Page 376 of Call Me Baby 2: Side B

Can’t, even if I wanted to.

My heart and lungs don’t know how to beat or breathe right around someone who keeps coming back. They’re moving worn and beaten from holding up these walls and bracing for impact. They’re too weak, too exhausted—two overplayed instruments wanting to be locked away in velvet cases to rest and collect dust.

I turn toward my dresser,

keeping my back to him,

and the mirror finds me.

Beneath the ruined glamour of a scarlet dress, my eyeliner’s blotched in the corners of my eyes, my lipstick’s gone, my eyes are sunk into purple valleys.

Beautiful Corpse Barbie⁠—

Christmas of ‘24 Holiday Edition.

I take off my earrings,

dropping them into the brass tray.

“Thought you were going back to the Clover.”

The TV bottoms out into silence,

then an explosion of mobster laughter.

Behind me, in the mirror, Andrew shifts.

“Tried.”

My movements hesitate a moment

before I remove my rings, one by one.

Clink.

Clink.

“Yeah, and?”

Clink.

“And they suspended me.”

My stare freezes first,

then lifts to my own eyes in the mirror,

where a silent scream lives.

“For how long?”

“Don’t know yet.”

I got him suspended.

This is all my fault.

My pulse is a drum, beating this consequence I can’t outrun, can’t fix. I swallow hard, another mistake that ripples through me.