rub my hands down my jeans, trying to remove the stickiness that has appeared.

“Is it him?” Rylee stands and lifts his hand to shield his eyes, narrowing his gaze to see down the road. His elbow juts into my side. “Sorry, looks like it’s for me.”

I can’t help the deflation of my body as I lower myself back to the bench.

Rylee bends to grab his bag and tosses it over his shoulder. “You want to exchange numbers or something? Keep in touch?”

I shake my head, throwing him a smirk. “Not really.”

He clutches his heart and feigns his knees giving way. “Ouch. Way to break a guy’s heart, Fin. And here I thought the time we spent together meant something.”

“It meant I was trapped with no one better to talk to.”

He shakes his head but there’s a smile toying at the corners of his mouth. That’s the thing I like most about Rylee. There’s no pressure to be anyone but myself. He laughs at my bluntness and merely rolls his eyes at my negative outlook on life. But the thing is, he doesn’t know me. Not the real me. He knows the me that existed inside the gated walls of the wellness center. He has no idea of who I was before.

The car pulls onto the patch of gravel. Rylee salutes as the window slides down and the female version of his face appears. “Sorry I’m late,” the girl says. “The car wouldn’t start and I tried to call but my phone had died and—”

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