Page 35 of Malaise
TWELVE
There’s nothing quiteas undignified as the sound you make when you’re heaving the acid from your stomach into somebody’s toilet bowl. Unless of course you’re the only one in that state while everyone around you looks on with sober pity. That’s kind of worse.
I hazard a glance at Tanya as she perches on the side of the bathtub, a wet facecloth in her hand, ready to clean me up when I’m finished… again. I’d say something, apologise for the hundredth time, but my stomach is currently trying to invert itself before it lodges in my chest.
Carver rubs slow circles on my back, a quiet rumbling hum coming from somewhere deep in his chest. It’s a disappointed sound, a murmuring of all the things he wants to say but presumably withholds until a more appropriate time.
“Would you like me to call your parents?” Tanya asks. “I know you guys aren’t exactly talking, from what Brett tells me, but they might still be worried.”
I shake my head before lunging over the bowl again to bring up nothing but the agonised groan of my empty stomach. “No,” I grind out as soon as my breathing allows. “Don’t call them.”
I’d passed out in the car on the short drive back to Carver’s place, waking up when the Falcon came to a stop outside the formidable fence that surrounds the property. Kind of amazing how fast two people can get you out of a car when you utter the words “I’m going to vomit.”
“What was the grand plan then?” Carver’s deep voice echoes off the tiled walls of the bathroom, wrapping me in its velvety tones.
“I hadn’t thought it through.” My knuckles turn white as I grip the bowl hard, pacing my breathing to stop my stomach from trying to ghost vomit.
“Clearly.”
“Lay off,” Tanya gently admonishes. “You were just as impulsive once too.”
“Yeah, but I never needed anyone to pick up the pieces when I self-destructed,” he bites back.
“Neither did I,” I protest. “I didn’t need anyone to ride in and save me. I was doing fine.”
Rough hands jam under my arms, lifting me from my koala-hold on the toilet. Carver hustles me across to the large mirror over the vanity and faces me to it, brushing my mess of dark hair out of my face as I hang like a scarecrow from the arm looped across my chest. “Does this look like you were doing fine?”
I screw my eyes shut and turn away from the train-smash that stares back at me, sagging into his hold against his chest. My eyeliner is smeared around my eyes, my face pale and hollow. I left the house as some mixture of punk and gothic, but I’ve arrived at Carver’s rocking the “crazed crack whore” look.
Tanya hands me the facecloth with a sympathetic smile and I set to work washing the remnants of the day from my skin after Carver lets me go to stand on my own two feet. “Dad gave me two weeks to conform to their rules or I have to find somewhere else to live. That’s why I left.”
“Harsh,” Tanya states.
“Where the hell did he think you’d go?” Carver asks. He frowns from his position leaning against the wall behind me, our gazes meeting in the mirror.
I shrug. “I don’t think he really cares.”
“You’re all of eighteen—”
“Seventeen,” I correct.
He pauses, swallows, and then carries on. “Seventeen, then. Even worse. What kind of parent ditches their only kid after losing the other one?”
“Mine.” I scrub a little harder at the unrelenting black under my eyes and cringe at the cramps in my gut. “He said that my behaviour would impede Mum’s recovery.”
“Well that’s just fucking ridiculous,” Tanya scoffs.
“Partially.” I squeeze the facecloth out and set it down on the side of the basin. “I have been acting reckless in the likelihood they’d notice and give a shit—I just kind of hoped that when they did it wouldn’t be negatively.”
“You can stay here,” Carver murmurs. He rustles around in the vanity drawers and comes up with what is presumably Tanya’s hair tie. “We don’t have a spare room, but you can share with me.”
My eyes go wide after he drops that suggestion as though it’s perfectly normal, and proceeds to bundle my hair into a rough ponytail. Tanya watches on in approval, clearly on board with the idea. My head pulls back slightly as Carver adjusts the pony and sweeps the loose strands off my face.
“Best we can do for now.” He smirks, resting his hands on my shoulders as he holds my gaze in the mirror. “Get some food in you and then you can have a shower.”
“Thank you.”
“Come on.” Tanya rises from the tub, holding out her hand for mine. “Let’s get you some clean and dry clothes first.”