Strapped Down (5 page)

Luckily
,
around that time I met Kristin, and something about her and I just clicked. I didn’t feel so alone anymore
.
I started laughing again. When she found out about my morbid
tendencies
, she didn’t treat me like a freak, while at the same time making it clear that she was not okay with my self-harm. When my mother decided to turn her life around, it created a crack in the wall of my self
-
loathing where I could break through. She started to smile again too. Slowly, over time, the need to cut was not so great and by the time I was a freshman in college, newly in love with an adorable, tall, lanky, amber-eyed boy, the urge had all but entirely disappeared. The stability was great, I felt so “normal,” and “adjusted,” but after so many years of stillness, I began to miss the rush of danger, the thrill and the pain of that first cut. It was right around that time that Taylor walked into my life and I could smell the danger on his skin. It smelled delicious.

After the call, I find myself with nothing to do. I could attempt some work, but am just too full of nervous energy to accomplish anything of significance yet too jittery to sit and watch TV. I wander around the house; strangely enough, there are some rooms I have yet to explore. During my tenure at Holden Industries, I never went into various rooms for professional reasons…well, except for that
one tim
e. After Taylor and I started our relationship, it just never happened. We were always together doing our thing and never really got around to the grand tour. I make my way upstairs, finally using the staircase to climb to the second level. First, I poke my head into a few bedrooms,
which are
decorated in a minimalist fashion. I smile to myself wondering why this extreme introvert would have so many guest bedrooms. I think of his subs and where they might have stayed. That hot and jealous sensation creeps up, but that only makes me think of it more.
Did he leave them upstairs here until he was ready to beckon them?
There is one very large bedroom with its own huge bathroom. I imagine this would be the preferred bedroom of a longterm guest such as a sub.
Ugh.

Eventually, I make my way to an office. It’s smaller than the one downstairs, but still bigger than the living room of my old apartment. The shelves are lined with books and photos. There is one photo
, tinted with age,
in a frame on the desk
.
A man and a blond woman, smiling, standing next to a beautiful dark-haired boy.
Oh my god, that’s Taylor!
It’s so hard to imagine the tall, brooding man I am completely enamored with
as
this little boy. And while he should be smiling, engulfed in the embrace of these people, he is off to the side, alone, not a speck of joy in his expression. His father, tall and strikingly handsome, tries to hold in a mischievous, crooked smile. Taylor’s right, he looks so much like his father, except his father’s brow is much darker, heavier. The platinum blond woman with bone-straight, shoulder-length hair must be his stepmother, based on what I know about his life and his age in the picture. She smiles, but it appears forced, as if some invisible force is tugging down at the sides of her mouth. A small hand peeks in from the corner of the picture, separated from its owner by the composition of the photo.
It must be Eric.
I wonder if he was left out of the photo entirely or cut out later by Taylor.

Gently, I return the frame to the desk and scan the bookcase. It is full of very old books, and I make a note to later ask Taylor if he collects them. Then my eye catches something out of place
.
T
he spine clearly does not belong to a book. I carefully glide it out of the bookshelf and see it’s a photo album. My heart skips with glee and curiosity. I am so hungry for knowledge about Taylor’s life and his family, I open it without hesitation. A photo slips out of the album and floats to the floor, landing face
-
down. I carefully pick it up, hoping not to bend it. When I flip it over, it feels as though someone has stuck their hand in my chest and clenched my heart.

A tall, thin blond girl with a bright, wide smile tucks her chin away from the camera. Her hair is long, nearly down to her lower back. Her golden waves are occasionally interspersed with light brown locks, and adorned with a single flower by her temple. She wears a loose-fitting white dress peppered with faded blue and pink flowers. Her bare feet bury into the grass. The bushes that surround her hold the same flower as the one she is wearing; the innocence of a girl picking a flower from a bush and placing it in her hair breaks my heart. I know what her future has in store, and from the hopeful look in her glimmering blue-green eyes, she has no idea.
Those eyes.
Sometimes I think they will be the death of me.

“What are you doing?”

I let out a loud yelp, still shaken up from yesterday’s events.

“Uh, I — I was just looking around.”

“Do you have any concept of privacy? You’re just snooping around?”

“I wasn’t snooping around.”

“Well, you could’ve fooled me.”

“I didn’t think there was a problem. I mean this was just sitting in a bookshelf, out in the open.”

“Those concepts are mutually exclusive, Shyla.”

“I wasn’t snooping, like looking for stuff, I was just curious about the parts of the house I hadn’t seen and then I came upon this office.”

“I doubt that.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You know exactly what it means.”

“No I don’t. Please don’t play games and tell me exactly what you are referring to.”

“You’re looking for the journal.”

Honestly, the thought had not crossed my mind, and I can’t believe how offended I am by the accusation even though it’s pretty logical. Sure, most women would be obsessed with finding the mysterious book of her boyfriend’s ex-lovers, but Taylor’s stalker brother, my new hobby as a detective of cult murders, and my new job have left little time for trying to find sex diaries. I guess it says a lot about my predicament that that task has fallen so low on my list of todos.

“Seriously? That’s what you think I was doing? After all of this, all that I am willing to go through, you think I am sneaking around behind your back?”
Oh no, here come the waterworks
. This is not the time to come at me with anything that might even remotely touch anything having to do with emotions. I am just a hot mess. “That is so fucked up, Taylor. I just wanted to find out more about you, learn about your family when I saw the photo on the desk and you think that I was looking for what? Incriminating material? You can be so hurtful sometimes. Why are you so protective of that journal? Are you hiding something?”

“No, I destroyed it. Not because I was hiding anything, but because I don’t want to hold onto it. I thought it was a way to protect myself, but it was just another burden, having that thing around.”

“Well I guess I’ll have to take your word for it. But what about the other way around? You have to do the same for me,” I say, clearly heartbroken by his tone.

Taylor watches me hold back tears in silence, seemingly dumbfounded by my emotional reaction. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. You did snoop around once before, remember? It’s not like I just pulled this out of my ass.”

“I’m sorry I did it that one time. It’s not like me, I just had a hunch and I had to know. I’m sorry, okay?” He grabs my arm and pulls me close to him. He hasn’t showered yet, but I find his natural scent intoxicating. “You smell yummy.”

Taylor laughs. “Really? I just worked out.”

“I know, that’s why you smell so yummy.”

“Am I gonna find you sniffing out my shoes or something? Do you have some sort of odor fetish?”

“Oh you should talk, Mr. Dom!”

Taylor lets out a faint smile and sighs. “I didn’t mean to snap at you, I’m just stressed, and I know you are too, so it’s not okay for me to take it out on you. I’m not used to living with someone all the time, even as much as I love having you around, I am not used to navigating what that’s like.”

“I know,” I say tenderly.

“Why are you smiling?”

“Nothing, it’s silly.”

“No, tell me.”

“When you were a kid, did you ever watch Beauty and the Beast?”

“No, I was too busy being a badass.”

“Oh, nevermind.”

“I’m joking!”

“Oh, god, I can never tell with you! Well, you remember that scene when the Beast finds Belle in the west wing?”

“Oh christ, so now I’m the Beast?”

I start to laugh uncontrollably. “Nevermind…that’s why I didn’t want to mention it. You’re way too hot anyways.”

Taylor looks down at me warmly. “You know, if you want me to show you stuff, you can just ask.”

“Well, I know how you hate to talk about things from the past. Plus, I never took you as someone to have pictures around.”

“You’re right, but you can still ask me.” He steps away for a second and then leads me by my hand to a large leather chair, pulling me onto this lap. “Did you look through the album?”

“No, I just pulled it out when you came in.”

Taylor’s eyes glance over to the single picture I hold in my hand. “So you found her?”

“Yes. Sorry to bring her up. She just slipped out of the album.”

“No, it’s okay. I’ve seen that picture for years. It was the one my dad kept in my room growing up.”

“She was beautiful.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know when this picture was from?”

“No, I never asked.”

“You have her eyes.”

“I know.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Well
,
I guess I have no choice
,
now that I said it was okay to ask me anything.”

“Why did you keep the photo all these years? I mean you say you hate her, that you want nothing to do with her, but you held onto this.”

Taylor rests his face on the back of my shoulder
and
sighs.

“You know, I never thought about it. I guess it does seem odd that I would keep it.”

“Well
,
any boy would want to keep the last memory of his mom alive. But the way you speak about her is what makes me surprised that you kept it.”

Taylor sighs again. “You know when I was in the hospital today, I remembered something that I hadn’t thought about in a long time. Something I never told anyone.”

I turn to face him, bringing my feet up in the large chair as he cradles me in his arms. “What was it?”

“The person who discovered me after the suicides was a woman. I don’t remember much about her, besides that she was a friend of my mom. I remember she was familiar, someone I trusted at the time. The room was really dark because they had drawn all the shades and so I had been in the dark without light for days.”

“Oh my god.”

“When she opened the door, my eyes were so sensitive to the light and she was engulfed in it. At first, I thought that I had died and she was an angel. She was beautiful, she had long dark brown hair.” He slides a tendril of my hair between his fingers. “She started to cough, I presume because of the smell. And she kept mumbling something over and over. I think she was panicking, calling out names of people she knew. She was definitely crying.”

“I can’t even imagine.”

“I started to cry out, but I was so weak, I could barely make a sound.” Taylor’s eyes look out into the distance, as if he can see the scene replaying in front of us. “Then she spotted me and ran over. I remember her tripping over the bodies, then she started to crawl towards me. She scooped me up and I hugged her so hard. I mean a tornado could have ripped through that building and I would have never let her go.” I try so hard to hold back the emotion, but a single tear drops down my cheek. Then another. Taylor snaps out of his trance for a second and notices the second tear. He wipes it off of my face and pushes some hair behind my ear.

“So what happened next?” I ask.

“Well, it’s kind of blurry, but the next thing I remember is being in the hospital, which is why I fucking hate them, not just because of all of the people. I didn’t want to let this woman go, she was the only person I knew, everyone else was strange. I had spent my entire life up until that point at the commune. I didn’t know what hospitals were, or the police, I didn’t know these people were there to help me. So many adults had hurt me up until that point. Eventually, they had to pull me away from her and I screamed, I bit, I kicked, I cried. She cried. It took several people. All these strangers, putting their hands all over me, ripping me from her arms.” He stops.

“That must have been really hard and scary for you.” The act of speaking distracts me from holding back my tears and they begin to drip down steadily. He simply nods. We are silent for a few moments, and I lay my head on his shoulder.

“She held me the entire time, until my dad showed up, which is when they ripped me away. He left for the first flight out to get me as soon as he found out. Before I was to leave with him, they gave her one last opportunity to speak with me. So this woman crouched in front of me, as I sat there with my head down, and she whispered to me. ‘Taylor, I may never see you again, but it is important you never forget this. Your mother loved you very much. People may try to make you think otherwise, but I know she did. Don’t let yourself forget that.’ Then she kissed me on the forehead and left. My dad took me immediately after. She was the last person who I ever let hug me, until I met you.”