.PART 8 – Chapter 5
I don’t know how pressing a cold cloth over the bridge of your nose stops the bleeding because it never seems to work for me. Maybe it slows the blood flow, yeah, but I feel like I’ve been keeping this compress on for an hour now and there’s yet to be any improvement. But listening to Masque, I stay sitting forward and hold the icy washcloth in place.
“What excuse do you have this time,” she asks somberly. Her hands gently rub my back up and down, soothing me to an even pulse. I sigh through my mouth feeling light-headed an unwilling to answer. She doesn’t say it but Masque knows that I don’t have ‘chronic nosebleeds’ and I’m not ‘just a clumsy person’. We have been best friends for too long to hide anything behind a disguise of deceitful innocence.
“The door swung toward me,” the lie spews out of my mouth. Already I know her eyes are rolling. “Westley was coming out of his trailer when I went to open the door. It was an accident.”
“Right.” Masque pauses her hands on my back before removing their comforting warmth. I turn around to her but the guilt burns more at the acceptance she refuses to lace into her expression. The air conditioning hums in the background but that’s the only noise to be heard. We let the uncomfortable energy in my trailer build and in that time my best friend’s eyes stare with an accusing glare. My inner lip is pinched between my teeth from not telling her. It’s so hard to keep this bottled up but it’s for my lover’s reputation.
Once she sees that I won’t tell her the truth she already knows, her hands slap onto her thighs as she gets up. Choking myself with all the memories I want to confess, I can’t even look up as she leaves. This conversation feels so unfinished.
“One day you’ll see just how much he has already hurt you,” whispers Masque with a seriousness I don’t understand. Her eyes glisten back at me with more words left unsaid than me. “Maybe then you’ll let him go.”
The trailer door slams shut behind her and I’m left alone. She should know better than to let me be by myself, it’s one of the worst things a person could ever do. When I’m on my own, I have nothing.
Oh God, I screw up so much! I can’t see how anyone can stand me. All I ever do is make everything worse and cry with my sappy weak heart. Goosebumps crawl over my skin at the knowledge that I’ll never be good enough. Perfection is the only thing I have ever wanted to be but more often than not I disappoint myself. More importantly, I disappoint Westley.
The once-cold rag feels gross in my hands now. I toss the thing away at the laundry, letting it whip from my hands and bouncing the basket backward. My head bows, falling into my palms with defeat and letting my fingers run through the roots of my hair. The bleeding of my nose has stopped but I can still feel the pain, I can still hear the shouting. There I was messing up in practice again —my toes weren’t pointed and my arms looked sloppy— but even with my dancing being a mess, I don’t understand why Westley does what he does. Maybe I’m dependent on him too much to stop it.
Sorrow tries to warm my face. A high-pitched ringing settles in my ears but I pick my head up. It is time to stop my sniveling. The lights on my vanity cast an orangey glow to the vacant girl it reflects; her features are almost skeletal the way the light shadows the definition of her cheek bones and the indents over her puffy eyes. I wipe my cheeks from the bleeding makeup and the red lipstick stains. A fake smile forms as I inhale the still air of my trailer to shake away my emotions. Widening my grin, my lips sigh unsteadily. There's a show to set up for and I can’t trifle with anything but the discipline I bring upon myself. Perfection is everything.
*~*~*~*
A kiss trailed on my neck while his steamy breath warmed my skin cooled from lying down so long. I stood there staring out through the window in thought, something he loved me to do. It drew him towards me and our lives were intertwined from then on. His hands gripped around my waist, turning me around to face him. The skins of our bare torsos pressed together, him meeting my icy skin and me being becoming undone by the heat blazing from his tender body. Lips touch so softly, his hand cradling my cheek and I barely leave myself conscious from the innocent lust of it all.
YOU ARE READING
The Pretty Poison
HorrorA place in the Huntsdale Circus is nothing but struggle and tears. Pretty Poison, the seventeen year old Poi fire dancer, knows that more than any other. Even so, she could never part with her real-life fantasy. But when a strange woman joins the co...
