The jogging stroller squeaks to the time of my sloppy pace up the hill. My calves ache, and all I can think of is relief, the sound of rum rushing from the bottle to a glass. Distraction. It’s the sort of thought that jogging can’t push away.
Every run uphill makes me feel like I’m starting over.
The dry summer parches its way down my throat, making every exhale a cough. I wipe at the sweat on my face, smearing the cover-up above my lip.
“Shit.”
The baby starts crying. Leaning over the handle of the stroller, I reach out and touch her cheek. Her eyes close into tight wrinkles and her mouth gapes wide. Her screeches fill my ears.
“Please stop,” I gasp.
She doesn’t. I turn the stroller around and walk back to my sister’s townhouse. The baby’s wails force me to shut my eyes. Even the speed bump at the complex entrance feels like a burden.
“Hey, there. Hey!” It’s a male voice calling.
I turn around and the new neighbour jogs past.
“Hey,” he says again. He’s wearing a navy blue shirt and white jogging shorts. A sweatband pushes his brown hair back. “You okay?” he asks, running in place. “You don’t look so great. You look beat. You’re probably dehydrated.”
He’s tall, lean, with a pale face and a beard. His pupils are dilated, but I can still see that his eyes are the colour of a Blue Hawaii, the first drink I ever had. All I can think of is the chilled pineapple sweetness as my gaze trickles down. He’s sweating, and the fabric of his shirt clings to his chest.
My fingers tense around the stroller.
He takes a drink from his water bottle, and then rotates it in his grasp so the water clings to the sides. “You live just over there, right?” he asks, pointing. “I know because I saw you. You were in the window with that other girl. You were watching me move all my shit.”
“That was my sister, Marie,” I say. “I live with her and her baby.”
“You should come in,” he says, paying no attention to the crying infant in the stroller. “You’re not busy, right? I can show you my place.”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Come on.” He jogs backwards, his smile too nice, eyes so intense like Blue Hawaii vacation excitement. “Come on,” he urges. “You can have a glass of water. I promise I’ll make it cold and refreshing. I promise. I guarantee, even.”
There’s an ant’s nest beside his front door, a swarm of black crawling around my feet. Inside, his place is barren, the boxes still taped up, stacked beside his kitchen counter. There’s a couch in the living room. The suede clings to the sweat on my thighs when I sit down.
He gets me a glass of water and sits beside me. He watches me drink. “You had a cleft lip,” he says.
“What?”
“You did at one point, didn’t you?” He rubs at his nose, sniffing. “I mean, it doesn’t look like it, but I can see the scar.”
My hand flinches, touching the uneven skin. He catches my wrist, his palm hot, sweaty. I jerk my hand away.
“I’m sorry,” he says. He laughs, leaning forward, unable to sit still. “I’ve seen all those pictures of babies with cleft lips. It’s crazy that those kids can look so normal, isn’t it?”
“I guess,” I say. The scar throbs and I stare down at the floor. I flinch, thinking of the ants on the doorstep, crawling around my feet like early memories: learning to speak without slurring, trying to explain to classmates why my mouth was so ugly, all that social withdrawal sewn up inside my restructured upper lip. It’s hard to breathe. I turn my head and take a drink. The water’s cold but it doesn’t provide the right kind of relief.
“Do you want to do something?” He edges closer, his hands shaking, fingers brushing against my leg. “Do you want to fuck?”
My grasp tightens around the glass.
“Sex is just the best when I’m high,” he says. “It feels so fucking good.”
I brace myself when he slides his hand up my thigh. “What are you high on?” I ask.
His lips curl into a smile. “It’s coke,” he says. “It makes me want to fuck you so fucking hard.” He fingers at the leg of my shorts, pinching the fabric.
My gaze drifts to the baby, now asleep. Her head’s slumped forward. Her eyes are closed and her mucus-filled nose makes sounds every time she breathes in and out—dazed, dreaming.
He leans in—the sweet scent of his cologne mixed with perspiration, something new, something worth trying. I set the glass down on the floor. “You have to be quiet,” I say. “You can’t wake her, okay?”
He’s got a face beyond my league, but he kisses me, eager. His tongue probes past the scar. Warmth settles between my legs. My limbs loosen. My veins run hot, heart throbbing, and I sink back, giving in. This is what everything used to feel like when I first started drinking. No tension, just a black hole to fill with anything.
“My name’s Ian,” he says, climbing over me on the couch. He stares me down, his big eyes just dark holes with blue edges. He’s somewhere else, somewhere better. He kisses me again, thick saliva in my throat, taking me with him.
He pries at my clothes, his hands quick, aggressive. He pulls his shorts down and grabs my knees, shoving his dick between my legs. “You’re so fucking wet,” he says. “You fucking like me, don’t you? You fucking want me, don’t you, baby?”
He wakes the baby. Her cries squeal like the stroller wheels.
I shut my eyes and smooth my palms over his chest, feeling the rapid pace, the pulsing throbs. Under him, everything else is hard to hear.
When Marie comes home from work, I sit up straight on the couch, holding the baby, pretending there’s nothing to hide.
“I met the new neighbour today,” I say.
“Oh yeah?” She sets her purse down on the table.
“His name’s Ian. He’s really nice. He showed me his place.”
She looks at me. My lip itches and I rub it with the back of my hand. I can still smell the sweat on my skin.
“How was Emma today?” she asks, taking the baby.
“Fussy,” I say. “I don’t think she likes jogging, the motion of it. I don’t think it does anything for her.”
At night Ian follows me. He chases me through the dirt trail beside the highway. The sun beats down on my skin. I can barely run, and he tackles me into the sagebrush, the gravel scraping at my flesh. There’s an ant’s nest beside my face.
“What did your mouth look like?” he asks.
“I don’t remember,” I say. “My mom never took pictures of me.”
“It was probably a hole you could slip right into,” he says, his voice hot and eager in my ear. He slides two fingers into the nest and the ants crawl out. I realize he’s naked, that I’m naked. I wince, arching myself against his hard-on. He enters me, invades me, and I gasp, the ants finding a new home in my mouth, crawling inside.
I wake up in my bedroom. There’s nothing but black outside the tiny window, and I lay there, looking at the shadows, the comfort of them.
I put the baby in the stroller, her little mouth filled with a pacifier so she’s quiet, non-existent. I walk across the parking lot and knock on Ian’s door. He’s shaved off his beard and his face is marked with little red nicks. His skin looks sallow. He stares with empty blue eyes. There’s a plastic bottle of white powder clutched in his hand.
I push the stroller inside and lean against the door.
“I just want to do another line,” he says. “That’s all I ever want to do. That’s all I can think about.” His voice is low, quiet, the way mine used to sound when going out stopped being about blended drinks and partying, when it was solely about the alcohol, its influence feeding my veins.
“It’s better to talk than to keep it all in,” I say.
“What does it matter to you?”
“I was an alcoholic,” I say.
He stares.
“It’s still hard, trying not to think about it, knowing it’s not an option. I told myself I didn’t want it to be an option. It just makes everything even harder.” My gaze drops. I step forward, breathing in, inhaling the scent of him.
His fingers curl around the bottle. “It’s getting worse,” he says. “The first time I did it, I felt like angels were in the walls. They were talking to me, giving me energy and powers. Now the highs never last as long, and when I come down I just, I can’t even do anything.”
“Do you ever think of hurting yourself?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
My lip twitches. He watches me rub at the scar. “I tried to cut it open once,” I say. “Marie found me in the bathroom with a knife. I told her there was nowhere else for the bullshit to go. The hole had to get bigger. All she did was cry. She didn’t know what to say. Nobody ever did.”
His hand starts shaking. The bottle looks like a tiny martini shaker in his grasp, the powder inside like white drink froth.
“There’s no point taking it out on yourself,” I say. “It’s better when you’re not alone.”
He pours a bump on his wrist and he snorts it back. His chest heaves in and out. He looks at me, his lips tight, eyes wide, hot. He smiles. Blue Hawaii vacation relief.
I want it. I want him.
Marie wakes me up, walking into my bedroom with the baby wailing in her arms. “Where’s Emma’s pacifier?” she asks. “You had it this morning. She can’t fall asleep without it.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe it fell out at Ian’s place.”
“What?” Her face is blurry in the dark. “You went there again?”
“I was talking with him. What’s wrong with that?”
“You’re supposed to be looking after Emma,” she says.
“I get bored sometimes,” I say. “What do you expect, that I’m just going to sit and listen to her cry all day?”
Marie groans. “I thought you were done with all this,” she says. “You can take care of yourself now. Why can’t you help somebody else?” She slams the door, but it doesn’t mask the sound of the baby’s colic moans.
Ian never unpacks. He tells me that he’s started selling his stuff to pay for more cocaine. He’s so high, so excited, stubble on his face. He lets his beard grow back.
I buy pacifiers. There’s a bag of them on his kitchen counter. The baby cries and I pop one in. Her mouth is so pretty, so perfect. Her lips close around the pacifier and she falls asleep like a normal person. Then Ian does another line.
Every climb up to his bedroom makes me feel like I’m starting over.
Blue Hawaii vacation refreshment.
He doesn’t have a bed. There’s just a mattress on the floor, and it squeaks like the baby’s stroller when he fucks me on it. He’s shaved again. The scabs are thick, dark, like ants are crawling on his face. His nostrils are lined in red.
The room smells like sweat and bile and aftermath. Sickness. His dick slips in, and he goes hard, fast, deep, filling me until my stomach cramps. His groan echoes when he pulls out, gushing hot all over my torso. He rubs his hands over the sticky white, slides two fingers into my mouth, making me taste him.
“Don’t you like me?” he asks. “Don’t you want me?”
He pries my lip up, pinching right where the scar is. “What’s it like, knowing you were born with all the ugly on the outside?”
It feels like ants are crawling in my veins.
“It used to be so different,” he says, voice cracking.
I wince, but I can’t shake him off. He clings to me, nails bearing into my skin like tiny bites that sting all over. His groan echoes, turns into a moan. My lip throbs.
“It’s never like it used to be,” he says, his eyes turning red, blinking, tears slipping out. It’s like a Blue Hawaii vacation gone awry.
He’s on his hands and knees, shoulders shaking. His sobs sound stuck in his throat. It’s how my cries must have sounded when I was a baby, when my mouth was still a gaping open mess. I crawl away from him, his sweetness diluted on my tongue.
I hold my breath, standing at the living room window. The baby’s crying in my arms and I rock her, watching Ian as he bends down over his doorstep, an aerosol can of insect killer clutched in his unsteady hand.
Marie comes home.
“Jessica, are you okay?”
I shake my head, my fingers flinching, the baby slipping. Marie takes her, pats her back. She looks out the window.
“I’m sorry,” I say. My fingers clench but there’s nothing to hold onto. “I relapsed.”
Marie looks at me.
“I’m not going back there. I just wanted to feel like I used to.”
“What is going on?” she asks.
I shake my head, tight-lipped. Outside, Ian turns, looking up at the window, at me, nothing but black filling his gaze. I look away.
Emma wakes me, crying again. There’s blue behind the white sheer of the curtains. Dawn. Marie’s in the living room, trying to soothe the baby back to sleep. She doesn’t notice me.
“I can take her,” I say.
“Huh?” Marie blinks, looking up.
“Go to bed,” I say. “I can take her for you.”
Emma settles in my arms, her cries fading. Her skin’s warm and soft, her tiny infant grasp clinging to my finger. In the daylight, her eyes glisten bright blue. Normal.