Held A New Adult Romance(43)

When I got to the hospital the wretched Andrea had been thrown out, exiled for the cardinal sin of not being me. Justin was pale and greasy haired, but very much alive. "You came. You came," he said, grabbing my hands and kissing them. I started to cry, relieved to find he was okay. While I was furious at him for pulling this shit, I crushed down my anger, conscious that he was fragile.

"Nothing's been the same since you left," he said. "It's like the whole world's gone dull and gray."

My heart flipped over and I wanted to tell him it had been just like that for me too, that this proved we were two halves of a whole. But I didn't. I stayed strong. At first, anyway.

"They made me sign," he said. "Your Daddy - he had these casino heavies standing over me. Left me in no doubt that they'd break my legs and cut my dick off if I didn't sign the papers. I never wanted to do it, Amber. I loved you. You know I love you. I will always love you."

I had a whole speech in my head, one that I'd been rehearsing over and over, based on this very fantasy coming true. If he told me he loved me and needed me I was going to be brave, and honest. I was going to tell him that it was over and yes, it hurt right now but heartbreak sucks - them's the breaks, kid.

Except he turned his head into the pillow and tears slid down his cheeks. And I was so fucking relieved he wasn't dead that I started to cry along with him. I thought I was good, but he was so much better. When they discharged him I took him back to his place, with a mind to hiding all the knives and pills in the house. His apartment was a wreck - broken mirrors, smashed TV. His roommate had moved out in disgust and he was weeks behind on the rent. Like a sucker I wrote him a check - I figured he didn't need anything more to worry about.

There were no sheets on his bed and slashes all over the mattress. I patched up the worst of the damage with electrical tape and made up the bed for him. He kept begging me not to leave and pulled me down onto the bed. I panicked but when I tumbled over onto my back I understood what it was he wanted me to see.

He'd painted me on the ceiling. It was a life-size nude, me in the pose of Botticelli's Venus, clamshell and all. Only the angels and devils from Justin’s shoulder tatts had replaced the cherubs from the original painting. For a while I just lay there thunderstruck, while he explained that he'd done it by building a platform on top of several stepladders and painted it while lying on his back. "...just like Michaelangelo, only less gay."

I'd never understood the meaning of the phrase 'walk of shame' until I headed home. Everglade took one look at my face and groaned. "Tell me you didn't," she said, but I just shook my head.

Maybe that's why, when it got really bad, a little part of me believed that I deserved it. You don't play footsies with emotionally unstable exes, not if you're smart. But I wasn't smart, not when I was with him.

He called me five times that afternoon. The first couple of times it was sweet. Then it started to get scary, even worse than the times he'd have me backed into a corner. "I've never hit a woman," he used to say. "But don't make me start, Amber. Don't you dare turn me into that person."

"Aren't you coming over?" he said, at nightfall the next day. "Come on, cher. Don't you want to come admire my work of art?"

I said I was tired, which was true. I'd spent one night in hospital and the next night making the worst mistake of my life. "Fine," he said, after a long, stony silence. "Just remember that I asked you and you said no."

"Okay," I said, stifling a yawn. I didn't think much of it at the time - I was far too sleepy. I figured out what he meant some four hours later when he was standing outside on the sidewalk giving it the full Stanley Kowalski routine.

"STELLLLLLLAAAAAAAA!!! STELLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAA!!!"

I staggered out onto the balcony. He yelled again, so hard that he started to cough. "Hey baby," he said, when he could speak again. "You miss me?"

"Justin, what are you doing?"

"A Streetcar Named Desire," he said, and filled his lungs for another blast. I could see lights coming on in the windows left and right and across the street.

Something flew past my shoulder and it was only when I saw its exploded remains on the sidewalk that I realized it was a cantaloupe - one that had been sitting in our fridge for too many weeks before Everglade fished it out and put it to good use. She'd thrown long but had missed Justin by a couple of feet. "Stanley Kowalski was a fucking rapist," she yelled over the railing. "Did you even read the play, you poser?"

He started to laugh and screamed all the louder. "Fuck him," said Everglade. "I'm calling the cops."