Chapter 7: Lucy

I left a trail of wet footprints as I walked down the hall towards my room.

“I think I heard your phone ring while you were in the shower,” Fiona said as I squeaked by her door.

“Thanks,” I said, shutting myself in my room. I unplugged my phone from where it was charging on my dresser. The missed call was from Aiden, but he hadn’t left a message.

I looked up from the phone and into the mirror, staring at the drops of water dripping from the ends of my hair to the top of the towel that was wrapped around me. Then I held my arm out. The straight scars below the inside of my elbow were red from the heat of the shower and felt fresher today because I’d had a cutting dream.

Even though six years had passed since I’d drawn my own blood, I still dreamt about it. They weren’t the kind of dreams where I could watch from outside myself either. Instead, they were vivid and full of palpable stress.

When I was in them, I could feel the anxiety of being desperate to find a safe place to cut, the anticipation of pressing the razor into my flesh, and the relief that came when I dragged it against my skin and started to bleed.

Then I would wake up, as if seeing my own blood was the proof I needed to know that I was alive and could still feel something. It had been much the same when I started cutting myself in the first place.

It was around the time my Mom died. I think the combination of how curious I was about death and pain mixed with the fact that I didn’t have the tools I needed to cope with my feelings is what drove me to it.

Eventually, I realized that I was looking forward to cutting more than anything else, and I grew more afraid of having to do it forever than I was of trying to stop.

But I still had to hide it.  

After all, it wasn’t a cry for help. It was a coping mechanism, albeit a fucked up one. I never had any intention of actually killing myself. If anything, I wanted to feel something, not create the absence of feeling.

There was only one time I ever crossed the line and over did it. I knew when I started to feel lightheaded that I was in trouble, and I woke up my Dad so he could drunk drive me to the hospital.

I told him I got snagged hopping a barbed wire fence when my friends and I were running from the cops after drinking on the beach that night. It was an elaborate, patchy lie, but he was in no position to father me at the time. In fact, he was drinking so much then that Alex and I are lucky we didn’t lose him, too.

But he pulled it together, and so did I.

I don’t think he ever said anything to anyone about what happened- me included- except for that night when I heard him tell the doctors where to go when they suggested I might’ve done it on purpose.

Sometimes I wished I’d cut myself in a different place, one that was less awkward to hide, but I wasn’t even sure where that would be. Even if I’d cut my thigh instead, I’d still have to pretend I didn’t like to swim or get my hair wet or that I was terrified of the sun, which was believable enough because of my porcelain skin.

Someday, though, I hoped to have the kind of intimacy with someone that would allow me to tell them about my scars without them thinking I was a head case. Cause I wasn’t. Not anymore than anyone else I’d met was anyway.

But until then, I was committed to keeping my arm under wraps, to having short flings with strangers who were more interested in turning the lights off than they were in figuring out how to light me up. Once or twice, I hadn’t been careful enough and a guy had seen my scars. However, since my shirt is always the last thing to go, I’m usually standing there naked already, and they’re all too happy to believe the barbed wire story and get to the main event.

I wrapped my fingers around the edge of my towel and opened it until I could see my naked body in the mirror. I felt neither enamored or ashamed of what I saw. I’d won a very average prize in the body lottery and was just grateful I had all the parts I needed to get around without having to rely on other people.

Unlike my Mom in the last years of her life.

I bent over and wrapped my towel around my wet hair and grabbed a robe off the back of the door. I was in no hurry to get dressed and had nothing planned for the day except to lounge around and give Fiona my opinion on what she should wear to the movies with Peter.

As I tied the belt on my robe, I heard a coin drop in a bucket and went to read the text.

“Any news on that new futuristic ice cream place?”

I smiled. Aiden was one of the few people whose voice I could hear when I read his text messages. I knew I should call him back. I wanted to. Not just because I never blew him off, but because I was eager to make sure things were normal after the last time we saw each other.

Unfortunately, I was also starting to feel shitty about the fact that I hadn’t told him about Chelsea, and as a result, I was sort of avoiding him. Which was terrible. It meant both of the women he was closest to were mistreating him.

But I still didn’t know how I was supposed to tell him.

Plus, I couldn’t get Fiona’s suggestion out of my head. Was the reason he hadn’t made a move because he respected me too much?

I mean, when Brad took me back to the hotel, he had slammed me up against the lockers and pulled my hair and pinched my nipples, degrading me in all sorts of delicious ways. But I couldn’t even imagine Aiden ever doing something like that to me. He was too gentle.

Then again, he’d slept with enough of my close acquaintances in college for me to know that wasn’t always the case, though hearing those tales always made me uncomfortable. Maybe it was because I couldn’t imagine him going down on me- much less Sarah Young as graphically as she’d recounted the events. Or maybe it was because if it was me that he’d hooked up with, I would never devalue what happened by gossiping about it.

And perhaps that was part of the problem. Maybe I respected him too much, too.

Regardless, I’d had more fun washing his hair and letting him look down my shirt than I’d had fucking a guy in years. Which was so stupid.

When was I going to learn that nothing good ever came out of lusting after my best friend? He didn’t need a lover or a girlfriend. He had those things already, and he’d never had a problem getting them when he didn’t.

He needed a friend, someone he could rely on to tell him the truth even when it was difficult, someone who would answer his phone calls and not blow him off because they were afraid to hurt his feelings.

And I had to be that girl because it was the only way I knew how to keep him in my life.

So I would do what it took to maintain our friendship.

Unless I figured out how to get him to respect me less.

But I didn’t see that happening.