23.
Becca
I’m not surprised when I hear the knock on my door not ten minutes after I’ve returned to my villa. When it comes, I’m curled up in bed, the covers pulled tight over my head, my face buried in the pillow. Hearing it, I take a deep breath and count to ten. All you have to do, girl, is make it through ten seconds. If you can do that, you can make it through another ten seconds. Just keep breathing.
The knock comes again a minute later, my heart almost leaping out of my chest. Despite the pain of what I’m feeling, there’s a huge part of me that wants to run straight to him. A strange phenomenon when the person you wanted to hold you and tell you it was all going to be okay was the very person who hurt you.
Uncovering my head, I sigh and flip over onto my back. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a shadow appear on my balcony. Rich. The shadow grows as it approaches the sliding glass door.
“Becca,” he calls, the door rattling as he pulls at the handle. “Becca, darling. Open up.”
Go away, I want to shout. Go the fuck away! I don’t. Instead, I stay silent. Soon enough, the shadow disappears. When I’m sure he’s gone, I let out the air I’ve been holding. The pillow below my head is damp with my tears.
I lie there for some time completely unmoving. I must still be in shock because not a single thought enters my head. As I had said before, I’m empty. Completely empty. There’s not a single anything inside of me.
As time passes though, this emptiness is slowly but surely replaced with sadness. It’s a sadness unlike any sadness I’ve ever known, a sadness distinctly different from the sadness of losing my mother, yet nearly as potent. It’s the sadness of realizing how alone I truly am.
Wait, a tiny voice pipes up after a while. It’s the first real thought I’ve had since returning to the villa. Shouldn’t you ask him about this before you decide he’s guilty?
I silence this dissenting opinion immediately. What was the use? I was so tired of talking, so tired of chasing, so tired of working for things that obviously weren’t meant to be. Why couldn’t something just be easy for once? Why did everything have to be so goddamn difficult?
What a shame! I think as I twist around in the sheets. What a damn shame! It was impossible to find a comfortable position when I was feeling like this. I wanted to tear off my skin, want to bury myself at the bottom of the ocean. No, what I truly wanted was someone to just stop this awful pressure in my head, to make it all go away.
Ugh, I was so damn lonely! What was it about me that wouldn’t allow me to have love like everyone else? What was it about me that deserved to be punished? Had I done something terrible in a past life? Was that why everything around me turned to shit?
I end up not doing a thing for the rest of the day. I just lay there, my thoughts circling my brain like vultures floating above some dead animal. Every so often one would swoop down to pick at me, to dig its claws into my aching flesh and tear at the little bit of me that was still here. You’re not good enough. You were never good enough. Did you really believe you could be happy?
Noon comes; before I know it, the afternoon is slipping away. Day turns to dusk turns to night. Time was now without meaning. Though I knew I had been in this bed for hours, it felt like mere minutes.
As night falls, drums begin to sound elsewhere in the resort, the air shaking with their vibrations. Another luau is underway in the garden. Though my belly is aching with hunger, there’s no way in hell I’m about to go anywhere. The thought alone of seeing so many happy, smiling faces was unbearable. What was there to be happy about?
What a waste of a vacation day!
No, I correct myself. What a waste of a vacation, spent chasing love that wasn’t real!
It’s not until the clock reads midnight that I’m finally able to force myself out of bed. By now, I’ve been lying here for well over twelve hours; every muscle of mine is aching. I slide to the edge of the mattress. Here too I sit for a while, my elbows on my knees, my face in my hands. At the very least, I had no more tears to shed, having run out some time ago when the drums were still playing in the garden.
Needing to move, I get up and begin to pace back and forth across the room. It’s the only thing I can think to do that has even the slightest chance of stopping myself from going crazy. It’s like I’m a teenage girl again, like this is my first-ever heartbreak. The pain is gut-wrenching. How was I ever going to get over this?
My eyes fall upon the computer on my bedside table, the masochist in me begging to twist the knife a little deeper. Should I reread the articles Sophia sent? I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to do it. Why should I be scared though? How could it possibly get any worse?
I’m woozy from hunger. I needed to eat. I don’t want to, but some small preservative instinct in me knows that I have no choice. It was an immutable rule of life. Regardless of what happened, you didn’t stop until you were dead, even if you felt like you already were or might as well be.
I give in and call room service, ordering the only thing on the menu that seems even slightly appealing: pizza. While I wait for it to arrive, I take a long, hot shower, the heat turned up as high as it can go. I needed to wash off all traces of him. I scrub and scrub every inch of me, scouring myself three or four times, each wash more thorough than the last. By the time I’m finished, my skin is red and raw.
A knock comes just as I’m about to get out of the shower. Hearing it, my heart leaps out of my chest. It’s just room service, girl. I turn off the water, grab a towel, and wrap it around myself. In the mirror, the happy girl I had seen this morning is nowhere to be found.
I pad out of the bathroom, my hair dripping onto the carpet, and open up the front door. Cal is standing there with a tray in his hands. He opens his mouth to speak. Before he can utter a word, I grab the tray, thank him, and shut the door in his face. Though I can’t be sure, I have the feeling he’s spoken to Rich.
Back in bed, I pick at the pizza. Every bite makes me want to vomit. I force it down anyways, practically gagging as each bite drops into my belly. I have the television on and tuned to some terrible sci-fi movie about a giant, sentient jungle spider hunting down a group of college kids during their semester abroad in some unnamed South American country. The movie is so bad that it manages, for a little while at least, to distract me from my thoughts.
Though I’m quite hungry, I don’t make it through more than one slice of pizza. When the movie ends, three in the morning now upon me, I click off the television and lie back. My eyes are tracing watery patterns on the ceiling. The tears, having now had time to replenish, are ready to flow once more.
Momma, I cry up at the ceiling, my shoulders shaking with silent sobs. Momma, I miss you. Why didn’t you tell me it would be like this? I wish you were here, I wish you were here to hold me. Am I the only one this happens to, Momma? I know you had a terrible love life, too. Is that the fate of us, of us women? Or am I the only one getting knocked around like this? Is it something about our family? Momma, please. Will it ever get easier? I don’t want to end up bitter and alone. It wouldn’t be so bad if you were here, but now I have no one. I can’t stand it, Momma. I just can’t stand it…
The hours pass; I lie there unmoving, my eyes fixed on the same spot on the ceiling. Somehow, before I know it, as if someone has come and snatched away the night, dawn finds me. As the sky beyond the curtain begins to lighten, finally do my eyelids grow heavy with sleep. Exhausted, I let out a long, slow breath and pull the sheet over my face. Only too happy am I to succumb to the sweet, sweet darkness that soon overtakes me.