Page 80 of XX Love Affair
“When we would get tired of sleeping with each other. I’m familiar with that as well.”
“Do you think it would have been mutual?” Delia asked. “That you would have been tired of being with me? Or do you think it’s me who would have ended it?”
How dare she cut right into it. Helena chewed on her thoughts while turning her head toward the refrigerator. Unlike many of the other homes of the rich she had been in that past year, this fridge sported personalization. Delia kept a “to-do” list that mostly amounted to groceries that required ordering and chores she did herself in between visits from cleaning crews and maintenance people. There were inspirational and travel souvenir magnets from places she had visited around the world. A birthday card from her friend Tiffani. She even had an old invitation to one of Mira and Blair’s free performances at The Dark Hour.
“I don’t think we would have lasted, no,” Helena finally admitted, “but a part of me hoped we would. I like the idea of having someone consistent in my life. Someone who isn’t…” She didn’t want to say like Irene, but that was where her mind went, and she hated herself for it.
She was supposed to be moving on. She had gotten rid of most of Irene’s gifts. She had even burned Mr. Smith’s letter. Because of Delia…
Helena had an awful realization as she witnessed the upset countenance sitting across from her. Delia wasn’t only angry about what this could possibly mean for her image, or that she could no longer take someone like Helena to bed. She was hurt. Crushed.
“Were we falling in love?” Helena asked.
Delia jerked back from the counter. Had she been sitting on a stool like Helena, she would have crashed to the floor and hurt herself. Instead, she wavered on her feet, still tipsy from the drinks at the club and the shot to settle her nerves. More like the opposite effect. Delia would be lucky to make it to bed without falling over if she kept drinking like this tonight. A part of Helena didn’t want to care. Another part was worried about the woman currently dumping her.
“I don’t know,” Delia blurted. “Definitely not now.”
“Because I’m only nineteen?”
“Because you lied. About something really, real…” Delia steadied herself with a shake of the head and by gripping the corner of the counter. “Important.”
“Would you have been open to falling in love with me?”
Delia curled her arms on the counter and put down her head. “I can’t think about this right now.”
Neither could Helena, who didn’t know what would become of her immediate future. She sure as hell wasn’t curling up in bed with Delia, who soon slinked off to her room with her invisible tail tucked between her legs. With nowhere else to go, Helena changed into her pajamas and sat on the couch in the living room, the TV on but her eyes glued to her phone.
She was so close to texting her mother. But what would she say to her? “Help me, Mommy, I’m in trouble.” It made her cringe to think about, let alone actually do it.
She looked at another name instead. One that she hated was hidden deep in her contacts lists and even had a recent message.
Helena slumped over on the couch, burying her head beneath one of the throw pillows and wishing she could disappear. She didn’t know where to. She only wanted to be far, far away from New England and the mistakes she had made in her one year on the run.
The Helena of a few months ago would have booked the first flight to Vegas and made a fool of herself the moment she landed in Sin City. She would have cast aside her memories of – and feelings for – Delia without a second thought. What memories? What feelings? By the end of the weekend, Helena would be attached to someone else, someone new, someone who didn’t give a fuck about her or the body she inhabited.
She would tell herself that was what she wanted. To be forgettable. To live in the moment as it blew up in her face right now.
But the Helena of now, of this summer of her nineteenth year on Earth, merely got on a plane bound for Seattle and waited for her mother to pick her up at SeaTac airport. They said nothing as Helena stared out the window, her new luggage taking up room in the backseat and the trunk. Her mother likewise said nothing until they were home, where Helena was instructed to start going through her things before heading off to college.
For the first time in years, she had no desire to run off and get into trouble. She didn’t touch a dating app on her phone. Nor did she spend her nights dreaming of being somewhere else, with someone else.
It got to the point that she had to get the hell out of her parents’ house.
“I’m staying with a friend for a couple of weeks,” she announced to her mother while a suitcase rolled behind her. “Here in Olympia. I won’t be far. I’ll still come by and keep going through my stuff, but you don’t have to worry about me.”
Her mother said nothing, but the look on her face screamed, “I always worry about you.”
That was why Helena couldn’t stay there. If it weren’t her father’s invasive questions – “Where have you been? Who have you been with? You’re in trouble, aren’t you? You’re always in trouble.” – it was her mother’s awkward pity that ate away at Helena’s soul. She’d rather stay with someone who respected her as an adult but didn’t have that history with her. Not the one from before she came to Olympia.
“You’re actually doing me a big favor.” Brynn Morgan had instantly responded to Helena’s text when she finally asked for help. “Keep me out of trouble. Give me some structure. I’ve been through… a thing. I’m embarrassed.” “Don’t have to cajole one of the neighbors to check on the house while I’m away this week. You know how to use a garden hose, right?”
Helena stayed in her old coach’s house in exchange for watering the plants and keeping the house lived in. While Coach Morgan’s neighborhood was far from the grungiest in the home state of grunge, she felt better going away for a summer vacay with her younger girlfriend if someone was there to watch the house. Despite the history between them, Coach Morgan trusted Helena to not make a mess or steal anything.
During the day, Helena did the chores before heading over to her parents’ house to go through some of her things. Bit by bit, she amassed bags full of crap to donate or throw away. The more she shoveled away her childhood, which had already been pared down after moving so many times as a kid, the more she was prepared to move into a dorm she’d share with a total stranger who may – or may not – try to be her friend. Odds were Helena would freeze her out and focus on her classes and soccer practice during the week while playing games on the weekend and partying like a wild child in the frats.
I mean, probably. She had long accepted that would be her outlet in between classes she had no interest in and soccer games that meant nothing to her. But maybe, as her mother quipped quite unexpectedly one day, she might meet a nice boy or girl who kept her occupied for a few months. Someone to bring home for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Helena never told her mother about Delia. There was no point, assuming she didn’t want to hurt her mother any more than she had been by her daughter’s wild and unrelatable behavior. Helena barely told anyone, except for Coach Morgan, who was the only one who would listen and not immediately judge her. If she did, she kept it to herself.