“I’m fine,” I respond stiffly, my vision tunneling on the cream paint hidden underneath the brown stripes and blue floral. “I’m gonna… go change while you…” My mouth tenses, jumping down from the counter and beelining for the door.
I’m out before he can say anything. But I can hear his rusty laugh through the wood, like the intention all along was to mess with me and get me flustered.
Gunning it into my room, the mental note of the lamp already being on and the box fan rumbling in the window drifts to the back of my mind, ripping each zipper down and kicking my boots off in the middle of the floor.
Rushing to sit on my bed, I bring my legs up into a crisscross, and the jarring latch of the door closing shoots a puncture of panic up my torso.
Ora folds her arms, sinking her weight to one leg and staring at me. “What’s going on? You’ve been weird since…” she rolls her eyes back toward the wall separating us from the bathroom, bumping her shoulders with a defeated huff.
Her insinuating Razor is making me act out of character tightens my face. “Me? How have I been weird? You snapped onme… I-I thought you were excited about, you know… Razor and me.”
Feeling like I just made this worse and said something cringey, the shakes of hunger invade the weightlessness circulating my head, glumly slumping over my lap.
She steps closer, sharpening her eyes. “That was before he was bruising the shit out of you and waking me up with threats.”
“Threats? What do you mean?”
Aggravation rumbles in her throat and she casts a glance back at the door, dropping her arms and ripping her oversized leather jacket off. “He’s not right in the head. I don’t think you are either for thinking that-” jabbing a finger my way, she swirls it toward my neck “-is fucking healthy. That’s weird. That’s psychotic. I don’t give a fuck what kinky shit you’re into but letting him do that when that’s exactly what got us in this fucked position in the first place is insane!”
My eyes water, wanting to curl in and say she’s right, just for the sake of not having to argue. But there’s a little voice in my head telling me to poke harder. She’s so close to breaking and giving me an answer to a question I can’t even formulate because I don’t know what the hell is happening here.
“And what position is that?” I ask.
Launching her jacket to the closet, she whips her fury to me, breathing harder, like the gate is opening up to a playground that’s going to exhaust me. “You ran into Razor’s arms when Damien did that to you. But now you’re letting him. Get back on your medication. Both of you.”
Damien? Medication?
I’ve never been on medication, and I don’t remember a Damien.
Damien.
“Try and remember it for me. You did used to yell it.”
No… That’s not… I mean, is he haunting me? Why? How? What happened?
Here I go again. Questions, questions, questions.
Courage pops in my heart, lunging out of bed and twisting around to fit my feet in my shoes. “Can you help me?”
“That depends…” Watching me yank the zippers back up on my boots, she adds, “With what?”
Straightening my back, my arms tingle, swallowing additional warmth from the rush swirling behind my eyes. “Stall. Don’t let anyone come after me.”
Her brows dip. “Where are you going?”
Not responding, I move around her and head for the door.
“Bunny, no. I’m coming with you.”
Getting my hand on the knob, I turn my pleading eyes back over my shoulder to her. “No, I really need you here.”
She sticks her neck out, lashing up a stiff hand toward the bathroom. “He’s probably ready to grope you again! How am I supposed to distract him from that?” she whisper-shouts.
“I don’t know, but I’m running out of time.” Leaving it at that, I pull the door open and make quick, quiet steps past the bathroom.
Running water is trickling through the door, meaning he’s most likely cleaning the makeup from his face. It usually takes him roughly four minutes and thirteen-ish seconds to remove it all, so I fly through his darkbedroom and into his closet, rummaging through the hamper he shares with Xene.
It sounds insane that I know that, that I know how long it takes him to melt the façade into the dreamboat that’s always made me a nervous, stuttering mess. But I used to try my hardest to avoid him. I avoided everyone, to be honest. So, I’d keep track of who was where and at what time, and how long it would take them, all so I could go get water, or shower, or grab a handful of dry cereal, without any small talk to distract me from how much I hate it here.
