A Case of You

It's clammy and warm but the window is open and the air conditioning unit is whirring in the corner. It only makes the noise worse; adding to the faint sound of cars and people in the early morning street fifteen stories below. I'm in a hotel in Montreal, hours from my apartment in Toronto. Sometimes driving helps me clear my head. Tonight, it's just a waste of gas, and there's nothing I can do but charge $50 on my father's credit card for a shitty hotel room.

The sun is rising and I haven't slept a wink. It's the third time this week. At this point I've stopped feeling surprised. The OTC sleeping pills I bought don't do shit except for add an extra-haziness to my vision, another layer of bone-deep exhaustion that somehow I can't shake. I feel like if I could get one good night's sleep-- just one-- maybe I could shake this. But that would be too easy, and now I'm three hundred miles from home and the hotel sheets scratch against my skin and I think: What would it take to leave this?

--

The insomnia started out slow, a mixture of anxious adrenaline at finally, finally, knowing that maybe this thing with Clara was over, and the simple fact that I couldn't get her out of my head for long enough to drift into darkness.

But that high has worn off, and now when I lie in bed, it's not her face that I see. I keep my eyes open and stare at the ceiling instead. Sometimes, I feel so thoroughly exhausted that I think I could cry, but my mind still can't shut down enough to drift off, even for a bit.

It's not healthy, I know. I can feel that in the way I respond later to touch, the way you'll have to call my name twice, three times, before I answer. I can see it, too, in the dark circles under my eyes in the mirror, the pallid tone of my skin, the increasing amount of cigarettes I smoke out of boredom during the night; choosing to believe it's a lack of nicotine that's making me twitchy, and not my own fucked up biology.

I flick my lighter on and off out of habit on the balcony of yet another hotel room, this time all the way in Thunder Bay, and I think about fucking Clara. I take three Xanax, sit down on the hotel bed, and turn off my phone before I decide to call you. It wouldn't help. The Xanax doesn't, either. It never does. Everything feels blurred, and my thoughts are a wild disarray of thoughts of Clara and I and the years we had together, before everything went to shit.

--

A friend of mine once told me that he knew he was in love because the thought of getting married to his girlfriend was less scary than not being with her for the rest of his life. He couldn't picture his future without her in it. I thought that was nice, I guess, and it helped me figure out a few things.

When I picture my future, Clara isn't there. Not because I don't want her to be, but because she can't be. What she needs is to marry some asshole guy with a stupid haircut and a job that pays well. She could stay home and work on her music, and kiss him hello when he came home from his mundane 9 to 5 desk job, and fine, maybe the sex would be clinical and missionary, and she'd fake it every time, but it'd be enough; it'd be fine. She'd have 2.5 kids and a white picket fence and a vacation home outside of Niagara, and it'd be fine, and her life would be one long boring series of fine.

I burn through money like it's going to disappear if I don't use it. I'm a writer and I'm too fucking proud to get a minimum wage job on the side, as though the struggle of being dirt fucking poor makes my writing more authentic. I could never give her children-- I can hardly take care of myself, and we couldn't afford to adopt, anyway. The sex would be good, and things would be interesting, but interesting would be far from fine. Clara would get furious with me and I'd give as good as I got and we'd just keep burning each other the same way I burn everything else. The same way the insomnia makes my eyes burn with exhaustion. She'd learn to hate me, more than she already does.

I tell myself this because it makes it easier.

--

You're going to need more back story than that to understand what happened between me and Clara, I know. I'll start simple.

The one thing I know Clara and I always agreed on is that we aren't right for each other. The war between us could have ended itself years earlier if we just learned how to stay away, but she couldn't, and although I never admitted it, I couldn't either.

Our relationship turned into a competition of who could hurt the other the most-- who could say or do things that would leave the other the rawest, the emptiest. I couldn't say who won. I stopped keeping score.

I remember asking her once why she wasted her time with me. Clara is a year older than me-- one of those kids with a late birthday-- and she's beautiful and brilliant, one of the smartest people I've ever known, but also one of the most deeply ruined. She shrugged at the question, tapped her cigarette against the ashtray on my bedside table, and said, "I don't have to be nice to you, and I like that."

--

Clara's biggest complaint about our relationship was always that I needed her too much. That was true. If it wasn't, I wouldn't have driven through two fucking provinces, from Quebec to Manitoba, Montreal to fucking Winnipeg, just to get away from her.

I need her something visceral-- just to fucking fall asleep, I need her. I bought a few Ambien off of a guy who I think thought I was a prostitute, and those help for about five hours or so, but they give me recurring dreams of Clara killing herself. It's almost not worth it, to have to see that for just a measly half-night's sleep, even if it is sickly satisfying, to imagine her feeling the same way I do. To imagine that maybe she needs me too much, too.

--

We met in our sophomore year of college, at McGill. At that point, I thought I would be a doctor, and I was majoring in biology.

I met Clara Hayes for the first time in a Chem lab, some stupid fucking 101 level class that she took because she thought it'd be easy, since she got a five on the fucking AP test in high school. Clara didn't study. She didn't have to, she just got it, in a way that was so effortless it made me furious. We were lab partners, and where I struggled, Clara would pick up the slack, joke that I was stupid and lazy but correct my mistakes anyway.

I'd never known jealousy like that before. Clara wasn't even a fucking Science major and she didn't give a shit about her grades, but she made it all look so damn easy.

"We can't all be fucking geniuses," I snapped at her one day, when she was laughing at a question I missed on my last test, saying something about how we talked about that so many times, Annie, come on.

Clara just snorted, pulling a hand through her perfect red-blonde hair, and told me to, "Grow the fuck up, Annie. Do yourself a favor and change your major," while she shoved her aced quiz into her bag along with her Chem textbook. "Who fucking gives a shit? Your parents? They'll get over it."

She looked at me like I was stupid for not thinking of it before, as though she was the first person to plant the idea in my brain.

I talked to my advisor about switching to English a week later.

Clara and I didn't fuck that semester, but she had already wormed her way under my skin anyway.

--

I realized I was gay when I was fifteen. It wasn't any sort of crisis, nothing I felt guilty about. It was more of a slow realization, one that was thrilling, confusing, and underwhelming all at once. I didn't say anything to anyone, and if anyone knew they didn't say anything. It was easier that way.

Clara seemed to take one look at me and know. We didn't fuck that first semester we knew each other, but it wasn't for lack of trying, at least on Clara's part.

"You're so fucking uptight. When's the last time you got laid?" she'd say at midnight in the library, all casual-like under her sleazy grin.

"I'm not sleeping with you, Clara," I'd shoot back, flipping the pages of my textbook.

"What's the problem? It's not like we even have to see each other after finals in a week," she shrugged. "It's a big campus."

I grimaced. "How do you even know--"

"That you're into girls?" Clara rolled her eyes. "Annie, please, don't insult me. Of course I know."

I didn't even want to ask how she knew; didn't want to know. I couldn't tell my parents, I still haven't told my parents, six years after figuring things out myself. The fact that Clara somehow assumed made my stomach churn, but I didn't want her to have anything to hold over me. So I acted less scared than I was.

--

It was spring break of my junior year before I saw Clara again. I thought about her, sometimes, when I was drunk or when I burnt my fingers on a clay crucible in lab and expected to hear her crinkly laughter and her voice calling me a dumbass.

I was never much for parties. I prefer to stay in the dorms, get high in my bathroom with a few close friends, maybe, but keggers always made me feel off-balance. I was dragged out to this particular party, though, because I couldn't use the studying excuse I always did when it was spring break.

I was in the kitchen of some disgustingly dirty frat house and suddenly Clara was there, her red hair shoved underneath of an ugly straw hat. She was wearing an equally ugly Hawaiian shirt that was entirely too big on her, bright orange in color with what looked like possible palm leaves on it. I couldn't be sure. I'm terrible at botany.

"PERRON, hey, Annie Perron!" Clara was yelling, stumbling over to me with a stupid smile on her face.

"Clara, he-- what the hell are you wearing?"

"It's fucking spring break! I brought the vacation to Canada," she said, doing a little shimmying dance. She looked like a little girl dressing up like a forty-five year old dad at a backyard barbecue.

"You look awful."

"Fuck off, I look amazing," Clara grinned, taking a sip from her red solo cup. She looked me over, and it was suddenly clear to me that I was being flirted with. "You, on the other hand, look... boring as always."

She stepped closer to me and I felt a mixture of uncomfortable and aroused. It was a strange, too-big-for-my-body sort of sensation, like someone had taken off my skin and reattached it just a touch too tight. There was clear intent in Clara's eyes, behind the glaze of drunkenness, and I knew in a bone-deep way that somehow I'd be powerless to stop it.

Clara leaned back against the kitchen island, then, and sighed deeply. "You have done this before, right?"

"Done what?"

"Don't be fucking stupid, Annie, because you're not," she paused, putting her drink down and smirking. "Okay, well, sometimes you're not. You're not dumb about this, I mean." She gestured between us.

I stayed silent.

Clara put her hands on my face, backing me up against the fridge. "It's okay, you know," she murmured, moving one of her hands down to catch my wrist in her hand, swiping her thumb over the bone there. "I can be gentle when it counts."

My breath caught in my throat, an embarrassing choked out noise. God, I was so fucking obvious. I downed the rest of my drink and threw the cup in the sink.

"Unless you don't want me to be."

"I-- don't."

"Don't what, Perron?" Clara insisted. She always did. She always pushed me.

"Don't want you to be gentle."

Clara just grinned.

--

I'm not a romantic. I don't give a shit about that, usually. Sex with Clara was something, though. Her fingers were long and agile, and she made my chest flutter, a swell of emotion I couldn't really name; didn't need to. It was embarrassing and hot and I couldn't get enough of her. I never did. I never will.

I told her I thought I loved her six months into our... thing, after she went down on me for the second time that night, and Clara had laughed lightly into my shoulder, patted my hair like I was some sort of kid, and said, "So it's like that, is it?"

In return, I told her she was a fucking bitch. She just tilted her head, another dazzling smile on her wet lips.

"Really?" she said. "And here I thought you loved me."

--

Things got worse after that, I guess, both of us so aware of how in love with Clara I was, and it wasn't like I could take it back, though I thought about it.

I could have blamed it on the orgasm I'd just had when I told her; something stupid that slipped out that I didn't really mean. But I knew she wouldn't believe it, because Clara knew me well enough that I never really had to tell her anything. She would have known whether I said it or not.

Her reaction hadn't shocked me. I just wished I hadn't been so fucking stupid to tell her how I felt.

We fucked even more after that, but there was a rift between us, then. I was desperate for it, and Clara didn't kiss me nearly as often as she had before, pulling away right after we'd both finished, and it was fucking agony, but I kept coming back to her.

--

My facebook profile said single, so that's what I was. That's what I told my friends, my family, anyone who asked-- usually curious guys-- because there was nothing else to say. "Of course you are," my mom laughed when I told her, no, I wasn't seeing anyone. "You never smile. You're so stoic, Anna."

Sometimes I wouldn't see Clara for weeks.

I knew I wasn't her only fuck, because we weren't in love, and Clara made sure to tell me so at every opportunity. "You know I'm not your fucking girlfriend, right? Jealousy isn't sexy, Annie," she'd say, biting at my shoulder.

"Thank fucking God you aren't," I'd tell her in reply. "I can hardly stand you as it is."

It was like all I had to do to make Clara stay was convince her that I didn't care if she left.

It's the only lie I ever told that mattered.

--

Clara showed up at my apartment drunk as fuck on a Wednesday morning, once, a week before we both graduated. It was 7 AM and she was going to wake up my roommate.

"I need you to fuck me," she slurred, unsteady on her feet, leaning against the wall right inside my door. "Please, Annie, I-- I need it, please--"

I could never deny Clara anything, so I went down on her in my bed, using my fingers and tongue until she was sobbing with it.

"Tell me you like it," I said, angry in love with her and her brilliant mind and the way she pushed me away.

"I love it, Annie, please," she moaned. "Annie, I love it when you fuck me."

I felt guilty about it, but that was enough, coming from Clara. To my ears, it sounded close enough to Annie, I love you, too.

--

Clara and I both stayed in Montreal after graduation, because where the hell else were we supposed to go? I wasn't going to go home to Halifax, that was for fucking sure, and Clara was American-- from Nashville-- and she hated the south like nothing else. It made her crazy.

I couldn't find a fucking job in English, just as I expected, but I couldn't come home, couldn't admit to my parents that things were fucking shit exactly the way they told me they'd be. So I used their credit card to pay rent and lied about my job search.

I got a lot of writing done, at least, even if I had no one to sell it to. I watched the summer pass me by and I watched Clara pull away from me more and more. We didn't see each other for months until one Friday night at a bar in August. It was definitely her, I knew just from the back of her head. I could pick her out in a crowd any time.

"Hey, Clara, holy shit!" I yelled, high out of my mind on the cocaine some guy had given me, mixed with a few martinis. I pushed through the crowd, putting my hands around her waist, needing to be close to Clara, to remind myself she was real.

Clara looked uncomfortable, for one of the first times in all of the time I'd known her.

"Whoops," I laughed, sounding bitter even to my own ears. "I forgot you get touchy about that kind of stuff in public. Wouldn't want to let anyone know you'd have bad enough taste to fuck me, right?"

"You're pretty drunk, huh?" said Clara, smiling weakly, punching at my shoulder.

I wondered why she was wasting time stating the obvious, when she never did shit like that. It was one of the things that I loved about her.

"You're here with someone, aren't you?"

Clara's faced paled and I couldn't help but laugh again.

"Wow, I-- you're nervous," I snorted, almost hysterical with laughter at this point. I looked around briefly, wondering which one of the people around us was the one that Clara deemed good enough for her.

"Annie, look, I'm--"

"No, I get it," I said. "Not your girlfriend. I remember."

We stared at each other for a moment, but I was too drunk and stupid to let it go. Clara had always been the smart one. "Come home with me," I blurted. "Fucking-- come home with me, fuck whoever you're here with, Clara, please--"

"Okay, Annie," Clara's calm voice murmured. "Okay, take me home."

Nothing happened that night, but I woke up the next morning to Clara in my kitchen making coffee.

I asked what I really wanted to know. "Do you really not love me?"

"I don't know. I don't think so. I think I'd know, wouldn't I?"

"You care about me, though."

"I do," Clara sighed. She sounded tired. I didn't know if it was because of the long night, or something else.

"Why?"

"Because we're friends?"

"You're the worst fucking thing that's ever happened to me," I admitted, closing my eyes in my seat and wrapping my arms around myself.

"Is it terrible to say that I'm glad about that?"

The only thing that Clara is consistent in is her inconsistency. She's distant and fucking insane, she thinks I'm too clingy and I think she's an unemotional bitch, but I don't know how to love anyone else, don't even know how to try.

--

I'm in fucking Calgary and I think my car might break down soon enough. I miss Clara like a phantom limb and I don't know how to stop it, but I need to be alone. It's better this way. The distance, the thousands of miles between us, is better.

I've got a prescription for Ambien, now, because this way I don't have to pay, like I do when I buy it from a dealer. If I take enough, I can sleep through the day and the night, and I don't have to think about Clara in Montreal at all, fucking other people the same way she fucked me. I wonder if she treats all the girls the same way.

I hope I have at least some piece of her, because god, she has all of me. But I left for a reason, and being in love doesn't make the world stop for me. Nothing changes but my tolerance for sedatives and the date of the calendar.