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“I never thought I’d be happy again,” he says. “I didn’t want to be. All I felt was anger and bitterness. Guilt and regret. I think I stayed alive to punish myself as much as everyone else. But then you showed up, and I started to feel other things again. To tell the truth, pretty shitty things, at first…I wanted to take advantage of you. I wanted to use you and fuck you.”
That should probably make me mad, but in a weird way, it just turns me on. Being used by Dane is pretty fucking fun.
“But once the dam broke…” Dane sighs. “I started to feel more and more. And the guilt was overwhelming. I wanted to dance with you that night, Remi—I’ve never wanted anything so badly. And I hated myself as soon as I left. But I don’t know how to make it okay in my head for me to enjoy you…or anything else.”
I don’t know how to answer that. I don’t know what to say at all.
So, I say possibly the stupidest thing: “Maybe I should hypnotize you.”
Dane gives a hollow laugh.
“Remember when I told you I’d done it once before?”
I nod.
“I did it to myself, hypnotized myself. I told my mind not to feel anything anymore, to keep it all locked inside. And I thought it worked…until you came along.”
Again, I feel that nagging urge to ask Dane what suggestion he made to my mind, but opposite that urge lurks an intense panic that I don’t want to examine—that I can’t even fully admit.
Instead, I say, “Emotion can’t be banished. It can only be stuffed down inside to fester.”
“And what happens when it festers?” Dane asks.
“It rots you from the inside out.”
* * *
23
DANE
After Remi goes home, my house feels empty in a way it never used to.
If anything, it used to feel too full—full of memories, full of spirits. Not just Lila and James but my ghost, too—the ghost of who I used to be. And sometimes, the ghosts of what could have been. I’d hear us laughing, running through the halls…little feet that I never actually heard pattering across the floorboards because my son never had a chance to crawl, let alone walk.
Sometimes I did everything I could to feed the memories, to feed my hopeless longing.
And once, I smashed every mirror in the house.
That day I swore I’d sell this place and move away.
But I never did because I couldn’t bear to leave them.
And I knew I deserved this torture.
Maybe I still do.
Fucking tourists is one thing, but Remi is different. She’s making me feel happiness again.
Who said I could feel happiness? Who said I was forgiven?
Definitely not Lila.
Lila would hold a grudge until the trump of judgement day and beyond; I know that about her like I know her favorite songs and her favorite cereal.
If I go back up to the bedroom, she might be waiting for me. Raging for what I dared do in our old bed.
Maybe I meant it to be an exorcism. Remi’s screams could clear the house.
