AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Give him hell, Kate,” he says, leaning in to kiss her cheek before sauntering out the door. I want to flip him the bird, but weakness is stealing through my body, and I lean back into the pillows and close my eyes.
When I open my eyes again, I find her looking at the record on my clipboard. “Are you mad with me?”
She inclines her head.
“Will you talk to me?”
She nods, and clearly this is all I’m going to get, so I take a deep breath and shut my eyes again.
“Her name is Nadine. We met in college. When we first hooked up, she was fun, wild; we had a few crazy nights together, which were …” I screw my face up, I want to be honest, but I’m not sure by how much. “The truth is they were thrilling, but I realized that what for me was a game, a bit of a laugh, for her … well … drugs were her whole life.”
When I open my eyes, Kate’s face still has a neutral holding pattern expression that I can’t read.
“I’ve no idea what she said to you, but you probably view my lifestyle and think I’m crazy, but I’m not. I experiment and my interests are eclectic, but I’m all right up here.” I lift my undamaged arm to tap my head. “Nadineisn’tright. When I first met her, she was crazier than I was, and she dared me to do all kinds of mad, impulsive things. I was young, thrilled to have found somebody who seemed to get where I was coming from. After a while, I became aware that she wasn’t what she seemed, that she’d used tricks like this before to hook herself into guys.”
How do I explain this? “I took more and more risks. Things spiraled downward. She was high a lot of the time, and underneath the crazy girl exterior there was depression and neediness. She was heavily dependent on drugs,dealtthem too, and I got wise to it, although like most addicts, she hid it well. It took me a long time to cotton on to what was going on. She was crafty, so good at pretending.” I run my good hand over my hair and inhale deeply.
“She’d been chucked out of colleges and jobs, drifting from one thing to the next, in all sorts of trouble with the police, and other people you don’t want to be in trouble with. She sold sex to escape from some of her problems. I think she looked at me and saw a way out, someone who was prepared to help and not fuck her over. She never understood that she got screwed over becauseshescrewed people over. I felt responsible and she exploited that, told me I was her last hope. Extracting myself seemed impossible, and I ended up staying with her and trying to sort her out. God, I tried so hard.” I scan Kate’s face: She’s not meeting my eyes.
“I knew that she manipulated me. I wasn’t stupid. But I didn’t mind. I wanted to help, and I felt sorry for her. She was an addict like Zach, and it was a path I could have so easily been on myself. Even if I couldn’t turn him around, perhaps I could saveher. I don’t know … She was desperate to hang on to me, desperate to pretend. And I was naïve. But she didn’t really want to change, and I couldn’t do it for her. She tried to commit suicide when I left her.”
Maybe telling Kate all this will kill everything we have, but I’ve watched too often how lies play out, and I should have been honest before now.
“After the overdose, she was hospitalized. I didn’t go and see her, and I’m still ashamed of that, but I knew …” I draw in a sharp breath. “I couldn’t be sucked into her craziness any longer. I had to protect myself. I’m not proud of it. I abandoned her.”
“You sound like you did a lot.” Kate’s voice is a calm well of stillness.
I did, but I will never feel I did enough for Nadine, and maybe I let her stay with me because of that. But there is no rationality in any of this, so I nod, and my chest eases slightly. Kate is still here and talking to me: That’s a good sign, right?
“She contacted me three weeks ago and said she was in a ton of trouble and needed somewhere off-grid to camp down. She said she tracked me down through some old college friends. I was surprised and relieved to hear she was still alive, and I still felt guilty. But I refused to have her in my apartment. I knew what would happen. Then, two nights ago, she turned up on my doorstep, and she was so wobbly and ill, I gave in, said she could stay for one night. That’s all it was meant to be: one night.”
“One night with you …” Kate croaks.
“She’s very manipulative, and I’m sure she thought this would be her route to stepping back into things with me. I was crystal clear that I was giving her shelter and nothing else, but obviously Nadine doesn’t work that way …”
“So you slept with her.”
“What?No! Of course, I didn’t sleep with her, Kate, I …”
“When I came to your apartment, she was in bed with you.”
My body floods with ice. “What?”
“She was tucked under your arm like …” Her voice breaks, and I reach for her hand, but she moves away.
Sickness curls in my belly. I grip the soft blue blanket covering my legs.Thisis why she hasn’t responded to any of my messages?
“Like it was me.” It comes out whispered, hoarse, like Kate is only just holding it all together.
“No, no, no.”
This can’t be right. I open and close my fist on the covers trying to remember that night in bed. I settled down late, left some code running overnight. It was late, and I was exhausted. Spots dance in front of my eyes. How onearthdid she end up in there with me?
“Nothing happened with Nadine, Kate.”
I’ve been stone-cold sober the whole time she’s been there. Fucking hell. Did she do something to me? Sweat trickles down my neck, and words rush up and out my mouth in a torrent.
“I’ve no idea how she got in my bed. Honest to God. I was crystal clear she was sleeping on the couch. I did not … I would never … not after you and I … You know how we are, Kate … I wouldn’t do that …” I stare past her shoulder. “She must have climbed in there after I went to sleep. Fuck, that’s the only thing I can think of.” The desire for honesty jumbles all my words. “She tried to persuade me into having sex with her, and I told her there was no way that was going to happen. She wasn’t happy.”
