Work Text:
The sound of her phone ringing woke Vanessa up.
She groggily raised her head from the pillow to glance at the clock.
4:45am
Seems about right.
Seems about the time he usually called.
She seeled herself for the inevitable slur in his words. The compliments that would wash over her body like honey, too sweet to clean the filth that he would later rush out between grunts.
She closed her eyes and tried to slow her heartbeat in time with her breaths. It didn’t work. The knowledge that he was calling. That he wanted her.
Now, he wanted her.
Not then, though. Not when they were together and happy, and things were working. He didn’t want her then because it was too easy. It made too much sense. Now he could call her at whatever time he wanted. He made the rules.
She doesn’t know how long she can keep doing this.
She prays, and she never really believed in God, but Lord, she prays, night after night that he won’t call. That this time, when he drinks too much and he is carried home by a friend, and he says nice things to her that she won’t go over to his place. With its hardwood floors and strange art pieces that she never gets to admire because it’s always dark when she leaves.
And Lord does she want to know what picture is hanging above his fireplace. But she’s not sure she does. Because what if it’s ugly. What if it’s a terribly ugly picture and he asks her what she thinks, and she lies about it?
She groaned at the incessant ringing.
She let it go on, telling herself that this time she would let it play out. Go to voicemail and then back to sleep.
It gets all the way to the last three rings when she picks up.
“Come over,” He says.
“It’s late,” She doesn’t mean.
“Come over,” He says again.
As she orders the Uber, she looks back through their recent messages. She usually looks through them when she’s drunk. They make her feel worse, so she’s not really sure why she does it.
That’s a lie. She does it because she knows it’s the closest she can ever seem to get to him. Through a screen.
Through an artificial portrayal of the person she knows he isn’t.
Though she isn’t sure.
Isn’t sure if the cool facade he puts on is really a facade or not. Because he was the one to throw his arm around her first. He leaned in first. He pulled her close and whispered sweet things in her ear till the sun came up.
She doesn’t know if the sweet, sensitive terrified boy she fell for is the same as the one posting thirst traps and pictures of someone who looks a lot like her, even though no one wants to say anything about it. Naomi and Kameron don’t bring it up backstage in Vegas. Asia, thank the Lord, keeps her mouth shut for once. Though Vanessa is pretty sure Kameron had something to do with it. She makes a mental note to thank her later.
She isn’t sure that this boy she’s so infatuated with even deserves it.
So maybe it’s self-destructive. But Vanessa has never been any good at coping.
So she climbs into the car when it arrives.
He greets her at the door, and before he can pull her into the bedroom, she stops him.
And looks at the painting above his fireplace.