Love Nouveau (28 page)

“Are you fucking kidding me?” My voice cracks as emotion takes over.

My mother barks at me. “Ivy!”

The look in her face tells me everything I need to know. It doesn’t matter what happened, or how it happened, they will always see me as the daughter who screws everything up for everybody else. The one who whored herself out to her sister’s boyfriends and now her fiancé. The one who pursued a career not worthy of their approval. The horrible one bringing the demise of the Cotter family name.

Round and round we go. I will never be able to get off this carousel of disappointment. And this time, I never even punched my ticket to ride. I was dragged on kicking and screaming. Without my knowledge. Without permission.

This ends…

Right here.

Right now.

I cannot handle the loathing they continue to unload on me. Their loathing turns into self-loathing and no longer will I allow hatred to have a vice grip on my soul.

I am done.

“Just get the fuck out!” I scream in a fit of rage at Genevieve.

“Watch your tongue, young lady. Don’t you dare spit profanity at us!” My mother says as she glares at me in disgust, antipathy evident in her body language.

Of all of the moments to step up and pretend to be my mother, this is the one she chooses. I find the look of horror on my mother’s face highly amusing, but she is no longer allowed to scold me like a petulant child.

I take a calming breath and collect myself, calculating my next move. “I’m not spitting profanity at you,” I say in the most pleasant tone I can summon. “I’m enunciating it. Loud. And. Fucking. Clear. Like a goddamned lady.”

The conviction in my voice surprises me, and the terrible parts deep within proudly wear a sinister smile. I watch my mother as shock and horror replace the smug look she wears upon her Botox-filled face.

Genevieve is the first to leave wordlessly, likely to go find Sully and examine the damage done to his face. I don’t dare justify myself to her, but he got off easy as far as I’m concerned. If I could kill him myself, I would. Phoenix should have killed him with each punch, though Phoenix has another thing coming if I ever see his sorry ass again. My stomach turns at the thought of him.

It takes effort to not laugh under my breath as I imagine how the supposed love of Genevieve’s life will look in their wedding photos, assuming she is stupid enough to still marry him. I can’t help but wonder if the thought of her husband-to-be being a rapist has registered in her mind. I want to tell her all of the awful things I’ve learned about him through Phoenix, before we realized how we were connected, but that won’t change anything. Nothing I say will help the situation, so I don’t even bother. Plus, she won’t want to hear what I have to say. Genevieve and I will never recover from this, I’m certain.

My mother eyes me with such abhorrence that I don’t even have to wonder what she’s thinking. Her glare says it all. Hate pierces right through me. I’ve never noticed how her mouth puckers with displeasure like she just sucked a lemon dry whenever she looks at me with disgust. But if looks could kill, I’d be dead. Actually, I would’ve been dead about eight years ago. I guesstimate that’s around the time she emotionally disowned me.

“It’s one thing to be a complete bitch, Ivy, but it’s another to be a disgrace of a daughter.” Her words, while true, still sting, but I don’t flinch. I don’t dare give her the satisfaction of seeing how she affects me.

I watch as she collects her purse and turns toward the door. I allow her the last word in this conversation because I refuse to give her the last word in my life. If I have my way, this will be the last time I see her for a very long time.

My eyes return to the vacant wall across from my bed. Ever so slowly, I breathe in through my nose, fill my lungs beyond the point of capacity, and exhale through my mouth. Deep, cleansing breaths, trying to release the tension I’ve been carrying for years.

A few quiet minutes later, the day nurse returns. “Is everything all right in here now?”

“I’m fine,” I respond numbly as I stare through the white sterile wall. I know that I’m really not fine, but I also know that wasn’t what she was asking. She doesn’t care about my personal bullshit. It’s not her job. She only cares about getting me cleared so the next patient can be wheeled into this room.

“From here on out, no visitors. Let security know the only one allowed in this room is Rachel Meyers.” I don’t intend to come off brash, but that’s the thing about emotions—it spoils all sense of rationality.

“Rachel Meyers?” I give her an affirming nod. “Sure thing. I’ll let the desk know. Anything else?”

“More pain killers.”

And make them strong
, I silently ask. I don’t want to feel anything again for a long time.

INHALE NUMBNESS.

Exhale apathy.

Repeat involuntarily.

When you think about it, involuntary behavior is fucked up, really. Our bodies just take over without thinking. Without permission. Without control. Without cognizance. And even when we try to resist, to hold our breath or keep our eyes open, our conscious eventually relinquishes control and our body involuntarily takes back over. It’s really quite obnoxious, being forced to do something you don’t want to do. I could really do without breathing right now, and yet my lungs continue to expand and contract without my permission.

At some indiscernible point in time, the stark white, sterile walls of the hospital room involuntarily turn into the beige, standard rooms of Rachel’s apartment.

I don’t remember coming here, but I’m thankful to be sitting among her moving boxes, mindlessly watching her unload her belongings, listening to her fill the air with her thoughtless thoughts.

Inhale numbness.

Exhale apathy.

Repeat involuntarily.

The scent of fresh paint assaults my nostrils and churns my stomach. I’ll never understand why anyone would paint an empty apartment beige with all of the colors available in the spectrum.

Beige is where color goes to die. Is there a shade out there that could be more horrible than beige? Some might say black, but black hides secrets and haunts and conveys anger and emptiness. On the other hand, white is stark. It brings cleanliness. Godliness. Purity. And pearly white gates.

But beige? Beige is emotionless. It is the shade of lifeless contempt.

My mother is beige. Genevieve, too.

And now, after Phoenix coming clean with the truth,
I am beige.

Involuntarily, I laugh under my breath and take notice of how fitting my surroundings are. Condemned to a life of beige.

And so again, I inhale numbness.

Exhale apathy.

Repeat involuntarily.

“I STOPPED BY YOUR HOUSE on my way home. Gen was none too pleased and nearly didn’t let me in but your dad saw me at the door. He asked me to have you call him … he’s worried about you,” Rachel says, placing an old duffel bag at my feet. “Anyway, I thought you might like a few of your things.”

“Thanks,” I whisper with a tight smile and make a mental note to call my dad sometime soon. Even though we’ve come a long way the past few days. I’m just not ready to talk to him. I have no idea what day it is. Surely Genevieve is getting married today or tomorrow, but I don’t even feel bad for not being there. As far as I’m concerned, they can all go to hell.

Friends like Rachel are rare. She is indefinitely the first person to go to bat for me. But she never fails at being the first to give me a high five in the face with the back of a chair when I act like a raging bitch. Since leaving the hospital, Rachel has opened her home to me. It’s a humble apartment in the Wicker Park neighborhood, which is full of quasi-hipsters much like my dear friend.

Rachel stands there, looking at my intently. She clearly wants to tell me something but hesitates.

“Out with it already,” I say.

She sighs and pushes her hair back out of her face. “Genevieve was really wrecked,” she begins. “I think it has finally hit her that her fiancé did the unthinkable.”

I look at Rachel, vacant and unfazed.

“She didn’t look good, Ivy,” Rachel informs me. “Maybe you should ca—”

“No,” I snap at her sternly. Hell will freeze over before I call my sister. I know Rachel means well, but I do not have room for toxic people in my life anymore.

She unloads a heavy sigh in the space between us. “Well, you are welcome to stay as long as you need to, Ivy. I just ask that maybe you consider taking a shower?”

A soft laugh escapes my throat, thankful she is not going to push Genevieve on me anymore. “Yes, Mom,” I reply sullenly as she disappears into the kitchen.

Snatching up my bag, I retreat to her spare bedroom where I put on a fresh change of clothes. I’m thankful that she grabbed my favorite pair of yoga pants—I have every intention of moving into them until the hygiene Gods evict me.

“What the hell happened in here?” Rachel shouts.

She must have found the small heap of technology I left crumbled on the floor of her kitchen.

I pop my head out of the bedroom and shrug, feigning nonchalance. “Phoenix wouldn’t stop texting me.”

“So you broke your phone?”

“I didn’t mean to break it,” I lie. From the instant I threw it, I knew I was going to have to result to more extreme measures when I found it unscathed. Apparently shatterproof phone cases aren’t exempt from cases of extreme heartache. I have every intention of fixing the dent in her kitchen wall once I have my first paycheck. I may even buy myself a new phone, though I don’t see the point. I can’t imagine having happy conversations with anyone anymore.

But once I got the screen to crack I went a little overboard. A meat pounder and a box of tissues may or may not have been involved. On second thought, that sounds like a subplot of a really bad porno.

“You know, you could have just turned your phone off if you didn’t want to hear from him,” Rachel informs me, trying to hide the condescension in her voice.

I roll my eyes. Really? She’s going to scold me? I am at the lowest point of my life and the last thing I need is to be reprimanded.

“Okay, okay. I felt like breaking shit. I figured breaking my phone was better than chucking your television out of the window. Sue me.” I turn back into the bedroom, hoping she gets the hint to just leave me the hell alone.

She doesn’t, of course. She stands in my doorway, holding the piece of metal formerly known as my cell phone.

“My life is a train wreck, Rachel.” I release a heavy sigh.

“No,
my
life is the train wreck. You, my dear, are the conductor on the Hot Mess Express,” she responds, trying to make me smile. She tosses what’s left of my phone on the side table by the door and releases a heavy sigh that lingers in the air between. “I’ll leave you be for a little bit.”

I watch as she shuts the door behind her, and then hide under the covers for the umpteenth time today, hugging a pillow to my chest tightly. How I wish this were the comforting arms of a warm body.

In spite of everything that has happened, I still miss him.

I want nothing more than to open my eyes and be somewhere else. To be lying next to Phoenix. To be completely oblivious to his lies. To disappear into a state of being where the lines of numbness and happiness are blurred. I want to rewind life and start things over. I don’t care if I’m blissfully ignorant. At least I wouldn’t be in pain.