“Lana—”
“You are not going to keep doing this,” she rasps. “You don’t come into this house, drunk off your ass, after wetting your fucking pants in the hall!”
Her voice fades into echoes…
Her hand slaps my cheek again, waking me up, the sting worse than the last one.
“I am talking to you!”
“Lana, baby?—”
Lana releases my chin and steps out of the tub. She drops my towelon the counter and walks out of the bathroom, the door slamming loudly behind her. Loud enough to make my heart skip and my body jump, slightly sobering me.
“Fuck.” My head falls back and thuds against the wall.
I take a shower under the cold water and punish myself. I wash my hair, wash the smell off my body, and get out. I dry off, brush my teeth, gargle mouthwash, and wrap the towel around my waist before I open the bathroom door. The living room and kitchen are empty. Quiet. Dark.
“Lana,” I rasp, and I hear the choking coming from the bedroom.
I sigh, raking my fingers through my hair and tighten my towel before I go into our bedroom. She’s packing, I know. I don’t have to walk in to know it. But I still freeze because I can’t see it. I don’t want to see it.
I take a deep breath and walk into our room. Lana is on her side of the bed, curled up under her yellow throw blanket, quiet. Slowly, I go to that side of our bed and sit at the edge, just in the space where her body curves. “Lana,” I whisper.
Tears roll down her face, sideways. One tear leaves her left eye just to fall into the right. She blinks and just stares ahead at the wall. Emotionless.
“Lana, I’m sorry.”
She stares and stares. “Lana?—”
Lana gets up, hitting my shoulder on purpose in the process. I remain seated and she paces in front of me. “I don’t know what you expect of me.”
“I don’t… Lana, you?—”
She stands in front of me, her face red, her eyes broken, her voice hoarse, with her finger in my face. “I deserve better from you!”
I shake my head and quietly disagree. “You deserve better than me, Lana.”
“No,” she snaps. “I deserveyou, I wantyou. But I deserve betterfromyou. I know you love me, because you do—I know. But this… Christian, this isn’t you. And it’s beyond the point of blaming your father.”
“I know,” I breathe.
“Do you? You promised! You made a promise you’d try!”
“I did—I did try!” I stand. “I did try, baby,” I croak, breaking. “It’s hard and I hate it and when I stop, I want to die.”
I shouldn’t have said that because now she’s crying harder.
And she’s walking away. “I can’t,” she whispers and her voice cracks. “I can’t. I’m… I’m gonna shower.”
“Lana.”
She’s gone in a second and the pipes are humming again.
If Lana told me, to my face, that sometimes she wants to die, I wouldn’t want to take a shower. I’d want to kill the things that are trying to kill her. But realistically, I’d probably take a long drive. Shower. Go to the gym and punch a bag.
If she told me, to my face, that she wanted to die, I would want to die too.
Lana is in the shower, probably thinking the same thing.
