Bunny

“I can’t sleep.”

“I’d be amazed if you could, Bunny.”

Laurie rolled over and pulled the beaded cord of the bedside lamp. The room filled with a comforting tangerine haze through the smoke. Horizontally, she wriggled to close the space between her and her lady, resting her head in the magical crook between thigh and stomach.

Flick, crackle, inhale, exhale. Jane lifted the joint from her lips, leaving a chocolate lip print on the filter, and tilted her head down to lay heavy-lidded eyes on her lover girl.

Laurie’s head still spun every time Jane’s eyes met hers. It was electric, the way she loved her. She was stunningly beautiful from every angle, and her voice rolled off her diaphragm like the Pacific off Zuma’s shores. She could convince anyone of anything, with half the words and double the comfort.

Jane’s hand tracked through the roots of Laurie’s hair, crimson nails prickling her scalp in lines that made her spine tingle. A contented sigh left her tongue in a hurry, as if coaxed by Jane’s convincing fingers.

“My Bunny,” she muttered in her gravel-road tone, twisting locks of her ginger curls between her fingers.

She read Laurie’s face; silver lids fluttering shut over bloodshot eyes, a smattering of sunny freckles across her button nose, soft smile gracing her glossed lips. Her nails skimmed down the side of her face, leaving four jetstreams in their wake on her tanned skin.

“What, exactly, is troubling your pretty little brain?”

Laurie’s eyes fluttered open. Jane closed the book she’d been reading – just something she’d picked up off the nightstand. She didn’t know what it was about, really, and frankly, she didn’t care too much.

Laurie adjusted her long legs, one pulled up to her knee. Like a model, or a ballerina. She’d been both, once. Bony arms, thin face, and long, long legs – barely a size zero.

There had only started to be problems when they learned how she kept it that way.

“It’s about Val... you’re sure she’s okay with us staying in her room?”

Laurie shifted uncomfortably, averting her gaze from Jane’s. That stare. It was boring into her skull, now. She’d never admit to her lover how uncomfortable her gaze made her, on occasion.

“You know she is, Bunny. You heard her tell us earlier, surely.”

Jane’s voice had found an edge that added to the chill in the air. Laurie nodded to herself, biting her bottom lip and toying with the tie of the robe she was wearing. It was a little too big, in a color she’d never pick out for herself. She didn’t look good in orange.

“I know she did, I just... I don’t know. I’ve always felt weird sleeping in other people’s beds. Even when I was out, you know...”

Laurie ticked her head to the left, towards the… Open? Drafty? Shattered?... window.

“I still didn’t sleep in the beds of the summer houses we would get into. Felt wrong, I guess,” she muttered. She returned her attention to the robe tie.

Where had she even gotten it? Must have been a gift.

Oh, dear. She was getting blood all over it. There was a gash in her hand she couldn’t even feel. How silly.

“Laurie.”

She snapped her attention away from the robe tie and back up to Jane. Her face carried a whole new set of worries, masking something darker. She never called her Laurie anymore. Bunny. Her jaw was set. She was still holding the joint they’d been sharing.

Well, she was.

Until she grabbed Laurie’s wrist and pressed the angry, smoldering tip into her arm.

Laurie gasped, yanking her arm away and struggling to sit up on the hot silk sheets.

“What the fuck, Jane!” she shrieked, tears springing to her huge eyes. The burn seemed to eat at her arm, an unsettlingly pale-centered ring that radiated up her arm, around her back, up her spine, filling her throat – choking her.

In her panic, she slipped off the bed, stepping on Val’s hand in the process of catching herself. She whispered sorry, out of habit.

It’s not like she could hear her, anyways.

“Why can’t you just listen to the fucking words I’m saying?”

Her dark eyes were filled with an empty hauntedness that hadn’t been there previously. Laurie felt a chill creep up her spine, up her neck, worm its way into her ear and whisper, Run.

She couldn’t. Her bare feet were rooted to the shag carpeting, alongside stains snaking out from under the bed. Despite years upon years of endless party drugs, her brain felt as clear as it possibly could. She remembered who had put the stains there.

Whose veins they belonged in.

“Jane, what did we do?”

Jane’s face was stone. Eyes empty, jaw set. A statue. Maybe if Laurie, too, stood still enough, this would all go away.

“You know what we did, Bunny.”

“Janie, baby, you’re scaring me.”

Laurie never called her Janie, unless she was scaring her. Usually, the pet name worked in her favor. Eased her nerves, smoothed a hand over her bottlebrush coat.

Right now, it did not. An eerie smile crept over Jane’s lips, stickered on – there wasn’t an ounce of feeling there.

“How do you not remember? You were there. Jesus, babe. Your mind is everywhere today.”

Laurie was fighting off the drugs lingering in her system. They were threatening to pull her under again, clawing at her thin skin for another hit. Her heart was thrashing into her ribcage like a bird begging to be freed.

“Where did I get this robe, Janie?”

“Val gave it to you. She said you looked good in orange.”

Val. Val was wearing it. Why wasn’t she wearing it anymore?

Laurie shifted her weight backwards, and pasted on a smile.

“Well, that was awful sweet of her,” she giggled, using up the last of the delirium to play this part. The innocent, stupid, brain-fried girlfriend.

Jane seemed to ease up a bit. Her smile went easy, less plastered on, more genuine. It was almost scarier this way.

“Yeah, it was. And you thanked her, and then she said she had to go to her mom’s, remember? She got picked up by a cab.”

Her mom is dead.

“Right, yeah,” she mumbled as she leaned into Jane. She could feel her heartbeat in her shoulder blades. The burn was still angry, radiating, searing into every inch of her skin. She traced her fingers up to her elbow, the track marks still raised and tender.

One hit. That’s all it would take for the blood and the robe and Jane’s cold glare to fade into a numbing fog. The idea of that dreamy distance was thick and bitter, at the back of her throat.

That’s how we got here.

Why is the window broken?

She turned her gaze to the window again as Jane contentedly rubbed her shoulder and picked up her book again. A hole in the center of it, glass on the floor.

Glass.

The gash in my hand.

The sirens that echoed off the canyon walls as they peeled up the silent street answered her before she had a chance to open her lips.

That same impulse from before, hand around her throat.

Run.