Stomach of the Ventriloquist

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Haven: noun. Oasis. A shelter serving as a place of safety or sanctuary.

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ADAM DESROCHES was, and I'm sure still is, a beautiful person; one of his only flaws was falling for me.
We met in the eighth grade at the approximate age of thirteen. This was a time of self-discovery: hormones kicked in and we all found out that there was greater pleasure in the world than just hop-scotch, perfected paper air planes and first-person shooter games. We were young, imploring and not to mention, exploring – on the verge of losing our innocence, some within the next few years.
He was brand spankin' new in town and had this rugged look about him. All the boys in my class I'd already sifted through and thrown away; they were puny, endomorphic little things, most of them shorter than me. They were pathetic and did not know how to treat a girl with mild class. I had wanted a man and no boy could satisfy that deep, ruttish desire living in my bones.
None of the other little underdeveloped girls had taken any significant fancy to Adam because although he was quite tall and sinewy, a real football player even back in that day, he had had surgery done on his mouth and nose when he was smaller, probably just a child. His left nostril sunk into his lips a little as he was born with a cleft lip and palate, but the surgery made it hardly visible and the only evidence of the gap ever being there was a small pale scar running up his nostril. I had thought it was sexy, and damn, I still do. Everything about him was almost pornographic.
Adam had dark, fluffy hair, always cut just right so it wouldn't annoy him in his football helmet because his mom was a hairdresser. His eyes were hazel and continuously reminded me of caramel candy drops. His skin tanned easily and he loved the sun. Adam liked being hot and he was good at it, too. He had a lovely, poised, delicate nose and a round chin that fit perfectly in my hands. His ears were, naturally, perfect as well.
He called me “Lye” short for Delilah, but he and I both knew that it was fitting in more than just one way. You know those people who make you want to smile, automatically, no matter what your previous mood or attitude? That was Adam. He had this air of an archangel. If I believed in God, I'd say He sent me the greatest endowment in this whole galaxy of stars and empty space. He gave me a piece of Eden.
Adam fell in love with a lot of things – animals, people, and even inanimate things like pretty trees to sit against or comfortable chairs or Polaroid photos just to look at. He was a child inside and probably always would be. He was sickly smeared in innocence that it made me feel perverse to think sexual things about him.
Adam had to be one of the only people to ever monumentally care for, or even be able to deal with, me. To this day it still triggers a series of contusions blotting my heart like a Rorschach painting, to think that he wasted so much time and love on a girl like me. On a thing like me.
It was surprising, that he didn't care that I was a malevolent bitch. Part of me wanted to believe that Adam could see right through me and loved me for just who I was – then I realized “who I was” wasn't all that great anyway. I wasn't anything special to fall in love with. Yet, somehow, Adam understood or could at least grasp at the concept that I was horrible for a reason: he just didn't know that reason and, well, neither did I.
When I'd be going through withdrawal, not having been able to get my greedy hands on some pot for a few weeks, he was the only one who could deal with my tantrums and my addictions. No, I wasn't just addicted to weed: I was addicted to leaving my brain for long periods of time. To being calm. To not worrying. To not being Delilah. He, at least, could understand that, though he was probably the happiest most optimistic person I'd ever known in my whole life – and completely straightedge, no influences ever latching onto his beautiful pockets of braincells. I probably wouldn't let him if he tried, anyway.
Adam's family had adapted to me and knew me simply as Adam's sweet girlfriend. I found it incredible how they did not find the fact transparent that I was only a moderately okay person when Adam was around – because he was so shiny that some of his light always reflected onto me whether I'd wanted it or not. Sometimes it was blinding in the best kind of way.
Adam was both so overwhelmingly smitten and smiting. Crushed and crushing. Loved and loving.
If one were to sift through his knowledgeable and always correctly done homework, the words “Delilah Desroches” could always be found at least twice on each page with small doodles and hearts all around them, cascaded, in between science theories and math problems. His desk in art, the class he hated most believing he was no good with a paintbrush, had an elaborately designed “AD+DC=<3” carved into the bottom of it; his teacher gave him his first ever detention for defiling school property, but could not deny to herself that Adam was a wonderful person. She'd smiled to herself and given him extra marks for it. For his beauty and his commitment to a girl who told herself she did not even have commitments.
Adam had super-glued himself to my side whether I'd wanted him there or not and my hardships were always his. He carried me, mostly, when I did not deserve it. I did not like to depend so much on him but I usually found myself calling him in the middle of the night or knocking on his basement window at ungodly hours when my mother was too much to bear or I just started hating myself more than usual.
The two only times that I had cheated on him, I had not wanted to admit to anyone that I felt horrible – at times it was only a scapegoat for Adam to finally break it off with me like he should have done the day he, for me, fell blindly. I'd tell him what I did and I'd try not to cry. I wanted to seem proud of what I had done – whether it was with a stranger at a party or his drunk best friend. Adam always knew my true intentions, though, and he never thought I had something to apologize for even if I sobbed and told him “sorry” all night long. He would never let me ruin anything good in my life and I had to thank him for at least that.
Perhaps he was like a father I never had. He was a sweet, sweet triple threat: beautiful, selfless, and compassionate.
Adam offered protection when I pissed people off so much that I got weekly threats of being knocked. He offered comfort and warmth in his small home of four brothers, one sister and two fully functional parents; alone in his basement, thinking, and having space to just breathe and make a mess if we wanted, which I couldn't do at my own smothered home.
I was never pressured around him. We never had to do anything whatsoever. We could simply sit and talk or kiss or laugh, and sometimes we said nothing at all. Sometimes we just sat on his swing set in his backyard in the dead of night and listened to each other breathe. For the first time in sixteen years, I'd feel that it was okay to be me, at least for then, with him. I didn't need a mask. I could rear my ugly entrails.
Sometimes, also, he would rub my cheek with the tips of his fingers, those lovely unique circular lines imprinting a stain of passion on my face. He'd ask me what was on my mind and I'd tell him some lie about scandalous scholastic happenings, and Adam would laugh and I would too because we both knew I was a dirty, dirty liar just like my mother.

//

“You're sure? Lye, I need you to be sure.”
“Adam, fuck, get on with it. I'm sure.”
“It'll hurt.” he said and bit his lip.
“I know. I'm fully aware.”
“I've never done it before.”
“That much is obvious.”
Adam sighed and rubbed his upper arm nervously, flexing subconsciously. He was tense and his jaw was locked. “Alright. Just stay still.”
We cleared everything off his kitchen table. I climbed on quickly and laid down to the length of the wooden piece of furniture, my nerves causing a tumult throughout my whole entire body. I tried not to show it, holding my arms by my side firmly, mentally gluing myself to the plank. The wriggling nerves in my fingers made them clamp up and I dug my nails into my skin, not caring for the crescent-moon indents that would appear there.
Thankfully nobody but us was home (for the first time in what had to be weeks – Adam had a plethora of family members always running around the house) and we had complete privacy. I stared at his ceiling fan as he began to prepare.
Don't be a pervert.
Adam revealed, out of a bag, a thick needle and lots of cotton swabs, with a huge, intimidating bottle of peroxide and a small metal ring. Slowly, he lifted my shirt as if the damage had already been done, and gingerly placed his hands, with the needle, above my navel. He collected what little white skin I had beneath it.
“Right here?”
I nodded, having lost my vocal chords to sheer steel.
“Breathe in.” he instructed.
I did as he told, as deeply as I could, but I just couldn't breathe the way I used to. Quickly, like a fast lightning snake, Adam stuck the sharp metal object through my bellybutton. Almost immediately he slid the small silver stainless-steel ring into the hole and secured it there, and then began to tenderly absorb away the blood pooling around my stomach with a cotton swab.
“Are you okay? I know it stings, I have to clean it. No, stay down, just let me do it,” he mumbled worriedly.
“Thank you, Adam.”
He smiled that crooked smile of his that made my frigid, small heart actually beat for what felt like the first time since I was born. “Don't worry about it.”
Later that night, in his basement as he shared a room with one of his brothers, we kissed a lot. Adam did not have the kiss of a football player: it was smooth, rugged and passionate, as if he needed me when in all reality it was him who I depended on to keep my feet on the ground. I liked to kiss as much of his body as he would let me and we had never had sex before. I believe to this day that we mutually did not want to have sex for one specific reason, even if I never truly did not want to admit it: we were waiting until the horrible, horrible “m” word.
“Delilah,” he said after the minute, puckering sound of lips parting and paused, pulling me up from my horizontal position on the couch and holding me in his big, great arms. “Marry me one day, Delilah. Please.”
“Why?” I asked him, not looking at him.
“Because you can.”
“You don't want that. Don't let me.”
“I'll sure as hell let you marry me.” Adam laughed as if I were the one proposing silly, impossible things, his chuckles vibrating my body. “Do you really think I'd ask if I didn't want to? Hell, Lye, I want to spend my life with you. You're the most beautiful person I know.”
Adam was the only man, or woman, who could ever make me cry in both a happy and sad sort of way.
“Why, Adam? Why? How could you say that? I'm not... I'm not... It's just not...” I gulped, melting slowly, seeping into the couch.
“Delilah, you're a bitch. You're not afraid to be. You hide. There's something underneath you that I know keeps you human and whatever it is, I love every part of it. You're not just beautiful on the outside, Lye.”
“Please stop.”
“No.”
“Adam...”
“Delilah, please, just believe me for once. You dance with Lucy when she asks. Last week, you made Kyle lunch when I was at football practice and my mom was doing laundry. You hold doors open for old people. You say you don't care about things but you do – you care about me and you care about my family. No real hard bitch has any capacity to bring herself to care about anything.”
I couldn't deny that I was a fool for little boys. I had wanted a baby brother my whole life, or rather I felt like I needed one... Or was simply missing one.
“Maybe you're the only exception. When you're not around...”
“Lye...”
“Adam, it's just not ethical...” I muttered and wiped my wet eyes, sitting up further on the couch. “There's no reason for you to – ”
“Ah, Delilah, but there is. I forbid you from telling me I can't marry you. There's only you, Delilah. Only you, Delilah Lauvely Chamberlain and I will never unlove you.”
“Don't say my middle name.”
“Lovely, lovely, love-ly,” he smiled and pulled me into him, murmuring into my hair. “Please know that you can never be without me.”
“I wouldn't miss you.” I tried. “Don't call me lovely.”
“Delilah, I don't care if you're lovely or not. You're just real. You're human. How could I not love that about you? There's nothing you could do or ever say to make me stop. You will always miss me when I'm gone and when I do not want to go. You're staying with me until you die, or I die, and even then, we'll be inseparable. You will always love me, Lye.”
I did not want to believe it then, but now, I found it true: even standing in the threshold of death, I could still miss him.