“Why?” I echo. “I could ask you the same thing, you know.” I take the dress from him. It shimmers, even with just a hint of moonlight from outside. Our windows are open, and I can hear the sea saying hello and goodbye to the beach in a gentle, soothing murmur. Constant, unending, boundless.
“Copout,” Vic says, lighting up another cigarette. He’s addicted to nicotine the way I’m addicted to his attention. It might kill us one day, but we don’t care. “You know why I love you; I said as much on our wedding night, right after we got naked in the hotel room.” He points at me with the cigarette. “It’s you who owes me.”
I frown and look down at the dress.
“I have intimacy problems, Vic.”
There. Wow. I said it. I said something real, something that isn’t … angry.
“We all do,” he says, kneeling down in front of me. I look up at him, and I do my very best to hold back the tears. Why am I crying now? I’ve had much better opportunities to cry. Victor reaches up and cups the side of my face in a big, warm hand. His thumb plays across my lips as salty tears slide down my cheeks. “We were raised on broken glass and shattered dreams, Bernadette. We’re allowed to be fucked-up. We’re allowed to make mistakes.” He sighs and his breath feathers across my knee as he puts his forehead against my leg. “We’re also allowed to change.”
I reach into the pocket of the dress and pull out the tube of pink lipstick. Heartless, it’s called. But even though I love the shade—Penelope would’ve really loved the shade—I am not heartless. In fact, sometimes I wish I had less heart, because then things wouldn’t hurt so damn much. The next thing I pull out is the list, that ugly, crumpled envelope with all of those awful people written on it.
1. the stepdad
2. the best friend
3. the social worker
4. the ex-boyfriend
5. the principal
6. the foster brother
7. the mom
Smudges of pink lipstick obscure a few of them, but the most important one is still left.
The mom.
Because out of all people, out of all humans, she was the one who brought me into this world and then let it fuck me. Encouraged it to. Did it herself, even.
“The saddest part about all of this,” I say to Vic, studying the list I made just a few months ago. “Is that these names are on here not because I wanted to hate these people. They’re here because I loved them, or I loved the idea of who they were supposed to be.” My thumb brushes over number three as I think about Coraleigh in her bedroom down the hall. “Her job in society is to be a safety net. She was supposed to protect me, to spirit me away to somewhere better. She pretended to be my friend, Vic.” I sigh and move my thumb down to number five. Principal Vaughn is … interesting. He isn’t blameless, and he got what was coming to him, but he also called the boys for me. He called an ambulance for Ms. Keating. Is it possible for someone to search for redemption, no matter how badly they fucked up?
Not for someone like Eric Kushner. Or the Thing. But I guess that’s why they’re dead and Scott Vaughn is not. Coercing underage teenagers into making live porn videos is pretty bad, but he didn’t rape anyone that we know of.
I turn the envelope over. My vows are written there in ballpoint pen. Some of the ink is smudged, but it doesn’t matter because I can still read it. Fuck, I still know what I want to say without reading it at all. But pretending to read the words off the paper makes me feel better.
“It’s too dark for you to possibly see that,” Victor challenges, lifting his head up to look at the piece of paper. I smooth the folded edge down, so he can see the page better. Moonlight splinters across it in silver bars. I can read it well-enough.
“I don’t even need to read it to say it,” I inform him anyway, my hands shaking. Being vulnerable is not my thing. Vulnerability has never served me well. I let myself be vulnerable with Penelope, and she’s dead. I let myself be vulnerable with Aaron, and he left me. Big exhale. “Can you do yours again?” I ask and Vic laughs. He nuzzles his face against my knee, and I let out a small sigh of relief.
He’ll do it; I know he will.
“Sure, but you gotta put the dress back on.” He stands up, looming over me in a way that I can only describe as protective. Vic, despite his dickish demeanor, wants to take care of me. That much, I do know.
“It’s covered in grave dirt and cum, you prick,” I grumble, but it’s really not that bad. Truly, it just needs a dry cleaning. After paying nearly six thousand dollars for it, you bet your ass I’m going to have it cleaned and wear it again.
“Put it on, Bernadette,” he demands softly, moving around me and heading over to the balcony. He steps outside, bathing his body in even more silver light from the moon. It highlights his tattoos and enhances the shape of his muscles.
I stand up and shirk the black lacy nightgown I was wearing, trading it out for the dress. I don’t bother with panties. Victor’ll just tear them off and toss them anyway. My bare feet whisper across the tiled marble floors as I move over to stand beside my husband.
“I can see why you kept yours hidden from Ophelia,” I tell him, and he scowls, turning his attention out toward the sea. A few Sitka spruce and shore pine trees dot the edge of the property, but for the most part, the view is unobscured. It’s nice, but it isn’t worth the blood of innocents. “She’s a motherfucking shark, Vic. Truly, she’s scary as hell. What are we going to do about her?”
He just shakes his head, reaching inked fingers up to run them through his hair. I step a little closer, so that when I breathe in, I can smell that masculine musk of him and not just the salt and sand and sea.
“No more business tonight,” he tells me, glancing over and exhaling sharply. Victor reigns that anger of his in the way he always does, the way he did in his front yard that day that I challenged him, and he pushed me up against a tree. He’s a master at controlling his temper. Daresay, better than Oscar at even. “That’s the thing with Havoc. There’s always someone to bury, someone that wants to bury you, and a more productive way to spend your time.” He laughs again; the sound of it is the very definition of ASMR for the soul. “Sometimes you just want to fuck your girl, you know what I mean?”
I smirk at him, tucking my right hand into my pocket while I hold the list with my left.
“Not exactly. Pretty sure I was born cursed because I’m into guys. If only sexuality was a choice.” I shake my head as Victor smirks right back at me. Tit for tat, he said to his mother, but really, that’s me and him in a nutshell.
“You’re stalling,” Victor says, and he isn’t wrong. The idea of reading to him what’s written on this paper fills me with terror. He turns around, resting his elbows on the railing behind him and looks right at me. “We’ll have another wedding, after I get my inheritance. And we’ll invite every snot-faced, billionaire asshole that my mother knows. It’ll be gothic as fuck and it’ll scare the shit out of them all. Because, you know, I’m not satisfied with owning the respect of high school students. We will control the underground, Bernadette. We will rule it.” Victor reaches out and grabs my arm, pulling me close and lining our bodies up. When he looks down and into my eyes, my heart stops beating. Because he has the power to make it do that. He owns my heart, and he knows that, too. “When that time comes, I will say this to everyone in the audience.”
“Oh please,” I murmur, but once again, my words are soft, as mollified as the gentle waves of the ocean. Victor stands up straight, putting his palms on either side of my face.
“No, you listen,” he tells me, but the pressure on my cheeks is gentle. He can crack skulls, or he can hold me close with those hands. He does both admirably well. “Ophelia cannot truly understand how important you are to me, not yet. She cannot know the depth of the things I feel. If she does, she will do her very best to ruin us.”
“Nobody could ruin us, Vic; we’re already ruined,” I say, and he kisses the fuck out of my mouth, burning me up with teeth and tongue and leaving me panting in his arms. “Bernadette, you are the driving force behind everything I do,” he repeats, and I shiver at the sound of his deep voice. It shimmers through the air and drives into me, filling up every crack, every empty space. I close my eyes, just so I can listen better. “You always have been. I can’t thank you enough for that.” Victor kisses each of my closed eyelids, and I smile. I also feel a little bit sick, because I know I have to sound as vulnerable for him when it’s my turn. “Without you, I wouldn’t have had a reason. A reason to live. A reason to fight. A reason to succeed. You’re the oxygen in my blood and the electricity that makes my heart beat.”
I let out all the breath in my lungs and just let the pain of not breathing sear me for a moment. That’s what it feels like when Victor looks at me, when he talks to me, when he fucks me. Not the pain, I mean, but like the very first breath I take when I can finally find the courage to pull oxygen into my lungs again.
“Even though I don’t deserve you,” he continues as I struggle to hold my breath as long as I can. Victor knows I’m doing it, too, but he doesn’t hurry his way through this. Instead, he draws out each word, like my soul is a voodoo doll and he’s sticking in pins. Each one hurts, but then blooms into a pleasure unlike any other. “Even though my love is selfish, I want you to trust me. Close your eyes and free fall, Bernadette; let me catch you.”
I open my eyes at the same time I draw breath, filling my lungs with the sweet, coolness of the winter breeze. It feels so good that for a moment there, I almost stumble. Vic keeps me standing upright. He leans down and kisses the side of my neck, sending lines of fire into my bloodstream.
“Let me be your husband, and I fucking swear to you that I’ll love you until the world goes dark and beyond that, into the stars.”
“Do the other guys know what a soft-hearted motherfucker you are?” I whisper, but it’s a deflection technique and we both know it. Victor isn’t a soft-hearted motherfucker; he is only soft for me. I have to remember that.