I thought things were heading somewhere with Roxanne. Just when I think we’ve finally reached a turning point, she pulls away, and I don’t know how to follow her to where she’s gone. I’m always too fucking scared to take the steps that will pull her back to me. I’m too scared to let everything out and say what she needs to hear, to show her once and for all what she means to me. I don’t know what’s going to happen when that floodgate bursts open. I’ve spent my whole life building a dam around myself, and I know I’ll hurt people if it breaks.
I know what losing control looks like. I watched it happen to my dad again and again, until he was just a jagged shell, just shrapnel slicing into everyone around him.
My eyes adjust to the darkness, and I can spot traces of Roxanne all around the room. Some black clothes are thrown over the back of a chair. Her violin case is on the desk. A pair of black boots with high heels is sitting by the door.
She’s everywhere. She always is.
I decide to take the goddamn shower and go to the goddamn bar. I’ll probably hate it and leave after half an hour, but it’s better than standing here in the dark. The bathroom door is closed, and when I pull it open, my eyes are blinded again, this time by the sudden light. It takes me a few blinks to realize there are three candles flickering in the steam that fills the room.
“Oh sorry, Kay, I’m in here. I didn’t end up going out. Did you forget something?”
I follow the sound of her voice, and it’s like the wind gets knocked right out of me. She’s stretched out in the bathtub, her back propped against the wall and a book held in front of her face. There’s an empty wine bottle on the floor.
For a moment, all I can think about was the first time I ever saw her in a bath. It was just after we started dating. She’d moved into a new apartment a few months earlier. It wasn’t that great of a place, but she decided to rent it as soon as she saw the claw foot tub. She always goes crazy over antique shit like that.
I’d been playing a show the night before, and I passed out on her couch from sheer exhaustion after coming over to hang out with her in the afternoon. I woke up in the semi-darkness and couldn’t find her, so I checked the bathroom.
She looked just like this: hair swept up off her neck, with little strands of it gone all curly from the steam. She had candles going then too. They made her pale skin look gold, made the drops of water clinging to her shoulders look like jewels.
She was readingThe Iliad—because if you hang out with Monroe long enough, you end up doing stuff like readingThe Iliad.She didn’t turn around when I walked into the bathroom, didn’t even say hello. She just started to read:
“Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”
She twisted in the water to look at me, and I knew.
I knew I was looking at the hardest fight of my life. I knew I was looking at something that was going to test me in every way I knew I could be tested and then some. I knew I was looking at the only person who could ever be worth facing doom for.
That was the first night I ever told Roxanne I loved her.
“Kay?”
She looks up at me, and I see all her muscles go stiff.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, dropping my eyes. “Kay said you were out. I...I needed the shower.”
She stays frozen for a few seconds, and then she seems to relax a bit. She closes her book and bends to set it down on the bathroom floor. I recognize the cover. She must have readValianttwo dozen times by now. She was so fucking proud the first time she got through it.
I was too.
“I...” Her voice is thick. “I’m happy you’re here.”
I feel my eyebrows rise. I was expecting a ‘Get the fuck out.’
“I don’t really want to be alone right now,” she continues. “I thought I did, but...Do you want to...Are you doing anything tonight?”
“No.” My throat feels tight. “I can stay, or we can go somewhere. Whatever”—I have to pause to swallow—“whatever you want.”
She lets out a soft breath that blends with echoes of the water slapping against the sides of the bathtub.
“I don’t know what I want.”
I swear I start to feel the beginnings of a heart attack when, without any warning, she grips the edges of the tub and pushes herself to her feet.
I can’t help it. I take all of her in. The drip of the water streaming off her is the only sound as I follow the trail it traces down the curve of her neck, over her clavicle and along her chest that’s beaded with drops I would give anything to press my lips against. The swell of her hips almost makes me feel weak with wanting. One of her thighs is inked with a black line drawing of a cactus, flowers twined around its base. I’ve wrapped my hand around that tattoo so many times as I pulled her hips into mine, or gripped her legs as I worked my tongue between them. I know all her freckles. I know all her scars.
Her chest is heaving, and I realize mine is too. I lift my eyes to hers, and I know what she’s going to say before she even says it.
“Read my mind.”
