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“Thank you, Camilla, for a spectacular performance,” one of the judges says with joy, and I smile.
Now that I’m no longer blinded, I look beside her to find Nikolai with his camera. “Nik?” I whisper, though he seems to hear me when his eyes light up for me. “What are you doing here?”
“This young man wanted to take pictures of your audition and offered to give us copies.” The woman looks at me. “I’m sure they will be lovely, Cam.”
Cam.
Not Milla.
Cam.
Much better that way, anyway. Wouldn’t want to like the nicknames he gives me if he’s willing to ghost me. Now, here he is, after ten days of silence taking pictures of me.
“Thank you for the opportunity,” I tell the judges, then saunter down the side steps and away from them. The list will go out soon anyway, so there is no need to stick around and hear her call me by a name that no longer feels like my own.
Nikolai doesn’t chase me. Instead, he stays rooted to the spot, not even looking at me. How dare he come to take pictures of me and then not even have the decency to speak to me?
An hour later, I’m back at my house, watching television with Leo in the living room. Although it used to be a formal living room with a sofa and a loveseat—decorated by my mother—I’ve now made it my own. This is one of my favorite rooms in the house, aside from my studio, and I always close it when there are parties here so no one can ruin it.
There’s now a cloud couch in the middle of the room that looks like a bed and a dark wooden television stand right across, littered with trinkets from all over the world, souvenirs of places I’ve been to before. A metal Eiffel Tower, a ballerina doing a pirouette, and snow globes. They all represent a part of me that I’ve left behind at each place I’ve traveled to. As if a small fragment of my soul stays in that place long after I’m gone. Maybe even forever.
Above the TV stand is a Samsung framed television with my favorite painting by Van Gogh, The Skull with the Cigarette. I know it’s unconventional to like art and yet pick that as my favorite, but it just speaks to me.
Plants hang from the ceiling, lace curtains adorn the windows, and poufs and knit blankets litter the floor and the couch. It’s all very…me. My favorite part is the simple, white portraits of my favorite quotes from Sylvia Plath and Edgar Allan Poe. If there’s one room in the house that describes my personality, it’s this one.
“Hey,” I tell Leo as I plop on the couch beside him. His eyes are rimmed with red and he looks like shit. The bags under his honey-brown eyes are dark purple, and the redness to his straight nose screams of chafing from the tissues hurting it. I feel awful, though I can’t say it wasn’t his fault. “How are you feeling?”
I run my fingers over his jaw and he closes his eyes, which makes me feel even worse. Getting comfortable, I grab his head and rest it on my breasts, and he gets even closer, shutting his eyes and sighing. It’s the saddest sound I’ve ever heard, and suddenly, I want to take away his pain, whether he had it coming or not. At the end of the day, that guy was like his brother, and who am I to make him feel worse?
“Dead inside.”
I should’ve seen that one coming, considering the state he looks to be in. “I’msosorry,” I reply gently, almost a whisper.
He looks up at me with tears in his brown eyes and my breath catches in my throat at the way his sad eyes transform right before my own eyes. Leo is vulnerable right now, lost even. The way he’s looking at me makes my heart ache. That’s how intense it feels. I need to get away from his gaze and breathe before I can return to him fully. I’m his safe harbor right now, and it shows in the way his eyes soften for me.
My lips part when he touches my face gently, cupping my cheek, and gets closer to me. Our lips are centimeters apart for a second, but I rear back when he tries to close the distance between us. And that’s when I see him—Nik. Leaning back against the wall, watching us. I swallow hard and avert my eyes, not wanting another fight. Nonetheless, I know I’ve fucked up when I let Leo back on my lap.
We stay on the couch for a few minutes before I slip away without an explanation, leaving him lying on the sofa. He’s on his side, watching TV, his eyes tearing up again, rimmed with red. I don’t hate him right now, and I’m definitely not disgusted by him. Except this doesn’t feel right.Leo doesn’t feel right. Only one person does. Nikolai is ruining my life.
I need to desperately get away, so I do. I grab my keys and leave in the same outfit. Tank top and shorts, along with some flip flops. I don’t even care that it’s November and cold at this time of night or that I don’t know where I’m going. All I care about is the fact that I need something that’s out of reach.
This entire situation with Leo has opened fresh wounds from my brother’s death. I don’t know why it all feels connected, but it does. There’s something Leo isn’t telling me, such as why he wants to kill Nikolai so badly and vice versa.
It makes no sense.
Leo wants revenge, but so does Nik. So my question is: What did they do to each other to have them so thirsty for each other’s blood? Surely, it can’t be what happened between us all when we were teenagers. No, this feels different. It’s as if they can’t get enough violence, and Leo murdering Nikolai’s friend was an accident. Yeah, he wanted Nik, not Igor, but that shit went sideways, and now his friend—best friend—is dead too. It’s no wonder he feels like shit, guilty. I would too if I were him.
For whatever unexplainable reason, I end up at the private beach Nikolai brought me to. I don’t know if this is my way of hoping he will be here waiting for me or if I’m just a masochist, but here I am, taking off my clothes.
I remove my shorts, tank top, bra, and underwear then drop them on the ground. I peer down at my blood-red toenails and suck in a deep breath. It should’ve been me on that front porch, bleeding to death.NotAndrea.
With renewed determination and a heaviness in my chest that I’ve never felt before, I make my way to the water. There’s a prickling sensation at the back of my neck, like someone is watching me, yet I don’t stop or glance back.
The water is freezing as I let the waves wash over my feet. The tide is high right now, the waves crashing against the sand so hard the sprinkles of the foam land on my skin like hail rather than water.
My toes already feel frozen as I walk into the water, and once I’m waist-deep, my body feels like it will collapse from how cold it is. Nevertheless, I push on until I’m neck deep and then float.
Right now, it doesn’t even matter if these are shark-infested waters or if the tide washes me up, spins me around, and drowns me in the undertow. I just want to be done with it all. I don’t belong here anymore.
