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“I can feel my soul rotting, you know.”
It was three in the morning when she finally spoke, the time of night when the world seems as though it’s been placed in suspended animation until the sun thaws it back out. The room was tarred and blackened by the absence of sun, and only the faintest traces of moonlight were poking through the blinds, tracing Dia’s nose and lips in a palid white.
I sighed, then turned over to face her. My hand made its way to hers, and grasped it gently. She hadn’t said a word to me since the party ended earlier that night.
“Is this about your birthday or the new year?”
Dia turned to me, and though I could barely make it out, there was a hint of annoyance in the creases of her eyes.
“Are they not one and the same?”
The question stumped me. I laid there a while, tracing circles into her hand with my thumb.
“I guess,” I finally replied. “But your birthday doesn’t have to be anything more than a birthday if you don’t want it to be. Same with the new year.”
“Well, then, it’s both,” she said. “Both.” She smacked her lips ever so subtly, as though she were testing the texture of the word. Both.
I furled my brows and reached to the cord on the lamp, blindly fumbling until I caught it in my grasp. I pulled down and it flickered briefly before consuming us in shades of warm, golden yellow. Dia’s eyes reflexively slammed shut, and I felt a bit bad about it. I couldn’t let this go unresolved, though. Every fight we’d ever had seemed to happen at eight in the morning after we’d gone to bed miserable the night before.
“Let’s talk. Come on, Dia.”
I pulled closer to her and tried to give her something approximating a cuddle, but with the way we were positioned I couldn’t find a place to put my arms, so the whole thing just looked a bit awkward and sad.
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
Dia can be… difficult, sometimes. Everyone who knows her knows it. Still, it never fails to get my blood boiling. It’s easy to hate the people who’ve hurt Dia. It’s harder to hate her for hurting herself. She tries letting people in, then closes back up as soon as she considers the risk of getting hurt. It’d been like that all our lives.
But I’m just as stubborn as she is when it comes down to it, so I try a different tack.
“This isn’t about the fireworks, is it?”
Dia finally looked me in the eyes, and I found myself lost in emerald. Then she laughed just a bit, and my heart became lighter.
“They were a bit much, don’t you think?”
She seemed happy for the change in subject, and happy for the kindness from a friend.
“I dunno, the diamonds were pretty cool. Mari told me she’d been shopping for this in the states like a fucking year ago. I didn’t think she’d actually go through with it.”
“Then you’ve forgotten what she’s like,” Dia replied. She curled into me with small, subtle movements, like she was afraid I’d notice and scold her. “It was nice. Ruby seemed to really enjoy the spectacle of it all.”
“Well, she’s Ruby. What about you?”
Dia smiled. Her eyes turned downward to the pillow.
“Yeah, I enjoyed it. Nice to know she’ll still do that for us, even after all this time.”
“Twenty years, coming up. Fucking crazy to think about.”
Silence.
“Yeah. It is.”
I squeezed her hand in lieu of saying anything. This happened most years. Not all, but it was becoming more frequent, like a heart pumping faster and faster as something unsettling looms closer.
I turned to her, stroke her cheek. Did all those little things I’d learned to do that made her feel like she had a home in my heart.
“You hanging in there, babe?”
She looked away, nodded. Neither of us spoke for a bit. I figured she’d say something when she had something worth saying.
Then, finally, her lips parted.
“Do you still have that flask in your nightstand?”
My face heated up.
“Ah. You, uh, know about that.”
Dia’s eyes glinted fey-like, then she laughed under her breath. She’d always hated having alcohol around the house, given my history before we got together. Maybe a six-pack of beer on my birthday or the holidays, but that was it.
“You can make it up to me by letting me have some.”
“Alright,” I said, not ready to defy her on this one if it meant I got off the hook. “It’s rye. You’re not gonna like it.”
“My father only drank rye,” she said confidently. About the closest she’d ever come to saying something positive about him, I thought. “I’m sure genetics will see me through.”
“Okay,” I replied. I’m sure she could tell how little I believed her, but I handed her the bottle. She unscrewed it, took a sniff. Her nose scrunched up. The corners of my chapped lips curled moonward.
Finally she took a swig, and I could see her struggle to choke the stuff down, but goddamn if she didn’t get it done. Her body convulsed, then settled down. I felt like I’d watched someone go through all five stages of grief in the span of a second or two, then remembered Dia telling me once that the five stage model was invented to describe the emotional response to someone’s own imminent death.
“So?” I asked, breath far from bated.
“It’s… potent.” She coughed. “It helps, though.”
“Good.”
I grabbed the bottle from her hand, then drank from it myself. She looked at me angrily, but the glare began to fade when I did that little lopsided smile I know drives her crazy.
“That’s it for the night. You already had two glasses of champagne.”
She pinched my cheek in that motherly way of hers that she never wants to acknowledge having before snatching the bottle back and putting it on her nightstand. It’s so her, and only really makes me happier I drank.
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t help it! That shit was, like, a zillion dollars. She told me the French ambassador gifted her the bottle.”
Dia blinked once, then twice.
“Good lord. I would’ve taken my time with it if I’d known.”
“It didn’t bother me. It’s all the same ABV at the end of the day.”
“Mari would kill you if she heard that,” Dia said with a warm laugh. “Still, it makes me miss our younger days, when we were content with so much less.”
“Yeah, I feel the same way sometimes.” I let out a sigh, and it dissipated into the air. “Still, I couldn’t call you my girlfriend back then. So things weren’t all better.”
Dia turned to me, her cheeks just barely tinged by a blush.
“You’re not getting more whiskey, Kanan.”
“Worth a shot.” I leaned in and gave her a quick peck.
“You know…” Dia pulled in close to me, wrapping a hand around my bicep. “Those years keep getting further and further away. Our birthdays are the only time we even see her anymore.”
“Yeah, adulthood’s a bitch like that.” I kept wondering what time it was, but I’d lost track by that point, too disinterested to look at my phone since it would’ve meant pulling away from Dia. So I just sat there and took in the cracks in the ceiling, deep as ever.
“We need to get a contractor in here,” Dia said after some time. Apparently, her line of sight had followed my own. “I wish we’d paid more attention to the structural integrity when we put down the mortgage.” I tensed.
“We don’t need someone,” I replied. “I can get the repairs started. Just gotta go to the hardware store.”
Dia frowned.
“If we could afford the supplies you would have already gone, Kanan.”
“Which means we can’t afford the contractor. So we’re back to where we started.”
The room filled with an uneasy, noxious silence. I couldn’t think of what to say. This had been a sore spot since the down payment went through last April, like a perpetually open wound that constantly needed new coats of rubbing alcohol.
“This is exactly what I mean, you know,” Dia said. Her head fell limp into the crook of my shoulder. “We have to worry about these things now. Money, repairs, all that. We didn’t always have to.”
“I hate to burst your bubble, Dia, but you didn’t always have to. This was my normal back then, with my granddad.”
“Ah.” The single syllable was tinged with a wounded kind of pride. Her parents had never approved of us, and the lack of support had weighed on her ever since. There was resentment in her voice, and guilt too. “I suppose you’re right.”
She tried to pull away as she spoke, but I used a free hand to gently grab her head and hold it in place.
“Hey, don’t you go bailing on me here. Just because you had money doesn’t mean your childhood didn’t fucking blow.”
The tension left Dia’s body, and I combed my nails through her hair, just a faint bit of pressure.
“Thanks,” she said. She grabbed the flask from the night stand and offered it to me. “There, you’ve earned it.”
I smiled, then pushed it back.
“Nah, I’m good. Wanna be present for you right now.”
“God, Kanan. Keep talking like that and I’m going to get turned on.”
“Now this is definitely starting to feel like a test,” I replied with a grin. Not that I wouldn’t have gone down on her then and there, but I’d apparently mustered something vaguely resembling self-control in the last couple minutes. My loss.
“Well, maybe that’s what I want for my birthday this year,” she cooed in a faux-sultry voice.
“Really? Because I’m pretty sure you asked me very specifically for a subscription to the Sunday Times and some new socks.” I paused for a minute. “Fuck. I just gave it away, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, but that’s okay,” Dia said with a laugh. “I’m just happy you remembered.”
Suddenly, the window behind Dia lit up a vibrant orange, haloing her slim body and the thin fabric draped across it so fucking perfectly. People were still setting off fireworks, I supposed, and I didn’t waste the opportunity. I leaned in and kissed her deeply, like if I didn’t the world would end and I’d be left all alone. Her lips pressed against mine, so thin yet perfectly soft.
I pulled away after a moment, and realized that her eyes were still closed, lips chasing mine. It took a second for her to realize, and she pulled back with a tinge of childlike embarrassment.
“I feel like you’re patronizing me a bit there,” I said, “but I’m going to focus on the part where you said you were happy. That’s good. I like making you happy.”
“You always do, you know.” She said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, but there was a hint of a waver in her confidence. “That’s been true since we were kids.”
“You know I try, Dia. Fuck, I try.” I sighed. “But sometimes I don’t know how. Especially this time of year.”
Now it was her turn to tense, and I could feel all her muscles contract like plates of armor. Still, I waited. Gave her a chance.
Finally, a sound. It came from her lips, sounding like the vestiges of a word she couldn’t bring herself to finish speaking. Then, a question.
“Doesn’t everything feel so long ago?”
I knew that feeling, yeah. I understood it in my heart, my soul, my bones. I didn’t respond, though. I let her wait. I’d known her long enough by now to tell when she needed time. So I squeezed her hand to tell her something like a ‘yeah, it does.’
“I… I often wonder where I’m going.” Her words were rigid, like they’d been rehearsed to death in the mirror during her hardest nights. “I keep getting older, but nothing gets better. That’s not how it’s supposed to work, Kanan.”
“Hey, we’ve got plenty,” I said. “We’re building a life here. That’s worth a lot.”
“It’s not about what we have or don’t have, Kanan. It’s… they said it was going to get easier. To exist.”
I wasn’t sure if she wanted me to ask, but I couldn’t help myself.
“Who?”
“Everyone.” Dia took a minute. “The adults. My aunts, uncles. My parents’ friends. They saw how miserable I was, back then. When I was a kid. I think they said it to assuage their own guilt.”
“They were just trying to do what they could, Dia.”
Dia pressed her palms to her forehead, the same way she would when she got migraines.
“I know. I know. But they didn’t know what they were talking about. It wasn’t their right to get my hopes up. Now I keep getting older and older, and each year this great, unfathomable abyss in my heart keeps getting bigger and bigger. I think it’s where most people put their happy childhoods, but I can’t figure out what to fill it with.”
She took a deep breath for the first time she started talking, then continued.
“So now when I get a year older I grow a bit more resentful, a bit more hollow, a bit more cold. I feel better when I’m with you, but then I leave for work, or I think about how happy our friends look, and I forget why I’m always trying so hard. It feels like I’ve been living someone else’s life, and all I can do is dream about the one I never got. So I don’t bother with living. I rot.”
She pulled tight to me.
“Loving you is the only thing I ever did for myself, you know. I even got some small amount of satisfaction when my parents punished me for it. We’re what makes me feel okay, when I can be.”
I didn’t say anything for a bit. A million different reassurances were caught in my throat, bunched up and tangled together. One slipped free, though, and came to my lips.
“I love you, Dia. More than any single fucking thing on the planet. You know that, right?”
“I forget, sometimes. Then I see you and I remember. That’s the best feeling in the world.”
“Atta girl.”
I wrapped my arms around her gently, like I’d snap a bone or break her heart if I wasn’t careful. She was so thin, something I used to mistake for frailty. But anyone who knows Dia understands how impossibly, incredibly strong she is. And I know her better than anyone else. I’m really proud to be able to say that. Always have been.
“It’s not fair to you, Kanan,” Dia said. “For me to be like this.”
“You know that’s bullshit, Dia. I don’t need to tell you that’s not true.”
“I know, but I still feel it. The guilt crushes me sometimes, knowing that you could’ve had someone who’s whole.”
I laugh, in awe of the sheer absurdity of what she’d just said.
“Dia, I don’t want someone who’s okay. I’d feel like such a fucking fraud around them, trying to keep myself together and fit into their easy little life. We’re broken, together. Isn’t that so much better than being broken alone?”
“Yeah,” Dia replied. “It really is.” Her voice was quiet. I wished I could see her face, to know if she was smiling or frowning or crying silently, but with the way she was laying on me, I couldn’t catch a glimpse.
“You said you didn’t know what all this is for, I said. “Honestly, I’m not that sure either sometimes. But I think we’re going to wake up one day and it’ll fall into place.”
Dia finally turned toward me, cheeks dry. Her eyes were wide, and I saw so much within them.
“Do you believe that?”
I laughed.
“Fuck no. But what else am I supposed to tell myself, you know? That this is as good as it gets? I might as well give up and rot away. So I tell myself that eventually the sun is gonna be a little brighter and the grass is gonna be a bit greener. We’ll be older and wiser, and even if we can’t be happy, we’ll at least be content. That’s how I talk myself into surviving. It’s all I can do.”
Dia smiled, though I wasn’t sure if it was sad or hopeful or some other unfathomable emotion. She could be like a book written in a foreign language sometimes, but it only made me love her more to know how much I still hadn’t uncovered.
“You know, every year I wish that the next one is going to be the one where I pull myself together. Maybe that’s part of why I get so bitter. I feel like the universe is making a fool of me, always reminding me of the name I can never live up to. I keep hoping for the exact thing you’re talking about, and I never get it no matter how hard I work for it. Then I see Mari’s latest Instagram story, and I’m reminded how easy it is for everyone else.”
“She struggles too, you know,” I said.
“Of course, but only when other people hurt her. Without anything holding her back, she’s an unstoppable force without an immovable object in sight.”
I knew immediately that she was right. I guess I just didn’t want to think about the gulf between us, and how wide it had grown with time.
“Shit, yeah. That’s true.” I turned to her and grinned lazily. “Guess we’re fucked, then.”
“Fucked together,” Dia replied. “Right now, in this moment, I couldn’t ask for it any other way.”
She squeezed my hand tight. I laughed, taken aback by a word as filthy as that falling off her lips.
“Listen, we’re gonna make things work, alright? It’s a new year, so we’ll start fresh. Find things worth doing, build something worth maintaining. Every year doesn’t have to be like the last one. Things might be different this time.”
Dia looked at me with a fire in her eyes, one I hadn’t seen in some time.
“You better promise, Kanan.”
I can’t say no to a pretty face these days. Been trying for years, ever since the three of us all met. Every stupid, hurtful decision I ever made came with a glare of disapproval from everyone’s favorite Stick In The Mud, trademark and all. So now I know better. I don’t even try saying no, because when Dia knows she’s got someone on her side, she can do anything. She thinks she’s different from Mari, but I don’t buy it. It’s a load of shit. Dia just has that little voice in her head telling her everything she can’t do.
So my job is to drown it out.
I grab her tight, pull her close to my chest. My lips touch hers and our arms wrap feverishly around each other. It’s a few minutes before I pull away, heart pounding heavy and feeling so fucking alive.
“I'll do my best, Dia. I’ve got you.”