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Aurnia
I couldn’t hear much. With my ear pressed against the frigid woodgrain of the door, Conor’s words were mostly muffled, mostly distant. I closed my eyes and strained to hear, but it sounded like the inside of seashells: a murmur and nothing more.
When I thought I would hear nothing more, nothing distinct, nothing remotely clear, I heard these words as if they were being whispered straight into my ear, as if Conor was right there beside me, as if his hair, fallen as always from his bun:
She doesn’t deserve the life I have. So I can’t. I can’t.
I don’t know if Conor’s voice returned to a murmur or if he said more after that because all I could hear was the blood rushing in my ears.
I didn’t deserve the life Conor had? I didn’t deserve what? Friends that loved me? That cared about me? That would do anything for me? I didn’t deserve a business? Something I built from the ground up? Something that gave me purpose? Something I could look at and call “mine”? I didn’t deserve a life of art? Of doing what I was passionate about? Of making a living off something I was good at? What? What didn’t I deserve?
And why not? Why not?
If it hadn’t been for the creaking of the old wooden floorboards in the apartment, I probably would have been standing there, frozen and stunned and red-faced, when Conor inched open the door and slipped back inside the bedroom. I had just enough time to tip-toe hurriedly to the bed, duck beneath the covers, and bury my burning cheek against the pillow before the door handle turned. I squeezed my eyes shut just as light from the hallway stretched over my face. In that moment, caught in the yellow light, I was certain that Conor would be able to see that I’d heard him. I was certain he would take one look at me and know that I knew. I was certain he would sigh and then brush my arm as he whispered softly, “Aurnia, let me explain.”
The light from the hallway came and went and the two of us were plunged back into darkness as Conor shut the door once more. The floorboards moaned beneath his weight. I was too stick-straight. I needed to relax. I needed my muscles to unclench, to sink, to melt into the mattress. But it was impossible. Impossible. Because all I kept hearing was, “She doesn’t deserve the life I have”. And all I kept thinking was, “Why? Why?”
Conor’s hand came first to the mattress, pressing down. I was faced away from him, but I was sure he could see the strain of my spine. I was sure I looked not like a human girl, but a moulded statue, my muscles hard as stone.
But maybe Conor couldn’t see me in the dark of the early grey dawn. Because the mattress creaked and just like the night before, Conor lay himself down beside me. Just like the night before his fingertips came softly to my side. Tentative once more. Hesitant as always. I tried to breathe evenly as he kept them there for several long minutes like he was testing the waters of some dark lake. I tried to breathe evenly. The hitch as I fought back a wave of hurt. I wanted nothing more than for Conor to notice. To see me. To see me.
After those several long minutes with his fingertips there on my side, he moved in closer, just like the night before. Like nothing was wrong. Like he hadn’t said what he’d just said. Like he didn’t feel what he truly felt. What he’d kept hidden from me. What he’d intended to go on keeping hidden from me.
My heart raced as Conor’s chest pressed against my back. How could he not feel that? Why wasn’t he concerned that in my sleep I was running? Sprinting? Trying to escape something? Why didn’t he want to know what I was running from? Why didn’t he hold me tight with those big, strong hands on my shoulder and shake me gently awake and whisper in my ear, “Aurnia, Aurnia, there’s nothing to run from. I’m here, I’m here.”
Just like the night before, Conor’s arm wrapped around me. At first, he seemed to be holding his arm up. His skin barely skimming mine. The hairs along his arm just barely brushing against mine. Just like the night before he seemed to be fighting with himself.
Conor held himself there, suspended, and then, like the night before, stopped fighting. He melted against me. Whereas the night before I felt cocooned, felt safe, felt protected, that morning, after overhearing him, I felt trapped.
Tears pricked at my eyes. In my mind, I begged Conor to notice how it took everything inside of me not to squirm. Not to push him away. Not to try to free myself. Silently, as the first hot tear wetted my half of the pillow, I pleaded with him to see. To understand. To comfort.
I urged the tear to spread to his cheek. To draw a trail across the worn linen to the tip of his tongue. I wanted him to taste salt and know it wasn’t from the heat of our bodies. To know it wasn’t from pleasure, but from my pain.
I felt like I was gasping as I tried to hold back more tears and yet Conor’s breathing behind me only seemed to soften, to slow, to even out. He was falling asleep, I realised with a sort of panicked horror. I knew how difficult Conor had found sleep recently. Anyone could see it in the dark bags beneath his eyes. In the red streaks around his green irises. In the quick snap of his temper.
With my body pressed against his, sleep came to him like a child. There I was upset because of his words and there he was, resting at last because of my warmth.
So that was what I was to him. Not someone to bring alongside his life. Not someone to join Dublin Ink. Not someone to share his friends with. Not someone to create art with. But a sleeping pill. A healing tonic. A prescription for a good night’s sleep.
Conor was using me. Just like my father had used me. Just like Nick had used me. I was and I would always be the little thief that was serving out her sentence. Paying her dues. Rectifying her crime.
All this time Conor had such guilt and reservation about being with me because he didn’t really want to be with me. He wanted to be with my body. The body of a seventeen-year-old. The body of a seventeen-year-old at last turned eighteen, thank fucking God.
I had stolen from Conor and I would never be forgiven. I would never be deserving in his eyes. I would always be the trash that he repurposed before eventually throwing out.
I was being used.
I shuddered against Conor, but of course he did not feel it. Did not feel me. I was as dead to him as the pillow beneath his cheek.
As the tears ran hot and fast now, I remembered the anger in Conor’s eyes that very first day. That very first moment he laid eyes on me. That very first moment he laid hands on me. It was a startling fury. A brutal anger. A rage that his massive body seemed even incapable of containing.
Conor was a man who life itself stole from. I didn’t yet know what was stolen. He would, of course, not let me know that. Why would you open yourself to someone you were simply using? You don’t tell your secrets to your pencil, your kitchen knife, your fucking bus pass. I didn’t know what, but life, or someone in it, stole something from Conor.
I’d come along. Hand in the cash register. Taking. Taking. Taking. I hadn’t realised it in that moment, but I had committed a cardinal sin in Conor’s eyes. There was never any chance of forgiveness, even after the bruises around my wrists faded. There was no chance of redemption no matter how many people I brought into Dublin Ink. No matter how many drawings I made that he liked with a simple nod. No matter how far I spread my legs on the tattoo chair.
I had been a fool. Turning one year older hadn’t changed that. It had just made me a socially acceptable fool to fuck. To gain pleasure from. To use before discarding.
I cried, feeling more like a stupid child than I had in years. Years. Conor slept, his breath warm against my ear.
Maybe he’d notice the stain of my tears in a few hours. But I had a feeling he wouldn’t.
Or simply couldn’t.
