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When he staggers inside and plasters himself on her lips, reeking of sour sweat and clearly operating on a mixture of who the fuck knows how many prescription drugs, Cherie decides she has no idea why she keeps doing this.
Okay, that’s a lie. She knows precisely why. What she doesn’t understand is why she can’t just stop.
It’s not like Serge is her only option when it comes to getting quality dick; an entire week has passed but she still finds herself marvelling over what a single metalhead can do with his hands, even though he does lean a bit too daddy dom for her taste. And no one could accuse Cherie of spending her days in a lovelorn haze, glued to her phone and praying it lights up with a booty call.
Shit, if anyone could remind her of the last time she as much as thought of Serge without getting seized by one bitch of an irritation fit, that’d be a bottle of Chivas Regal on her and one hell of a night.
In fact, as often as not she doesn’t want him around, even while she’s asking when he’s dropping by.
And yet she does. She asks and threatens and opens the door and lets him into her bed for a bout of stinky sex that leaves her feeling empty and no less irritated than when he turned up.
As he blurts out his latest fuck-up into her sheets, a clueless virgin mourning a bond lost, she grits her teeth and plays the therapist, supressing the need to snark at him that maybe you forgot about some other bond you might want to fucking mourn, pumpkin?
It didn’t used to be like this. There used to be times when she could talk to him, when the taunts and jabs didn’t hide a silent reproach, when the two didn’t communicate in a language of resentment and neediness, a careful tango of push and pull once the pushing put them on the way towards a conclusion she wasn’t yet ready to accept.
Once, they were a beating heart, a single creature with six legs, nestled in the one warm safe corner of this cold screwed-up city. They knew each other, in every way there is to know a person, understood one another, on a level that’d be impossible for most people to comprehend, let alone experience.
One living organism, thrumming with life, being.
And then Serge took a big steaming dump all over it.
And as much as Cherie tries, as often as she reminds herself of his reasons, she’s never entirely forgiven him for it. She’s never managed to forgive him for making her doubt if what she considered to be her family was ever real, making her wonder if she was too starved for belonging to notice Serge may have viewed them as little more than a convenient lay.
She can’t forgive him for slinking away in tears, honoring her wish to grieve alone when she yelled it at him, setting a new dynamic for then and now.
She misses him the second the door slams shut behind him, and her stomach clenches at the thought of how much humiliation and aloof prodding awaits her before he shows up again.
It’s so exhausting, this battle of needs, this wish to hold on as tight as she can and kick him in the ass, to keep them on life support and cut the cord.
To remind him she exists and forget that he does.
They’re out of balance, a carousel with a jammed axle, a juggler with broken hands, a pair of fish circling the drain, looking for something, something, anything, dammit.
Cherie knows what that something is. His name was Jay and he died five years ago, alone in a puddle of vomit.
And she wonders. Oh boy, does she fucking wonder; after all, the church pew is hard on her ass and Cherie’s never been the praying type so there’s little else to do but obsess over missing pieces while she waits for Kimiko.
Smirking at the crucifix behind the altar, it brings her no small pleasure to imagine the squeaky fart of shock big ol’ JC must be having in his diaper when he sees the direction of her thoughts.
Honey, even you have admit that between the doe-eyed innocence and feral killer, there’s no way the girl isn’t a freak between the sheets.
It’s an exercise in bullshit, of course, born out of frustration and boredom. The problem Cherie and Serge are battling doesn’t lie in a lacking thruple, and throwing another person into the mix would help precisely fuck all. No. The problem lies in a lack of reasons to keep looking past the expiration date on what can ludicrously be called their relationship.
Still, she has to concede there might be a connection between the girl’s sudden appearance in their lives and the fact that her own simmering anger at Serge is about to reach a fucking boil.
All evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, Cherie’s not the possessive type. The deal with their old family wasn’t that they get to fuck their brand onto one another, closing themselves off to other people, other bonds. No. What drives Cherie up the wall isn’t that Serge found someone new. It’s that she might be starting to figure out what this thing between him and Kimiko is, the thing which makes them gravitate towards one another across the room without either of them noticing.
Because it’s not lust, not yet at least. While Serge might be in a hilariously gentleman-like denial about the nature of his feelings—seriously, who tries to console a person they’re not attracted to by making out with them, the patron saint of detachment?—the soft melting his face does whenever Kimiko appears isn’t the expression of a man ready to dick down. And the two aren’t in love either, if only because to love someone, you first have to know them and Cherie’s pretty sure you can’t get there with a few wide-eyed looks and a metric fuck-ton of assumptions.
No. This is Serge staring into the void of his pain and throwing the still attached tatters of his bond into the bottomless pit, hoping that the helpless child he created in his head, the perfect counterpart he gets to save and redeem and cherish, catches these jagged tendrils and cradles them in her palm, effortlessly understanding him on a level which’d be impossible for most people to comprehend.
And on one hand, Cherie feels like jumping for joy because finally, finally, a clear sign that she isn’t insane, that their loss was real and he suffers from it as well. But on the other, she’s this close to grabbing him by the ears and screaming some sense into them because for fuck’s sake, it gnaws on you too, it eats you up alive too, and yet this is what you choose to do with it? This sexless master class in projection, this puppy-eyed devotion that’s tethered to nothing but air? You shut me out for an illusion?
Because she doesn’t mind Serge fucking Kimiko. Shit, she doesn’t mind him loving her.
What she minds is seeing his life shrink to include little more but his idea of her.
What she minds is being cut off, without Serge having the decency to at least sweeten the boot with some cab money and a lame offer at friendship.
What she minds is him shitting on what they used to have.
Outright implying it wasn’t special.
Because it was, asshole, she almost shouts when his head pops into view. It was and fuck you for ever making us think otherwise.
And so when he gets a taste of his own medicine, experiences just a small portion of the exclusion and abandonment she’s been living with for the past five years, Cherie can’t help but feel a tiny dose of satisfaction.
Yeah, pumpkin. This is what it feels like. Lap it the fuck up.
But then the two dart off in separate directions, having each taken a big steaming dump all over the other’s illusion, and Cherie’s left alone, staring into the bustling street and no less irritated or lonely than she was a minute ago.
Because just as Serge can’t fill the hole with delusions and fantasies, she can’t forever hide behind sharp smiles and not-giving-a-shits.
So she takes out her phone, brings up the message app, and regards the screen for a good while, mind buzzing with the many things she should be saying to him.
Cant do this anymore.
Need 2 talk.
Miss him too.
Instead, her fingers fly across the keyboard, dripping smirk, the mask safely reapplied.
Wanna come by? xo
Her thumb hovers above the send button and Cherie stares at the text, hating it and everything it represents.
Deleting the message, she jams the phone into the pocket of her leather jacket and sets off down the street, the sounds and smells of New York drowning out the need for a little while longer.
She can always succumb to it later.