15:27
She can hear the whispers. Her school is a rumor mill, and she is the material to be ground. With their stares and their words and their laughs, they are relentless. Subtlety is not their strong suit, and she wishes they would find someone else to talk about.
But they will never stop, so she pours herself a cup of whatever is on the kitchen counter. She figures she might as well give them more to talk about, and it’s much easier to ignore the whispers when she’s drunk. Once she’s finished her drink, she eagerly pours herself another cup and downs that even more quickly than the first. She has another, and another and another another another a n o t h e r …
To be honest, she loses track of just how many drinks she’s had. Yet her mind is still buzzing with thoughts, and she knows she needs another. Only she can’t seem to be able to get the beverage to flow into her cup anymore, and the thought makes her want to cry. She won’t, however, because she knows they’re still watching her and whispering about her. They are always watching and whispering.
His hand saves her. Or maybe he just meant to save the floor from all of the alcohol she was spilling, but she doesn’t like to think like that. After all, everything is about her, isn’t it? When all eyes are on her and all talk is about her, how is she supposed to think otherwise?
She’s still thinking. She needs another drink.
“Woah, Finn,” he murmurs, his voice husky. Or maybe she’s imagining it, which she hopes because she never really liked husky voices anyway. Bey’s—or should she call him Beyond again?—voice was only ever husky when they were in bed, and it was the only time she didn’t mind. Maybe that was because she stopped thinking in bed.
She snaps back to the present when he dumps her drink in the sink. She’s infuriated because he just dumped the only thing that was supposed to help down the drain— literally . She knows it’s probably her fault. She slipped into her thoughts instead of staying rooted in reality, so he thinks she’s had too much to drink. It’s a ridiculous notion, she thinks, if only because she’s still thinking. Why does she think so much?
“That was mine,” she whines. She hates whining (because there’s no point in whining if you can do something or if you can’t do anything about it), but here she is, whining. It probably doesn’t matter, she thinks. She hates herself anyway.
He snorts, and she wonders why he’s even there with her. She’d rather drink and party without her brother breathing down her neck. Both of them have better things to do, better people to spend their time with. “You didn’t need it. Trust me.”
She usually does—trust him, that is. He is her brother, after all—but he just dumped her drink into the sink, so she’s not prone to trusting him at the moment. She doesn’t really have anything to say to him anymore, so she turns to the living room to dance.
He grabs her arm before she can leave, pulling her backward. She’s frustrated. What is he trying to accomplish? “Where are you going?” he asks, as if it isn’t obvious.
There are only three things she can do at this party: dance, drink, and have sex. Those are the only things parties are good for, if only because the first two lead to the last activity, and the last thing on the list is the only thing that turns her mind off now. Bey—Beyond’s not around to distract her anymore.
She doesn’t really want to tell her brother her plans, even if she knows he’s planning on doing the same. So she ignores him, yanking her arm out of his grasp and pushing her way into the mass of bodies writhing in the living room. Wait, no. They’re not writhing; they’re dancing, and she’s going to do the same. Everyone’s a carbon copy of each other here because originality is overrated.
She misses the times when Bey— Beyond would tell her that she is one in an infinity. She misses his dumb space puns (and his math puns, once she’d taught him enough). Actually, maybe she just misses him, but that’s impossible because she’s the one who led to the downfall of their relationship and because she’s the one who broke it off.
She’s stupid, if she’s going to be honest. But that doesn’t matter when someone takes to dancing behind her.
She turns around with a wide grin on her face, or at least she thinks she’s smiling. At this point, she’s lost control of her facial features, but she doubts a frown would deter the dancer behind her. It certainly wouldn’t deter her. “What’s your name?” she asks, because she thinks they’ve probably already exchanged greetings. Haven’t they?
He answers her, but she can’t really hear what he’s saying. Frankly, she doesn’t care. She just knows she’s found tonight’s one night stand, and that’s the most important part. That’s all that matters right now.
She giggles. She’s not really sure why, but hopefully whoever this guy is thinks it’s cute and maybe even thinks she’s cute. (She thinks giggles are obnoxious, but maybe he has different tastes.) “Want to go someplace quieter?” She reaches forward to place her hand on the left side of his chest, but she doesn’t have to reach far because he’s very, very close to her. She doesn’t think she likes it, but she decides she doesn’t care. She can’t be bothered, not anymore.
He says something again, but besides the sounds of her heart pumping and the bass thumping, she can’t really hear much else. Again, she decides that the words coming out of his mouth are unimportant. She’s sure they are. His words aren’t why she wants him, anyway. All she needs is his body on hers, and maybe her brain will finally let her be. She just wants to stop thinking for a while. Maybe forever if she can figure out how to accomplish that without Bey.
She takes his hand and guides him to an unoccupied bedroom. The door clicks shut, the lock slides into place, and she’s finally free.
15:21
He doesn’t understand. He never really has, not in the way he should. It’s not his fault; Bey just doesn’t know enough of the world. He’s so frighteningly naive that he believes that hard work and dedication is enough to drag the two of them out of their toxic mess of a relationship.
She wants to believe the same as Bey, but she knows better than to cling to such childish fantasies. To find true, pure romantic love at such a young age is much rarer than the young adult novels everyone is reading these days make it out to be. Frankly, she despises those books because they mislead young hearts and drive them to their own destruction. She may bring young hearts to ruin herself, but at least she never meant to.
She knows that she could have prevented so much, but hindsight and regrets mean nothing after the fact. All she can do now is try to make it right, no matter how much it’ll hurt Bey. No matter how much it will hurt her (but she won’t be able to show it).
He’s smiling at her even as he turns away from the flailing bodies on what was supposed to be the dance floor. She knows he hates parties, but she also knows that he hates being without her, so here they are. He’s smiling at her as if she’s beautiful even as she drags such ugly things into his life. She loves his smile; she loves how he seems so happy in such a broken world.
She can’t do this anymore. She can’t pretend that they can still be together and that they are doing just fine as a couple anymore. She can’t go on letting anyone—least of all Bey—believe that this relationship is healthy for anyone. He needs to stop idealizing her because she is the furthest thing from ideal. She needs to stop depending on him because he’s not ready for the burden named Infinity.
She’s heard that ripping off the Band-Aid is the more painless way to remove it. She’s not entirely sure that is true, but she supposes there’s some merit in forcing oneself to get the pain over with all at once rather than prolonging it. That’s what she’s attempting to do by breaking up with Bey.
He approaches her, still smiling. She knows the party hasn’t caused his smile; he’s far too pure for that. His smile is for her, and she wishes that it wasn’t and that they didn’t have to end like this.
“My dear Infinity,” he breathes, sliding his arms around her waist to pull her flush against him. He still has on his face that smile that’s slightly crooked if one looks at it long enough, and she almost forgets what she must do to that smile (and to him) because she loves it and its innocence and its vulnerability (and maybe even the person wearing it, but definitely not in the same way he’d like to believe) so, so much. “You’re the only sight worth seeing here.”
She loses the ability to breathe. She struggles to grin back but only succeeds in a faint half-smirk. Instead of responding to him—for what could she possibly say?—she simply slips her hand into his and leads him to a more secluded place. She doesn’t want this to become a spectacle. She has more respect for Bey than to break up with him in front of half the school.
When they are finally in an empty bedroom and she locks the door, Bey sits on the bed, his crooked little smile significantly less happy than before. “Normally you drink a lot more before we get to this point,” he jokes halfheartedly.
Her heart drops. She’s given him such bad impressions of her, and what she will do to him will only be worse. “No, no. That’s— That’s not why we’re here, Bey,” she sighs, settling into a desk chair rather than sitting next to him. The more physical distance, the better, she thinks. She can’t afford either of them becoming distracted, especially not her. She has one goal for her night with Bey, and she really can’t risk failing it.
He tilts his head so innocently, so ignorantly. “Then why are we here?” he asks, clearly oblivious to what must be done. She had underestimated his naivety, thinking he would have understood the situation by now. But then again, why would he when he’s still trying to understand his own little world of ideals?
She sucks in a short breath, realizing there is no easy way to word what she wants to say and still make it clear to him. “Bey, we need to break up,” she tells him directly. The Band-Aid is off, and she risks the wound either being given the chance to heal on its own or the wound being exposed to a filthy world from which it isn’t prepared to defend itself.
Much to her surprise, Bey isn’t as shocked as she thought he would be. His expression has turned into an odd combination of relief and sorrow. “We can still try to make us work,” he feebly protests, but they both know that she is right.
The corners of her lips curl into a melancholic smile. “You know that’s not true anymore.” She is still for a moment, unsure of what to do next. When Bey fails to say something, she stands, knowing he needs time alone to process what has just happened. She moves to open the door, only to be stopped by Bey speaking.
“But I love you.”
The tone of his voice is a strange amalgamation of emotions, much as his expression was. She can feel the heartbreak dripping off of his words and the hurt laced into the very essence of his proclamation. But most of all, she is frozen by the pure power of his infatuation and how fervently he believes his words to be true.
She shakes her head, refusing to turn toward him in fear of seeing his shattered heart and dropping the fragments of her own in response. “No, you don’t,” she says gently, trying to tell him kindly that he has mistaken his feelings for a relationship and his infatuation for love. Then, she lies straight through her teeth. “I don’t love you either.”
She hears the bed creak as he stands, freeing the springs of their burden. Oh, how she wishes her burden were lifted like so. “Finn—” he begins to speak, but she won’t let him sway her with his words. His vocabulary is dangerous ammunition; his speech, a deadly weapon.
“Let’s not delude ourselves into thinking we have true feelings for each other,” she forces herself to say, steeling herself to hold the tears back. She can’t let him see the way her face has contorted in pain nor how her hands are trembling as she unlocks the door. If he discovers how she truly feels about him (or if she admits how she feels to anyone including herself), then she will probably fall back under his spell, and the two of them will be stuck forever in a relationship that gives them nothing but pain.
She’d rather rip her heart out and feed it to the crows than allow Bey to fall into such ruin.
She twists the knob and throws open the door, flinging herself back into the crowd. In the kitchen, she orders ten shots of straight vodka for herself, much to the pleasure of those standing around her. She downs them quickly, numb to the burn and the cheers of the partygoers. The numbness continues even as she stumbles out the front door.
13:19
Despite the alarms going off in her head, she takes the red plastic cup from him. She knows she really shouldn’t allow him to give her drinks or lead her to the dance floor because, though she is here partying with him, she’s with Bey , not him. Despite that, she has still come to this party with him, has still accepted the drinks he’s offered, and is still dancing with her body pressed to his.
This is all right, she thinks, because he knows it can’t go any further, and she will never cheat on Bey, even while drunk. She’s never even truly considered cheating on anyone, let alone her sweet, sweet Bey. She plans on staying true to him no matter how rocky their relationship becomes.
Except she starts to lose control of her own body. The room turns hazy, and the pounding in her head begins to drown out the noise. She stumbles, and suddenly someone’s hands are on her. His hands are on her, and they venture far beyond simply catching her.
She wants to pull herself away and to scream at him, but she can’t move much. She struggles to resist the urge to close her eyes and lose herself in the darkness because his hands are all over her where she knows—and he knows—they shouldn’t be. But he’s not stopping, and she can’t do a single thing about it.
She feels him begin to pull her away, and she thinks that maybe he’s taking her somewhere quiet. However, she can’t quite tell because her senses have long since dulled, and she isn’t sure if she’s still lucid anymore. Maybe this is all a dream, and she’s simply fallen asleep on the way home, and he’s not throwing her down on a bed and locking the door. Maybe he isn’t undressing her, and maybe he isn’t staring at her like a piece of game that he’s gone out and hunted down as a prize for his wall.
Yet she’s not going to fool herself into believing that. She knows that this is happening, that he is violating her, and that she won’t be able to do a single thing about it because she’s left herself vulnerable and open.
She thinks she hears him curse, and suddenly her vision is gone along with the freedom of her mouth. She isn’t quite sure what he’s used as a blindfold and a gag, but she supposes that it doesn’t really matter in this moment. She does know that her blindfold is growing increasingly wet, and it takes her a while to realize that it’s soaked in her own tears.
Telling herself that she doesn’t care about what’s happening because all of this is temporary anyway is something she’s used, but this time—in this instance, she simply cannot fool herself into thinking that everything will turn out all right in the end. She cannot deceive herself into thinking that she doesn’t care. There is nothing she can do but let it happen and feel the pain of it all.
All she can properly understand through the haze of whatever drug he has given her is that 1) she wants it to stop and 2) she can’t do anything to stop it . This is all too much, and she can’t stand it anymore. She succumbs to the darkness because the pain of her dreams is better than the pain of reality.
09:15
She tips her head backward as she downs her last shot, reveling in the cheers of the spectators around her. They are always— always —watching, but this time she doesn’t mind much because they are encouraging her. But then again, aren’t they always encouraging her? Even if it’s only to her own doom, they are always pushing her toward something with their whispers and rumors and lies. They murmur under their breath, thinking she can’t hear; she smiles, bleeding where no one can see.
Not even Bey, poor, trying soul, can fathom the severity of her wounds. Though he is always by her side, worshipping her as if she were a deity and not a wretched mortal, battered and bruised, he still thinks he can comfort her with sweet nothings and fix her with false feelings. She knows their relationship probably won’t last—she’s known that for a while—but she loves the euphoria caused by the way he showers her in affection like a child looking for approval. Eventually, she will put them to rest, but for now she is content with basking in the glory Bey lavishes upon her.
And lavish glory upon her he does. She can’t help but feel giddy as his eyes drink her in as they dance together. Their bodies move in tandem, and the bass is making the whole house shudder, and somewhere deep down she is enjoying this despite knowing how wrong it is, to corrupt Bey like this.
She knows that, though she relishes the pathetic excuse for an escape parties offer her, Bey doesn’t share the same sentiments. She should really accept his other offers for dates, but they won’t present her with ways to make her brain stop working as her parties will. She’s not ready to give that up, not yet.
So she lets his lips sing her praises, and she lets his eyes marvel at her body. She encourages the way his fingers feel on her hips and the frenzy of his lips on hers. She continues their little game of deity and mortal, letting him sacrifice himself to her even if she knows their roles should be reversed.
Maybe the devil will be merciful to her in hell.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
