It’d been six days since I’d last heard from Six. And the entire time, I’d tried to keep the guilt of kicking him out from eating me alive.

On that sixth day, there was a small, padded envelope sitting atop a few bills. I quickly disregarded the latter and ripped open the former. Inside was a hundred-dollar bill and … the lighter. I dropped it into my palm and then flicked it on. He’d refilled it.

At the bottom of the envelope was a note.

“So loquacious,” I murmured to myself, pocketing the money and the lighter. I couldn’t lie—I was relieved to have the note. Relieved to have money again. Relieved to hear from Six. Relieved that I hadn’t fucked it all up like I’d expected.

I let myself into my apartment, dropping the bills into the trash and fingering the Benjamin in my pocket when my home phone rang.

I glared at it as its shrill tone echoed through my apartment. There could only be one person calling me, because the very fact that she was able to get through meant she'd paid my bill. As she always did.

I let it ring and ring until it hit the answering machine and smiled to myself when the bleat of her sigh rang through. In her most insufferable voice, she said, “Mirabela, I know you're there. You're either high or being a little bitch, and frankly—I'm not sure which version of those two I'd prefer.”

I smiled to myself and sat, cross-legged on the ground, picking at the nail polish that had begun to chip from my fingers.

“I'll call you back in five minutes. I expect you to answer, if you know what's good for you.”

At that, I laughed and fell backward onto the floor. I was in no hurry to obey my mother, not ever, so I made myself obnoxiously comfortable on the hardwood.

“If you don't answer, I'll cut you off. I mean it this time. Nothing. Do you hear that, Mirabela? Nothing.”

“Nothing,” I echoed loudly, with as much nonchalance as I possessed. But I wasn't unaffected. Sure, I'd helped Six and he'd helped me in return, but I wasn't able to support myself, long-term, on one single Benjamin. When I heard the clunk of her hanging up the receiver, I sighed—an echo of her own sigh.

I mustered up the energy to get up when I remembered the bottle of vodka in my freezer. I'd need a bit of that before I suffered through a phone call with the woman who'd shoved me from her vagina like the alien she thought I was twenty-three years prior.

I didn't have any clean glasses, which wasn't terribly shocking since I owned just three, so I grabbed a mug, some Dollar Store find, likely, judging by the cartoon “#1 Grandma” in hot pink coloring glazed across the front, and tipped the ice-cold vodka out.

Henry did a loop in his cloudy tank as if he was unsubtly shouting, “Feed me!” so I poured in what was probably too much food across the top and watched him chase the colored flakes with wild abandon. I tapped on his bowl, seeing how similar I was to my fifty-cent goldfish, desperate for sustenance, but living in what felt like a prison. I wasn't sure who had it easier—Henry, whose prison encompassed him or I, whose prison lived in my head.

The shrill ring of the phone startled me enough that I shook my mug full of vodka, splashing bits all over my counter. I swore under my breath as I rubbed my thumb through a puddle of vodka and then slurped it up off of my skin before waiting until the third ring, just before the fourth and final one, to pick up my phone.

“Hello,” I said in a voice that was unconvincingly sleepy.

“Mirabela.”

I scrunched up my nose whenever she said that. Four-syllable names were a workout for the mouth. “Mother.”

She sighed again, and my mind flashed to her funeral and what I'd choose to have inscribed on her grave:

“Mirabela,” she repeated, as if she liked reminding herself of the full-mouthed name she gave her daughter when her own first name consisted of merely two letters, repeated. Mother's parents were Slavic, the exact opposite of chatty—which explained my mother's name—and unsurprisingly, about as warm as the vodka in my hands. I tossed back a gulp of it as she continued. “What are you doing?”

“Do you want the honest answer, or the one that will please you?”

I waited for her answering sigh and was rewarded just seconds later. I'd need a tally sheet to keep track of each time she sighed during our conversation, I knew. It was a good day when I got her up in the double digits. “Are you taking your medication?” I had to blink, as if fluttering my eyelids would bring forth the image I was searching for. Meds. What meds was she talking about?

Then, in stunning clarity, the pretty pink pills came to mind. “The lithium? No, I'm not.”

“You have to,” she urged. “The doctor was adamant. Look, I didn't want to take my medication either when the doctor prescribed it. But look at me now! You're just like me. You need it.” That line was enough for me to cut her off, but it took a few seconds of blind shock for me to learn to use my voice again, as she continued, “You need to control your manic episodes, especially when I'm so far away—”

“Hold on,” I stopped her, holding up my hand. “For one—that doc was a quack and gave me a dozen different medications. And two? You've been far away my whole life. Don't act like you suddenly care. And three, and most fucking importantly, I am not you. Should any child ever be cursed to have me as a mother, I would never, ever let them feel any fear—especially not the fear of their own mother.”

Anger coursed through me, hot like a flame rippling up my skin. I picked up my mug and tossed more back before setting it down on the counter with more force than necessary. I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth and was about to hang up on her when she spoke again. “I don't deserve that.” Her voice had taken on a pitying tone and if I didn't know her as well as I unfortunately did, I might feel the slightest twinge of remorse. But after growing up under this woman's roof, the right side of my face constantly reddened by her slaps and my ears ringing from her screams, I had not an ounce of remorse left in me.

“I didn't deserve a mother who spent my childhood alternating between screaming at me and neglecting me.” I ran my tongue across my teeth, taking in whatever little licks of vodka I had left in my mouth, and continued. “I don't know if I preferred you slapping me during your alcohol-fueled tantrums or forgetting I existed. Right now, I'd prefer the latter.”

“You're so melodramatic, always have been.” I could practically see her spit from hundreds of miles away. “I just finished paying your hospital bill from the last time you overdosed.”

“I didn't ask you to,” I told her, but this was my mother's way of 'stepping up' in the mother department. Mira makes a mess and Lala cleans it up. It was my mother's favorite narrative.

“Couldn't you have sliced your wrists instead of getting your stomach pumped?” Ah, there was the disgust I knew so well. I could practically feel her spit through the phone. “Do you know how much more expensive it is to pay for a gastric suction over a few sutures?”

“I'm sorry to inconvenience you,” I said bitterly. My eyes fell to the scars along my wrist, and the one scab from the last time I'd cut. “I'll do better next time.”

But I wouldn’t. I was used to being a disappointment. Failure was inevitable.

My mother’s voice became a distant echo as my thoughts turned to Six. Doing the job for him was the first time, in a long time, that I hadn’t failed when someone was counting on me.

“Oh, don't be an idiot, Mirabela. It's not hard to not do drugs, you know.”

“Maybe I should just be an alcoholic, like you.”

“I am not an alcoholic. You may play me for the villain, but you're the one fucking everything up.”

I set the phone on the counter and curled my fingers into fists tightly, my nails pressing into my palm. I wasn't prone to violence often, but my mother was like a hair trigger on my rage. I actually believed she enjoyed seeing the effect she had on me, even though we'd gone years without seeing one another in person.

Hearing her voice echo off the counter, I ground my teeth and picked up the receiver. “Why did you call me?” My voice held none of the anger I felt but sounded rather dull. I wasn't a great actress when my emotions were heightened, but the biggest punishment I could bestow upon my mother would be indifference.

“I was calling to see if you needed anything,” she said with more than mild disdain. “Besides a better attitude, which you're clearly lacking.”

I bit the inside of my cheek and tried to tell myself to hang up on her. But the hundred bucks burning a hole in my pocket wouldn't last me through the weekend, and I was down to just schnapps in the fridge for alcohol. “I could use money,” I finally said, even though it felt like I was making a deal with the devil.

I squeezed my eyes shut, ashamed for succumbing to her offer, when she said, “I'll send some along this week. Don't waste it on drugs unless they're prescription.”

This was the game my mother and I played. She called every month or so to remind me of the burden I was on her conscience and I fought back with my version—the real version—of a childhood in a house run by a woman suffering from untreated bipolar disorder. She'd remind me of how unfair/unkind/selfish/melodramatic I was and then she'd try to buy my temporary peace with the offer of financial help. And then we'd both pretend I wouldn't use that money for nefarious purposes.

“Great,” I told her, already imagining her next words in the script we practiced so frequently.

“I'll call next month and check up on you,” she said, and I mimed each word. “Try to be a little grateful next time.” This was a deviation from the script, one that had my cooling blood starting to fire up again.

“You know,” I said, my voice dripping honey, “you can fuck off. Stuff yourself with the money you were going to send me—I know it's the only thing that makes you happy anyway.”

I heard her sharp intake of breath and braced myself. “Of course it is! Because I have a fuck up failure of a daughter. It's really a testament to your complete ineptitude as a human that you haven't managed to successfully kill yourself yet.”

“Well, I'm sorry,” I spat. I squeezed the handle of the mug hard, threatening to break it. “Death would be my only freedom from you. And trust me, I've tried.”

“Try harder.” The phone went flat, and I dropped it at the same time that I threw my mug into the sink. Like a grenade going off, pieces of porcelain splintered across the counter.

In my veins surged a hatred that had been awakened by her vitriol, and the boiling rage was pressing against my skin like a balloon being blown up far past its limits. The need to breathe was so intense, so blindingly necessary, and the voices so overpowering to cut, cut, cut, that before I had a second to think, I picked up a sliver of sharp porcelain and dragged it quick and hard across my arm. Three times. Slice, slice, slice.

The sliver fell to the ground and I slid down beside it, watching with a sick satisfaction as red poured from my arm, pooling in the creases of my palm. The pressure was gone, replaced with relief, as if opening up my skin had allowed everything to empty from the darker parts of my head.

I sat on the floor for a long time, watching the blood slow to a trickle as the clotting protected me from bleeding too much. Trails of red slid down opposite sides of my arm, staining the worn linoleum of my kitchen floor. The moment my head was completely clear, and my heart had slowed to normal, a brisk rap on the door echoed across my apartment.

I blinked rapidly, as if the haze of relief had put me in a trance and I was just now awakening.

“Mira.”

Six. I sucked in a harsh breath, like one would when coming up for air, and then stood, grabbing the kitchen towel he'd left the day he'd been at my apartment, and I wrapped it tightly around my arm. Not to stop the bleeding, because it had long since slowed, but to hide what I'd done. Whatever relief I'd collected from cutting, I was still completely aware that it wasn't normal to cause oneself harm.

As I cautiously walked toward the door, I snagged a sweater off the top of my laundry basket and pulled it over my head, dropping the towel immediately after my arms were covered.

I swung open the door, meeting Six's hard eyes. He looked angry about something, but upon seeing me, a little bit of that left his face. “Hi.”

“Wow.” I leaned against the door jamb. “A normal greeting from you. Wonders never cease.”

He looked beyond me. “Are you alone?”

I laughed and moved away from the door, ushering him in. “Always. Welcome back to my humble abode.”

“So, you tossed the table and chairs?”

I looked to the empty spot, where they'd once sat. “Sure did. Don't need them.” I stared at his leather-clad back as he stood halfway into my apartment and watched as his head turned and he looked at me over his shoulder.

“Don't you need a place to sit?”

I gestured to the one worn armchair across the room and then pointed at the floor. “These suit me just fine.”

“Have you fed your goldfish?” He looked toward the kitchen, where Henry whizzed along in his little glass prison.

“Just did.”

He made a murmur of acknowledgment and then turned, as if taking in my apartment. “Have you fed yourself?”

I shrugged. “I was thinking about it.”

He stepped into the kitchen and opened my freezer. As if he'd memorized its contents during his last visit, his forehead wrinkled. “I see you've killed off your vodka.”

It was at that moment that I remembered the shattered mug, which coincided with the moment that Six took it in himself. He stared down at the floor, and I hated that I couldn’t see him clearly enough.

“Sorry, you caught me off guard. I didn't have time to prep for company,” I said, hoping to pull his attention away from the mess.

“I don't think you're taken to cleaning up for company.” He gave me a wry smile, something that I recognized was rare from him. “But this appears to be more than just a matter of neglected housekeeping.” He met my eyes over the counter and his gaze was questioning.

As if he could see right through me, I felt naked. Tugging on my sleeve, I made my way into the kitchen and watched as he picked up the tiny trash can under my sink and started dropping the bigger pieces of the broken mug into it. “You don't need to come in here and clean up after me,” I said, thinking of my mother. Bile turned in my stomach and I put my hand on him to push him away. “Stop.”

He held up his hands in surrender, but no degree of pushing him had actually moved him away. He was a lot bigger than me, a fact I often forgot until I was facing him. He probably had more than a hundred pounds of muscle alone on me. His jaw was set, and his lips were in a firm line. The look in his eyes was angry but also curious.

“Was it an accident?”

“What do you think?” I blinked, hoping I betrayed nothing in my face.

His head angled to the side as he took in the shards on the floor and the droplets of blood that he'd stepped in and smeared. He squatted on his haunches and picked up the piece of porcelain I'd used as a knife and held it up.

I thought I'd felt naked when he'd looked at me from across my apartment, but the real vulnerability was in this moment, as he was seeing my own self-destruction and looking at me for answers. It was an invasion of privacy, a display of my shame, something I didn’t want him to have access to. It was nearly impossible to keep up my tough girl persona when someone could see the cracks beneath it.

Angry, I ripped the shard from his hand and felt the sharp corners prick my palm before I dropped it into the trash. He stood up and I pressed my hand to his stomach. “Get out of my kitchen.”

“I don't think you're angry with me,” he said.

“Yeah, well then you're shit at reading minds.” I pushed him harder and he backed up a step, boots crunching on porcelain. “Move!” I yelled, not wanting him here for this, seeing my mess. I didn't need another mother, certainly not a Six-sized one. I let go of his shirt as he stepped past the threshold, into my living room.

And then I saw the bloody handprint I'd left on his white shirt. He might not have noticed it for a while, except I couldn't move my eyes away from the detail of my palm imprinted so clearly on his shirt.

In slow-motion, he looked down at his shirt and tugged the hem away from his body to see it more clearly. I waited for him to show disgust, anger, or something else.

Instead, he looked at me with softer eyes, and I felt that uncomfortably familiar squeeze in my chest as he took my bloodied hand and pulled me toward him. Gently, he pulled my fist open so my fingers splayed out in his hand, and he pressed along each fleshy pad of my palm. I figured out that he was trying to find the wound, and when his gaze followed the trail from palm to wrist, disappearing under my sleeve, he met my eyes first. It was as if he was asking permission to pull up my sleeve, with his soft eyes and reverent hands. My heart had launched itself into my throat, so I couldn't do anything—shake my head no, nod a yes. But he must have seen permission anyway because the next thing I knew, he was tugging the sleeve up and staring at the damage I'd caused myself.

I imagined him asking me why; why hurt myself? Why dig into my own skin? The thing about cutting that people didn't understand was that more often than not, the physical pain was much easier to endure than the mental anguish. And a physical representation of a mental hurt gave me a perverse kind of pleasure.

The only times it became difficult for me were moments like this one, when others had to bear witness to my demons. My scars weren't liars; there was no use pretending they were caused by anything other than my own hand. The “why would you do that to yourself?” question was asked the most, as if it was more important to know why I put sharp objects against my skin than why I lived with hurt.

But he didn't ask me why. He didn't ask anything. He shrugged off his leather jacket and led me to the sink and turned the water on before gently, as if I was made of glass, sliding my arm under the warm water. His thumb brushed on the tender skin right below the lowest cut, over scars that represented a hundred moments like this one, illustrating my weakness in a hundred ripples across my skin.

He didn't look at me like I was a freak. He didn't look at me like I was weak. He looked at me like I was human, even as my blood stained his fingers like he'd caused this himself.

It was in that moment, with his bare arms along mine, with his hands washing my skin, his eyes locking with mine and his mouth silent, that I understood intimacy for the very first time in my life.