When all else fails I go to Erik.
Tonight, all else has failed.
He answers the door, eyes bloodshot, unsurprised. And then the hitch in my breathing that comes, that always comes with Erik.
“Can’t sleep?” he says.
“No.”
He steps aside to let me in, shuts the door behind me, slides the bolts, and chains the locks.
“Drink?” he says.
I refuse, as always.
There is no bar, just a huddle of bottles on top of a giant, long-broken stereo speaker. He pours himself a Lagavulin, neat, as always.
“You painting?” he says.
“All day.”
“Good.”
“You breaking the law?”
“Not at the moment,” he says with the ghost of a smirk.
The couch is clear of its usual technological detritus. I follow him there, and sit.
I shouldn’t be here.
I should never have been here. But it was too late years ago, and now it doesn’t matter so much.
We try small talk but soon run out of easy things to say. Our ill beginnings surface quickly, so it’s really better not to converse.
“So,” he says.
“So.”
I feel his eyes on me. He knows if I’m here, I’ve done everything I can to still the storm inside, to put all the demons back into their boxes and seal the lids. But sometimes they won’t go. Sometimes my ears are full of screaming, and sometimes, like tonight, the voices are mine.
Erik has them too—demons, voices, nightmares seared on the soul—I knew it the first time I saw him. And sometimes, when there are large, dark spaces inside that you cannot escape, sometimes someone can meet you there, keep you company. Sometimes they can break you out.
I turn my head and let his eyes in. We search, and accept.
There can be no love here; we don’t want it and we don’t have it to give, especially not to each other. No love, but there is something else.
“Mara,” he says. A question, a command.
“Yes.”
We both stand.
I know the way to the bedroom, I know his mouth will taste like Scotch. I walk ahead and listen for his footsteps behind me. Just inside the door his arms wrap around my waist. He swivels me around and pulls me closer. I let him.
I come here because I know Erik will drag me to the edge. He will drag me there, push me over, and then leap after me, to a place beyond pain, beyond loss, beyond the things that haunt us in the empty spaces of the night.
When all else fails, I have this.