Page 475 of Call Me Baby 2: Side B

his eyes bloodshot and heavy.

I lean my temple against the wall and stare right back, neither of us making a move to stand.

He won’t get up ‘cause I’m here. I won’t get up ‘cause I don’t want him to leave. We are trapped in this stupid, beautiful deadlock of our own making.

I pinch the hair between my fingers.

“Andrew,” I whisper, my eyes bouncing between his, too tired to fight myself on this any longer.

So I just say it, “I throw up ‘cause… there’s this gross feeling I feel inside me…”

His gaze caves in on itself,

but the rest of him doesn’t move.

“Other times I throw up ‘cause… after the climax is over? After the high fades? All the feelings crash back into me—if I was raging, scared, sad, overwhelmed, whatever I was hiding from.”

I curl my knee to my chest.

“I never learned how to fuckin’ deal, so my body only knows how to get rid of it. At least, that’s what Brooke tells me.”

His eyes dim.

“You feel gross with me?” he asks.

My next breath shakes when it leaves as I find the words. “The first time I ever had sex, when that guy used me, and after he’d already left, I still felt him inside me, like he was still using me, and I didn’t want him inside me anymore,” I say, voice raw from the dry-heave. “So I stuck my fingers down my throat, like I could get rid of him that way.” I lift a shoulder. “It’s like… bulimia. Over time, it became a reflex. I don’t even think about it anymore. Used to only happen with intercourse and other weird-as-fuck triggers, like people used as objects.

“That changed after I met you.

“Like… my body’s confused.

“It’s happening all the time now.

“Not ‘cause I feel gross with you…

“It’s different. With you.

“It’s like front-row seats on a roller coaster, the click-click-click up the track, higher, higher…

“then you hit the peak, and the car teeters over the edge and you’re forced to stare down at the drop with no clue when the gears will let go. Inside, my head’s manic. I’m screaming, terrified, cursing myself for ever strapping into this seat, ‘cause what the fuck was I thinking, right? But there’s also this breathless thrill. It feels like flying, and it feels like dying. And my body can’t handle all that whiplash.”

That beautiful,

suffocating cocktail of emotions.

My shoulders sigh against the wall.

“That’s why I throw up.

“And you can’t fix it.”

He rolls his head slow from side to side.

“I didn’t say anything about fixin’ it.”

“It’ll always happen.”

“Okay.”