Page 109 of Use Me Up

I nod slowly, thinking that over. “Well, that sounds…”

“Awful, right?” she says. “It is, but I mean… I think I’ve known, deep down, that there was no way to change any of these things about myself. I’m never going to not want you, Ellis. I will always want you in this bad-good way that we want each other. But if I can learn to tolerate the feeling, the yearning, the ache… then I can stop calling you.”

This washes over me in a whoosh that seems to settle inside every part of my body. I see the difference immediately. No, I can’t control if I want Callie. I can’t ever turn that off. I want that to turn off, of course, I really want it to turn off, but it never does turn off.

I can refuse to fuck her even while I feel that, though.

And I think… if I refuse that often enough, I think the feeling will fade. Maybe it won’t go away entirely, but I think it will, because when I was away, when we weren’t near each other, we were both better.

I have had this backwards, all along. It’s not that my thoughts will change my behavior, it’s that my behavior will change my thoughts.

“As you can see, however,” says Callie, “the new therapy is not really working very well.”

“Well, you’ve been at it alone,” I say. “And if we’re both in this together, maybe it’s better. Where’d you find this therapist?”

“Andrew’s mom,” she says.

“But I’ll just look it up. I can find some therapist who does it if I look on my insurance’s site, probably. Can you text me what it’s called again? Dialectic what?”

“I’ll text you,” she says.

It’s quiet.

I’m still inside her.

She sighs, looking down at the places where our bodies are joined.

I used a condom, we can say that for me, anyway. I brought it along, though, like I planned to fuck her, so I feel guilty about that, but… whatever.

It’s done.

Radical acceptance? Not beating myself up forever about things that are already done that I can’t undo? Uh, I could get used to that, I think. Especially if it would mean I have a better chance to do something differently in the future.

“Maybe we don’t have to tell anyone,” she whispers.

“That’s not fair to them,” I say.

“Andrew is going to…” She pulls free of me. “I cannot keep doing this to Andrew. He is too good to me and he deserves better.”

“I know,” I say. “You deserve him, you deserve to be loved like that, not the way I love you, which is, uh, which is toxic.” I pull the condom off gently. I toss it out of the window, and then I think about just tossing my DNA out like that. Also, it’s litter. Also, it’s gross. What am I going to do, though, bring the used condom home with me in my pocket?

Fuck. I open the car door.

“What are you doing?” she says.

I grab an old fast food bag from the floor and I go find the fucking condom and stick it in there. I tie the bag off. “Cleaning up my mess,” I say, as I get back into the back of the car.

“We both need to do that, huh?” she mutters.

“We have made kind of a big mess,” I say.

She groans.

I groan, too.

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hannah