69 ~ Annie is Okay-3

. . . I sat on the edge of the bed with the scent of faded icing sugar emitting from a pile of dirty shirts and a single pair of dark jeans in the corner of the room by the open bedroom door, and the scent of his deodorant was strong in the room as I waited with my hands clasped together in my lap, continuing to think of Reese’s reddening face as she shouted after me as I got into my Smart Car, slammed the car and caused her shouts to become muffled in my ears, and I wondered if I had done the right thing by telling her mother, if I would ever hear from Reese again or if she would forgive me but uncertainty clouded my philosophies of the future. I found out a weeks earlier from Kara that Veronica had stopped throwing up her meals after her ulcer, too scared of the prospect of throwing up blood and images of deformed baby birds flooding her mind, and she started seeing a therapist too, and so all that was left was Reese. As I waited for him, glancing around the room to take in his propped open textbook on the foot of the unmade bed, I felt the smallest part of me that knew I had done the right thing but as I heard her calling my name, calling Mandy, I still felt uneasy and guilty, but it was for the best, and I hoped that one day she would see it too. After I had left her house and the sounds of Reese’s voice shouting after me had drowned away into the various timbres of traffic, car horns and a distant siren separating her voice from my ears, and I drove for that one familiar golden house with paint that matched the hair of the boy I was going to see. I had emailed him a few times since that night after I watched him before they had slammed the ambulance doors and divided us from each other, and he came to visit me once after I was released, just before we were supposed to leave for the renovated lake-house, and he brought me a couple of mix CDs, but he didn’t say much as he looked at me, and I wondered if he still saw the flashing lights of the ambulance casting red and blue glows on my skin as he looked at my arms or if somehow I had gotten smaller in his eyes, but the lack of what he said had just reminded me that we weren’t what we once were—two broken people confined in the kitchen of a restaurant and Hans Zimmer soundtracks to fill the silence as we worked in a tacit state that felt so full, so peaceful. When I arrived and knocked on the door, I held my gift to him in my hands, ready to meet the hazel that would greet me at the door, but instead Louis opened the door, a guitar strapped across his chest and his hair was tousled and there were pink sheet creases on his cheeks. He told me that Orion was in the shower and said I could wait in his room for him, and I thanked him. I hesitated a moment as I watched him amble, leisurely, as if he had all the time in the world, back to the living room, and I said to him, “I’m happy for you. And Mikayla. I’m happy for both of you.” And then I smiled at him as he grinned and flashed me a mock salute before heading back on his way, his back to me, and I wondered if he was going to be with her right now, strumming her a lullaby written just for her as she sipped her coffee or sang along with that beautiful voice of hers, and I smiled at the thought, of them both finding their places and each other at the same time. When I heard the bathroom door opening, smelled the distant scent of soap and humidity emitting from the bathroom, I straightened myself on the edge of his bed, and fought the urge to smooth back my hair or dart into Mikayla’s bedroom to see if she had a bottle of mascara or lip gloss that I could quickly apply before he saw me, but I told myself that this was Orion, and that I needed to be me, bare and vulnerable, and that he wasn’t the kind of person to narrow his eyes or judgmentally wonder how left the comforts of their bedroom without at least a layer of lip gloss on their lips. I inhaled deeply as I heard his footsteps creaking on the floorboards underneath the old carpeting, and then I held my breath as I saw the toes of his socks coming into view through the opened door and then slowly I saw him, dressed in a pair of jeans and a faded T-shirt with a hole in the neckline by the hem, and he was rubbing a towel in his blond hair. He hadn’t seen me yet sitting on his bed until after he threw down his towel on the back of his desk chair, his hair standing up and in wet spikes, and when he did see me, he just gawked at me for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure if I were really there or if I was some kind of mirage on his bed, hands clasped together and breath held tight in her lungs. “Amanda?” he said finally after a moment of just staring at me, a few droplets of water dripping from his hair and onto the fabric of his shirt over his shoulders into little darkened dots, and I nodded, forcing a light smile onto my face but his lips were still and straight, and his eyes weren’t exactly cold but they felt more stunned than rejoiced at seeing me there. For a moment, I wondered if he had already found someone else to listen to soundtracks with and that he was worried that she would walk into the room and see me there, that he was expecting her at any moment, but I pushed those thoughts out of my mind. Your insecurities, Amanda, make your bulimia worse. Your constant fear of rejection because of your flaws is one of the reasons you’re here. And let me tell you, the right person will love your flaws, not reject you because of them, my therapist had once told me, and I remembered these words as he sat down in his desk chair and swiveled around to face me, the back of the chair pressed against his chest and he had perched his hands on the top of the back. “I didn’t know you were back.” I shrugged, running my palm against the uneven lumps of fabric from his duvet that was messily strewn around his bed and his pillows were uneven, a few old, outlined stains of drool on the pillow I knew he rested his hand on when he slept. I remembered how his cheeks pinked and he rolled his eyes when I first noticed them and asked him if he drooled when he slept, and eventually, he admitted to it, and in return, I told him that I snored and at this, he chuckled, nudged me, and told me that he already knew that. “I’m not, really,” I said, forcing a few ounces of confidence into my voice. “I had a few things to do here and I wanted to talk to you.” I waited, to see if he would interject something, but instead he was silent, merely nodding at me. “I wanted to tell you that I was doing better. I’m actually eating meals now and I’m not throwing them up. I can say bulimia without feeling like a total failure now. And I’m studying for my GED and this January, I’m going to community college. It’s not Yale or anything but it’s a start, according to my therapist, because I am seeing a therapist. I don’t exactly know what I want to be, but I was thinking of maybe being a journalist or a teacher, something. And I wanted to tell you that I was sorry. I can’t tell you if we would be together if she were still alive because things would be so different then. And it’s okay if you don’t know the answer either or if you do and it’s not me you’d choose.”