Eli

There is no medication to help me, so I’ve been told. By my psychiatrist, no less. A person whose job it is to prescribe medication.

She sits across from me now, one leg crossed over her knee, her hands resting on the arms of her chair. It’s a chair exactly like mine, across from her: burgundy, plush, comfortable. I think the identical seats are supposed to put us on equal footing or something. Maybe so I feel safe speaking with her.

 I don’t, though. I don’t particularly feel unsafe, either, but this shit is pointless.

I can tell she has no idea what to do with me.

 No one ever does. My father, especially. It’s why he forces me to come here. I have no incentive to do so, except the way Dr. Shaw sometimes squirms when I give her honest answers to her direct questions. Would she rather me lie?

“How have you been?” she starts with.

I almost laugh out loud. Such a stupid question. Why does anyone ask it? No one really cares. It’s a filler question. Meant to break the ice, maybe, or fill a gap of silence. But I’ll play along. It’s the only thing I enjoy about these sessions: The playing.

“Great,” I tell her, glancing down at my tattooed hands on my thighs. She’s never asked me about those, and I wonder if it’s from not wanting to discriminate, or if she hasn’t noticed, or she just doesn’t give a fuck.

My dad has asked about them.

A lot.

“What’s been going on?” she presses. “Your senior year started, right? Are you happy with how things are going?”

I shrug. “For the most part.”

She raises a dark brow, tilting her head, her amber eyes holding mine, urging me without words to continue.

Usually, I’d just make her ask for it. I like the asking, and the begging. But for once, I have something I want to talk about, so I’ll make it easy on her.

“Classes are going well.” School comes easily to me. Papers, numbers, exams. They’re like cars. Parts of a whole, and if you isolate the parts, you can work on them one at a time. In the end, it all comes together. Sometimes, like with cars, one part will fuck up another, and you’ve got to have a little patience when that happens to get everything running again.

That’s what I’m having with Zara Rose Henderson.

Patience.

Alex is a component that can fuck everything up, but he’s useful, too. I can use him to get to her. In the end, it will all start up just how I want it to. Like with a car.

The differences between people and cars, of course, are vast. People talk too damn much, and their emotions, instead of machinery, get them running hot or cold. But over the years, I’ve learned ways I can manipulate emotions, too.

“School isn’t the issue.” I pause. Pauses show thoughtfulness. “I have a girl problem,” I confide in Dr. Shaw.

She blinks, startled. She’s used to me being forthcoming, but I rarely talk about women.

“Oh?” she asks, voice full of interest. She tucks a lock of her long, dark brown hair behind her ear, leans forward slightly in her chair.

I smile at her. “Yes,” I admit. “I’m in love with my roommate’s ex-girlfriend.”

Dr. Shaw looks like she might fall out of her chair. She’s got her hands in her lap, twisted together as she stares at me, trying to mask her expression. She’s shit at it, though. Even psychiatrists, by their own admission, are tripped up when it comes to people like me. People with antisocial traits and tendencies.

I don’t even think it’s that they’re that tripped up as they are terrified.

I like the fear.

When people are afraid of you, they don’t pose a threat to you. I’m not immune to gunfire or knife wounds or any shit like that, of course. But that’s not what I’m worried about. It’s the other shit I don’t like. Matters of the heart.

I wasn’t born without a heart. But when my mom left to start another family and forget all about me, she took mine with her. Even if she ever thought about returning it, I wouldn’t want it back. Without a heart, you’re almost invincible.

“Oh?” Dr. Shaw finally asks, swallowing hard. “Does she…return those feelings?”

I laugh, leaning back in my chair casually, cocking my head at her. “Is she in love with me, Dr. Shaw? Is that what you’re asking?”

 Dr. Shaw has a small smile on her face, but her eyes betray something else: confusion. She’s not sure if I’m serious about being in love, and she probably thinks that’s not even possible for someone like me.

After a moment of trying to read me—impossible—she gives a small nod in concession. “Sure. Is she in love with you, Eli?”

I glance up at the ceiling above our heads, the noon sun filtering in from her window throwing slices of light up against the white. After a moment, I roll my neck, meet her gaze again.

“Not yet,” I tell her truthfully. “But she could be.”

“Does your roommate know?” she presses, furrowing her brow as if this is concerning for her.

I blow out a breath, tapping my fingers against either side of my chair. “That’s the problem, huh? I’m not sure how to tell him.”

“How recent was the breakup?”

I’ve never discussed Zara before today, even though I’ve had an eye on her for a while. She’s a little crazy; certainly not Alex’s type. Exactly mine.

More than that, though…she’s easy to fuck with because she’s almost never sober.

“Not long ago.” No use in lying about that. “But he’s done some pretty shitty things to her.” I sigh, glancing at the ceiling again. “I don’t really like that.”

“Oh?” Dr. Shaw presses, as if this is a breakthrough. She even leans forward in her seat, shifting on the burgundy cushion. She’s practically salivating at the idea of me having a sliver of empathy. “Why is that?”

“Why don’t I like a girl being treated like shit, Dr. Shaw?” I counter innocently, just to make her uncomfortable.

It does the trick. She leans back, bites her tongue as she glances at the floor. “No, well…yes,” she admits, flustered. Small pink patches form on her cheeks, and the embarrassment gives me a sense of elation, my chest swelling knowing I caused her discomfort. “What is it, specifically, that makes you dislike it? Is it just her, or because your roommate is treating someone poorly in general?” She clears her throat as I stare at her, rubs her hands together. “In other words, would you feel that protective over anyone else?”

Do I feel protective over Zara? In a way, yes. I don’t want Alex to have her because I want to take her away from him, and because for now, she’s fun.

But to answer Dr. Shaw’s question about feeling like this with someone else… “No.”

This seems to please her for some reason. She crosses one leg over the other, careful not to bounce her leg even though I know it’s a habit of hers. Or maybe it’s just a habit when she has a session with me.

“What do you like about her?” she presses.

That she’d let me do whatever I wanted to do with her. But if I say that, I sound more like a sociopath than I’d really like to.

So I don’t say that.

Instead, I give Dr. Shaw exactly what she wants to hear.

“She reminds me of my mother.”

God, I swear the woman is going to have an orgasm right across from me in that fucking chair. She leans forward, gripping her knees, her knuckles blanching. There’s a gleam in her eye that one might call “sick”, but I guess this is her job. The prying and poking and Freudian bullshit.

“How so?” she asks, barely able to keep her excitement contained in her voice.

I glance at my hands, running them over my thighs like I might actually be uncomfortable. “Her eyes are similar,” I tell her truthfully. “She’s kind of wild, like my mother wanted to be.”

Dr. Shaw frowns, but that spark is still in her eyes. This is exactly what she wants. “Why do you say that?”

I look beyond her, through the window that overlooks the parking lot behind this building. I wonder for a second if Alex and Zara are swimming in my pool. I imagine holding her down in that pool, having her squirming beneath me.

That would feel pretty damn good, knowing I held her life in my hands.

It’d probably feel good to her, too. It’s why she still fucks with Alex. She likes to be dominated. But Alex is shit at it. He cares too much.     

I don’t have that problem.

I shift my gaze back to Dr. Shaw. “It’s why she left,” I say simply. “She wanted…freedom.” I’m not sure that’s the word I’m looking for, but I remember how Mom stared blankly at the walls when I was growing up. How even when I cried—from skinning my knee, falling off the couch after I miscalculated a jump, even that time I tripped headfirst into the brick fireplace—it would take her a minute too long to respond.

She hated being home with me.

And my father hated her being anywhere else.

Dr. Shaw awkwardly clears her throat. It’s like this woman didn’t go to fucking school for twelve years to become a psychiatrist.

“Is that why you think she did what she did to you?”

She can’t even fucking say it. I clench my fists in my lap, but I quickly recover, flexing my fingers out wide. She’s just shooting her shot. I know Dr. Shaw has wanted to talk about this incident for a very long time. My mother told my father apparently, because he told Dr. Shaw. I think my mom wanted Dad to take her depression seriously.

Pretty sure that didn’t fucking happen.

“Did what to me, Dr. Shaw?” I ask sweetly, meeting her gaze.

Those pink patches bloom on her cheeks again and she leans back, uncrossing and crossing her legs again. “If you don’t want to discuss it, it’s okay—”

“Do you know that I have a brother?” I interrupt her.

She doesn’t look at all surprised, because of course my father told her, even though I’ve refused, up until this point, to discuss it.

“Well, I did know that but—”

“Did you know his name is Adonis?” I feel something cracking in that coldness that I seem to just exist in. I don’t like it, and yet I can’t stop it. She brought this shit up, or maybe I did with that stupid comment about my mother, but if she wants to fucking hear this, then I’ll let her hear it. “My mom replaced me. She replaced me, and my fucking dad. She replaced us. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t come by. She doesn’t write or call. She just sends me his picture every year, as a reminder of what I’m not. All the shit I won’t be.”

Dr. Shaw shifts back in her chair, as if she’s trying to get away from me. I won’t touch her, because I’m not that stupid. I can get away with a lot of things. Assaulting my psychiatrist in her office when there’s a receptionist right outside is not one of those things.  

“And you know what? I want to be everything she doesn’t want for me. She hated that I was a wrestler. She didn’t want me to hurt my pretty face.” I laugh, but it sounds strange even to my own ears. “She wanted me to go to law school, not dad.” I glance at the ink on my hands. I ruined that dream of hers for me as soon as I could. “She hated cars. She thought they were a waste of fucking money.”

I grit my teeth for a second, but I don’t look away from Dr. Shaw, who looks fucking blindsided.

She asked for this shit.

“I always knew she hated me, too. Hated us both for trapping her here.”

I swallow down this odd lump in my throat, blink a few times. “You want to hear the story firsthand, Dr. Shaw? About what she did to me when I was a kid?”

Dr. Shaw takes a breath, glances behind me, at the door. Probably gauging if she’s got enough time to run out of here before I get to her.

She wouldn’t, but I don’t want to get to her.

“Sure, Eli,” she says softly, trying to keep her voice steady. “If you’d like to share that, that would be—”

“She was giving me a bath,” I interrupt her, balling my hands into fists and not bothering to hide it this time. I stare out of the window behind her, at the clear blue sky. “I went under water, holding my breath to show her how long I could do it for.” Another twisted sort of laugh escapes me, and I don’t even know why I’m laughing. Maybe to stop from screaming. “It was probably five seconds, but she clapped her hands, pretended to be delighted. She told me to try it again.” My voice breaks, and I stop for a second, still staring at that sky.

“It’s okay, Eli,” Dr. Shaw says quietly, even though it isn’t. “It’s okay. You can keep going, or you can stop, whatever you feel more comfortable with.”

If I don’t get the rest out, how will I ever tell Zara? This is practice for her. I’m not even sure why I want to tell her, except for that I think she’d understand. She wouldn’t think I’m a freak with mommy issues. She’d probably get it, how I feel.

“I went under.” My voice is shaking, and it’s annoying, but I can’t stop it. “And she pushed my chest. I wasn’t afraid. Not at first. I wasn’t scared. It was Mom. She was moody and locked herself in her room sometimes, and her and Dad fought a lot, but she was my mom.”

I hear Dr. Shaw’s sharp intake of breath but I’m not seeing her in front of me. Just the sky.

“She was my mom and I wasn’t afraid but then I couldn’t breathe. Everything was hot and tight, and I needed up. I tried to sit up. My eyes opened under the water and I could see her.”

God, I could see her so clearly. I shouldn’t have been able to. It should have been blurry, but her eyes were just so fucking clear.

“I thought I was going to die, and I didn’t even know what death was. But finally…finally, she let me up, and I was gasping and crying and she just…” I bite my tongue a second, the pain bringing me back. “She just walked out.”

I want Zara here. I wish it was Zara I just said all of that to. I’d kiss her and fuck her, and this would be done. This hollowness would be filled.

“Eli, I’m so—”

I stand to my feet, cutting off Dr. Shaw’s words. This wasn’t as cathartic as I thought it might be. But as I glance one last time out the window at the sky, thinking of how it looks almost like the still water of my pool, I think I know what will be.

If I could do to someone what she did to me, and save them, like she saved me at the last second, maybe that would get this memory out of my fucking head. Maybe I could understand Mom. Maybe that sense of power, of holding someone under, holding their life in my hands, would make me get it.

Maybe not.

But it’d be fun as fuck to try.

“Have a great day, Dr. Shaw,” I say before I walk out without looking back.