Everything I Need

Part 8

 “You’re really good at this,” Shela chuckles because Charlotte is calmer than she ever expected her to be. Something nags at her chest and she turns to her carefully to ask the thing she’s desperate to know. “Did you…” she starts awkwardly. “Have you ever had a scare like this?”

The smile that covers Charlotte’s face is wide and pretty. She gives Shela a look and Shela remembers the rumors about Charlotte but she’d never want to believe anything Charlotte hadn’t told her herself.

“Uh, no,” Charlotte shakes her head and she still looks amused, even as her face screams discomfort. “No, I haven’t. But it doesn’t really have a high probability of happening when you’re one, hugely gay and, two, a virgin… so…”

Shela feels her brow rise at the information and keeps her gaze fixed ahead of her. There are about eight million questions she wants to ask her roommate at this moment but instead she just nods respectfully and tries not to explode. Charlotte looks at her like she’s expecting something but when Shela just nods she rolls her eyes and nudges her shoulder playfully.

“But one of my friends growing up had a lot of scares like this,” she nods in explanation. “A lot. Like, I remember yelling at her all the time that condoms are cheaper than pregnancy tests. We used to have to drive to the a*s-end of New Jersey so that people wouldn’t wonder why we were always buying pregnancy tests.”

Shela sighs at the mention and Charlotte leans forward onto the steering wheel and closes one eye thoughtfully.

“Do you want me to go in?” she asks and Shela just finishes the bottle of rum and lets the buzz sink in before nodding her head. She leans into the glove compartment to get her a hundred dollar bill and Charlotte’s eyes widen before she disappears inside.

She returns fifteen minutes later, with water and some snacks and she throws most of it in the back before climbing into the drivers’ seat. She grabs one of the bottles of water and instructs Shela to start drinking as she makes their way back to campus. She only stops to get Shela a happy meal and more McNuggets than a human should ever need. She helps her back up to their room and forces Shela to take the five pregnancy tests she bought. They leave them on her desk for way longer than they should and Shela lays back on her bed as Charlotte finishes the rest of her food in silence.

“I don’t know what I’ll do,” Shela whispers and she didn’t know the words were coming until Charlotte’s turning to her slowly. “If I’m…” she shakes her head. “I can’t tell my mom because she’ll probably fall apart again. I can’t tell Sana because she’ll judge me. I can’t tell Harper because I’m sleeping with the boy she’s in love with who doesn’t want her back. I don’t know what to do because I can’t do anything.”

Charlotte looks at her softly and shrugs. “Yes, you can,” she mutters. “You’ll make a choice and it’ll be the right one. You can do whatever you want, Shela.”

Shela closes her eyes and tries not to cry. She lies there quietly until Charlotte reaches over and takes her hand, squeezing it tight.

“They’re all negative,” she whispers and Shela can’t stop the tears any more than she can stop the hopelessness she feels. She sobs into her hands and laughs when Charlotte starts chuckling.

The laugh until they fall asleep.

//

Charlotte doesn’t talk about it after. She knows, from experience, that it’s just best to move on and get over it. It’s just a thing that almost happened and there’s nothing more to be done.

She remembers that one time that Jackie told someone else about her scares and the judgment and hurt she received wasn’t worth it for something that didn’t even happen. It was more detrimental than the actual scare. Charlotte doesn’t want to damage or hurt Shela anymore than she already might feel. She wants her to know that everything’s still okay.

The only difference between before and after their little adventure across town is that Shela seems to have calmed a little. She drinks less, comes home earlier, and can usually be found helping someone else deal with their drunkenness instead of her own.

Charlotte doesn’t know if it’ll last but she likes that Shela comes back, only ever buzzed from one drink, and falls asleep to the sounds of crappy TV shows on her computer. Charlotte likes that the only thing she needs to do to take care of Shela now is to take her laptop off her chest once she’s asleep.

She thinks that, maybe, Shela will go back to her old ways once midterms are over and there’s less schoolwork to do. Maybe Shela will get swept up in the parties of the pre-holiday season.

All she knows is that Shela is somber and softer than she was before. She sleeps a lot and eats proper meals from the dining hall instead of take out all the time. She calls her mother more. She doesn’t let Sana and Harper encourage her into doing things she shouldn’t. They come over for movie nights and Charlotte sees the guilt eating away at her that she wasn’t able to tell her friends this important thing.

“I can’t believe we have like a week left of semester,” Harper groans from her place on Shela’s bed. “I can’t wait to go home.”

Charlotte looks over at Shela and knows that she’s anxious about going home. Her mother’s called her a few times and the conversations seemed strained and forced. She knows that they’re both trying. She knows that Shela doesn’t want to jinx the tentative effort they’ve made to be better.

“Charlotte?” Shela asks and Charlotte shakes her head, suddenly aware that she was daydreaming about things she shouldn’t. She looks over at Shela with a frown and tries not to wonder what her friends think when Shela playfully nudges her with a foot. “Sana asked where you’re going for the holidays. She wants to know where home is.”

Charlotte glances over at Sana who looks at her expectantly. She speaks without thinking because normally she wouldn’t answer such personal questions but Shela’s caramel eyes are curiously watching her.

“Incheon,” she says. “I’ll be in Incheon.”

Shela smiles and looks ready to say something but the conversation has already moved on.

//

There’s three days until the end of school and Shela feels strange and out of sorts.

She’s had a routine for a long time, even when she was back in high school and everything was much more difficult. She’s had a routine and that’s always included working hard to get good grades and finding someone willing to ease the tension that only knows how to leave her body through one thing. In high school, it used to be Jackson and then maybe a girl here and there who was interested. In college, it was a few randoms and then Oliver. It was Oliver from early on and then it was not Oliver when she realized that Oliver was the same boy that Harper had told stories of being in love with. After that it was whoever was willing. She didn’t care who it was, just that they were capable.

(She still hates that it somehow managed to be Oliver again after that.)

Now, it’s no one because s*x makes Shela stupid. s*x makes Shela do dumbass things. Also alcohol. Alcohol makes her dumb as f**k and that’s why Shela swore herself off booze and s*x until she can figure her life out.

She can’t have another incident where her dumb, drunk self thinks that it’s an awesome idea to rip a c****m packet open with her teeth and not do anything about it after because she was too drunk to remember. Nothing happened, but it could have, and Shela never wants to have to drive to an unfamiliar Walgreens with a bottle of rum again.

The only problem is that she’s never been this wound up before. It’s been almost a month and she hasn’t had a goddamn o****m.

The mere thought makes her want to cry. She hasn’t had an o****m. She hasn’t had an o****m and she’s on the verge of being ready to kill something if she doesn’t have one soon.

Shela hasn’t m*********d in a long time. She’s never needed to. She’s pretty sure the last time she m*********d was when a girl she hooked up with in Haeundae Beach last summer asked her to. She can’t even remember the time before that. It’s not really something that she’s ever put enough effort into learning how to enjoy.

She knows that college dorm rules state that you do it in the shower or you do it when no one else is home but Shela has serious issues with that. m**********g in the shower scares her (she almost blacked out and tripped during shower s*x once) and after Charlotte walked in on her and Oliver, what’s to say that she won’t walk in again?

She’s been debating these issues for about a week now and, short of f*****g herself in public, Shela knows that she’s going to have to wait until Charlotte’s at class to do it.

Except Charlotte sent her a text this morning saying that she wouldn’t be able to go for dinner until later this evening because she has a long exam that doesn’t finish till six. It’s four o’clock now and almost dark and Shela feels her entire body fill with warmth as she realizes that she’ll be on her own for the next two hours. She was going to shower but she can do that after.

This is a more urgent matter.

She strips down to her underwear and turns off all the lights, lies back on her bed and pulls her blanket over her. It’s soft against her skin and after all these many days without release, that’s almost too much. Her hand finds the skin of her chest, tracing the curves of her body. Her eyes flutter closed and she sighs as she imagines the hand touching her isn’t her own. She thinks of long, lithe fingers and gentle hands. Her touch drifts down her body, fluttering over the bottom of her ribcage and the dip of her stomach as her diaphragm pulls with her suddenly heavy breaths. She wishes that there was someone kissing her skin, setting her nerve-endings alight. Her imagination runs wild, faces blurring in her vision as one hand hurriedly reaches up to grasp her breast while the other finally delves beneath the blanket and into her underwear.

She’s ridiculously wet and flashes of brown burst behind her eyelids as a familiar body writhes atop her in her mind. Her fingers find sweep steadily, firmly, as a relieved shudder flutters through her body. She gets swept up quickly, her mind reeling with images of blushed lips and soft curls. Her hand sweeps up from her chest to her neck, wishing that someone was kissing her there, l*****g and biting and panting warm breath against her skin.

A familiar voice from her memory whispers that it’s okay and broken moans catch in her throat as she fits a finger inside of herself. Her thighs rise up, widening her hips and giving her more room. The voice is familiar, too familiar, and she only barely lets reality set in to realize who it is. She shudders and refuses to let herself acknowledge the want but doesn’t stop herself from thinking about thick, dark curls drifting over her skin. Her fingers swirl patterns over her stomach and ribs and she chokes back a moan as she adds another finger. She wants those swollen lips from her imagination against the wettest, softest part of her and she lets the name drop silently from her lips as her back arches and her toes already start to point against the covers.