Just Take The Pain Away
Hoping you’ll come around
Just let me know I’ll be on the floor, on the floor
Maybe we’ll work it out
Gotta get better, gotta get better
Gotta get better, gotta get better
Gotta get better, gotta get better
And maybe we’ll work it out
We don’t talk about it
It’s something we don’t do
‘Cause once you go without it
Nothing else will do
When Carolina awoke again, she was vaguely aware that she had essentially lost an entire day of her life. She hadn’t eaten, she hadn’t done anything; she had only slept and slept with Taylor. She wondered where along the way she had lost herself and forgotten the responsible adult she had become.
She laid awake for a while, barely moving. Taylor appeared to be asleep beside her, but when his lips slowly turned up in a smile, she knew he wasn’t. She had been caught watching him. That wasn’t the end of the world, she supposed, but it still wasn’t ideal. Carolina gave a soft laugh and buried her head in the pillow.
“How are you feeling today?”
“Kind of gross, really,” she replied. “I think I need to take a shower.”
“It’s all yours,” Taylor replied. Without making a move to do so, he added, “I’m going to make some coffee, if you want some.”
“I don’t really drink it, but thanks for the offer.”
Carolina pulled herself from the bed with a soft groan. Taylor’s towel hung by the door, and she casually grabbed it, wondering if he noticed how easily she made herself at home. Perhaps she shouldn’t, but it was too late to take it back. His house felt like a place she’d been a dozen times, a place she innately knew and felt she belonged, at least as much as she did anywhere else.
She showered quickly, still feeling somewhat unsteady on her feet. There was a distinct possibility she had given herself alcohol poisoning again. There was no doubt she shouldn’t have been in bed with Taylor the night before, but the more she tried to move, the more she wondered if she should have been in a hospital instead. Still, it wasn’t as though she could go back in time and fix it. All it took to recover before was time, and she still had nearly a full day of work to recover this time. She would be fine.
After the shower, she swallowed her pride and sat down on the bathroom floor. She plugged in her hair dryer, and as she lifted her hand to her head, a large, deep purple bruise on her arm was revealed. Carolina paused for only a second before setting down the blow dryer.
She stepped out of the bathroom and peered down the hallway; the front door was open slightly. She straightened her shirt and took off toward the open door. This wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have, but she had been really drunk. Maybe things had been rougher than she’d realized.
Sure enough, just as she suspected, Taylor was sitting on the front stoop, his legs almost comically bent as he cradled a coffee in one hand and pulled a cigarette to his lips with the other. He glanced up at her, a mixture of confusion and amusement on his face.
Carolina held out her arm to reveal the bruise. “Did you do this last night?”
“No, I think I would have remembered that,” Taylor replied, his tone not revealing what he thought of the question.
“Huh.” Carolina said, then shrugged. “That’s weird.”
Taylor didn’t reply, though Carolina was sure there was plenty that he wanted to say. She had nothing else—nothing good, anyway. It was best to keep all of her stormy, conflicted thoughts to herself.
Back in the bathroom, she sat back down to dry her hair. She would need to face Taylor again before she left, she was sure. Now she had no clue how to do that. The tedium of hair drying was usually a good time to think, but it revealed nothing then.
The mirror revealed little more. The bags under her eyes were worse than usual, and one earring hung low, dangerously close to having been ripped out; it was a good thing she was too lazy to wear anything but studs. Still, Taylor denied having done anything to bruise her arm, and she believed him. Trying not to look at herself, she shoved her earring back into place, then set about brushing her teeth and putting on enough makeup to look alive.
She was just leaning in to put her mascara on when someone appeared at the door. She jumped slightly when she realized it wasn’t Taylor, but he was gone before she could process who it was.
“I’ll be out in a second!” She called after him, though he was already gone.
Had it been Zac? She couldn’t be sure. Carolina knew Taylor had friends in the neighborhood, and was starting to look for a new roommate to replace Zac once he had finished moving in with Mia. If it had been Zac… would he have even remembered and recognized her?
That question was probably best ignored and unanswered, Carolina decided.
She continued with her makeup, but she couldn’t stop herself from hearing soft voices from somewhere—the kitchen, perhaps. Taylor’s voice was easy to recognize, and she reasoned that the other had to belong to whoever she had just gotten a fleeting glimpse of.
Only the word fan was easy to pick out when Taylor spoke, and she felt it cut deep, deeper than three letters should have had the power to do.
The other voice spoke again, and she could have sworn she heard the name Delanie. The response was muffled, but the tone told her it was a denial. Had he really thought… no, she must have heard that wrong. Delanie? She looked nothing like her. But she supposed Delanie was the consummate example of a fan.
Laughter followed that, along with the word crazy. There was no doubt about that one; Carolina was certain she had heard it, and if it was applied to Delanie, she found that she had to agree. If it was applied to her… well, after the two days she’d had, she wasn’t so sure she would disagree with that, either.
She waited until the second voice had faded away, the conversation presumably over, before she gathered up her things and left the bathroom. Whoever it was, she was certain that she didn’t want to see him or for him to see her. This was the ultimate walk of shame, and she knew it; there was no point in denying it.
When she finally made her way to the living room, she found Taylor sitting at his desk. She hadn’t noticed, the day before, that half the furniture was missing—the couch was gone and the built in bookshelves were bare. Zac really was moving out, she supposed.
“Are you heading out?” Taylor asked, glancing up from his laptop.
“Yeah, I think I should,” Carolina replied. She stood awkwardly in front of him, unsure what to say or do next. She may have done the walk of shame before, but this was a situation she did not know how to navigate.
“There’s a really good diner, if you head left out of here; it’s like three blocks down on the right. You know, for some greasy hangover food.”
Carolina winced. “Oh, I don’t think that’s the best idea.”
“In that case, there’s an organic grocery right across the street.”
Taylor’s concern made something in her heart swell up, but her brain immediately reminded it that he was simply a good, hospitable host. He wasn’t exactly from the south—neither was she, for that matter—but he had manners. Of course he wouldn’t just kick her out. Giving her a few good options for her first meal in a day was the least he could do, and Carolina knew, deep down, that there was no reason to read any more into it than that.
“I may stop there,” Carolina said, although she didn’t feel like eating a single thing. She couldn’t remember why she had thought driving to this conference was a better idea than flying; all she wanted right then was to magically teleport back to her house, where she would—hopefully—feel like a human being again.
“Okay, well,” Taylor said, standing up. “I guess I’ll see you later.”
“Yeah,” Carolina replied, looking up at him.
He leaned in first, wrapping his arms around her. Carolina let herself melt into him, resting her head on his chest. Taylor gave a soft sigh and said, “Sweet, sweet Carolina.”
“Bye, Taylor,” she replied, that feeling welling up in her chest again. She had to free herself from his arms before she did something stupid, like kiss him or confess her feelings.
“Goodbye.”
Carolina stepped back and ran her hand through her hair. She wanted to say something else, but she didn’t dare. With one last look at Taylor through her eyelashes, she turned and walked toward the door. The sun shone brightly outside, and it did nothing to help her hangover, which still lingered somewhat despite the entire day she had spent in bed.
Carolina wondered if she would ever feel normal again. She remembered the days of fog that had followed her alcohol poisoning, how she had wondered if she would even be able to finish college with her brain so fried. She had overreacted, of course, but how she felt then was exactly how she felt now. She hated that Taylor seemed to bring out that side of her.
There was no point in lingering on any of it, though. Carolina collapsed into the driver’s seat of her car. It took longer than she cared to admit to program her GPS to direct her back home. Finally, the monotonous voice was directing her down the road. Finally, she could put this weekend behind her.
Carolina was nearly an hour outside of Los Angeles before she remembered that she hadn’t taken her birth control–again. She found an exit with a gas station that looked only semi-sketchy, and parked outside. She fished her pack of pills out of the back of her car and walked inside. There was a McDonald’s tucked onto the side of the gas station, and it was still just early enough for them to still be serving breakfast. Although she had told Taylor that greasy diner food was the last thing she needed, a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit did sound good.
In a matter of minutes, she was tucked into a booth with her food in front of her. She pulled the little envelope of pills out of her purse and flipped it open. To her surprise, she was caught up. Apparently she had managed to defy Laura and gulp down pills while she was drunk. She had probably puked them back up, she realized. That wasn’t great. Still, she probably shouldn’t skip ahead another day.
She probably wasn’t pregnant. Taylor had used a condom again. Things were probably going to be okay.
She really couldn’t even think about a situation in which they weren’t. She had managed to have very few pregnancy scares in her life, and she wanted to keep it that way. The thought of having to tell Taylor—no, she wouldn’t. Probably not even if it turned out to be true.
In any case, she was due for her period in just a few days, so she would have her answer soon enough.
Carolina stuffed the pills back into her purse, and let out a long sigh to clear her mind. She carefully unwrapped her biscuit and picked it up to take a small bite. When she began to chew, her mouth felt as though it were full of knives, a meal that should have been soft comfort food more like jagged rocks. Swallowing didn’t help—her mouth was as dry as the desert, and gulping down half her Diet Coke barely made a dent.
She had never felt this way before. Then again, no one else had really made her feel any of the things Taylor did—maybe one person, but that was different. She forced herself to take another bite, with no improvement in how it felt. Still, she suffered on. This would pass. It had to.