I close my eyes to shut him out. I can’t bear to look at all that I’ve lost, at all that I could have if only I didn’t let my fear rule my life. In such a short time, he’d come to mean so much, but God, I require so much work, so much sacrifice.
He turned his world upside down for me, re-creating my office and bedroom down to the last pink pillow. He set up eyes to the outside world to alleviate my anxiety. He showed never-ending patience. And what do I give him in return?
A freak show.
I can’t allow him to make more sacrifices for me. I remember when Adam, my ex, broke it off, telling me how he was done explaining how I’d hidden away under the guise of someone else’s name. He wanted me to go out and defend myself. I tried, but the deluge of abuse was too much for me.
I understood why Adam didn’t want me anymore. I was too much trouble. Eventually Jake would feel that way and I can’t bear for that to happen—to see the love in his eyes replaced with resentment. It’s better this way, I think.
Eventually the hot water runs out and I am forced to leave the shower or turn into a Popsicle. The phone dings and a message from Oliver pops up.
Read your email. It’s important.
With a trembling hand, I pick up the phone and open my emails. There’s one from Oliver that I swipe on and I see immediately it’s a forward from Jake. The contents send me reeling.
I don’t want to believe a word of it. It’s all so circumstantial. Roadkill, a restaurant, a delivery service. It doesn’t compute. She’s my friend, my only friend, and the betrayal strikes deep. I hate Terrance, but I love Daphne.
If it was Terrance, I’d believe it, but not Daphne. Never Daphne.
I delete the email and stumble toward the bed. I haven’t changed the sheets and they smell like Jake, which makes me cry harder. The diazepam must not be working. The pain of emptiness and loss wracks me, and I feel worse, a hundred times worse, than when the only thing that surrounded me was fear.
I huddle under the blankets, wanting to rewind the clock, only I don’t know when I’d stop. Do I go back to four weeks ago when I first met Jake? Or six weeks to the time I got the note? How about three years ago when the subway attack happened, or maybe all the way back to when my parents died?
Why did I come here? I can’t remember. I don’t feel safer. I don’t feel better. I don’t feel less shame or embarrassment. Instead I feel alone. So alone.
It’s the unbearable emptiness that makes me take the phone call. It’s the twelfth one.
“Why?” is the only thing I can think of to say when I answer the phone.
“Let me see you. Let me explain in person,” she begs. Her voice is thick with emotion. Is she crying because she betrayed me or because she got caught? How does she even know? My guess is that Oliver or Jake called her to tell her to leave me alone.
“Why?” I repeat. I can’t see her. I shouldn’t want to talk to her, but she’s someone I love and I have this need to hear her out.
“We needed another hit. You were way behind. These notes, the clown, spurred you like nothing else. I would have stopped them once the book was done.”
“For the book? That’s it? Because it’s done. It was done this morning. I was going to email it to you.” The manuscript that I finished after working all night and into the morning rests abandoned on the floor of the office at Jake’s house. I wonder if it will ever see the light of day.
“What do you mean, that’s it?” she cries. “That’s everything! I did this for you! I would never have sent the dog if I’d had the manuscript. You were too busy with Jake.” She says his name like he’s the devil.
“No!” I sob. “No, you did this for yourself. You fucked with my head, Daphne. I trusted you and you—you did this horrible thing for your own gain. I don’t want to talk to you ever again.”
I move to hang up, but she yells out, “Stop.”
“What is it?”
“The book? You said it’s done? Can you send it to me?”
I shake my head in disbelief. “No.” And then I end the call.
I drag the comforter and pillows into the bathroom, turn my phone off, and try to sleep, but my mind is racing. I want to call Daphne again and yell at her until she says she’s sorry. I want to hurt her so she knows what it feels like. I close my eyes and envision kidnapping her and locking her in a box until she screams for release. But then somehow, it’s not her in the box, but me. I’m the one screaming and afraid and no one is there to hear me.
I see Jake, but he can’t hear me. I yell for him and slam my palms against the box, but the barrier is too thick and he walks by. I gag on my own saliva. Crawling to the sink I fumble in the drawer until I find my bottle of Restoril. It takes thirty minutes, but eventually I find peace in a drug-induced sleep.
I wake up with my face glued to the bathroom tile. The Jake-scented sheets cocoon me, and for a moment, in the dawn space between sleep and awareness, I feel him next to me. He’s curved around me with his right arm under my cheek and his left arm resting on my waist. I have my legs tangled with his and my toes are pressed against his calf.
But then the smoke of sleep dissipates and I’m left with the cold tile and the sheets that are quickly losing his special scent. My body protests as I rise. In the mirror, a puffy-faced monster stares back at me. My hair is both knotted and limp, a spectacularly ugly nest. I had told Jake I wanted to fall apart alone, and here I am, more unraveled than a ball of used yarn.
My eyes are red and tired. Below my puffy eyelids, my cheeks look extra pale—nearly ghostlike. An insistent pounding sets in around my forehead. I swallow two aspirin before I leave the bathroom in search of clothes. Three antianxiety drugs yesterday, a sleeping pill and two aspirin before breakfast. I’ve become a regular pill popper.
I dig my laptop out of the suitcase that yesterday I tossed just inside the door on my way to the bathroom. I bypass the kitchen because the thought of food makes me ill. In my office, I take a seat and then power up the laptop. The room looks enormous and bare without my treadmill desk.
I ignore the new emails—all of them from Daphne—and dig out the deleted email. In plain and unmistakable detail, Jake spells out what he knows. That Daphne sent me a dog that was already dead to scare me into finishing my book. He believes she was responsible for the note and clown too. He ends the email saying that he loves me and that the third floor is waiting for my return. I get misty-eyed when I read that part.
I open the manuscript. The dedication reads:
To Daphne, a tough but necessary taskmaster. Without your encouragement, I would never have finished this book.
My finger hovers over the DELETE button. Is she right? That without the notes, the clown, I would never have finished? When I was achieving my biggest milestones—leaving the apartment, walking into a café, traveling all the way to the subway stop—I’d forgotten about the book. Or not forgotten about it, but it wasn’t my priority. I’d done the three books in the trilogy. This was the start of something new, and I felt that I had time to pay attention to fixing myself rather than the words on the page, and so the book was pushed aside.
I’d been selfish, because Daphne had made me a commitment and needed me to fulfill my end of the bargain. But I’d ignored her pleas, too wrapped up in seeing how far I could push my phobias.
But then I remember the cold sweat and nausea that hounded me for days after the note came. I remember the sense of utter defeat when I couldn’t bring myself to open the door. Her methods worked but at a great cost because once again, I’m a prisoner of my own making.
That’s not entirely her fault, though she played a part in it. I press down and watch the letters disappear. The cursor blinks at me. I can’t write what’s in my heart, so I shove away from the computer and pace. The walls of the apartment feel confining rather than protective. I pull open the curtains of the French doors and look outside. There’s a blue sports car and then a red one. And then a town car and then a taxi and then a black Audi and then a white delivery truck—my eyes swing back to the black Audi. It’s hard to see inside the tinted windows, but I believe I see the shape of Jake’s perfect head.