Ride or Die

She’s dead.

I say it again to myself silently, to see if I believe it yet.

Nope.

Dead, dead, dead.

The word didn’t mean anything. Of course she wasn’t dead. If she was dead, I’d be dead too. That’s how it was supposed to work, right?

I reach out to touch her hoody and then pull my hand back. All of her stuff is exactly as she left it.

A pigsty.

I’d bitched about it to her often enough. Though it hadn’t changed anything.

Why can’t you ever pick up your stuff?

Why can’t you ever leave it alone? She’d asked me. I’d said something unkind. So had she. Even the memory could get me riled up.

I sit down heavy onto the couch. The stupid beige couch that she had gotten for free and refused to let me replace because she liked it so much. I hated it. I hated everything in this room.

The real love of her life stared at me from her desk. Her precious computer. God knows she couldn’t pay attention to me when there were video games or books or porn on the internet. Or her stupid LGBTQ+ forums. Communities, she’d told me, like I should care. They’re my real family. And she’d stared at me with those hurt eyes, as if I was going to yell at her or take them away from her. All pathetic desperation and wounded pride.

I put my arm over my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see her anymore, but there she was. Always.

She’s dead, I remind myself again. Dead, dead, dead.

She can’t be dead. If she were dead, I’d be dead too. Soul mates die together. Everybody knows that.

She’d told me that. So many times. Ride or die, she’d said. I didn’t know what that meant, but she kept repeating it, so I stopped trying to figure it out. Ride or die. You and me forever, love.

Love.

The word makes me angry now. Or maybe upset. No, still. I was upset when she used it before. When she was alive. But I can’t tell the difference and no one cares anyway. I get up and carefully thread around her stuff to get out my uniforms and iron my shirt for tomorrow. You don’t get bereavement for a relationship that doesn’t exist. Work is good. Work I can understand, at least.

I stare down at the shirt and at the iron. Neither make sense to me. I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to do something with them, but the order escapes me and I’m not sure why I’m doing it anyway. Ride or die. I didn’t know you’d choose die. I stop. I can hear my heart beating in my ears and then I remember how to iron again and start the familiar ritual.

She always made fun of me for this. Little put-downs about trying to look nice for the Green Weenie. Why do you get dressed up just to get fucked? She’d said. It’s not like the Army is going to notice. It’s not like any of your soldiers will care.

They’ll care. The uniform means something.

Oh? Is that why you don’t want to talk to me in public? Or hold my hand? You’re a fucking hypocrite.

I know.

She wasn’t wrong. But, she also couldn’t hold down a job or do anything other than cry when someone said something to her, so. Here we are.

The Army feeds you. Just shut up and be grateful.

Be grateful for what? That you hate yourself or me?

Leave me alone.

Oh, sure. I’ll leave you alone. Like always. You’re an emotionally repressed thirty-something with PTSD. I’m sure leaving you alone will work out great. What are you trying to do, kill yourself?

You don’t understand.

Of course I understand. I’ve been watching you for almost two decades. You think I don’t know you by now?

You don’t know shit.

I sit down again and put my head in my hands. Why do I hate you so much?

Because the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s apathy. Hate is only for the people who get inside you. For a second, I can hear her voice and feel her hand on my shoulder. It’s like she’s there. Rhain?

No. She’s dead.

Dead, dead, dead.

I can’t sleep, so I just lay in the dark with my chores half done and wait for the pain to stop.

“What’s wrong with you?” Eddie. Eddie doesn’t like women very much and doesn’t like smart women who happen to be smarter than him very much. Strike out all the way around.

“There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“Something’s wrong with you. You’re in a snit today. Women are so emotional, am I right? Let me man-splain something to you, sunshine. You can’t just go and do things without my permission. I’m the base engineer, you go through me, you understand? No going above my head.”

“I didn’t. I actually—”

“Yeah. I understand. Don’t do it again.”

Does everyone feel like they’re underwater all the time?

No, that’s called grief honey. You’re grieving.

For what? You can’t be dead.

But she doesn’t answer. I sit at my desk. I stare at the manuals. I’m supposed to be doing something. Something about a road. Why are they having a bioenvironmental engineer design roads?

They’re fucking idiots. They’re doing it to hurt you. To make you think you’re dumb and helpless because the Army is the devil.

The Army isn’t the devil. It’s the only job I can get, I tell her. But she’s quiet again. I look at the clock and realize it’s five o-clock and time to go home. I forgot to eat. And to turn in the design specs. But it’s ok. No one will care. I put my hand on the door knob. Please don’t make me go home.

Who’s making you do anything? This is your fantasy.

I open the door and step out.

Her stuff is still all over the place. It’s still a mess. My eyes track to the bathroom and I push the door open. The blood is still there. I have to clean it up. I should clean it up. It’s the only funeral she’ll get. And the only closure I’ll ever have for a woman who doesn’t exist. I thought maybe it would make me sick, but it doesn’t.

I’ve spent years cleaning up after her, after all. All those nights holding her hair when she drank herself sick. All those days wondering if she’d overdosed for good this time and leaning my head on her chest. Her tattoos moved when she breathed, changing shape and stories if she was alive. The first time she’d tried to slit her wrists, she’d messed up and just put scars on the pretty patterns curling like geometric smoke up and down her forearms. She’d added more colors and shapes over the years, but the scars ran like canyons along her circulatory system. At least they did. I don’t know what they did with the body. I wasn’t next of kin.

I guess she needed a dress rehearsal. She certainly did it right this time.

I get on my knees and scrub, forgetting I was in my Class B’s. But it doesn’t matter. The blood comes out of the tile easily and soon it smells like bleach and emptiness. Maybe she’ll haunt me.

Maybe? Sweetheart, I’m never leaving you.

Never?

Nope. You’re stuck with me.

But you’re dead.

When did a pesky thing like existence keep us apart? I’ve loved you since we were 15. There’s no stopping now.

You killed yourself. How could you have loved me and killed yourself?

Maybe I hate you instead. Maybe I wanted you to suffer like I was.

I stopped scrubbing. I never wanted to make you suffer.

I know, love. I know. But you know, loving you is like loving a thunderstorm. It looks real nice from far away, but up close, it’s all fury and cold fear.

Really?

Really.

I’m sorry.

I know. Still doesn’t make me any less dead.

You’re not dead. If you were dead, I’d be dead.

Stop it. You know better than that. Ride or die, love. I couldn’t ride the storm, so there’s only one way out for me.

The bathroom is pristine and the wastebasket full of red flowers. I tie it off and dump it in the parking lot garbage bin. The apartment looks normal. It shouldn’t look normal, should it? What will I tell the neighbors? Why you aren’t home?

Oh, we were just roommates, right? Just good friends. Nothing to see here.

Right. They didn’t know. I walk up the stairs and close the door softly.

Her stuff is all over. I start picking up the clothes and folding them carefully. She might need them when she comes back.

I’m not coming back.

Oh. Right.

I keep doing it anyway. I carefully shut down her computer. That great monstrosity that kept her glued to it better than her lover could do. I stick it in the corner and finally clean off her desk. It’s gross. Papers, art supplies, trash all built up like a little fortress of solitude. Random art pieces stuck to the chairs, the fridge, the counters. I look up. She stuck one to the ceiling fixture. It’s a blue fox on some sort of clear paper that smears when I touch it.

What would it have been like if we were married? Would people come with casseroles? Would a priest ask if he could help me? Would people hug me and tell me it will be alright? That she was a wonderful woman and will be missed? Would I have a funeral for her, where I could hold her hand one last time and say goodbye without seeing all the blood and her white, white face staring up at me from the bathtub, all glassy and pathetic. Pathetic desperation. Or maybe no one would notice still.

I realize I’m frozen dropping the fox into a special book I got for her that she never used. A proper art portfolio that she said always intimidated her and made her feel judged. I didn’t understand. I put the fox in with the rest of her doodles and sketches. Its little face warped and marred now.

She didn’t have a lot of stuff, she just insisted on throwing it around the apartment as if she couldn’t bear for any of it to be hidden. I sit down on her stupid couch.

She’s dead.

No, that’s impossible. If she was dead, I’d be dead too. How can two people love and hate each other at the same time?

She doesn’t answer me. I don’t need her to.

Tomorrow, I’ll get up, go to PT, report to work and do all the things that I’ve spent my life doing. All those things that she couldn’t. No one will know that the one person in the world I’ll ever love killed herself and me in one go. No one will ever know her name. I won’t get to go to her funeral or say any of my feelings out loud, because she was a woman and that doesn’t exist. She shouldn’t exist. And now she doesn’t.

I’m going to ruin your life, just like you did mine.

I know. I deserve it. I can feel her again. I can’t decide if I’m relieved or angry. I can’t tell the difference and it doesn’t matter anyway. She’s right. I’ll never get over this.

Ride or die, love. Forever and ever. I told you the truth, didn’t I?

Yes. Yes, you did. I’m sorry I didn’t know what you meant.