Page 55 of Rivals
I told myself the hungry demon that rages within me wouldn’t win. I will not go quietly into the night. My rage may be directed at proving my family wrong, but it is fuel nonetheless. I’ve committed myself to using every last drop.
I know Revna has her demons. She fights them daily, and I can see them brawling in her eyes and how she tries to disappear when I see her a little too closely. The subway slows for our stop, and I stand to exit the car.
I expected Revna to tell me she wants to go back to her place, but she hasn’t said a word. Tonight would probably be the best time to tell her my idea. If she doesn’t like it, then I’ll walk her home.
We walk down the dark Brooklyn streets with the soft yellow lights barely lighting our path. Revna grabs my arm, and I can feel her shaking as we walk. She was attacked somewhere around here, and the thought makes me mad all over again for entirely different reasons. I wish my first response to most things in life wasn’t anger, but it is. I have never known any different. But when I’m with Revna, I find myself stopping to respond in a different way. I find myself caring for her well-being before the anger, and if that’s not progress, I don’t know what is. She lets go when we step into my building, and the door closes.
We get home, and she drops her bag, heading straight into the bathroom and closing it behind her. I look at the mess we left behind. There are jars of water, paint tubes strewn about, and dirty palettes we used to mix paint.
I glance between the bathroom door, the mess, and my bed. The lights outside stream through my large uncovered windows, casting a whitish-blue hue over everything. I sigh, push my hand through my hair, and head for the bathroom. I’m choosing Revna right now. She’s wrestling with something. I can feel it. It’s different this time.
Chapter 36
Revna
Iknockonthedoor and can hear the shower running. “Revna?” No answer. I knock again, thinking she didn’t hear me. Still no answer. “If you don’t answer me, I’m coming in.” My heart lurches into my throat and I throw the door open, somewhat surprised it wasn’t locked.
I find Revna standing under the spray, staring off into space. She is in a totally different world again, and I wonder if she popped something. “Revna? Baby, are you ok?” She slowly turns to look at me. Her glassy eyes clear a little, but the darkness within them threatens to swallow me whole. A sob bursts from her lips, and her body shakes. I rip off my shirt and shoes, step into the glass enclosure, and hug her.
“It won’t stop. I keep hearing it. I think I’m losing it,” she says into my chest. My throat goes tight because I’ve felt the same way but chalked it up to exhaustion. That has to be it. I’m not going insane. Right?
“What do you mean? What won’t stop?” She doesn’t answer right away. She shifts and hesitates before sliding her arms around my waist.
“I keep hearing things, Lachlan. It’s this voice it…it’s telling me to do things.” The food in my stomach threatens to make a reappearance. Her words slide into my heart like barbed wire and tear at the flesh.
“What is it telling you, little bird?” I ask carefully. If it’s asking her to do things she can’t take back, then I will wrap her in a towel and get her help immediately. I’ve been there. I’ve been on the edge. She doesn’t know this, but she kept me from jumping. That’s when I won that award for the painting I did. I knew she hated me for it. She didn’t know it was the result of a fight that I won. She gave me a reason to fight it because of her own work.
“Well, it sounds stupid out loud, but it was telling me to use certain colors in my paintings. Then it told me to…trust you. And now I think it’s telling me…” she trails off and cries a little more. The vice around my sternum loosens. It’s probably the drugs. They make you hear, see, and say things that don’t always make a lot of sense, but it’s temporary.
“I heard voices, too, baby. You were just tripping. Maybe you should give the OBA a break, you know? The voice might stop then.” She stiffens in my arms and then nods against me.
“You heard them, too?” she asks.
“Yeah, it uh…” I don’t know how to tell her that the voice kept encouraging me to her. I feel like that would scare her even more. “Yeah, I heard them, too.”
“But I’ve heard it when I… I wasn’t high.” I frown. That’s odd, but I guess it’s possible we both experienced the same residual effects. It’s not like the drugs were tested in a lab for clarity. There could be a lot of side effects, and we would have no idea until after the fact.
“Maybe it was just a weird side effect,” I offer. She nods.
“I still feel like I’m losing my mind, Lachlan. I feel like maybe I’m going crazy.”
“I think you need some sleep.”
“Ok,” she says and starts to pull away.
“Did you actually take a shower, or did you just stand here in the water?”
“I don’t know,” her voice breaks.
The hooks in my heart tug, and this scares me. This zoned-out Revna, afraid of her mind, makes me nervous because I heard them, too. It is probably just the drugs, but what if it’s not?
I flip the button to my jeans and tug them off my body. We shower together, but it’s not sexual. It feels quite natural and normal, like we do this all the time. Over the past few days, I’ve noticed how easily we coexist with each other. Yes, we fight, and we’ve hardly slept. More kissing than sleeping has been done, but it’s comfortable. I mean, it’s far from easy. Nothing about Revna is easy, but the challenge doesn’t bother me. I welcome it. It frees me from the fire in my veins and cools me. I wonder what we could be the longer we stay together. Tires screech in my mind as I watch Revna. Her head tilts back into the water, and it cascades down her body.
I retract my earlier statement.
I grab my soap and scrub my body down. We switch places, and she rubs shampoo in her hair, watching me rinse the soap off. Our eyes lock together, and I keep telling myself that we aren’t meant to be forever. But nothing about our time together would support that. Sure, we slept together. We are a team for the purposes of this competition, but we’re not together.
Are we?
