Sandpaper

five

The first time Charlie showed up for therapy three months ago she was half an hour late just to send the message that she didn't want to be there. She was sunken eyes lined with bruises and raw knuckles split open from a fight at the bar a couple of nights ago but she didn't seem to mind. She sat on Liam's couch staring through him and for some reason she made him nervous.

"You gonna try and fix me?" she had asked crossing her arms over her chest, tone accusatory. The name on the diploma hung on the wall behind his head was purple, and she already decided she didn't like him.

"That depends, do you think you need fixing?" he had responded cautiously. She gave him a pointed look, eyebrows raised, and the corners of her mouth twitched upward into a smirk. She thought it was cute that he was trying to pull this mind-game bullshit with her so soon.

"I've done just fine on my own so far," she shrugged.

"But you weren't completely on your own, were you Charlotte?" His question knocked her off guard and she felt the sharp pain of a knife being lodged into her back. She saw the yellow creeping in and swallowed once, and Liam thought he had finally broken through, could almost see the tears forming.

But she dug her fingernails into her arms and heard the pain beating steady, harmonizing with the screams in her memories. It was all so fucked up. She was so fucked up. And they both knew it.

"It's Charlie actually," she said gritting her teeth, eyes boring into him. They were as dark as the depths of hell and he saw the demons lurking in them.

Liam was overly expensive suits with gelled hair and puppy dog eyes, but he didn't fool her for one second. She was the stallion waiting to be broken and he was going to do whatever it took to smash her into the ground only to be credited with gluing the pieces back together. He didn't give a shit about her. And there was no fucking way she would let him in. She couldn't let him in.

"Tell me about him Charlotte. Tell me about Cole," Liam pressed and she could feel the air leaving her lungs. He was playing dirty.

She shut her eyes and for just a moment she was there. She saw everyone around her sitting on velvet covered chairs, vision hazy like it always was when she came home to find him smoking, windows all closed because "you get more bang for your buck this way Chaz", tongue swiping absentmindedly over those cherry lips.

And she felt herself falling into a bottomless pit, dustbowl of the soul melting into soundless oblivion. She sucked in air, trying to breathe through corroded lungs. She couldn't move, couldn't think straight and there was nothing to grab onto, nothing to stop her from tumbling into the swirling darkness. So she sat there choking on the sweetness while the preacher droned on about how he was in a better place. She knew it was all a lie and she couldn't take it anymore. Her world was caving in and each fragmented thought filtering through her head was pushing her to her breaking point. She was shaking hands and tears that wouldn't come and she wanted to scream.

She felt herself stand, chair flying backwards, heads turning to look at the girl that wore a yellow dress to a goddamn funeral. She was moving forward and her vision was a cloud of blank faces, black and white like a camera filter. And then she was standing right in front of the casket feeling sick to her stomach. Her eyes wouldn't fucking water, and she still wanted to scream. She heard a muffled voice asking if she was alright, identified it as Olivia's, and everything dissolved into red.

"Charlie," Liam's voice broke through splattering green on the red canvas like an exploding Christmas tree. It only took a second for her to regain her composure. And if Liam hadn't been doing this for a while, he wouldn't have caught the slight change in the slope of her eyebrows or the sharp intake of her breath. If he hadn't been paying attention, then he wouldn't have seen the flicker of fear in her eyes. But he did and she knew she had lost.