Chapter thirty-two:

 

 

Carrie is clean and I get her out of the bath, and she’s trembling and she reminds me of a kitten that’s just been born, all damp fur and mewling cries for help. Her eyes are so lost, and her body so full of warmth.

Her heart is beating against my chest as I pick her up and I carry her to her room. I don’t even bother with a towel; instead I use my own body to keep her warm. And that’s how it should be. She snuggles her face against my chest, and I think she’s crying again, but I know it’s a good cry, not a sad one like before. This cry is through happiness, because she’s so happy that I’m here with her, sharing this beautiful moment. And I want to cry with her, because I feel it too, Carrie! But of course I don’t cry, because I’m not a pussy—not anymore. And I want her to see that I’m not a pussy now. So I carry her in my arms, across the hallway and to her room.

I put her down on the floor, and I feel a little embarrassed now because I came all over her sheets to get rid of the smell of Adam, and since then I’ve stripped her bed of those sheets. But of course she doesn’t know any of that. She just sees that her bedsheets are gone and she looks confused. She’d probably just think I was a pervert, like Benny from the hospital, who used to break into women’s houses just so he could cum all over their pillows and faces while they slept.

He got the shit kicked out of him on a regular basis too. Apparently murder and theft are okay but a little cum shot to the face is disgusting. That’s what he used to say, anyway.

And so Carrie is on the floor, and of course her floor is gross. Like everything else in this house. It’s dirty and stained, and cheap and smells bad. I pull back the duvet on her bed and I don’t like it, but what’s a guy to do? I pick her back up and lay her shivering body on the stripped mattress and then I pull the covers up around her, because I can’t look at her naked body for another second without getting hard and wanting to come again.

She stares up at me, her almond-shaped eyes watching me closely. I sit on the edge of the bed feeling nervous and shy, and I stroke the hair back from her face (I washed it, so it smells like roses and cinnamon), and I breathe her life in. I literally take deep lungfuls of air, and I suck her deep down into me and I let her be a part of me.

She watches me and I watch her.

Closely.

Intimately.

It’s a beautiful moment that I know will be cherished between us forever. We’ll talk about this moment with our kids—“and then he looked at me, and I just knew,” she’ll say. And I’ll smile that knowing smile that she finds so attractive on me, and everyone will say aww and comment on what a great couple we are.

I lean over her and smile. Her lips part to say something, but before she can speak there’s a loud thumping at her front door. Her pupils dilate and she opens her mouth wide to scream. But I slap my hand over her perfect lips and stifle the sound before it has chance to escape.

“Why, Carrie? Why?” I shout-whisper to her. Because I’m so hurt and offended that she just did that; that she was going to scream for whoever that fucker is downstairs. And all I can do is glare down at her while whoever it is fucking hammers at the front door and calls her name over and over.

“Carrie, you fucking bitch, open the damn door!”

I frown down at her. “Friend of yours?” I snap.

She shakes her head.

“Boyfriend?”

She shakes her head again.

“Not a friend and not a boyfriend?” I say and she nods in agreement. And curiosity makes me wonder who the hell this guy is, but I don’t have time to ask that right now. I need to know the important things, like, “Will they go away if you don’t answer?”

This time she doesn’t answer. Her head stays fixed in position, and I can see her trying to work out the best answer to give. The answer that will work out the best for her, anyway. I smile, because I already know the answer is yes before she nods. And I’m glad that she at least decided to be truthful about that one little thing.

The banging goes on for several more minutes, and I get angrier with each fresh war against her door. But eventually they do stop and they do go away. Just like I thought. Just like she said with the nod of her head. She was going to scream for help, but then she told me the truth. And that reaffirms my belief that she can be saved, no matter what my mother said.

My Carrie is still in there—the girl with bruises on her thighs and lice in her hair

I slowly remove my hand from her mouth. Her tongue flicks out to lick across her lips, but she doesn’t scream or yell.

“You seem to attract some really nice people, Carrie,” I say, and she snorts in response to that. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, but she doesn’t reply to me. And it’s probably for the best, if I’m honest. Because I can feel myself getting angry again.

I’m beginning to lose my patience with her. I had my life back on track until she barged her way in, and now it’s all gone to shit again. For the second time since meeting her.

“How do you always seem to do this to me?” I ask, but I’m not really asking her; I’m asking myself, because as Benny from hospital used to say, ‘you’re the only one who’s accountable for your own actions, man. No one else. Just you. You decide who you let in.’

And good old Benny was right after all.

This is all my own fault.

I fell in love with her.

I gave her my heart and I keep letting her trample on it.

When will I learn? When? I guess the problem is that I don’t want to learn. Not really. What I really want is for her to love me back…to love me the way I love her. But I’m beginning to wonder if that will ever happen. I’m beginning to see that perhaps I will always love her more than she ever loves me.

That perhaps I always did.

You can’t force love.

I remember reading that somewhere. On a billboard, maybe? I’m not sure. But I read it, and I got it, or I thought I did at the time. But I now realize that I probably didn’t get it at all—not really. At least not until now.

Because as I sit here on Carrie’s bed, shaking in anger and being slowly swallowed by my own sadness, I realize that I love Carrie, but perhaps—even after everything we went through together, after everything we’ve been through these last couple of days—perhaps she never really loved me.

It’s just another perhaps in the story of my life.

Ain’t that always the way?