Chapter Seven.

CHAPTER SEVEN

↠ Etienne

"I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be."

― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

I always painted very pretty pictures for Cassie. My time spent with a certain Mary Anne McGregor never consisted of these wholesome moments I always made them out to be, but I liked making everything sound charming and engaging to her.

I would be lying if I said I hadn't once been very enthusiastic about where things could go with Mary. During summer I'd found myself messaging her incessantly. From good morning texts to sleep well ones because she was a very sweet girl and the type of affection I received from her was one I was rarely ever given.

We'd barely had any interactions at school, but Martin Hoult's party in the middle of June had been so excessively boring that an acquaintance I previously had no interest in ended up becoming a friend. And then that friend became somewhat of a lover when we kissed at Alloway Park late one night after she had convinced me that having a picnic there was the best thing one could do to spend away a sunny July day.

But I knew I'd made a horrible mistake by replacing Cassie's company with Mary's that night. Not because Cassie was this damsel in distress archetype of a character who was in constant need of someone to rescue her, but because I needed her. I needed to have her presence in my immediate vicinity. I needed to drown in the sound of her laughter and get lost in the curving of her lips and find myself in the glimmer of her eyes. She was the only thing that could make me feel as if the universe had not made a colossal mistake by giving me someone else's life.

I knew that I was right where I was supposed to be whenever Cassie was around.

But she wasn't that night. Mary had been in the process of pulling down my pants, but she just so happened to have a window behind her bed and I could not bring myself to look away from the storm. Thick raindrops collided against the window pane before running their sad course down the glass, and all I could think of in the middle of this very intimate moment was whether Cassie was looking at the storm as well.

Mary's cold hands came in contact with my lower abdomen before they slowly snaked their way beneath the elastic band of my boxer briefs. I tried my best to hide the grimace that twisted my features just as I'd hidden my discontent during the entirety of our date. I'd never enjoyed going to the cinema less and Mary just didn't look as pretty as she'd done that one day she'd made me very happy.

I got bored easily and lost interest fast. And when I felt her hand slowly creeping towards my crotch halfway into the movie all I could think was of the pretty picture I would be painting for Cassie later that night.

"We've been talking for almost two months now," Mary told me a couple of moments later. We were already in her bed. I was fully naked and in the process of removing her jeans. "I really don't want to be one of those girls, but things are starting to get a bit awkward with my friends, and my parents are asking questions."

I inhaled deeply. "Such as?"

"Who's the young man that is always coming to pick you up late at night?" she said, trying to keep some humour in her voice by attempting to mimic her father. Neither of us found her efforts particularly amusing.

I lowered myself once her jeans had been removed and hoped the goosebumps I was leaving on her exposed skin meant that she would not care for this conversation for long. "Should I introduce myself?"

"As?"

I smiled an insincere grin. "Etienne Sinclair?"

"They suspect we're dating. And rightfully so." Her words were cut off by my lips pressing into the fabric of her underwear, which was the only garment she was presently wearing. But she was insistent, and she was not going to let this night come to an end without telling me the clearly rehearsed speech she had already prepared. "And I really don't mean to keep on complaining, but it's embarrassing how you barely pay any attention to me in school. My friends are starting to say that I'm making this whole thing up, that this is all a lie I made up and we're not really seeing each other."

"Then get better friends, doll."

"Is the idea of people knowing we're together so awfully dreadful?"

This time I did grimace. Her words had led back to the very sensitive subject that was Cassie, and I wasn't oblivious to the fact it was somewhat strange to be thinking of my beloved childhood friend while on top of a naked girl. I sat up with an irritated sigh.

"No, Mary, it isn't. But it also doesn't hurt to keep things private. You know how people are."

And still, I proceeded to do what I did best in the majority of situations regarding women. Evade a serious conversation by feeding into the sexual nature of our encounter. I kissed her and brusquely slid my hand beneath her underwear. But my attempts still did not get me far. It did not matter how much I tried to run from Mary, she wanted answers and she was going to get them despite all the chasing I was forcing her to do. She kept breaking away from my kiss and looking me in the eye; searching for something. Searching for a truth that was frankly staring her in the face.

"Just be patient with me. I'll come around," I said, growing impatient. I didn't think I would. At least not at the moment, nor any time soon.

"God forbid people find out you have feelings," she said, her tone deflated and her eyes full of melancholy.

Yes, God forbid.

"If you don't want to do this then I can leave."

"I don't want you to leave, Etienne." She pushed me over so that she would be straddling me now, and with her lips nearly pressed into mine, she muttered, "I want you to want to stay."

I was very impersonal at sex. I tried to make it as pleasant for both parties as possible, but I almost always ended up feeling like I'd just partaken in some repetitive choreography that I had not enjoyed very much. On her back, on all fours, from the side, arch her back, arch it a little bit more.

Most importantly, when she says she's coming, keep the same pace. "Steady wins the race," Emily Varens, the nineteen-year-old I had sex with when I was fifteen, told me.

I used to think that knowing how to please women would be rewarding, that it would be something to brag about. But I never felt like bragging. When Mary came it made me feel angry to a slight extent because I knew my release would not be satisfying. It never really was. Although pleasant, I was almost always overcome with the sensation of feeling drained and sticky and repulsive.

Get out of bed. Get out of bed. Get out of bed.

"You know I'm not some whore that you're meeting with at a motel, right?" Eleanor Mirren once said to me when she was bringing to my attention how quickly I got out of bed after sex.

"You know you can stay the night, right?" Mary asked me, which was a statement that in itself implied the very same thing Eleanor had once said.

I knew I could but I didn't want to. "Maybe next time."

I knew something was wrong with me when I felt like crying on the drive back to Millfield Road. I turned on the radio as loud as it could go to drown out the sound of my thoughts. An alternative rock song filled the space around me but unfortunately failed to get inside my head. I couldn't understand why I felt the way I did. I'd spent all of my life trying to feel normal, and those small but persistent reminders that I wasn't made me feel like it was the end of the world.

I gripped the steering wheel and counted down the minutes to see Cassie. She was the only one who could make me feel a little less uneasy in my own skin. I only ever truly felt like a normal human being when I was with her.

But to get to her, I had to make it past the eighth floor. The dreaded eighth floor. Walking into our apartment building always made me feel like a little boy again, mainly for all of the wrong reasons. Brick piled over boring brick, holding the cold captive inside its four walls. It was a coldness that never left. A coldness that had accompanied me through all of the moments of insanity I had lived through. It carried the sound of my mother's screaming and also that of her silence, and they both announced how her brain had been wired incorrectly.

I stood on the landing of the seventh floor, looking up at the set of stairs ahead of me with slouched shoulders. My height was the only thing that reminded me I wasn't a little boy anymore. Everything else remained the same in a fastidiously eerie way. There was nothing but silence coming from my family's apartment, and I had for long debated whether the absence of sound was actually worse than the clamour.

It meant that my mother was not having another one of her episodes, but that I was still very much afraid of her. I dragged my feet over each step and let out a resigned sigh as I kept on walking up to the ninth floor.

Cassie was sitting on the floor, leaning back against the couch, waiting for me with unopened Chinese takeout on the coffee table. We both perked up when we saw each other, but I beat her to the one question we both wanted to ask. "How was it?"

She sat up straight and it warmed my heart to know she was just as eager to see me as I'd been to see her. "Good. They gave me this little button because I've been clean for three months. It's cute, I guess."

"Look at you." I kissed the top of her head, and just that small gesture alone made me feel more than Mary did the entire night.

I loved her, whatever state she was in.

"So, Mary," she started.

"Let me go shower first."

I think that alone gave away what my night had consisted of. I had accidentally ruined the pretty picture. I got in the shower as quietly as I could and rubbed on every part of my body until I felt less sickly about myself. Mary was a very nice girl. I was pretty sure I liked her, in some way, to some extent. So I could not understand why it was that I so desperately wanted to get rid of the smell of her and of the ghostly feeling her fingers had left in my body.

Cassie and I sat on her living room floor, with our backs pressed against the couch and my left leg intertwined with her right one. Various food containers were scattered around us. Our favourite series was airing on TV but we couldn't have cared less. If my existence could've been reduced to this I would've been the happiest man on earth.

"And the cinema was not as crowded as it usually is. It was nice. You know there's almost always a bunch of thirteen-year-olds being obnoxious," I said, finishing up my recounts of what that fairly uneventful evening had been like.

"What movie did you say you watch?" she asked, her inattentive gaze set on the TV.

My eyes followed her every move as she ate directly from one of the containers, trying to remember whether she'd eaten anything earlier that day. "Don't remember the name. It's about a couple in World War II. Tragic romance trope."

"Did you like it?" She tilted her head to the side so she could look at me. Her eyes were tired but the lazy smile on her lips seemed sincere. I loved her smile more than anything in the world. She had two little dimples that were a bit low on her cheeks and her two front teeth were slightly bigger than the rest. I'd never liked anyone's smile the way I liked hers.

I smiled back. "Yeah, it was nice. Mary cried a little."

"Should we watch it later?"

It was a bit of a tradition for us to occasionally watch a film I'd previously watched with someone else. But Cassie was never my second option. If anything, she was the only person on my mind when watching these films with other girls. I don't know who that was more insulting to.

"You're gonna think it's boring."

"I like a bit of romance here and there," said the girl whose favourite film was Inglorious Basterds. She readjusted her position then, turning over so that she would be sitting facing me. Her features contorted with feigned excitement that did not reach her eyes. "Then what? That wasn't the entire date, was it?"

"I drove her to her house," I responded, dragging my words more than necessary.

Her face lit up. "Did you two have sex?"

"Take a guess."

"Was it good?"

I shrugged. "Sure."

"Describe it to me."

Sometimes she would do this. Employing that limited social awareness she seemed to have, she would ask for details about my sexual encounters, unaware that this was not really something that normal. It did not feel like a violation of my privacy whenever she did this, although I could imagine it would strike me as bizarre if it came from someone else.

I did not feel uncomfortable sharing those details with her because, in truth, I would've indulged her in nearly everything she asked. I could not keep anything hidden from her. Everything in my brain was there for the taking. But something about this interaction always brought about a feeling of discomfort because I felt she didn't do it out of genuine curiosity, but rather because it hurt her feelings.

A lot of things were wrong with Cassie. The fact that she seemed to enjoy it when I treated her poorly was one of them, and it was high up the list.

"I put it in and then I pulled it out and then I put it in again, and so on," I replied, abstaining from actually giving her any actual details so that she wouldn't torture herself with them at some later point that night.

She raised her eyebrows, her lips curving into a mischievous little smirk. "How exciting."

I moved our food aside and turned to face her as well, reaching over to caress her head. "You should try losing your virginity someday."

"I cannot wait. All of your recounts sound thrilling," she responded, tilting her head so that it would lean against my hand.

Airy chuckles escaped from our lips as we proceeded to remain frozen in a moment that was unapologetically ours. All of our silences said so much that it made every exchange with every other person feel astoundingly insignificant. We stared into each other's eyes, and just as it had happened many years ago when I'd been nothing but an insolent little boy, I wanted nothing more than to kiss her.

"She's very pretty," she said after a couple of minutes of incredibly opaque silence. Our legs were now a tangled mess, the show airing on the screen had been long forgotten. "Mary, I mean, she's very pretty."

"She is."

"Prettier than me."

"Don't say that." I did not like how good she was at putting herself down. It was a skill I wished she was less talented at. "I don't think so."

She rolled her eyes and the prettiest of grins arrived to adorn her rosy lips. It was ethereal, her beauty. Too good to be true. Too impossibly lovely to exist in such proximity. "You love to lie, don't you?"

"To everyone, yes. But not to you."

"And what sets me apart from the rest?"

That I love you.

I moved my head forward so that I could press my forehead against hers. My eyes bore into hers in this exquisite moment in which all that was familiar and all that was hauntingly foreign met right in the middle. I did not want to say it. I did not know whether I had the sufficient emotional intelligence to submerge myself in something so immense and so infinite, something that came with the promise of being utterly unmeasurable.

She moved a little bit closer and by then my hands had begun to tremble slightly as they anxiously looked for a place to conceal themselves. She closed her eyes and I closed mine, and our bodies continued to pace over the edge, unsure of when the right time to jump would be.

I wanted her to be Mary. I wanted her to be Molly Laurent. I wanted her to be every other girl I'd ever been with. Every single time I found myself in the arms of somebody else I would try to find Cassie in her. Only then would I be able to feel what I wanted to.

I'd been in love with Cassie ever since I was eight years old. That was the irrevocable truth. And maybe it hadn't begun as romantic love. Maybe I wasn't capable of that kind of emotional depth at such a young age. But she and David had been the first people to ever love me without limitations, and the feeling this left was not one I could escape easily.

I came close to confessing my feelings when I was thirteen. I stood outside of her apartment for a good five minutes and went over everything I wished to say. I wanted to do it for myself. Because my feelings were eating me away and I thought everything would be easier after having a moment of brutal honesty the way it happened in movies. This was my moment of truth. A courageous step for a thirteen-year-old boy that had been deprived of affection.

But before I even gathered the courage to knock on the door I decided that it was entirely too selfish of me to do this. She'd only just picked up on her drug addiction a couple of months earlier and was at a very tumultuous stage in her life. The last thing I wanted was to add to her plate. So I swallowed back my words because I knew they were too heavy and I didn't want her to have to carry them.

When we were fifteen we both got in her bathtub because she'd gotten really high off of something and I wanted her to regain her senses quickly. We were in our underwear and I'm sure the moment would have been far more intimate had she not been completely out of herself. "You do know I'm in love with you, right?" she asked me, her words slurred, her eyes on me but also lost elsewhere.

I knew she was. I knew she loved me to the best of her abilities, in her own broken way. But I could not ask her for more, so I just smiled sadly and allowed the moment to pass, well aware that she was not going to remember it come morning.

"Yes, I know you are, ma chérie," I replied softly as I carefully moved her damp hair out of her face and continued to make sure she did not sink.

I knew, without an ounce of doubt, that Cassie and I were soul mates. But we had unfortunately found each other at a very early stage in life and were now being tasked with the burden of having to find the right time in a sea of unfavourable circumstances. This here was not the right time.

I could see David sitting on the couch behind Cassie, looking at us with those sad eyes of his, warning us that the worst was yet to come. We were not ready yet. We had a lot of growing to do. A lot of healing. I could feel it. And so I placed a soft kiss on the tip of her nose and untangled myself from her grasp, praying that she would understand that our time would come, just not now.