“Did you start a new pre-workout or something?” Ivy was spotting Camila at the gym the next day. Camila pushed through her hips to lift the 230-pound barbell, butt cheeks aflame. “I think this a PR on hip thrusts for you.”
Camila racked the barbell. “No, just the existential dread that comes with having my feelings finger-fucked into me.”
Ivy snorted and looked around to make sure none of the other clients were in earshot.
“Oh, poor you.”
“Shut up. I am messed up right now. I have googly eyes over this guy and we haven’t even had sex.” With the exception of her ill-advised relationship with Johan after Liam, Camila hadn’t dated anyone in years. The entanglements, the obsessions, the endless doubting that came with relationships triggered her most intense, irrational emotions. No man was worth risking her mental health again. Her therapist had asked her if she thought that was another manifestation of her black and white thinking pattern, more of a symptom of the problem than something that was targeting the problem.
And like... probably?
“You’re not counting the finger-fucking?” Ivy asked. “That’s so straight of you.”
Camila cringed. “Fine, we haven’t had penetrative sex. Jesus fucking Christ, why do I have to like men anyway? They suck.”
“And lick, if they’re worth a damn,” Ivy added.
Glaring, Camila positioned herself back under the barbell and propelled her hips up. “The words that came out of that man’s mouth, Ivy. I felt like a Victorian gentlewoman with the way I was sweating over it.”
“I love a dirty talk. It’s been so long since I had a good dirty talk. You know what you need to get the stars out of your eyes? Burpees. Let’s say … 100.”
Camila blinked. “Motherfucker.”
“Cruel of you to remind me I haven’t fucked anyone’s mother recently,” Ivy said.
Resigned to her fate, Camila dropped into a squat, then a plank, then reversed the movements and jumped in the air. Ninety-nine to go.
When she’d first found the gym, she approached it with the methodical mindset she’d developed toward every aspect of her BPD treatment. She was after endorphins and discipline. She tracked, evaluated, set goals. She couldn’t do more than a few push-ups when she started here, and now she was a full-on Amazon.
Over time, it became less clinical. It became a way to love feeling. For years she had fled emotions. They were always too much.
But as she started inhabiting her body, she started embracing feeling. The awareness of her lungs using oxygen, of the blood rushing to her cheeks with exertion. The strength in her fingers around the barbell, in her thick thighs pressed deep into a squat. How much she ached in her seat the morning after a hard workout.
This body she had carved with razors and saturated with ethanol had forgiven her. It healed and became strong. She had caused it pain and yet it still rewarded her with pleasure.
Enough pleasure that for the first time in years, she was reconsidering whether it would be so bad to be exclusive with a guy.
* * *
Zach was about to leave the shop, having stopped there on his day off to sign checks and work on invoicing, when Camila decided to ruin his life.
Camila
She’d sent a mirror selfie. Camila was at the gym, wearing a floral-print sports bra and matching leggings, and she’d angled her body so her luscious ass was in three-quarter profile.
Zach sat back down at his workshop desk and buried his face in his hands, staring at the photo between his fingers.
No, she wasn’t trying to ruin his life. She just wanted to end it.
Would it be inappropriate to respond that he wanted her to ride his face so he could dig his hands into her cheeks and steer her?
Zach
Camila
Zach
Camila
He waited a few minutes for his boner to settle down. He looked at the time. As usual, what was meant to be a quick stop at the shop had turned into almost a full work day. He’d worked through lunch and hadn’t noticed until his hands were shaky from hunger, so he put in a takeout order at the barbecue place on his way home.
The house was quiet when Zach arrived, food in tow. He’d already scarfed down a chicken sandwich from his order on the drive back. “I brought food,” he yelled.
“Put it in the fridge,” Irene yelled back, followed by a belated “please.”
He grabbed a pop from the fridge and made his way to her room, knocking on the frame of the open door. His sister was sitting cross-legged on her bed, watching YouTube videos on her laptop and painting her nails.
“Hey. What food did you bring?”
“Barbecue. Got you a brisket burger and hush puppies.”
“That sounds so good.”
“What are you watching?”
“Conspiracy theories,” she said.
“Oh Jesus. Please don’t become a flat Earther. I will Clockwork Orange you with Hank Green videos.”
“Look at you, that was almost funny,” she said. “No, it’s this girl doing special FX makeup while talking about ghost hunting and urban legends. She debunks most of it. You don’t have to worry about reprogramming me.” She looked away from her nails and at him for the first time since he got there. “Ack? Can you help with the right hand?”
He recognized her manipulation tactic, using the name she’d called him as a little kid when she couldn’t say “Zach.”
“Fine,” he said, extending his hand for the polish bottle. “You know, I’ve seen you sculpt a life-size flamingo out of craft wire and dish towels, so I know you have the dexterity to paint your right fingernails.”
“Paint, peasant,” she said, with a dismissive wave.
He took a seat next to her and she angled the laptop screen in his direction so they could both watch as he painted her nails in the glittery yellow lacquer. In between the first and second coat, he tested out the shade on his pinky nail.
“Oh no, that looks awful on you. Full body ick. Try this one,” Irene said, reaching into her messy box of polishes.
“If you mess them up, I’m not re-painting them.”
She handed him a cobalt bottle, her manicure still intact.
She was in a good mood, and they were having fun together. That was a rarity. This was as good a time as any.
“So, Dad wants you to go visit him for a few weeks,” he said, focusing all his attention on his first coat. “Like we’d all agreed.”
She snorted. “Are you his secretary now?”
“Nope, he’s just terrified of you.”
“He’s a prick, is what he is.”
He gave a deep, long-suffering sigh. “Yeah, he’s a prick. He’s also the only parent we have left. And when we worked out you staying in Pittsburgh with me, it was on the condition that you go to California over the summer, of which there isn’t much left.”
She gave him an unimpressed look.
“Irene. I don’t enjoy being the go-between so if you don’t want to go, you tell him so!”
“All right, geez. I’ll talk to him. Sorry.”
“It’s fine. Sorry I snapped, I shouldn’t raise my voice,” he grumbled.
Irene looked at him with sympathy. “You didn’t. You’re fine.”
She was right, of course. They both knew how real yelling rattled the house’s old, thin windows.
“Here,” she said, grabbing his hand. “I’ll get your right hand if you stop being pissy.”
He let her take over applying the cobalt, and they watched a few more conspiracy theory videos while their nails dried.
He felt the same intense, stabbing grief that seemed to punctuate any quiet joy he ever felt. Because he had missed this. He had missed out on hanging out with his sister, on getting to know her. In his mind, she was a baby, and then she was a near-adult. Everything in between happened after he’d peaced out of town.
What would things have been like if he had stayed? Would the two of them have been enough to control their mother’s rage? Would they have locked themselves in the basement and watched TV until she passed out? For a while in middle school, he had walked endless laps around the neighborhood, the steep hills slicing his already thin frame down to a wisp. How many nights had Irene done the same thing? If he had stayed, at least they could have waited out their mother’s drunken tirades together. If he had stayed, maybe he would have gotten them their own place. Some dilapidated duplex unit, with an out-of-state landlord and a stinkbug infestation. He would have gone to community college and waited tables, and Irene would have had a few years off her sentence in that goddamned house. They wouldn’t have needed their mother, or their father, as much as they had either of them.
But instead, he left.
Every terrible thing his mother had ever said to him came flooding back. Of course he didn’t know how to love someone. He couldn’t even love his own family enough to be there. He’d let Irene be raised by wolves, and for what?
Had he fixed any part of himself while he was gone?