Hugs & Blows

Caring

            Ethan gently ran his fingertips overtop Odette’s scarred thighs. She shifted unconsciously, moving her leg closer to him causing her slender legs to part slightly. “I’m sorry.” He murmured into her ear.

            “For what?” She said looking up at him from her laptop. They were intertwined as they lay on the couch.

            “For disturbing you, I don’t know. I just worry that if I touch your scars it’ll upset you or make you want to hurt yourself again. I didn’t mean to make you move.” Ethan said with a shrug.

            “No I just moved because my body always responds to you.” She replied with a soothing tone. Odette knew that Ethan was harboring massive guilt over the scars that smeared her skin. She remembered the time he apologized to her for the events that had caused all her scars, he apologized for the ones he wasn’t there to prevent and for the ones that occurred after she had met him. She had explained numerous times how that wasn’t how things worked and that love did not cure mental illnesses, sometimes she wondered if some sort of surgeon like savior complex. She always winced when those type of thoughts entered her brain, it was doubts like those that tainted love.

            “Oh, well that’s good to hear.” He whispered into her the junction of her neck, she could feel him smirk against her before he began to bite her. She moved her head to allow him more access.

            “Have you cleaned your stitches?” He asked her randomly.

            “Wow, Ethan you’re so great at dirty talk.” She joked sarcastically.

            He moved to kiss her forehead, “You have to be careful with stitches.”

            “It’s so peculiar that you can just sew skin back together but they freaking hurt and I can always feel them and they get snagged on things and just can I please take them out already?” She whined.

            “No, you aren’t healed.” He pointed out.

            She fiddled with the thick black plastic feeling thread woven into her flesh. “I am filled with an urge to gnaw on them.” She said extending the length of the word them. “I can just glue the skin back together after we take the stitches out.” She offered as if it were a reasonable compromise.

            “No! You can’t just put glue on a wound!” He argued.

            Odette sat up and turned to face him with a feisty eyebrow arched and her head cocked. “Trust me, I’ve glued plenty of wounds together and I am fine.”

            “It’s just the pain pills making you loopy and you aren’t going to put a toxic substance on your wound.” He answered sternly.

            She sighed and pouted uncontrollably. Sometimes she wished Ethan would be a little less careful and a lot more irresponsible with her wellbeing, but she always knew she was glad he cared and was willing to put up with her even when it was difficult for her to take it. “They didn’t give me any pain pills.” She told him as if to prove that he should let her use the glue, “and I won’t even use the hot glue gun.”

            “It never even occurred to me that you could use the hot glue gun.” He confessed, “Why didn’t they give you pain pills?”

            “I’m not sure, probably because my self harm scars. Hospitals are pretty weird about that stuff.” She said nonchalantly.

            “That’s awful!” Ethan exclaimed scandalized.

            “It’s eh.” She replied remaining unaffected. Ethan reached beyond Odette to fetch the saline, gauze, bandaging, and ointment. He motioned his head for her to present her stitches to him and he began to clean and re-bandage her. She smiled and his gentle movements. Sometimes she adored how careful he was with her. Her phone began to vibrate annoyingly against the table. She grabbed it when he finished. Her face fell as she read the message she had just received.

            “Baby?” Ethan said with a concerned expression.

            “My family knows.” She whispered. “Everybody knows.”

            “What?” Ethan asked perplexed.

            “Someone from high school just texted me. One of the tabloids has been talking about me, saying I’m a starving self-harming gold digging psycho attention whore bitch failure.” She answered monotone. It seemed as if she had suddenly gone numb.