Mutually Numb

I wanted to bang my head into the wall a million times. I wanted to knock it into the paneling until my scalp split open and the pieces of plaster got stuck in my splintering skull. I was seriously debating getting up and moving to the closest wall, but the arguing outside caught my attention again. It had been going on for a while, but every now and again a word or phrase would catch my attention, like Ash’s favorite recently, “you lying cocksucker.”
I had slipped off from my post outside the kitchen to the bedroom. I was sitting in bed with my knees clenched to my chest. I really didn’t know what to do. Kai had returned to the kitchen, I didn’t want him to seem suspicious for disappearing out of nowhere. But, honestly, I’m sure that nobody noticed. There was so much commotion going on in there that they didn’t even know what they were yelling; I couldn’t hear myself think and I was tucked away in another room.
Granted, I was pretty thankful that I wasn’t drug into this yet. Everyone was ganging up on Ruki and claiming that it was all his fault, and that he took advantage of me. Ironically, it was a bit more the other way around. But, hey, I wasn’t about to barge in there and correct them. I don’t need anything else going wrong right now, and Ruki is the one who decided to bring it up right now anyway; and he is also the one that decided to drop the l-bomb in the car. It feels awful for me to say it, but the only way for me to not break down is to say that it is all his fault. It’s his fault that he got me pregnant in the first place, right? Maybe I shouldn’t have even met Kai that one day – but I hate to say that. As little as I’ve seen him recently, I love Kai. Our friendship was one of those freaky coincidences where we were both in the right place at the right time. We were both at a local café getting something to eat. I hated to eat alone, but that day I decided to tough it out and go anyway. I tended to not eat well due to the anxiety of going out alone. I saw him sitting unaccompanied at a table, enjoying some tea, and I impulsively pulled up a chair and sat next to him. I have no idea what came over me. We had our first few awkward small talk topics, but we ended up having some similar interests and exchanged contact info.
In all honestly, when Kai called me for the first time I had completely forgotten I gave him my phone number. It took us a while to get together again, but once we finally did see each other, we realized that we needed to make it a usual rendezvous. We had so much in common and I loved his silly sense of humor. We were able to just sit around and enjoy each other’s company in complete silence, which was absurdly special to me since I had never connected with someone like that before. I was never afraid of looking stupid or awkward around him, we had a mutual and silent understanding of the other’s weirdness. Eventually, we merged the few friends we had together, and that’s how I met the rest of his bandmates. It took me a while to even realize they were in a band together, Kai never talked about it. I don’t even think of them as bandmates now, more or less just a bunch of guys who hang out too much and drink together. Ruki and I didn’t even hit it off perfectly at first. In fact, I was better friends and interested in Uruha at first. But, of course, as life has its own plans, I got way too drunk when I was over with the guys that one night, and Ruki got me pregnant after just having sex one time. Even after that night the relationship between Ruki and me wasn’t even that much better. We kind of blew it off like nothing happened at first, going by the logic that if you don’t acknowledge it that it’ll go away at one point. That obviously didn’t work and when I had to announce that I was pregnant, Ruki and I pretty much had to make the relationship work. We were never lovey-dovey with each other, but we sat down and talked about a life plan. Of course, abortion was brought up, but it just didn’t seem like the right thing. We had enough finances combined to raise a child and we ended up backing out last minute due to guilt.
His friends reacted to it pretty well. Actually, many times better than I had imagined. I remember being up all night practicing what I was going to say to them. I did that cliché thing where you practice talking to yourself in the mirror – it didn’t work, I was just as nervous talking into the mirror as I was telling them in person. When I told them I wasn’t showing yet, but it was going to be pretty obvious if I didn’t tell them soon. Everyone, Kai especially, surprised me with some baby supplies and stayed over to help out during my first days back from the hospital. That’s something I will never forget; three grown men trying to figure out how to change Aimie’s diaper for twenty minutes. I didn’t find it very comical then, being a grumpy mama, but in hindsight it makes me crack a grin.
“Who the hell do you think you are? Just because you’re some bigshot who can sing doesn’t mean that you’re immune to real life!” Ash blared through the wall. I had never heard her get this angry before, she was so mellow and even-tempered. I guess all of this was just building up inside of her for so long that it’ll be a full force rage-machine of hate on Ruki.
The door to the bedroom creaked open and Kai’s head popped in.
I rocked forward and flashed an unconvincing grin at him. “I was just thinking about you.” I whispered.
He quietly shut the door behind him and got in bed next to me, promptly lying down and throwing his head onto the pillow. “I couldn’t take it in there anymore. There was too much going on at once, everyone was yelling over each other. It was half and half Ash against Ruki and I want nothing to do with it.” He let out a deep breath and soaked in the silence for some time.
“Hey,” I started, “Am I a whore or a despicable person for doing that? I mean I feel pretty gross and telling myself that it’s all Ruki’s fault isn’t going to work forever. It wasn’t even very convincing in the first place.” I adjusted my back brace and laid down next to Kai.
“You and Ruki’s personal life isn’t really mine to fuddle in. But, I mean, that wasn’t the best way to handle that situation. And while I don’t really agree with what happened, I can’t do anything about it. There are certainly better – and worse ways – in which this could have gone. This is what you’ve wanted for so long, so I don’t blame you for trying,” He paused for another moment, trying to think of the right thing to say.
“No, it’s okay, I put you on the spot there. Thank you for answering it so nicely.” I curled my lips to the side pensively
We both laid in silence for some time. I have no idea how long we laid there, time warped around us. We could have been there for seconds, minutes, hours – I didn’t really know. We were both at peace with the discord around us. I rolled my head to the side and put it on Kai’s shoulder.
“Why does life have to be so complicated sometimes?” I groaned
“Well, it wouldn’t be any fun then, would it?” He let out a soft chuckle that was also apologetic.
“Hold on,” I mumbled, coming to a realization, “They aren’t looking for me out there right? I know this is half my fault, but I really don’t want to be in on this screaming match. But I also don’t want Ruki to be fully blamed for it…” I trailed off
“Ruki is a big boy, he can handle it. The stress won’t be good on your body, and I’m sure Ash knows that. While Ruki may be human scum right now, that doesn’t mean that Ash totally blew all care for you and your recovery to the wind. She felt responsible for your disappearance and kidnapping for some time, you know. She didn’t vocalize it too much, but Ruki mentioned it before.”
“Oh yeah,” I reminisced, “The night that I met her was the night that I went to the park… and well, that’s when, you know,” I tried to avoid saying it directly, it felt uncomfortable. I didn’t want the words to touch my tongue when leaving my mouth, they tasted rotten and made my face pucker.
“No, no, I understand.” Kai nodded his head and nudged closer to me.
Another huge ruckus and some banging came from the kitchen. This time I think it might have been Aoi or Uruha, it was hard to tell their voices apart sometimes.
“I really don’t want to stay here tonight.” I said, nestling my face into Kai. “Can I have another sleepover at your house? We haven’t had one of those in ages.”
He turned his head and let out one of his famous grins. “Sure thing. Want it to be like old times and I can make some popcorn and we can stay up all night talking?”
“I honestly couldn’t ask for anything better for tonight.” I was so ready for tonight to be all about me. I mean, everything has been all about me recently, but I wanted it to actually be about me and not just me feeling well again. Having everything revolve around me for the past year has made me more selfish than anything.
I propped up on my elbows and raised myself up; it was always a struggle to get up with my back brace on. You had to learn an entirely new set of physics to live life by. As soon as I got this annoying brace off, I was going to need to learn how to live life normally again, and I don’t think I’m ready for that. I’ve gotten so used to my hectic routine that I’m fine with this; I don’t want any more change. I still have one more big surgery to go, but luckily it wasn’t anything high-risk. It’s more cosmetic than actually medically necessary, but I don’t want the permanent dents in my thighs and the slight curve to my legs anymore. We didn’t have a set date for the surgery, but we knew it was going to be after I got my back brace off – We didn’t want to stress out my body too much. I was able to walk fine with it, but something definitely looked “off” about me. You could look at me and within the first few seconds you’d know that something went wrong. It was kind of funny, the first time I really got a good look at myself in the mirror, I burst out laughing because I looked so much like a gazelle. And for some reason when I was hopped up on so many pain killers, gazelles were the funniest thing in the world to me.
“Can you help me pack my overnight bag, Kai?” I sheepishly asked. “I want to get it packed as fast as I can so if someone happens to walk in, they don’t have time to ask questions.”
He sprung out of bed like a spring chicken and nodded to me. “Sure thing” He smiled.
He dug through my drawers and picked out some clothes while I gathered my pills and slid them into a random tote bag I peeled off the floor.
“Your shower also has a bathtub in it, right?” I questioned while opening random drawers to see if I missed anything else vitally important. “I don’t think you want to hold me while I stand and shower just in case I happen to slip or something.” I laughed nervously.
“Yeah, it does. You know I love my bubble baths.” He snickered back.
“Perfect. I feel like I remember that now for some reason. Geez, that just shows how long it’s been since I came to your place.”
We met in the middle and combined the clothes with the bag. I just needed to put on my winter coat and boots and then we were all ready to rumble.
I laced up my boots while Kai neatly folded my clothes into the bag. At this moment I didn’t care what they looked like, so I just threw them in them all crinkled. That’s what most of my clothes in my drawers looked like, I always dug through my drawers in the morning when I was trying to decide what to wear. As a result I happened to wear a lot of wrinkled sweatshirts, but they eventually straightened themselves out.
“Okay! I’m ready!” I said as I lifted my arms up in the air.
Kai took the cue and grabbed onto my sides and stood me up. He put my bag on my shoulder and we both ventured out of the bedroom, where all hell was breaking loose.
I tried to slither by while Kai aptly stood by the bedroom doorway, but I was caught almost immediately. I wasn’t very stealthy to begin with.
“Claire, where are you going?” Ruki accusingly shouted across the room
I stuttered and made a lot of noises that weren’t real words. I managed to puke out “Kai’s place” in the middle of all the commotion my mouth was spewing. I was a deer caught in headlights.
“What do you mean you are just leaving? You can’t do that, you live here. And I take care of you!” He bellowed
“You take care of her?” Ash retorted “Is it really just you that takes care of her?” She spat out her words and crossed her arms
“Ash, you aren’t a part of this right now. You won’t be taking care of Claire anymore anyway.” Ruki groaned out
“What do you mean by that?” Aoi jumped in, “Who says that you get full custody of Claire?” He snarled
“Woah!” I screamed, waving my arms in the air. Everyone in the room looked over towards me almost immediately. “What do you mean ‘custody of Claire’? I am in my late 20’s, I should very well be able to take care of myself and let nobody have custody of me! I can do what I very damn well want!” I firmly snapped
“Ruki had that attitude and look at where it got him.” Ash flipped her hair to the side and put on a cocky expression.
Reita and Uruha joined the conversation again, making another cacophony of disagreement. Kai walked over and scooped me up, swiftly bringing me to the door.
We got outside and strode as fast as we could to his car. Ah, freedom. Sweet, sweet freedom. It felt so nice to be out of that claustrophobic bubble. I held my scarf to my face and pressed my coat to my body as we went outdoors. It wasn’t as cold as before; there was no snow, but it was still rather chilly.
I hopped into Kai’s car the second he unlocked it and turned the heat up. I could feel my bones aching and my joints freezing over.
We pulled out of the parking lot, and as I viewed Ruki’s disastrous apartment from the roadside, I couldn’t help but feel like I was leaving my home when it needed me most. Guilt swept through my inner being – but it wasn’t enough to make me ask Kai to turn the car around. I promised myself I would only have one more day of being selfish before I decided to man-up and really be an adult. I had told myself that many, many times prior, however.