NADIA DUPONT || BEFORE

Simone doesn’t visit. They don’t even call. Nadia still finds herself by the phone more often than not, praying for the telltale ring. And yet, day after day, it never comes.

She wishes she had it in her to be angry at their dismissiveness. Anything would be better than the soul-crushing despair gripping tightly to her throat. A dozen excuses float through her subconscious, and on especially foul days she allows herself to entertain them. Simone decided she wasn’t worth chasing. They weren’t strong enough to handle this final antic of hers.

On and on the excuses go, nipping at Nadia’s thoughts like bugs, but they each ring hollow. Of course they would be through with her foolishness. Of course Nadia is not worth pursuing. Especially not now, bundled up tight in her bedsheets. In the days since the breakup, she’s formed a cocoon of sorts. If not for the truancy notices piled up on her nightstand, she wouldn’t bother leaving her apartment at all.

And so she wallows in her depression nest, emerging only to attend classes and come right back home.

How pathetic, she tells herself when she puts herself to bed for the weekend. As if you could have deserved anything better.

It’s the last thing she thinks before she closes her eyes for the weekend.

#

“You’re moping.”

Nadia unpeels one crusted eye and peeks out from within the bundle of blankets. Watery blue light streams in through the hole she’s formed for breathing. The warmth of Dio on her ankles comes to her next, light enough pain doesn’t register yet.

A throat clears from across the room. The clicking of heels draws closer.

“How did I know I would find you here?” Etienne asks. His weight settles next to her, forming a dip in the mattress.

Her other eye opens to join the first. Through the gap in the bedding, she sees the ends of Etienne’s brown hair. It’s gotten longer, somehow. Has it really been that long since she’s seen him?

“I know you’re awake, Nadia. We’ve shared a bed long enough; I know what your snores sound like.”

With a grunt, Nadia nudges Dio off of her. Otherwise, she doesn’t speak.

“I won’t leave just because you ignore me.”

Threads of pain weave themselves across her now-upright hip when she rolls over. Jaw clenched, she tries to find a more comfortable position. “Go away.”

Etienne scooches closer despite her groaning. The desire to kick him crosses her mind, but the spare energy she’s mustered flees the instant she thinks to use it. Instead, she remains stiff against him.

“You know, I never thought you’d be one to be knocked down by a breakup.”

She sniffles. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, come on,” he says with a scoff. “Both you and… Well, you were both tight-lipped all week, by the sounds of it. And Chantal told me she heard it from the source. And since you haven’t even seen me all week, well.”

Sighing, Nadia throws the blanket off of her. A cold gust runs over her in an instant. She wants to sink back into the void the nest she’s built has brought her, but she knows Etienne won’t allow such pathetic measures.

“I don’t think I even took breaking up with Aleksi this harshly.”

Though her hip continues to ache, she curls in tighter to herself. “Do you think telling me that is helping?”

His hand settles on her thigh. “If you wanted someone to coddle you, I know you could send me away and call someone else.”

Nadia’s jaw sets. “You think you know what I need?”

“I did, once.”

“And now?”

She knows she’s being callous, but she can’t help herself. Since she’s awoken, irritation has scratched at her like stray grains of sand. Each word from Etienne worsens the sensation. Her skin tingles, each nerve a needle. What does he know about how she feels? Why should he even care?

“You’re angry,” Etienne says. “You’re wounded. I understand. Driving the world away won’t solve anything, though. Relationships end. Life continues. Just because Simone broke things off—“

At once, Nadia is upright. Fighting the waves of nausea threatening to drag her back down, she spits out, “I was the one to leave them.”

Etienne’s eyes widen, just enough to notice. “What?”

She doesn’t meet his gaze. Though she trembles, she has enough strength left to keep herself up right, just for a moment.

“You…Why did you do that?” Etienne’s brows pull tightly together, like he’s examining a particularly intricate puzzle. He reminds her so much in this moment of Simone, and the thought is enough to steal the breath from her lungs. Her throat constricts tighter.

Another flash of her monstrous self comes to mind. She squeezes her eyes shut against the image, but another, more sobering thought crops up from the back of her mind. If Simone was in danger, Etienne surely is as well.

“You should go,” she croaks before she can stop herself.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

She shoves him as hard as she dares, the ghastly vision granting her strength. “Get out.”

One of his pencil-thin brows arches. “Not when you’re in such a state.” Then, softer, “…Don’t close yourself off from me.”

Her jaw clenches so tight it ticks. Anger, viscous and black, bubbles within her. “As if you haven’t done the same?” He opens his mouth to speak, but she surges forward. “For weeks, you’ve scorned me and pouted and thrown your childish fits because you can’t stand not being the center of attention for once in your fucking life!”

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He reels back as if she’s slapped him. She almost wishes she had.

“I—I’m sorry,” he says at last.

“Don’t give me that. You’re just saying it because you know, deep down, I’m all you have.”

Red fills his face in one fell wave. “Th-that’s not—“

“Isn’t it?” Stop this, some small part of her urges. Don’t shove him away, too. But she ignores it for the burning indignation consuming her. “You follow me around like a lost dog all the damn time. Don’t you know how annoying it can be, trying to placate you?”

He opens his mouth again and Nadia tenses. They’ve fought before, at times hurling insults like knives. Now, she sharpens her verbal barbs, ready for his retort. All the while, the smaller part of her screams at her to stop.

But instead of speaking, Etienne shakes his head and rises. Before she can challenge him—or apologize, some small part of her argues—he leaves the room.

The only thing you know how to do is to destroy. A sentence she has told herself every waking moment she’s had since her conversation with Simone. True or not, it’s been a useful enough tool in her self-pitying arsenal. Now, as she watches Etienne’s retreating shadow, the thought echoes in her ears, overtaking everything else.

#

And yet, when she wakes up again, Etienne is still perched on her mattress, flipping through the pages of an Enchanting textbook. Relief is the first tangible emotion unfurling within her, followed by confusion. Why would he have stayed?

As if sensing her stirring, he bends the corner of the page he’s reading and sets the book in his lap. “You know, you can be a real bitch sometimes.”

The blanket encases her. He’s tucked her back into bed? Flashes of their last conversation drift to the forefront of her mind and, all at once, the meaning of Etienne’s words dawn on her. How could she have been so callous? How could she let him believe she thought such cruel things of him?

The goal was to get him to leave, not to tell the truth.

She winces at this voice within her thoughts, her and yet not her at the same time.

Etienne shakes his head with a heavy sigh, one weighted with a tangle of unspoken thoughts. She’s heard this sound from him before, simultaneously frustration and resignation. And to think, she was the one to do this to him…

She takes his hand, praying he doesn’t snatch it back. “Etienne.”

He doesn’t look up. The unspoken declination takes the breath from her. Still, she must persist.

“Etienne, I’m sorry.”

Nothing. No twitch of his eye, no move to shrug away from her. His gaze remains locked on the book in his lap, like it’s the most interesting thing to him in this moment.

“You—you’re angry,” Nadia continues, faltering. This, at least, earns her the faintest shrug. “I said some… awful things to you before.”

“Do you really think that of me?”

She flinches. “What?”

“That I am some lost dog following you around. An inconvenience. Is this what you think of me, truly? Of our friendship?”

“Of course not.” She grips his hand until both their knuckles pale. “I—“

Now, finally, he looks up. Twin rivers of tears stream from his eyes, but he doesn’t move to wipe them away. His gaze is all fractured glass, a kaleidoscope of pain. At once, her own heart is fit to shatter.

“Oh, Etienne…”

With this, he snatches his hand back, rips off his glasses, and buries his face. Thick, choked sobs tremble through him. Nadia represses the urge to wrap herself around him, to shove him away, to have him scream all the terrible things she said back at her. And yet, none of them are enough punishment.

You deserve this. All of it, and worse.

She picks up his glasses first and sets them aside. Black frames hug two circular lenses, each relatively unmarred save the smudges of his fingers. Since when has he worn these? The frames she remembers were a tortoiseshell pattern, weren’t they?

All at once, the truth in its terrible entirety sinks into her. A schism has formed between them, vast and irreparable.

As Etienne continues to shudder, she envelopes him. The way he stiffens against her is enough to set her jaw, but she doesn’t let go. Not when he falls into her lap, still sobbing. Not when he stretches the front of her shirt with the force of his despair. His pain carves its way into the deepest recesses within her.

Before long, she’s crying, too, clutching him to her like the moment she lets go, he will disappear.

#

Etienne doesn’t stay for long after he finally calms down. Slinging his bag over his shoulder, he mutters something non-committal and wipes the last of the tears from his eyes. Then, louder, he says, “See you around.”

Nadia doesn’t stop him in his hasty retreat, no matter how badly she yearns to. Instead, as the door slams shut behind him, she sprints for the bathroom. Her knees crack against the tiles as she vomits—dry heaves, really—into the yawning depths beyond.

When she comes up for air, the absurdity of it all is enough to make laughter bubble up in the back of her throat. Her body rattles with manic energy, like she’s channeled an electric evocation through her.

Keep it together. Even as the thought crosses her mind, a sardonic chuckle slips through her teeth, followed by a wave of bile. As sweat breaks out across her brow, she rests against the porcelain. An uneasy quiet settles over Nadia’s apartment.

She doesn’t know how long she sits there, legs akimbo as she tries to recollect herself, only how badly her body aches when she drags herself to her feet once again.

The image in the mirror is a woman crazed, all unruly hair and flushed cheeks. “How close we came to ruining everything,” it tells her with a wide-eyed stare.

“It’s over with,” Nadia snarls under her breath.

She’s halfway to calm again when a flash of black catches her eye. She’s imagining it, she tells herself, even as she gives her reflection another look-over.

There, against her collarbone. The faintest touch whites her vision with pain, but she finally gets the collar of her shirt pulled away enough to inspect it better. A tangle of black veins surge across her chest, starting from the throbbing artery in her neck and spreading to the peaks of both breasts.

Nadia skitters away from the mirror, colliding with the back wall hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs.

You’ve had a long day. She takes a shallow inhale and finds her face in the mirror, looking just as frantic as she feels. It’s a stress-based hallucination. That’s all this is.

Still, she can’t get herself to approach the mirror again. Not at first.

When she again tugs at her collar, the black veins have disappeared. She trails a finger over where she knew them to be, but the pain has subsided as well. All of it, gone, as if it had never happened.