Caged (32 page)

I gasped when I looked up. The apartment was spotless, beyond white glove clean. I would never have known that a bloodbath had taken place only hours earlier. I threw myself wearily into a living room chair, unable to go anywhere near the couch. I stared blankly at it for an eternity, thinking of nothing.

Eventually my eyelids sagged and began to slowly black out my vision entirely. I laid my head back against the chair and allowed myself to sleep. The mental and emotional stress of the last few days still resonated through my mind like an aftershock I couldn’t escape. I tried to push past it, to let it go, to deal with it another day. It must have worked because I didn’t remember anything after that until I was awoken by an unfamiliar voice a couple of hours later.

The words didn’t register at first, so I forced my eyes to obey me and open. They were met by the most beautiful hazel pair.

“Sorry, Roomie,” he said with a wink. “You were snoring.”

46

“Cooper!” I screamed, hurling my body at him, clinging to him like a koala. I buried my face in his neck and squeezed for dear life. I was met with a groan, then a chuckle.

“Easy, girlie,” he groaned. His voice was scratchy and muted in a way that made laryngitis seem like a vast improvement. “I’m not up to snuff just yet.”

I eased my head back off of his shoulder just enough to see his face. He was just as amazing as I’d remembered and his smile warmed my insides. He reached his face towards me, and gently kissed my forehead. The tenderness of his action forced tears from my eyes.

“I’m so sorry, Coop. I’m so, so, sorry,” I squeaked. He squeezed me tighter in response. “I thought you were dead,” I whispered.

“I know you did,” he replied, stroking my hair.

I slowly climbed down off of him in total confusion.

“What do you mean by that?”

“It’s complicated…”

“Why does everyone say that? Am I a halfwit? Are you worried I can’t keep up?”

“Hey, Anger Management, you just got done telling me how sorry you were. Bitching at me doesn’t give me the warm fuzzies, ya know?”

I reflected quickly on what he’d said and realized that my anger was horribly misdirected.

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling sheepish. “Will you tell me what you can?”

“I will, but then you need to tell me what happened while I was out. I only remember pieces of the evening and I’d appreciate having them put together,” he requested.

”Fair enough.”

He rubbed at his throat for a moment, then walked into the kitchen to get water. After two enormous glasses, he attempted to tell his tale. His voice was very weak and his throat presumably very sore. He decided it best to write down what he could, only hitting the high points.

While he wrote, I frantically dodged around over his shoulders trying desperately to read it. I barked out random questions as they popped in my head with the hopes that he’d answer them, if he could. He seemed completely unfazed.

A few minutes later I was given a bullet form outline of the goings-on. He didn’t go into great detail, but I hoped that I could draw more out of him where necessary.

Never saw the shot coming.

Couldn’t move after, effect of the silver…will explain later.

In and out while you and Eric “talked”.

Went dark after you took off the ring.

Remember being healed…crazy shit.

Heard you and Sean talking.

Heard you and Sophie fighting.

Heard you didn’t want to leave without me.

You left.

Sean told me he had to leave, not sure when back if at all.

Asked me to tell you goodbye…Sorry!

I dropped the paper to the floor. What a week it had been, and what a kick-in-the-nuts way to end it off. I found out that I had a borderline-psycho who happened to live in my head, Cooper nearly died from silver poisoning only to be healed by a half-naked whore, and Sean who really didn’t want to kill me, who actually came back to save me, was now leaving forever (and didn’t have the balls to tell me himself). It was a real shitter.

Cooper had just finished his third or fourth glass of water, and waved his hand to get my attention. He was preparing to speak when I cut him off.

“Tell me about the bit-” I started, cutting myself off. “The healer.”

He gently cleared his throat in an act of determination to speak.

“It was some freaky shit,” he whispered. “I can’t be positive, but it felt like she was
inside
of me, literally pulling out the silver fragments and putting me back together.”

I looked at him incredulously for a moment and then remembered what I had seen when she walked down the hallway at her house. She looked as if she’d been birthed, coated in blood and slime, and realized that maybe he wasn’t talking so crazy after all. My only concern had been her saving him, and she did just that. Her methods were inconsequential.

“I heard them fighting…about you,” he continued.

“Who?” I asked, trying to determine who out of that crowd would have had something to say about me. “Who was fighting?”

“At first it was Sophie and Sean, but then some of the PC chimed in to share their not-so-flattering opinions of you.”

“I don’t care about the PC. They’re a bunch of spineless dicks. What did the bitch…Sophie say?”

Cooper looked reserved for a moment and it was clear that he didn’t want to answer my question. He rubbed his hand through his hair and sighed.

“She told him that he had to let his plaything go. That his fascination with you was only that, and it could never lead anywhere. That they were chosen for each other. ‘That’s the way it’s always been’, she told him.”

I looked at Cooper for a moment unsure of what I’d been told.
Plaything? Fascination? Where did she get that shit from?
It wasn’t like that, and never had been.

“What did he say?” I asked, curious to see his response to the nonsense the Bitch had spewed.

“He agreed,” was his only response.

A long silence stretched out between us.

“Shut the front door! Are you saying he actually thinks what she said is true? That’s how he sees me?” I cried, in total disbelief. “And now he’s going off to be with her?” I rambled rhetorical questions off one after the other until I realized how hysterical I sounded.

Then it hit me.

So much started to make sense. I replayed every moment I’d spent with him from first to last, looking at it with a totally different set of eyes - his. I felt a wave of elation and horror travel through me. It was true. It was all true.

I had spent months misinterpreting everything he did, and lying to myself about my own feelings. Once they were realized, they mattered not; he was to be with Sophie and he knew it, admitted it. The bond between them was obvious from the start. They clearly had a history. And a future.

True to form, my emotions must have been plastered all over my face. Cooper scooted carefully towards me, slipping an arm around the back of my shoulders, pulling me into his chest and walked us towards the sofa. We both paused before it. He sighed, and made the first move to sit, dragging me closely beside him onto it. He nestled himself into the corner with his head perched on the sofa arm and snuggled me into him in a half-on-half-off position. He pressed my head gently to his chest and held me. Neither of us said a thing.

For someone who’d known me for such a short time, I felt like he understood me better than anyone else ever had. I wasn’t sure what the future held for him, but I was glad for that moment that he was there with me. My Roomie.

We lay there silent for ten minutes or so, but I knew both of our minds were racing. It was usually the only time either of us was quiet, and I couldn’t take it any longer. I needed to get some emotion out, and I was disgusted by the thought of crying any longer. I was starting another “no cry” policy and strictly adhering to it. Maybe my parents really were onto something with that in the first place.

I told Coop I had to go upstairs for a bit to work some things out, and I’d be back in an hour or so. He said nothing in response, only smiled faintly. He knew exactly what I was going to do, but didn’t want to rub my face in it. For all his faults, he really was turning out to be one hell of a friend.

I walked down the hall to my room and changed quickly into a white v-neck t-shirt and some black boyshorts, my standard dance attire. I headed back out towards the living room and on my way out the door, glanced back to see Cooper asleep on the couch. I smiled to myself and walked over, pulling a blanket off of a nearby chair on the way. I wrapped him in it and smoothed his hair away from his face. As I left I turned off the lamp on my way out the door and closed it gently behind me.

I took the stairs two at a time and walked into the third floor studio. There, my therapy would begin. With so many emotions coursing through me I wasn’t sure what I was in the mood for. Before I turned on the elaborate sound system, I took a broom to the floor, removing the broken mirror that had shattered during Eric’s last visit. The PC didn’t get to that room to clean, apparently.

So as not to wake Cooper, I set the volume low and decided to put the iPod on shuffle and work with the first song that came on. I once again realized that the universe could have a perverse sense of humor. “Gravity”, by Sara Bareilles was first on the list.

Gravity: A force between two objects that accelerates them towards one another that is affected by the objects’ proximity to one another. Fucking classic.

In the background, she sweetly sang the first two lines, her sobering sentiments echoing through the speakers.

Truer words were never spoken.

47

My body moved without thought, compelled by the emotion of the song, starting off slow and gentle only to crescendo with the swell of the music. There were moments of frantic, angry motions into which I threw all my frustration, hatred, confusion and betrayal. The intensity grew as my memories came forward; so much pain I’d never dealt with, both recent and past.

I threw my body across the room in true contemporary style. I ran, jumped, crashed into the floor, reached in futility for something that didn’t exist. So many things that didn’t exist.

My emotions were boiling over from the dance to my eyes. It took a brief reminder that my new policy was in full effect - no more crying. I struggled to maintain the balance between control and expression, and the scale was tipping away from the former.

Her words pushed through my defenses, settling into my mind, allowing my subconscious to take over. So much for balance, and my policy for that matter. My eyes stung as I fought the pooling tears that threatened to spill while her verses pounded in my head.

As the last line was sung I crashed to the ground on my knees in a deliberate but painful move, and pressed my face tightly to the floor. The flood had broken the levy, and poured out everywhere.

Would something always bring him back to me?

In my sadness I felt, rather than heard, someone enter the room. I was in no mood for company.

“Coop, please. Please leave me alone,” I whispered, unwilling to lift my head to face him. He said nothing in response, but didn’t move away. He must have heard me carrying on from downstairs.

I’d never wanted to be more alone in my life. I didn’t know why that was so hard to understand. I lifted my gaze to plead with him, to send him away. The face I expected to see was nowhere to be found. Instead, I found myself eye to eye with Sean, who’d knelt down to the ground to be nearer to me. Before I could say a word he leaned forward, carefully cupped my face in his hands and kissed my tears away.

He thought I needed his comfort, his strength. He thought I was weak.

I’ll show you weak.

I slapped his hands away and shot to my feet.

“Why are you here?” I snarled. “Aren’t you supposed to be long gone? Don’t worry, Cooper is an excellent message boy.” He looked genuinely wounded.

“I came because I had to see you before I left. I just couldn’t do it without…”

“Taunting me beforehand? Wiping my face in it for good measure?” I spat, cutting him off.

“No, no, of course not,” he said, deflecting my anger with his hands.

“Oh, of course not,” I said in my most mocking tone. “That’d be
totally
beneath you, wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t do that, would you?”