He acts like he’s going to reach out and touch me, but then withdraws his hand back to his side. “You admit it to me.”

“But everything’s easier with you.”

This seems to sadden him. He frowns, forehead creased. I wonder what he’s thinking. What he’s feeling. I wonder what I’m feeling. More unspoken words pile up between us as he sighs and lies back down beside me. The quiet sinks in, surrounds us, consumes us. I can almost feel us shifting to another place and time, where I’m somewhere different—less confused. He’s happy. I’m happy—free.

“She’s always quiet when I’m with you,” I divulge more of myself. “Lily. She hardly ever says anything to me. I think it’s because she likes you… she doesn’t like anyone but you.”

“And that’s a good thing, right?” he asks. “I mean, not the not liking me part, but that she’s quiet?”

I want to say yes, but I can’t find my voice at the moment. Yes, Lily drives me crazy, makes me feel like I’m crazy, but at the same time, I feel lost without her. Like a part of me dies when she’s quiet. I hate the feeling; that I’m drifting away from reality when I’m not insane. Honestly, it makes no sense, yet it does. Even though I hate to admit it, Lily is a part of me. And no matter how much I despise her, she might always be.

Maddie

I leave the cabin and Ryland about an hour later, not to the bank to cash the check, not to the library where my mom thinks I work. I go to my real, Lily approved job down at the Devil & Angels Bar. I applied there about five months ago while I was working nights at the library. I was becoming so distracted by the idea of actually stabbing someone that I feared an impulsive murder was in the making. That’s when Lily arose and enticed me to go down to the bar and do something more reckless and worth my time. I filled out an application for a dancer/bartender. Even though I had no experience, the owner took one look at my curves and said I had the ideal look for the thirty to forty year-olds that generally migrated there. I was hired on the spot and I quit my library job an hour after the interview zealously with a bow as I walked out of the door. I blame the latter on Lily because Maddie felt furious and somewhat embarrassed like she does now in this slutty outfit. She even tried to convince me to tell my mother or therapist what was going on inside my head, but it never happened, and so my double life began.

I enter the bar where I’m greeted by Bella Anderfells, one of the waitresses/bartenders who I converse with a lot and who started working here a couple of months after I did. I’m actually not positive what our title is. Friendships baffle me and don’t seem possible, except for maybe with Ryland and Bella. They are my two exceptions in this world where they are more than just a face and a name, who I don’t feel like some strange alien creature around.

“Hey Maddie,” Bella says. She smiles as she strolls out from behind the bar, her cheeks rosy, her blond hair pinned up, her bangs framing her face. She’s about twenty years older than me, but looks like she’s in her thirties and dresses and acts like she’s in her twenties. She told me once she has some sort of disorder that the doctors say make her act younger than she is, because she’s trying to grasp onto something she lost when she was younger; her son and the man she was dating died in a fire. She said it so forwardly, so openly and in a way I envy her for it. To not fear the fact that she might be a little off. Maybe that’s why I like her.

“How’s it going Sweetie?” she asks. She kind of reminds me of a Barbie doll and I could see her going well with Preston, arms linked, head’s on of course. She exchanges kisses on the cheeks with me, a ritual she does with everyone she likes. Then she backs up and adjusts her red tank top, rearranging it to show more of her cleavage.

“I’m fantastic.” And at the moment I do feel fantastic, like myself—Maddie and Lily are subdued and conjoined into one single person. Serenity. No extra voices. No feeling like I’m being pulled in two directions. Like I have control over myself, a feeling leftover from my visit with Ryland. I know from past experience that the sensation will linger for another hour or so, and then the real world will catch up with me and poof, I’ll be crazy Maddie/Lily again.

Bella picks up a rag and begins wiping the barstools down. “Did you hear about the party going on after hours tonight?” she asks.

“I didn’t hear about it.” I drop my bag behind the counter and then kick it into one of the bottom cubbies. “Who’s having it? Glen or River?” Glen’s the owner of the place and River is the manager, although it’s just a side job for him until he gets out of grad school.

“River? Seriously?” She gapes at me because River hates parties and drinking. He’s a recovering alcoholic, something I discovered by accident one day when I crossed paths with him coming out of an AA meeting down on Broadway. At the time I was coming out of my support group meeting, which was coincidently next door. He was extremely nervous and somewhat agitated that I suddenly knew something about him that he kept from almost everyone except his brother. He told me to please not tell anyone at the bar. When I asked how he even was able to work at a bar without melting from his addiction, he simply said that some stuff had happened that made it nearly impossible for him to drink again. That’s what they all say, I’d thought, but on the outside simply smiled and I’d kept his secret just like he’d asked. After that, he started talking to me all the time during work hours, calling me up to his office for the vaguest reason, like to find out if we needed to order soap. I wasn’t stupid. I could see the way that he looked at me. He wanted to fuck me and eventually he put a move on me. Even though we haven’t screwed yet, we still fool around all the time and I know he’s waiting for me to give it up, which makes me never want to give it up.

“Maybe River decided to step out of his comfort zone,” I say as she shakes her head, giving me a dirty look. “Oh fine. No more jokes. Who’s party is it?”

She continues to wipe the sticky residue that we all pretend is alcohol, when really it’s a mixture of that and the residue leftover from sex encounters that go on after hours at the bar. It’s what made this place so intriguing to me in the first place. Dancing/bar until midnight then it shifts to a whorehouse. There are two sides to this place, just like there are two sides to me, and sometimes I wonder if there are two sides to everything.

“It’s one of Glen’s acquaintances,” she says, making air quotes, because acquaintance means some rich guy who comes here to fuck around with women, do drugs, and pretty much everything that’s illegal. She tosses the rag onto the countertop and turns to face me. “His name’s Leon. I actually new him in high school. He was arrested for drug trafficking or something, but he pretty much paid everyone off so he could get out of it.”

“Leon…that name sounds familiar. Has he been here before?” I ask, slipping my jacket off and shoving that into the cubby with my bag.

“Not since either one of us started working here.” She shakes her head as she plops down onto the stool, props her elbow on the counter, and rests her chin on her hand. “I did hear that he just got acquitted for trafficking.”

I try to shake off the unsettling feeling that’s rising in my body. A feeling like something’s set off a trigger in me, the hairs on my arms and neck standing on end. It happens sometimes, usually when I’m being reintroduced to something from my past and I glance around the bar to see if there’s anything out of the ordinary. There’s a guy in the back corner working on the ice machine, but he doesn’t look familiar. Other than that, everything looks normal, yet I feel like it’s not, like there’s something else here I haven’t seen before and it’s seeing me. What is your problem?