Paper Trails 2 | Draft

29.

There's this thing Chris used to tell me.

Chris.

I hadn't thought of him in a while, and it was strange that he's who I was thinking about now. But for some reason his voice, his words are ringing in my head like a bell. Over and over.

My Cherry. You won't be good enough for anyone but me.

His Cherry. The name I'd given myself haunted me. It wasn't my name anymore. It was his name. For me. He made it his, he owned it. He owned me—that part of me. Cherry.

I may not go by Cherry anymore, but she was still there. She'll always be there.

His Cherry. You won't be good enough for anyone but me.

Cherry won't be good enough for anyone but him. What about Neila?

It was weird, this dissociative sense of self. I was aware of her, and she was aware of me, but we weren't two people. We were one.

One jumbled, fucked up mess of a person.

What did that mean? Was I, altogether, simply not good enough?

I was aware of what Niccolò thought about me. There was no denying it. I was a whore. I was at the bottom of the totem pole—the disregarded, unwanted whatever. He didn't pick me. He settled. He settled for what he had and he did it because it was easier.

It's always easier to share the hurt and the pain.

And so I thought of Tyler, and how we shared our misery. I tried to take his and he tried to take mine and we suffered, but we suffered together and somehow that made it easier.

And he thought we'd be okay. We'd get better.

So I was the bad guy, because I let him believe he could fix something that was too broken. I let him tape the pieces together and ignored the cracks that were obviously there.  So I was the bad guy, because he didn't know better. He didn't know that I didn't care. About myself. About anything, really. He didn't know. And I focused on him so I didnt have to focus on myself. And I was the bad guy, because he didn't know not to let me. He was just hopeful.

Look where it got him.

So it is me, her, we, us. I wasn't good enough. Because even after we thought Chris was gone, even after I stopped saying Cherry, Neila was still broken. And Tyler is still dead. And Niccolò is still pretending.

We're all still pretending this made sense. It doesn't, I don't, we don't. But let's pretend. Let's share the pain.

Why not?

Why not sit and talk and act like everything is okay? He brought me...to Italy. To meet his family. For what? Because I asked? What does that even mean? Why did I suddenly care?

"Oh!" Niccolò's mother stood up, a smile on her face as we entered. There were five people now, not including us three. Three men, two women.

The moment we appeared, Niccolò was surrounded. People were rattling off in Italian, touching him, hugging him, and kissing his cheeks. He smiled, replying to them and nodding at whatever they said. I stood off to the side, letting them greet each other, until one of the women notice me. She turned to me, eyebrows furrowed, and looked me over.