“Don’t, Simone.”
“I know you’ve been doing good lately…I just don’t want to see you crash. I want to make sure this is you actually doing good and not just masking something you aren’t talking about.”
I let out a scoff. “You’re my best friend, Simone, not my therapist. I’m okay. I promise.”
And I’m definitelynotplanning to use a lot of sex and alcohol to try to forget the fact that yet another year is passing, where I don’t get to celebrate my sister’s birthday with her, or ever again.
“I just care, Lydia. I’ve been here for all the highs and lows, and I’ll continue to be, but if something is wrong, I want you to be able to tell me.”
“Yeah, I know. And I will. You don’t need to worry about me, Simone. I’m good.”
I don’t want to be anyone’s charity case. I’ve felt that way for long enough. I can handle my own problems now.
She reluctantly drops the conversation and stops trying to beat a dead horse. I’m glad, because I just don’t have the strength or ability to change how I choose to cope right now. This is what works for me. Maybe something else will come along one day that works better, and I won’t need to chase those highs just to get out of my own head. But for now…I’m enjoying this kind of distraction. It’s fun.
* * *
The house is already pulsing when I get there. I feel the bass of the music inside me like it’s my own heartbeat. It’s funny how you start to associate a place, a noise, or a smell with a feeling. It adds to this thrill and build-up that gets you excited for the night.
Unlike me, Lani was a good friend and promised Simone that she would go to the study group. So she told me she would go there first for a little while and then head over here and meet me at the party. So, here I am, alone. Something the old me would have never done. Yet something the new me kind of loves. I love what it says about me, how much it shows I’ve changed. College has stripped away the old Lydia—that quiet, insecure girl who permanently lived in the shadows.
The thing is, here, people don’t hate me like they did back home. They don’t know me as a headline. They don’t treat me like I’m the perfect punching bag for their own pain. No one tells me who they think I need to be, and no one has any expectations for how I should act. Here, I get to be whoever I want to be—whoever I choose to be, and sometimesthateven changes depending on the night.
The living room is packed. Cups in every hand. People dancing, bodies pressed close, sweat running down their bodies. I see a few girls I’ve hung out with at other parties, and a couple of guys I know, another perk of getting out of my shell more. I say hi to a couple of them while desperately trying to avoid any of the ones I’ve hooked up with recently. I typically avoid interactions with them, unless they were good enough to double back to, although most of the time I don’t even remember much of the interaction by the next day. I remember the high, the feeling, the quiet…but rarely the person.
I find the closest table with drinks and grab one for both hands. No point in waiting to get the night started. Definitely no point in being here sober, that’s for sure. Once I have enough in my system, I always gravitate to wherever there are moving bodies.
I’m lost in the beat, surrounded by a couple of girls I vaguely know, when a pair of hands slides around my hips from behind. My body reacts the way it always does with a trail of pleasure down my spine, excitement of the possibilities, the thrill of the chase. I turn my head to look over my shoulder at the stranger. He’s tall and slim, but still fit, not that gross, sickly slim. More of a muscular slim. Not the usual clean-cut frat type that seems to make up half the parties on this campus. He looks rougher. There’s an edge to him—dark jeans, a nice T-shirt, tattoos covering his neck and both of his forearms. He’s that bad boy kind of hot…it’s different…interesting.
I don’t pull away. Instead, I lean into him and move his hands where I want them to be, where it makes everything around us fade. It’s the same game every time. My body knows each step by heart. I turn around and shift my hips closer to him. He takes the invitation, fingers pressing into my skin. I let him roam my body as much as I do his, getting to know it with clothes still on, and imagining how good it will feel without.
We dance like that, pressed against each other for a while, heat pooling under my skin. Eventually, he leans down, brushing his mouth against my ear, causing goosebumps down my entire body. “You want to go somewhere quieter?”
I look up at him with the same look I’ve perfected with every guy and nod. He leads me down a hall, opens a door, and when he sees that it’s empty, we slip inside.
The music dulls behind the door, and I lock it when we’re both in. The moment I turn around, he’s quick, his hands gripping my waist, pulling me against him. His mouth on mine, hungry and desperate from what I teased him with while dancing. We barely pause for air, and I love the way my head spins with lust and this false fiery passion I build in my mind. The guy I use never really matters. As long as I’m attracted to them enough to want to see them naked, and they approach me the way I like, that’s all I need. My imagination does the rest. I close my eyes and picture the same fantasy in my head, the one where this is a man who’s in love with me, who treats me like the most precious thing he’s ever held, never wanting to hurt me or let anyone else in this world hurt me. I play the same movie in my mind every time, but who I picture never has a face, mostly because they just simply don’t exist, and never will. But this picture-perfect world I get to live inside my head for a moment while a stranger uses my body makes the high I experience better, and it keeps me from feeling sad and pathetic after the comedown. I just pretend I’m always giving myself to the man of my dreams so I don’t feel bad about it afterwards.
Some people might call me a slut, or a whore, or whatever other word they decide to use, but I just see myself as a girl with holes in her chest so wide that sometimes the only way to keep myself from falling straight through them is to fill them with distractions—skin, heated moments, passion, someone else’s touch…a touch that feels safe. I’m trying to force my brain to learn that not every man is going to hurt me. That they can make my body feel good without leaving bruises behind. My own personal exposure therapy. That’s all it is. It’s not love. Never is. Not even close. Just a way to feel something else for a moment, even if it’s brief, and even if I have to keep chasing the same thing over and over again to stay sane.
It’s easy to let them think it’s about them, too. Easier to smile and kiss back and let them believe they’ve got me wrapped around their fingers. The truth, though? The truth is, they never even touch me. Not the real me. Because the second that door opens and the world comes back in—the lights, the music, the voices—I’m already gone again. I leave before they get the chance to see the emptiness that follows, before they realize that the whole time, I wasn’t there at all. I was somewhere safer. Somewhere that doesn’t exist. And damn, sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever figure out how to stay in the real world without needing to disappear like this.
“You’re gorgeous,” he murmurs, kissing along my jaw. “What’s your name?”
I pull myself back into this moment, trying not to overthink it. If I overthink it, I’ll end up stopping. I can’t stop.
“Lydia,” I tell him through panted breaths. “What’s yours?” Even though I don’t care. I don’t need to know. It doesn’t make this somehow magically mean something.
He tells me his name, but I barely catch it. At—something, I think? I think he said Atlas? I don’t know. I don’t ask him to repeat it. I’m already pulling him back in. I can feel the alcohol haze starting to fade as we keep making out. I hate when that happens…and when his hands leave me, and the contact disappears, the anxiety starts to slip back in. I sit back on the bed and watch him walk over to the dresser, pulling out a bag from his pocket and pouring a couple of pills into his hand.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Molly,” he says, turning around to look at me. “You want one?”
The old Lydia would have completely panicked at the mere mention of drugs. I hated them. Hated what they took from me. Hated what I’ve seen them do to people. But this Lydia? The one who has swapped being curled up in bed, sad, and depressed, for searching for the best way to escape…is intrigued. So I let the curiosity win.
“What does it feel like?”
He walks back over, holding them in his hand still. “Like…all the good things get louder. Colors. Touch. Music. And all the bad? Completely drowns it out.”
