It. Is. Driving. Me. Mad.
I can’t sleep or work or function.
To make it stop, I’ve brought Portia Sinclair up to my room.
I know Amy is sat in her room, lost and alone. I know she heard us raising a ruckus up the stairs.
I know I’m a fucking arsehole who deserves to die.
This is me trying to put things back the way they were before.
Portia thinks I’ve got it rock-hard for her because I inked her forearm with my words tonight, my poetry. Portia wanted a tacky rose. Cliché and drab ain’t my thing. I gave her real art. Something real. I inked her with words I wrote while thinking of Amy.
‘Forever you will burn with me’.
Inking Portia didn’t rid this bitter sting in my soul. Instead, it’s made everything a little more darker.
In the bathroom, Portia is humming. Some fuckwit mainstream pop tune. I hate it. I hate dull.
I fucking hate me.
Amy isn’t dull. Amy is all the colours in the rainbow. Amy makes me feel like a man on fire.
Hell, when did this happen? It’s like finding a deep cut on your body with no memory of it happening. I need my head examined. I think of the time I went skateboarding by the docks and cracked my skull.
I rub the back of my neck. It’s too hot in the room to breathe. The sky is yellow and smells of sulphur. I hear the squeaking of the shower knobs. The pipes in the walls groan and stutter like a train is passing. I ball up my hands and flex them tight, knuckles popping. The bathroom door opens. Portia steps out, wreathed in ghosts of steam.
I brought Portia here to take back what Amy stole from me.
My dead heart.
I’m not for her.
Portia puts her hands on her hips and cocks them this way, then that. With her finger, she wipes away a smear of red lipstick from the corner of her mouth.
‘Let’s go into your bedroom,’ she says.
‘No.’
My bedroom is off limits.
‘Fine. Turn the lights on, babe,’ she says.
I click the lamp by the sofa. Piss-yellow light illuminates the room. A fly lies half-dead in the middle of my rug.
Portia says, ‘What do you want me to be? Do you want me to be that girl I saw you with? The one wearing your jacket. The one you used. You know, to make me jealous? Princess dresses and cardigans, it’s not my style but whatever.’
‘No,’ I grumble.
I’ve been drinking all night and I’m way off my rocker. The reason why I don’t fucking remember mentioning Amy to Portia.
‘Oh, I get it. Do you want to punish me? Do you want a bad, bad girl?’
She is the furthest I can get from Amy. That’s what I want.
I look at Portia in all her tacky underwear and I feel nothing. Not even disgust. I’m numb to all of her.
All I feel is Amy.
Amy. Fucking, Amy.
Amy is like goddamn Goldilocks. The girl who trespassed into my everything. Took over everything, consumed everything I own. The girl who stole my mind, my soul, and my heart — if I ever fucking had one.
The only girl who could bring the King of Rats crashing to his knees.
When you’re an addict, like me, addicted to lying, you can go without feeling anything except power or exploitation or the feeling of getting off on the high on manipulating people to your whim. Until Amy came along. She puts me on trial against all the lies I’ve told. I’m the hangman and the rope is in her hands.
I glance down at the decaying fly again.
Just what’re you trying to prove here, Shepherd?
That I’m an unfeeling jerk. That I really don’t care.
I look at Portia.
What would a monster DO?
The fuck you doing, Shepherd?
I can feel something odd warp inside my guts. Cracking, and crinkling, and seeping into my chest. Like the ice around my frozen heart is thawing, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it.
Portia’s breath is hot on my face. Her fingers clutch into my shirt, twisting it in a way that makes me angry. It isn’t hers to touch! I grab her wrist and feel the bones in her hand creak under my grip.
‘This ain’t happening,’ I rasp and whirl up from the sofa like a hurricane. ‘It was a mistake bringing you here.’
There’s only one girl I want touching me. But she’s living in the Land of Nowhere. A place with magical rainbows and unicorns and shit — that don’t fucking exist.
My cold hard reality is existing in Hell, with a girl who makes my dick limp.
Portia reminds me of an ice queen with her smirk. ‘You brought me to this madhouse for a reason, Shepherd.’
I’ll never sleep with another girl — goddamn never. That’s a promise I’ll take to the grave.
‘It means nothing. Just means I’m tanked up and nothing else.’
Her smirk dies. She laughs viciously. ‘It’s that virgin Mary, isn’t it?’
‘What? No,’ I spit.
‘Then what? Are you gay?’
‘Yeah, I’m gay.’
I don’t care if this girl, or every girl in the damn world believes I bat for the other team. They can never give me what I want. Need. Desire. Burn for.
Just Amy.
I ask Portia, ‘Got Henry’s number for me?’
I laugh.
Portia doesn’t.
I tell her to get dressed in the bathroom while I call her a taxi.
‘You’ll come back running, Shepherd. Men like you aren’t meant for girls like her,’ she says, then storms out.
I decide I am truly away with the twisted. Because
