Scenario:Here she was again, outside of the lighthouse. The day was late and tired, still breathing heavily from an excess heat. The sun was about to come down now, reaching the old tall building with its last orange strength. Summer afternoons could last forever, especially when you are a small kid playing around and exploring or an adult, waiting for or avoiding someone.
Rachel sat on the stairs to the lighthouse, first stretching her arms, then bending her knees to make herself more comfortable. Taking off her jacket she didn’t forget to go through all the pockets just in case she would get lucky and magically find a surprise candy. Tooth fairies don’t bring drugs though, so she just gasped with disappointment, frustration and relief at the same time. It would complicate everything.
Her clothes were searched. She was searched. No room for magic, especially the worst kind.
Having only a plain and simple menthol smoke, she lit it up, patiently waiting. She wasn’t in a mood for forbearance no more than anticipating the moment of peace. Her hands were shaking a little bit, unstable and unpredictable shivers went through the girl’s body up and down, back and forth. Her knuckles went pale, while clenching fists and fighting another wave of this sick need. Rachel put all her strength into this battle, hoping it would be the last one, but knew better. It won’t. She was used to mix hope with a lie for so long, so the sore acceptance didn’t come easily.
Damn, she just came here to relax.
Frankly she had gone through her worst of times already, leaving most of the shadows behind. She had drowned in the darkness, screamed in the light, begged and yelled for this one thing that would make her feel normal, feel alive, feel in general - one enchanted fix. It was like traveling between worlds, crawling on the bottom, scratching and humiliating herself inside and out in front of people she had previously wanted to impress so badly. Scream, curse, vomit, repeat. She had been given water, something to eat and a blanket, and then the diagram had repeated itself again and again, over and over for more than a week. It seemed more like years, but she couldn’t complain. She finally felt better, although it was a bittersweet victory.
Right now it was just an itch below her skin, a demand not needed to be fulfilled. Right now it felt pretty good.
The future looked ugly though.
It had been more than a month but the memories of humiliation and uneven fighting were still radiant in her memory. She despised all the recalls, hating every minute and every sound she had made, but it was history—a hurting story of a girl who was trying to get better.
Her own power of remembering every single detail of her homemade rehab was flabbergasted to say the least. David stopping her firmly when she tried to break out and run away, Joyce patiently waiting till she finished eating, Chloe holding her day and night, forgetting about her own sleep and rest. Sometimes you really try to remember somebody’s face, smile or gesture and can’t get it out of your mind cache. Sometimes you really do want to forget, especially all those worst days or months of your life and it seems unachievable.
She had too much stuff on her list to forget about anyway.
She looked at her phone, mostly checking the hour, but also curious if any message had appeared in the meantime. A few months ago, she would be flooded with icons, texts and pictures. The only thing that looked at her from the screen now was the set of sad, dumb numbers – hour, minute, second. She looked at the time, feeling numb and senseless, to the point that she stopped paying attention to the outside world.
She didn’t hear the truck parking by the lighthouse, or the fast steps on the sand.
“There you are.” Rising her head, Rachel choked on her own smile, seeing the storm of blue hair. The girl wanted to get up, but Chloe stopped her with one small gesture and took a space by her side instead.
They didn’t have to talk much looking at the tacky sunset, and Rachel couldn’t complain feeling her girl’s arm around her shoulders. It felt nice and ordinary. She never wanted anything ordinary, but this time had passed and faded away like a photo left on a sunny windowsill. Ordinary felt good at the moment. She missed it.
“Hey.” Chloe smiled lightly and kissed her lips. It was a short way of saying welcome, nothing unusual, but still magical. “You had to walk for hours to get here, girl. Are you feeling ok?”
Rachel snuggled into her girlfriend’s arms, asking for protection and warmth.
“You are still shaking.” Chloe noticed with a protective tone. She changed a lot recently. The past few months were indeed very hard for both of them.
“It’s the cold.” They both knew Rachel was lying, but was it really a lie, even that obvious? She promised herself not to stretch the truth though. She didn’t know why but her first thought was always to brush off the facts and come up with something meaningless and easy. Old habits die hard.
“I still can feel it. It’s still inside and screaming.” Rachel confessed, feeling weak and small again. It was hard to rebuild her typical confidence even if previously it had been just an act. She didn’t like feeling vulnerable, hating not being able to stand up for herself and rely on others. Trusting somebody, anybody, with this spiral of emotions was destructive enough. Trusting somebody she had hurt deeply was even worse.
“I know. It will pass. We will kick this fucking thing out.”
Rachel suspected that Chloe was talking from her own personal experience. Her girl knew more about getting rid of an addiction than she should, although she never slipped a single hint leading to any kind of reveal. The fact that Rachel didn’t know about another slip up Chloe had had to go through and couldn’t be there to help, was another sin she put on her unholy list. Another secret to uncover, another coded message she had missed along the way. One day she would ask. Not today though.
“You are doing great.” Chloe moved her closer, closing her in her arms, kissing her forehead. “Even David said you rule, Amber.”
“The step-douche is proud of me? Who would’ve guessed?” Rachel shook her head, smiling sadly. They dropped the nicknames for David a while ago, but it was still playable as an inside joke.
“Everybody is.” Rachel heard the response and sighed deeply. Not everybody, for sure. This was still an untouchable subject, yet again, the topic she had ran away from as soon as the conversation had started. She preferred to take the risk of shaking, and howling at the moon for a fix without any other protection than to face this particular drawback.
“And that brings me to…” Chloe, sensing Rachel’s mood, started the sentence slowly, knowing they had to go through it. Her personal bias against the topic was not important though.
“They called again, huh?” Rachel didn’t even have strength to fight back and put the conversation through a different route. She was too tired to run away again or go any further. Knowing she would have to face the consequences and go through another hell of questioning and arguments was a distress, but she didn’t have a choice. She had felt choice-less for a while lately.
“Yeah, they did.” Chloe sighed again. “They probably… want you back.”
“They won’t get me back.”
“Rach…” Chloe kissed her temple. “Let’s just talk to them. You haven’t been in touch with your parents for months. I’m not a huge fan of them, but fuck, you have hella stuff to discuss.”
It was strange to sit here, just like two people in love, like an ordinary couple, enjoying the bay’s sweet scent. Rachel’s breath touched Chloe’s cheek with an ardent recurrence. Yet she didn’t seem angry.
Sha came here to relax after all.