Page 83 of Closer

“You’re a monster.”

“BINGO! She’s finally seeing the fucking light.”

“Fuck you!” She shoves at my chest. It hurts after last night’s abuse of my body, but I don’t give a shit about the pain. All I care about is the fact that my coke has been upended, and that it’s now all over my goddamn couch.

“What the fuck!” I roar, getting to my feet. Brie doesn’t stop her assault. She beats at my chest, my face, hitting me square in the cheek. I grab her arms and attempt to pry her off me, but she’s stronger than she looks.

“Je te hais, je te hais! Tu n'es qu'un bâtard doublé d'un égoiste!” She’s screaming now, at the top of her lungs. A long stream of French that I don’t understand at all, and yet, it feels like I know every word by heart, because I’m no stranger to being called a bastard. I’m no stranger to making women feel like shit. It’s what I do. “Tes drogues et ton alcool comptent plus pour toi que tout autre chose et tu les aimes comme tu ne pourras jamais aimer une femme, comme tu ne pourras jamais m'aimer.”

“Get the fuck out! Go home, Brie.” I turn and walk away, but she launches herself at my back and we go down in a heap.

“Tu n'es qu'un putain de lâche!”

“I told you I don’t speak French,” I say through my teeth as we grapple on the floor. Our bodies roll across the hardwood until I pin her underneath me. “Fucking stop, Brie. Just stop.”

“Fuck you,” she spits in my face, and I see red. I thrust her hands up above her head. She thrashes, trying to free herself from my grasp. A feral, wild thing.

“Stop!”

She glares up at me, her breath coming fast, a sneer marring her lips, and then she kisses me. Maybe that’s not the right word. She bites me, sucks my bottom lip into her mouth and bites hard enough to draw blood. I reel back, pressing my hand to my bleeding lip. Brie sits up and shoves at me. I attempt to move away, but she keeps coming, climbing into my lap and pushing me back down. I don’t react, I just lay there, taking the beating she dishes out. When she’s frustrated and angrier than I’ve ever seen her, she straddles my hips, kisses my lips. I don’t kiss her back. Instead, I thread my fingers in her hair and yank her head back.

“What the fuck do you want, Brie?”

We’re both panting hard, and she looks on me with loathing in her eyes. She makes to get up and I grab her wrist and pull her down to me. Kissing her lips, forcing my mouth hard against hers, my tongue lashes hers, until she responds by tearing and clawing at my chest. I grunt in pain. She grunts back, and I shove her dress up, exposing her creamy thighs covered by stockings and sexy black garters. I grab her hand and slide it between us as I grip my semi-hard cock, tugging it brutally with both of our hands, ensuring I get the rest of the way there in seconds. She positions herself at the end of my dick and lowers her hips. With a loud groan, I slide into her. I can tell it hurts, and I don’t fucking care, because it feels so good. Brie fucks me like a pro, bouncing up and down on my dick, punishing us both. I sink the fingers of one hand into her thighs, tearing her smooth silk stockings, the other hand grips her hips as I slam into her over and over, until tears stream down her face and she’s screaming, “Oh, fuck. Oui. Oui.”

I rake my hands up her body, squeezing her tits, pinching swollen, tender nipples until they turn the prettiest shade of red, and when we come, it’s hard, punishing, euphoric, and it’s together.

I jerk inside her, spilling the last of my cum. I expect her to collapse forward into my arms, but she doesn’t. On shaking legs, Brie stands. My cock slips out of her tight cunt, and I lie still, lamenting the loss of her warm pussy no longer wrapped around me.

“You’re a monster, and worse still, you make one of me.”

She turns and walks into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. I lay on the floor and stare up at the ceiling. I don’t know what the hell that was. I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do now, so I do nothing but lie with cum dripping down my side, pooling on the floor. When she opens the door, she’s fully dressed in her clothes again. Her long hair pulled back in a severe no-nonsense ponytail, but her mascara is still smudged underneath her eyes, and her tears won’t stop.

I am the world’s biggest arsehole.

“Brie—”

“No, fuck you!” she sneers, stepping over me. She slips into her heels. “I hate you.”

“I think you said that already.”

“I thought you didn’t speak French?”

“I don’t, but you were screaming loud enough for me the catch your motherfucking drift.”

She grabs her coat from off the hook near the door and puts it on. “You do not deserve me. You do not deserve anyone, but your liquor and your drugs, so I hope you three will be happy together for a long time.”

She leaves, slamming my front door so hard it rattles on its hinges, and a fine mist of plaster dust falls in her wake.

I don’t know how long I lie here, but when I start to tremble, either from the cold or the comedown, I get up, grab another bottle of whisky from the kitchen and head into the bathroom to wash up. I run a bath, and set my bottle on the counter, pissed that I have no coke left. I splash water on my face, and put my fist through the bathroom cabinet.

My hand is bleeding, and it stings like a bitch. I grab a tissue from off the vanity and wipe the blood away, but when I go to toss it in the garbage, I pause. With my uninjured hand, I pull out her black silk stockings, now ruined with holes from my fingers and covered in cum.

I don’t deserve her. I never did.

I pry open the broken cabinet and search the contents, pushing aside boxes of pills until I find the oxy I keep in here for emergencies—like when some livid French woman upends my coke, or when I can’t sleep after pumping my body full of uppers while in the studio.

I fish out the bottle and pop the lid off. Then I toss a couple into my palm and swallow them back, but these are slow release,and fuck that shit. I take my bottle to the bath along with my whisky and decide it’s not working quick enough, so I tip out several more pills and chew. They taste like chalk and aren’t easy to swallow because it doesn’t dissolve as quickly as I’d like. I wash it down with the whisky, and then I climb into the bath. It’s cold, too cold for winter, and all my senses tell me to flee the second I’m immersed, but I sink further down, because I don’t care. My head hums, my mouth feels slack, and my chest is suddenly tight. I can’t breathe.It’s just stress.Anxiety. Or maybe my heart is finally cracking open because the best thing that ever happened to me just walked out of my life, and my best friend is dead. Guilt and shame wash over me, wave after wave of it threatens to pull me under.

I should never have touched her like that.

I should be at the funeral.

I should have gone after her.

I should have known he had AIDS.

In the end, the feelings don’t pull me under. The drugs finally kick in, and I feel nothing, because I float.

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