Pretty things

I was concerned when Ryan called me up Thursday around lunch and asked me if I’d talked to Bam these last days. I told him no, I hadn’t, not since last week where we’d all had a barbeque down by the Delaware River, which was the honest-to-god-truth. I didn’t really talk to Ryan a whole lot in the first place, and I’d only known Bam for a month or two, so it was unnerving that Ryan called me.
“I haven’t seen him either,” he sighed and I didn’t know if that was unusual or not, but judging by the tone in his voice, it was. “I texted him Sunday around nightfall about some MTV shit, but he just wrote back that we’d have to talk about it some other time, and I haven’t heard from him since then. Shit, I’ve called him about twice a day the last couple of days, but he hasn’t picked up one fucking time.” The worry was evident in his voice and I closed the book I had been reading and laid it on the desk in front of me.
“That is weird.” Bam may not be the best at keeping his phone by, but being out of contact with his supposed best friend for a week did sound absurd, even for him. “I called him Monday or Tuesday I think, but just got voicemail,” I replied.
“Dude, I’m worried,” Ryan said, which was pointless because I’d figured that out already, but he must’ve been extra serious since he told me. “I just wanted to see if I was---“
“No, Ryan, you’re not the only one,” I said and my brow furrowed. “Come to think of it, I remember talking to Ville about this yesterday, actually.”
“Ville Valo?”
I took a sip of my coffee and nodded though he couldn’t see me. “Yeah, he told me he was flying in tomorrow and had been calling Bam to see if he could crash at his place, but he couldn’t get hold of him either.”
“Shit, that’s—dude, it’s fucking serious when he doesn’t take Ville’s calls.” If it wasn’t because my nervousness was increasing every minute and I felt a funny ache in the back of my throat, I would’ve sniggered at that.
“How quickly can you get here?” I asked and placed my phone between my ear and my shoulder while I opened my bag and packed my books. “I’m at the South Campus.”
“Fifteen minutes. Are we going over there?” He said and the background noise consisted of the slam of a door, keys rattling together followed by the sound of a car being unlocked.
“Yeah, I’m getting pretty damn nervous, Ry.” I zipped my pencil case shut and put it in my bag along with my notepad and the Oxford dictionary.
“Thanks, Rebecca.” I hadn’t a chance to ask what he exactly meant before he hung up, but he was grateful and in my world that was more than enough, because frankly I wasn’t doing this for his sake.
My study group looked up from their books and sent me questioning looks. I had forgotten about them in this mess and I immediately felt bad for having a phone conversation in the middle of the university library. “I’m sorry guys, but I really have to go. A friend of mine---”
“We heard the conversation,” Seth, a guy who was quite dependent on help from the rest of us, said and stopped typing on his computer. “Will you be back for class later?”
I shook my head as I put my phone in my pocket and made sure I’d remembered everything. “Don’t wait for me. We have to finish the report by next Friday, so it would be great if you finished discussing the third part and the relevance of the time it was published in.”
“Isn’t it better if you take part in those discussions as well?” Dory asked, always critical about the decisions I made for the group, never thinking about the positive feedback we’d received from prior assignments I’d had responsibility for.
“Yes, it would, but we haven’t got the time to postpone this anymore. I’m sure I can keep up if you just summarize it next time we see each other, which is next Monday, I believe.” I pulled on my jacket and picked up my backpack and slung it over my shoulder. “So, I’ll see you then.”
I grabbed my coffee and turned to leave but I hadn’t taken more than a few steps before Seth spoke up. “Is it that MTV millionaire you’ve been seeing who’s in trouble?”
“I thought he was married,” one of the girls whispered, presumably thinking I couldn’t hear her. I stopped dead in my tracks for a moment, but only a moment, and then I picked up my pace and walked out of the door.

• • • •

Ryan wasn’t chatty on the 20 minute drive to Bam’s house – I think he was more nervous than I was, even though I had the feeling that this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. I knew from past experience that it was never any fun to be friends with someone who gave you plenty of occasions and reasons to worry, but in the end I’d convinced myself that there were some things I could not take responsibility for and then I just left.
That was almost five years ago now, when I’d graduated from High School and moved across three states to study in Pennsylvania and later, after I’d gotten my BA at Penn State, move to Philadelphia to pursue my master’s degree. Not because the universities here were particularly better than the ones close to Kenosha, IL; but this was away, far away, and I would be able to get a fresh start, clean plate, tabula rasa, whatever.
“Hey, Ry?”
He looked over to me briefly and I could feel my brows furrowing. “I haven’t known Bam for that long, but is this – I mean, has this happened before?”
“Well, I don’t know what the hell has happened, so I don’t fucking know.” Ryan didn’t seem mad at me, but maybe that was wishful thinking. In any case, I don’t think blaming me was a constructive solution, so the anger I felt from him was possibly misdirected hurt. “Sorry, Rebecca.”
“It’s okay.”
He looked over me and smiled, or as much as anyone could smile in a situation like this, and turned his eyes back to the road, a sigh escaping his lips. “A couple of years back, when he moved out here away from his parents, there were a couple of incidents where we’d find him passed out on the lawn or it turned out that he couldn’t find his phone, but it wasn’t more than a few times because we almost always lived here because we were filming for the show.”
“So he lives alone now?”
Ryan cocked an eyebrow and nodded. “Yeah… I thought you guys – I mean, how come you don’t know?”
I shrugged my shoulders and emptied my coffee. “I’ve only been at his place a couple of times. I think he’s given you the impression that we hang out a lot more than we actually do.”
“Obviously,” he said and fiddled with some buttons on the panel that adjusted the air conditioning. “One of his friends, Novak, he lived with him for a live but moved back to Baltimore when he found himself a new girlfriend. And, uh, Missy’s not really in the picture anymore.”
I never knew really knew what had happened between them – I didn’t ask, Bam didn’t tell, and I wasn’t curious enough to begin reading gossip online, because that would be weird now that I knew him. “That’s always nice to hear.” I may have sounded more glum and deadpan than I’d intended to be, but if I was going to be the next front-cover scandal in the state, or even the whole country… I don’t know if I could handle that.
Ryan didn’t really say anything to that, which I didn’t mind at all because I doubt he even knew my last name and what was there to say?
Five minutes had passed with me looking out the window and Ryan driving just under the speed limit. He pulled up to the giant house and parked next to all of Bam’s vehicles. “We’re here.”
“And it seems like Bam is, too.” I muttered and got out of the car. I left the backpack in the passenger seat, thinking I had no need for it, and followed Ryan up to the main gate. We knocked on the door and yelled for a while, but there was no reply, and it was locked, so we couldn’t get in.
Ryan suggested we’d take the back door down to the kitchen and I complied, not being completely sure where the supposed back door was. He led me around the house and my worry grew as I grabbed the doorhandle only to discover the backdoor wasn’t locked.
“Ry…” I breathed, pushing the door open and flicking on the light switch next to the doorframe. “This is bad.”
He patted my shoulder and stepped in front of me, pushing empty liquor bottles and take out trays out of the way with his feet. I, desperate for something to direct my thoughts to, picked up a trash can from the corner and picked up the vodka and beer bottles, half eaten china boxes, cigarette butts and paper towels.
“Bam!” Ryan called and looked through the kitchen and pirate bar, but there was no answer. He helped me clean the kitchen a bit and walked over to the fireplace. “It hasn’t been lit for a while,” he said and I knew something was wrong, very wrong, because I may not have been Bam’s best friend like Ryan was, but I knew that he always lit the fire first thing in the morning and sat watching the flames while drinking his first cup of coffee and smoked the first two filtered Marlboro of the day.
“Maybe he used the one up in the living room,” he said and walked up the stairs. I put down the trash can and went after him, but opened a few windows on my way because the air was stuffy and there was a stale smell of garbage and mold in the house.
“He didn’t use this one, either,” Ryan called and I could hear his footsteps as I approached the ground floor. There was a groan from somewhere up there, and Ryan’s footsteps increased in frequency as he ran, I imagine, towards the emitter of the sound. “Rebecca!”
I ran the rest of the way upstairs and saw Ryan hunched over a Bam at the end of the staircase leading up to the first floor. I hurried over to them and knelt down besides them, relieved that he was still alive but scared about what could have happened with him.
“Oh, Bam…” I sighed and brushed the hair out of his face. There was a gash by his temple and his hair was stiff with clotted blood, drops of red on the stairs. His left eyes had a black bruise under it, and his lips were chapped with sores in the corners. “What happened to you?”
He muttered and fidgeted, clearly far from fully conscious and sober, and I looked to Ryan.
“Cold shower?”
I nodded and helped him pull Bam from the ground, slinging his arm around my shoulders as Ryan took the other one. Bam’s clothes were dirty and he smelled worse than anyone I’d been around since Coach Jackson in Junior High, and I could tell Ryan was as embarrassed on behalf of him as I was. We dragged him through the living room to the big bathroom across from his bedroom, and when we stopped, he stumbled around until Ryan pushed him down on the toilet seat.
I pulled the shower door open and turned on the cold tab. I walked out to the hallway again to leave my jacket and cardigan there so they wouldn’t get wet, and when I walked back in Ryan was trying to help Bam out of his clothes.
“Hey, I’ll help you,” I said and took over. I knew Ryan probably wouldn’t be comfortable undressing his friend in front of me, so I asked him to go downstairs and start brewing some coffee. He agreed and smiled, probably thankful I had given him a way out, and as he slammed the door on his way out, Bam flinched as he regained consciousness.
He struggled a bit as I pulled his t-shirt off and he began moaning, telling me to stop. I tried to soothe him as I crouched in front of him and opened his jeans, but I couldn’t pull them off him while he was still sitting down. As I stood, I grabbed his arms and pulled him up with me, but he had trouble keeping his balance. It seemed he had problems doing just about anything at this point.
“Bam, you’re not making this very easy for me.” I tried to smile but the laugh came out as a croak because there frankly wasn’t anything funny about this situation.
“B-becca?”
I smiled at him as I pulled down his pants, thankful to see that he was lucid enough to know who I was. “Yeah, it’s me. You’re going to have to help me here.”
“Uh..mmgh…Wha’-what are you, uh---“
“Hey, sweetheart,” I looked up and saw him trying to keep his eyes open as he had one hand against the wall to support himself with. I reached for the other hand and gave it a squeeze. “We are going to take a shower.”
“Oh, okay,” he agreed as he helped me take off his boxers and sat down as I began tugging on his socks. He lifted his feet for me, I pulled off his socks, and soon he was naked from top to toe. I took off my shoes, in case they’d get wet, and dragged him up with me and helped him into the shower stall.
“F-f-fucking c-c-co-c-cold…“
“Yeah, it’s fucking cold, I know,” I groaned and leaned my head against the cold tiles as I looked at him through the tinted glass. I could hear his teeth clattering over the splashing of water and he was clearly trying to keep himself up. He slipped and fell down, and I had the shower door open and my hands under his arms within seconds. I managed to pull him with me, obviously getting wet in the process, and closed the door after me. Despite knowing that there was no way he could keep himself up, I instantly regretted going in there, because the water was cold and I turned the tab a couple of notches up.
“You’re really sweet, babe,” Bam muttered and crouched down to sit on the floor. The shower was big enough for the both of us and I sat down next to him. The showerhead sent the water directly into our faces.
“You’re a real jackass,” I sighed and got out of the shower to grab a small towel in a drawer under the sink. I went back into the stall and crouched down in front of him, efficiently blocking him from the water ray.
“What day is it?” He asked and winced when I touched the towel to the wound on the side of his head. I scrubbed off the dried blood and grabbed the shampoo to wash his hair now I was at it.
“It’s Thursday. We went on that barbeque last Friday, and my guess is you’ve been on one hell of a drinking binge since Saturday.” If someone said they’d detected a bitter or cynical tone in my voice, they would have been right, except that I didn’t blame Bam for his alcoholism. But I desperately wanted to blame him, because it was hard dealing with a problem I couldn’t fix. People expected me to have answers and solutions pouring out of me, and most of the time I did, but never in situations where it really mattered. Or so it seemed.
He winced again when I began washing his hair, not doing anything to prevent the soap from running into the cut that was healing, it seemed. “How long had you been lying there?”
“I don’t know,” he sighed and looked down at his hands. “I don’t remember much…”
“It couldn’t have been long,” I said and moved out of the way so the water could rinse out the shampoo. “But your cut is healing. I think we ought to get it looked at, anyway. It could be infected and it definitely needs some stitches.”
“No, I don’t need any---“
“Pull yourself together, for crying out loud.” I immediately felt bad for talking to him in a harsh manner and found myself plastering on a false smile as I handed him a piece of soap and stepped out of the shower cabin. “You wouldn’t want Ville Valo to find you with an infected head wound when he arrives tomorrow, would you?”
When he looked back up at me, I felt a surge of pity for him and I realized that this was not the man I had come to know and care for. Not anymore, and that scared me because I was no longer in control of this situation. There were men whom I had cared much more for than Bam; some were lovers, some were friends, but were all of them merely passing strangers?
I’d never felt like I didn’t know Ville, but that had been different, I told myself. He had been different, but wasn’t Bam, too? I used to think I had been good at reading people, but Bam kept surprising me. Was that because I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did, or was he just different like Ville had been?
Bam began talking to me and that brought me out of my trance; Dunn walked in the next minute with two cups of hot coffee and my bag which he had gotten from the car. I asked him to find Bam some clean clothes and then drive him to the hospital. Ten minutes later I was still sitting on the bathroom tiles, but I was alone then, which wasn’t very unusual at all.

• • • •

There have only been a few times where I’d wanted to talk to Ville more than that afternoon. I began cleaning Bam’s castle obsessively, trying to keep my hands and mind busy, but to no avail, because I thought the whole situation over and over, and wondered if Ville would call me before I’d cave and call him.
Ville called me just when I had finished the basement and moved up to look at the state of the bedrooms. “Just wanted to know if I should cancel my trip to Philly… I still haven’t been able to get a hold of Bam.”
I should have called him right away, I told myself. Ville would have worried as much as I had, probably more, but I hadn’t thought that calling him would be to any other purpose than to calm myself. Then when I heard him through the phone, like he was just a whisper away instead of more than 4000 miles, I was calm again. Some things never change.
“He’s all right,” I sighed, and the moment I had spoken the words I felt some sort of relief, as if it was just then it dawned on me how worried I had been over what could have happened. “He’s at the hospital with Ryan right now, needed some stitches.”
“What happened?” He asked and I could hear the sound of a lighter igniting in the background.
I sat down on the stairs where I had found Bam just an hour earlier and released my hair from the ponytail on top of my head. “He can’t really remember anything, but I’m guessing he went overboard on the beer and Xanax. Ryan and I found him passed out, bleeding in the living room.”
I bit my fist to stop myself from breaking into sobs, but I couldn’t keep the tears from my eyes. Even though I thought I was keeping silent, Ville hushed me. “Rebecca, please don’t cry…”
I told him I was sorry and hung up. The phone began to vibrate, and as I allowed myself to break down, the ringing of the phone continued with the same name flashing on the caller ID each time until I took the phone and threw it across the room.
It didn’t ring again after that.

• • • •

That night was the first night I spent with Bam where we didn’t have sex. When he and Ryan got back from the hospital, I offered to cook them dinner but I could tell Ryan just wanted to get home to his girlfriend, and he left while I searched the cupboards for anything edible that wasn’t full of mold. I was unsuccessful and with Bam strapped in the passenger seat in one of his cars and me in the driver’s, we drove to the nearest grocery store. I wasn’t ready to let him out of my sight and dragged him into the store with me; he was silent and mainly did as I told him to.
Almost two hours later we were sitting across from each other by the counter in the kitchen, two empty bowls of soup in front of us. I hadn’t talked much, and neither had he, both of us needing some time to think, I guess. After we’d cleaned up dinner, I warmed up some hot milk for him and he fell asleep on the couch watching the lit fire.
I didn’t know if I should wake him up or not, and I stood looking at him, listening to the crackles of the fire, drinking my coffee, and suddenly the grandfather clock stroke midnight and I was woken from my own dreary haze.
Bam slept on though, not taking notice of the noise, and I decided I was going to let him sleep there. I fought my way up the stairs to the bedroom, fighting to keep my eyes open as I realized how exhausted the events of the day had made me. I stumbled onto the bed, tangled myself in the sheets and within seconds I was asleep.

• • • •

I woke around five with a stiff shoulder and a sleeping foot and knew I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again. I pulled my tights and shirt off and changed into some jeans I found on the floor and a t-shirt from one of the drawers. They stayed on even though they were both big on me, but I didn’t mind that at all. I walked downstairs and saw the couch was empty; a pang of worry hit me but then I heard snoring from one of the nearby rooms and when I walked in there, I saw him sleeping on one of the guest beds.
I crept out of the room and closed the door after myself; hopefully he would be able to sleep through the worst hangover and be fresh to pick up Ville from the airport.
In the Pirate Bar I turned on the radio and listened to some music while I restlessly walked around to check if there were any spots I’d missed while cleaning yesterday, but I couldn’t find any. I saw a butterfly batting its wings against the glass of a closed window; it had probably been let in while we were cleaning out the air and was trapped after I closed the windows for the night. I observed it for a while, admiring its struggle against the transparent border between the house and garden and the beautiful colours and pattern on its wings.
I caught it with my left hand and ripped the wings off it with my right, letting them fall to the clean linoleum floor. The butterfly squirmed in my palm and I fisted my hand, efficiently crushing it.
Subsequently, I had a hot cup of coffee and contently watched the sun rise through the still closed window.

• • • •

Bam woke up around one o’clock, I figured, as I heard the distinctive sounds of vomiting coming from the bathroom. I’d finishing washing all his laundry – which proved to be a lot of clothes – and checking the online flight schedule to check when Ville would land. I’d also affectively searched the whole castle for booze and drugs and all of it had either been poured into the sink or flushed down the toilette.
With a cup of fresh black coffee in my hand, I walked into the bathroom where Bam was lying with his face against the cold marble floor. I put the coffee on the counter and crouched to sit next to him.
“So I guess you didn’t get to sleep through your hangover, huh?” I asked and brushed the hair out of his face. The light from the lamp made him wince and I wanted to laugh at him, but I felt too much pity for him to do so.
He caught my hand and studied it for a while, eyes squinting, still adjusting to the light. “Nice ring.”
I pulled my hand back from him and covered the ring with my other hand, sitting there with my hands folded in my lap like I was caught with my hand in the cookie jar.
“I need to get back into bed,” he muttered and coughed a few times. “I think I’m going to sleep some more.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” I said and reached up to grab the coffee. “Here.”
He took a few gulps and put it on the floor next to the toilet. He looked like he was going to heave again, I waited, but he just shuddered and stood up, leaving me on the cold tiles behind a closed door with a cup of coffee, half empty.

• • • •

At the airport I was oddly nervous of seeing Ville again after such a long time; afraid that things would turn awkward and that we would both wish that we’d just left things were we’d left them.
But we’d already destroyed the possibility of letting that happen; we spoke often – too often – on the phone for our relationship – whatever it was – to be over. But the last time I saw him was four, five months ago, and that had been under different circumstances.
My cellphone rang as a couple of teenage girls passed me, giggling, and I wondered if they recognized me from some glamourized gossip magazine I’d finally made the cover of. One would think that, after all I’d done, I’d deserved the spot.
I didn’t check the caller ID as I accepted the call. “Ville?”
“No, it’s me, Bam. Ville just called, he wanted to know if we were at the airport.”
“Well, I’m waiting for him at the terminal. He hasn’t shown up yet.”
“He said the flight landed at terminal 2 instead of 4, didn’t say why though. I told him you were there to pick him up, and he said he’d wait at the bookstore for you. By the way, is there a history there, because I seemed like he was making a joke and I thought you were just old friends, but---”
I hung up and turned off my phone.

• • • •

His body was warm and slender and just like I’d remembered. One hand on my waist, the other at the nape of my neck. His lips on my cheek, breath on my ear.
“You’ve dyed your hair blonde and cropped it off.”
“Yes,” I breathed, not knowing what else to say. With my hand on his shoulder I softly pushed him from me, the other instinctively and self-consciously going to my head to tug at the short strands of hair. “I needed... change.”
“I still like it,” Ville said, smiling, showing his gapped front teeth.
I didn’t thank him. As we walked in silence back to the car, I turned my phone back on and saw that Bam hadn’t called me back, but Dunn had left a message.
“Just wanted to hear if everything was okay, me and Angie are dropping by later to check on Bam and say hi to Ville, just lemme know if you have other plans.”
I didn’t know if everything was okay or not, so I didn’t know what to reply. I didn’t.
On the way back home, neither one of us spoke for the first minutes until Ville sighed and looked at the road ahead of us instead of my face. “I would’ve thought you would’ve told Bam.”
“I didn’t know what I should say. How I should say it. What relevance it had to what happens between me and him.”
“He cares deeply for you.” His voice was strained, like it pained him to acknowledge my importance to anyone besides him, like it meant that his importance to me had vanished. “He’s very transparent that way.”
“I know,” I sighed and led a hand through my hair. “Somehow, I thought that if I kept myself from getting too attached, he wouldn’t, either.”
“It doesn’t always work that way.”
“Sadly.”
He was silent for a while. Then he spoke up again. “You can’t control how people feel about you, Rebecca.” He seemed to lull his next words over, trying to form the perfect sentence in his head as he usually did. “I don’t think that people who know you can fail to love you.”
It was my turn to be silent while I thought his words over and it hit me that I didn’t want to talk about this in the car, knowing that I’d have to be all smiles when we arrived at Bam’s in ten minutes, and so I chose not to talk about Bam, chose the light-hearted, half-teasing answer, which I didn’t master, because my wavering voice betrayed me, “I’m pretty sure my reading group hates me.”
“But do they know you?”
I remained silent, but the answer rung in my head. No, they don’t. No one knows me but you.

• • • •

Bam was sleeping on the couch when we came back. I draped a blanket over him while Ville made a pot of coffee in the downstairs kitchen and for a couple of minutes I just stood there, looking at him, much like I had last night but in a different manner altogether.
Ville put his hand around my middle and instinctively, I found myself leaning into his side, proving the fact that Ville and I were very much in symbiosis, a fact that I’d grudgingly come to accept over the years.
“He sleeps like a kid, doesn’t he?”
“Only when he’s hungover,” I snorted and rested my head against Ville’s shoulder. “He usually snores a lot more, though.”
“How long have you been sleeping together?”
Somehow, I feel like I should’ve known he would ask me this; but the fact that he knew the extent of my relationship with Bam startled me, and for a moment I stood there and didn’t know what to say.
“A month or so,” I eventually replied. “It seems a lot longer, though.”
“But he loves you so much, already,” Ville mused, and for a moment it seemed like my relationship with Bam didn’t cause him any pain; that he could easily stand there and discuss the details of it with me. But then his voice took on the same kind of strain I’d detected earlier and I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry, “I shouldn’t be surprised though. I came to love you very early on, too.”
“I...” I tried to figure out what to say, how to form a coherent sentence when my mind was anything but.
The doorbell rang then. I glanced at the clock on my way to the door and wasn’t surprised to find Ryan and Angie on the other side of it.
“Hey! Did you get my message?” Ryan asked as he briefly hugged me and stepped into the corridor and greeted Ville. I hugged Angie and found myself apologizing for the mess, telling them to be silent because Bam was sleeping on the couch, and leading them down into the kitchen where Ville poured them a cup of coffee each.
I sat down next to Ville, across from Ryan and Angie, and he slung his arm around my chair, like it was the most natural thing in the world. I guess it was, to him, like it came instinctively to me to touch him – his hand, shoulder, waist, anything I could reach – whenever I had the chance. Like sea otters, holding hands in their sleep so they won’t drift apart.
“How do you guys know each other?” Ryan asked, taking a sip of his coffee.
“We go way back,” I replied, trying to smile, failing to do so. “Do you want dinner? We haven’t eaten yet.”
“We already ate,” Angie said, smiling, a knowing look on her features. “We just dropped off to check if everything was all right.”
“Actually, I think everything will be all right,” I said after a moment of two of thinking about it. “I got rid of the alcohol and drugs in the house, and I think Ville’s presence might calm him a little. I’ll give you a call if things get out of hand,” I said, directing the last part to Ryan. “Thank you for your help the other day. I really appreciate it.”
He held his hand up and he looked almost offended by my words. “Hey, how I see things you were the one offering your help, not the other way around. Forget it, Becca. You’re the one who should be thanked.”
His words made me smile and I briefly thought that this scene right here might be the most peaceful in all the time I’d been in Philadelphia, which might’ve been a very depressing fact hadn’t I been surrounded by friends.
“What actually happened?” Angie asked, and I could tell Ville wanted to know as well, even though I’d briefly told him over the phone.
Ryan and I went over yesterday’s events, telling them about what had happened at the barbeque last weekend, how no one had heard from him since then. We told them about the mess in the kitchen, the blood, the shower, the hospital, the hangover.
It was silent after that. It wasn’t long after that Angie and Ryan went home, and Ville cleaned the cups while I made dinner.
“I’m proud of you.”
His voice didn’t startle me, but his words did, and I stopped chopping the salad and turned to look at him.
“What?” My voice was small and I felt selfconscious under his gaze. He smiled and embraced me and we just stood there, holding each other closely, and suddenly I was crying and he placed kisses on my ear, my temple, my hair, and my breathing evened out.
I pulled away from him, but he held my hand and ran his thumb over my ring, again and again. He smiled.
“You’re still wearing the ring.”
I pulled my hand back and picked up the knife and continued cutting the salad and dicing the cucumber. He chuckled softly and placed the cups back in the cupboard, his laughter echoing into humming. I wondered why he was so cheerful, but I wasn’t curious enough to ask, and I had no desire to humour him, especially when I actually knew why.
I put down the knife and put the salad in a bowl. I looked at the stairs, “Do you think maybe I should go wake him up?”
Ville hands snaked around my middle and I leaned back against his chest. “No, I think he needs the sleep.”
“He won’t be able to sleep tonight. He’ll lie awake all night.”
“You sound like a mother,” Ville laughed, his lips against my ear. “Worried about her little boy.”
“I was like this with you, too,” I said and shook myself free from his arms, angry with him all over again. “You have no idea how the last six months were for me. Hell, the last year, even.”
I was surprised to find tears running down my cheeks. Ville didn’t say anything. I heard shuffling feet upstairs.

• • • •

“You’re still wearing the ring.”
A different man, but the same words, spoken in a different manner altogether; Ville had been pleased by the fact, Bam was not.
I was standing by the dresser, picking up a shirt for me to sleep in. Ville was in one of the guest rooms; Bam was already in the bed next to me. This was the first time I’d been alone with Bam since he’d been heaving in the bathroom earlier that morning. It seemed more than 12 hours ago; like we’d both lived lives during the course of the day. I guess visits from past lives would do that to you.
“Do you ever take it off?”
It seemed like he wanted to ask whether I ever would, and the look on his face was of hurt, like I’d betrayed him when I hadn’t, however much it might have felt like betrayal to him – and me, for that matter.
I didn’t think about it when I lifted my hand to look at it as if it were for the first time, an alien object, and turned it around my finger with the other hand. “Oh, I never have. I just couldn’t bring myself to it. Even after everything... Even after I found him in bed with---“
I choked up and my vision blurred with tears, but I could still see Bam getting up from the bed to hold me close as I sobbed. “Oh, babe, Becca, I’m sorry...”
I couldn’t figure out whether or not it was a consolation that Ville hadn’t shared his infidelities with his friends, couldn’t figure out if it meant that he thought nothing of them or if it was to spare me, but I was content just to cry and let Bam soothe me for once.
He peeled my tearstained blouse of me and helped me step out of my pants. He lay me down in his bed and folded me in his arms and covers that smelled like him and whispered consoling words in my ear until I fell asleep.

• • • •

I woke up in the middle of the night after an eerie, dreamless sleep and knew in the back of my mind that I wouldn’t fall asleep again. I pulled on Bam’s dressing robe and went downstairs to the kitchen to get a cup of tea.
Ville sat on one of the bar stools, hunched over an ashtray with more cigarette buds than I cared to count, and looked up at me when I descended the stairs.
“What are you doing up so late?” I asked, and we looked at each other for a while.
“Couldn’t really sleep,” he said and lit another cigarette. “I heard you. Telling Bam.”
I didn’t say anything and continued to make my cup of tea, trying to figure out how I felt about him knowing this piece of maybe significant, maybe insignificant dialogue that hadn’t been meant for his ears.
Later, I’d tell myself that it was because of the tone in his voice that I took off the engagement ring and placed it in front of him.
“He’ll hurt you, too.”
I knew it was the jealous, over-tired part of him – a part I hadn’t seen in a long time – that spoke up, and maybe that was why I was honest when I replied, “No he won’t, because he’ll never be you.”
Ville left after that, taking his pack of Marlboro’s, his lighter and the ashtray with him(, leaving the ring on the table. I finished drinking my tea until I saw another butterfly fluttering around in the kitchen, but this time I opened a window and let it out into the darkness.
I washed my cup, left ring in the kitchen and crawled back into bed with Bam.