Don’t they know who I am?
The footfalls sound closer to the bathroom door, and though I figure it’s most likely just Laurie coming back for something she forgot, I don’t return to washing my hair just yet.Our new apartment is like Fort Knox, and you’d have to be crazy to try and break in.We moved after what happened and our new place is bigger, more secure,easier to escape if you know how.Not that that’s a necessity for us.We were in more danger in a public place than we ever were in our shitty little apartment with its paper-thin walls and laughable water pressure.Not like our new shower, which pelts down consistently warm torrents of water as I listen for movement outside of the door.
I’m not going to call out “Hello?”
I’m still not a fucking idiot.
In the last eight months I’ve gone toa lotof therapy, determined to make the most of the life I walked away with after that night.My therapist is very proud of me, and really, that’s the whole point of therapy, isn’t it?To pay a stranger hundreds of dollars so they can show you how to deal with your demons and then tell you you’re doing a good job at it.And after all the sessions and exercises and strategies and support people, I feel okay.It helps to avoid any of the more misogynistic, blamey-sounding news articles and reels about what happened, too.No, “John”—not his real name as it turns out—didn’t need the love of a good woman to stop him from doing what he did.He needed to be under the care of a good medical professional.
It’s the knocks that bring my shoulders back down from around my ears.Our agreed-upon code is the melody of the “fa fa fa fa” part of the Talking Heads song “Psycho Killer.”The door opens, and instead of a polite greeting, there are more footsteps and then the shower curtain wrenches openPsychostyle.
I blink.He blinks.And then Wes steps into the shower, giving me a quicker version of the once-over he knows makes me lose joint control before he grasps my chin, his mouth covering mine as he pushes me back under the spray.
He’s obsessed with me.
Not “murdering ten people” kind of obsessed.More like “walking into the shower fully clothed to make out with me” obsessed.
Which is pretty fortunate, since I’m obsessed with him, too.
And that’s why I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him back.I kiss him until the material of his shirt gets slick and heavy under my hands.When I lean back, cast my eyes down his face and watch the way the water trails over his cheeks and his lips, I smile.Because even after the fallout, even though real life doesn’t get tied up neatly like a ninety-minute feature film, there are still some perks to being on the other side of that night, and one of them is seeing him relaxed and happy and not covered in blood.
“Welcome back.”
He’s been away for a week, conducting training at some precincts in Chicago.Quite possibly the longest amount of time we’ve been apart since we walked out of the club, covered in blood and sweat and grime and thatstupidfucking glitter.
“It’s good to be home.”He grins, taking a step back and starting to peel his clothes off.Something he should’ve done outside of the shower.
“I thought I was picking you up this afternoon.”
“I got an earlier flight.”His voice is muffled beneath the soaked fabric of his shirt as he pulls it over his head.“Where’s my sister wife?”
I grin.Wes moved in with us when we left our tiny Bed-Stuy apartment a few months ago.It might seem like a big step to take so early in the relationship, but I feel like once you’ve lived through a massacre with a person, you’re allowed to jump a milestone or two.He has slid into our lives so easily, effortlessly, that depending on the day, I both love and hate that I get ganged up on by my two favorite people every time I come home.
“Laurie’s on location,” I say, and reach for my conditioner.
She began development on the documentary a month ago.It’ll be a while before they actually get into production, but it’s her way of healing.Going back to the scene where it happened, recording and documenting every event and eyewitness statement.
She asked if I wanted to go back sometime and I refused.
I know every level, every corner, every hiding spot of that club, and I don’t think seeing it in the light of day is going to give me any kind of closure.I don’t think knowing exactly how John and Billie were able to cancel the cleaners and get into the club that morning to set up the entire space like they were preparing for a surprise party instead of a massacre is going to make me feel better about surviving their efforts.Knowing that they killed the security guy and left him in the alley before checking in, or that John was able to murder the two bartenders and still manage to fashion a look of fear onto his face when the lights came back on, hasn’t achieved anything other than unhelpful replays of a night that I can’t change.My therapist agrees.You don’t go back.You don’t go back to the shitty, bland ex.You don’t run back up the stairs if the killer is in the house.
I don’t judge Laurie for wanting to find order in something so senseless.Her story played out differently than mine that night.While I had a front-row seat to the action—high-definition images, surround sound—she had darkness and dead ends and the debilitating unknown.
So if she has to go back to find a way forward, then I’ll support her every step of the way, but I know what happened and the roles I had to play.I know when the years pass and interest dies down and other, more gruesome events play out and take the spotlight away from what John and Billie did, I’ll need things other than what happened that cold Tuesday night in November to define my identity.
And that’s why I won’t go back.
When Wes is more appropriately undressed for the shower, he reaches up to grab the body wash, his hand hovering dangerously close to my nice, expensive bottle until I smack at it, and he settles for his three-in-one instead.I pause in rinsing the conditioner out of my hair to watch him soap himself up.It’s… compelling.The best thing I’ve seen all week.
“Have you got a class today?”
Funny how fast you can finish a dissertation when you need a distraction from the outside world.Also funny how you become more employable after a highly publicized bloodbath.It’s not genre theory just yet, though.Somebody is going to have to die for me to teach that.But I’m now teaching, in a college, and getting paid for it.Introduction to Film Studies.While it’s a smaller class for the summer semester, it’s my trial run for the larger lectures in the fall.I’ve come to terms with the fact that while some people come to my class because of my newfound notoriety, at least they stay because I’m actually good at my job.
“No class today.It’s my day off.”I go back to rinsing my hair because there is no way that slow, extended glide of his palm across his abs isnoton purpose.When I glance up, the amused glint in his eye says it all.Eye fucker.
“Awesome.Are we finally going to do thisPoltergeist/Ghostdouble feature you’re always talking about?”He grabs my hips and shifts us around to rinse himself off, but when he doesn’t let go, I take that as an invitation to move in and lap the water that pools in his clavicle.I dig my index finger into the tip of his tattoo and trace the abstract tangled vines and spiked leaves back over his shoulder, down his back, around his ribs, until I hit the untouched pane of skin over his heart.He threatens to extend the tattoo and add my face there every time I try to convince him to finish watchingThe Conjuring—poor guy couldn’t make it past the clapping scene—but thankfully the space is still bare.Reversing the direction of my finger, I work around the detail of the ink by memory.I’m very familiar with it now.
I’m very familiar with all of him.I’ve traded minutes of surface information for months of getting to know him and what he’s like outside of a terrible traumatic situation, and I was right.If things had been different that night, I think we still would’ve made it here.Together.
