You Lift My Feet Off The Ground
TAYLOR
Calvin's face is red with anger and I know what that means. It means pretty soon my face will be red too, but for other reasons.
"You fucking whore." His voice is low and cold, and for some reason that makes me wish he were yelling instead. I feel dizzy.
"He's here, isn't he? I saw his car in the street, you slut."
A hard ball forms in the base of my throat, and when I swallow it down it feels as if I'm choking. Every part of me tightens and folds in on itself. A deep coldness spreads throughout my body.
"Don't fucking answer me then, you fucking bitch. I was gone for half and hour and you've already called him over here to beg him to screw you like the whore you are."
I can feel tears bubbling behind by eyes, and something sharp clawing at my chest. I slowly shake my head, trying my hardest to smother the fear burning in my stomach.
"Yes you were. Don't lie to me." He still doesn't yell and I've never seen this Calvin before. His rage has turned into cunning, and his fiery eyes into something cold and stormy. I am much more afraid of this Calvin.
It's not until I'm pressed up against a wall and his hand is closing around my throat that I realise why. He's not just punishing me this time. He means to end it.
My hands fly up to meet his which are clenching tighter and tighter and tighter until little black dots dance in my vision and a feeling I've never felt before, an electric, suffocating feeling shoots up my spine telling me to run run run and to hide hide hide and to kick him and push him off and pull his hands away and scream for Travis and most of all to breathe breathe breathe BREATHE BREATHE BREATHE oh god I need to breathe I can't think I can't see my legs are kicking out around me and kicking at whatever they can find and am I crying? I must be I can taste the tears as they drip into my open mouth my open mouth that is searching for air oh god am I dying is the last thing I will see going to be Calvin's red face and stormy eye's why couldn't it be the magical crinkly ones I can't breathe everything is fading but my legs are still kicking and they hit a chair and it falls to the ground and Calvin is saying something but I can't hear him because his hands are somehow tighter and the world is somehow darker because all the colour is fading and now there is only blackness and I can't see anymore.
TRAVIS
My ear is pressed against the door so hard that it aches, but I can't hear much. It sounds like they're talking but Calvin isn't yelling so I relax a little. Not enough for the knot in my chest to unravel, or the thumping in my skull to cease, but enough for my shoulders to drop and my mind to clear.
I'm picking at the skin around my fingers in a way I've noticed Taylor doing before when I hear it. A crash. My blood turns icy cold and I throw open the door, sprinting down the hall. I don't care if Taylor hates me, I don't care if she told me to hide.
I fling myself around the corner and race down the stairs and then I can see them and he can see me and his eyes are wild and red and she's crumpled on the floor like paper because he dropped her. He runs for the door and I am faced with the decision: run after him and make him pay for all the pain he caused or pick up the broken little girl on the ground and hold her until the colour returns to her face. The options bounce back and forth in my head, which is pounding harder than ever before. Calvin or Taylor? Taylor or Calvin?
But there's only one answer to that question, and so I rush down to her side because it's always been her and it will always be her.
Taylor.
Her eyes flutter open and I softly run my fingers over the angry red marks wrapped around her neck. With each touch my heart crumbles just the little bit more, leaving it a crumpled heap similar to the girl I'm holding in my arms.
"Taylor?" I ask, except my voice sounds strange and not like me at all. It's almost as if I'm watching this happen, watching my hands stroke her face and wiping away her tears, when in reality my mind is very far away, in a place where there is only warmth and sunlight and thick blonde hair and soft pale skin without a bruise in sight.
"I think it's time to go," my body says, my mind watching from afar. I feel the weight of those words, because I don't just mean she should leave this house, I mean leave Calvin and leave the scars and blood and tears and half-eaten dinners.
She slowly nods and I know she can feel the weight of it too. "Taylor," I start, and her eyes flick up to me. "I will never hurt you, okay?" She closes her eyes for a second, but then nods again. I place my palm on the small of her back, and when she doesn't protest I wrap my arm around her and pick her up. She stays quiet and still, and I wonder if that's how she spent the majority of the last two years. Quiet and still.
She lets me carry her to my car, which is down the street. I hope like hell no paparazzi are hiding in the bushes, their camera's perched in their hands like rifles. No, camera flashes and screaming photographers would not help the quiet, still girl I'm clutching in my arms.
I nudge my car door open and place her inside, wondering if I should plug in her seatbelt or if she can do it herself. I'm still wondering this as I walk to the drivers side of the car, and once I get there I see she has already done it. I sit in front of the steering wheel and try not to look at the deep blue bags under her eyes. She looks as if she's aged 20 years in 20 minutes.
The sky is dark now and stars hand in the sky like dots in the vision of a strangled, dying girl. I push this thought away as I start up the car.
It takes about 15 minutes for Taylor to fully come to her senses, and when she does she looks around the car with what I realise is curiosity, not fear. A sense of warmth bubbles in my chest and spreads up my neck. She meets my eyes in the rearview mirror and the warmth dissipates. Her eyes are hollow and haunted, like blue bruises on pale skin and puddles of tears on wooden floors. I offer her a soft smile, although there is no part of me that is happy. It is all darkness and it is all emptiness and there is no window I can open to let the light in. This is one of those moments where I am not controlling my body, and watching from afar.
"Are you hungry?" I ask, my voice low and scratchy.
She looks like she's about to shake her head, then pauses. She slowly nods. This suprises me, but not like the surprise I felt when I saw Calvin's hands around her neck. This is surprise like my six year old self finding that Santa ate the cookies I left out for him on Christmas morning.
"What do you want?" She stares at me blankly. "I'll get you anything you want. Anything in the world." I say, and it's true. Anything.
My stomach twists because she looks up at me with the saddest, bluest, most beautifully tragic eyes that I have ever seen. It's with a small voice and a tentative tightening of her eyebrows that she says "a cheeseburger."
My heart shatters and the shards pierce at my chest and my lungs and my throat and I think I might be dying. She looks so small and so innocent but this women has been through hell and back again and again and again. She has seen bad men with bad habits and bad manners and all she really wants is a cheeseburger.
And so of course we make a stop to McDonalds on the way home. I hand her the box with her burger in it and she slowly takes it out and cradles it in her hands like it's something really good, but really bad at the same time. Like a stoner holding heroin.
At first her bites are slow, and I have to force my eyes on the road and away from the sad, broken girl in the back seat. But then she takes bigger bites and the burger is gone in record time. This makes me smile and I offer her my fries. She takes them and eats them too. My smile widens.
She takes a sip of her drink and opens her mouth, but the words tumble out in a jumble and I have to take a second to figure out what she means. It's as if she's been keeping these words bottled somewhere for a very long time, and now that she's released them, they're racing to be the first one to cross her tongue.
"I haven't had a cheeseburger in a very long time."
I look at her, but her face is blank.
"Was it good?" I ask, and a small smile tugs at the corners of her lips.
"The best thing I've ever eaten.
The drive home is long and quiet, but a comfortable silence. Once we get to my house the streets are empty and I get out of the car and move towards her door. I open it and hold out my hand, but I'm offering her much, much more than just help up.
TAYLOR
He says he won't hurt me and has done nothing to make me doubt that. But then again I believed Joe when he told me that I was the only girl, and Jake when he said he would be at my 21st birthday, and John when he said our age difference wouldn't matter because I was so mature. I've learnt over the years that men lie and they lie and they lie and it drips from their lips like blood and they keep doing it and I keep believing them, just like I believed Calvin every time he said he was sorry, and every time he said it would never happen again.
It always happened again and I always kept believing.
I look over at the man beside me who is gentle and good and true and I know in my heart that he would never do the things that Calvin did. And so I place my hand in his, which is warm and soft, and I know that it's not just my fingers he's clasping in his palm, but my heart and my soul and every part of me that is pure and whole and fragile.
I think he knows this too, because he gives my hand a soft squeeze and leads me down the hall and into the guest room, which smells clean and sharp like him. But not sharp like the narrowing of Calvin's eyes and the smell of blood dripping into my nose. Sharp like the tip of my pencil pressed against a page as I let the words tumble out of my head. Sharp like the burn of a warm bath after a cold swim.
I let this smell consume me as he tucks me in like I'm just a child. My eyelids droop and then there is nothing but darkness and the sound of Travis gently closing my door and padding down the hall. My stomach feels full and heavy in a way that it hasn't in a while. I let that heaviness pull me under until there is no sharpness and no soft steps down the hall and not even any darkness. There is only nothing, and it is amongst this nothing that I enter a deep sleep, unlike any that I've had in a long, long time.