Becca Ritchie - Kiss the Sky

She finally says, “I’m not wrong.”

“You think your virginity is a prize that I want to win and run away with. Am I right?”

“Don’t manipulate me.” She shakes her head. “I don’t need you to tell me what I want to hear just so you can win that much easier.”

She’s crazy to believe such a horrible fucking thing. I want to hold her longer, tighter, to calm her with my words. “I’m not manipulating you, Rose. You’re smart enough to understand me. And if you truly believe I’d manipulate a woman just to fuck her, then you don’t know me very well.”

“Don’t lie to me.” She points to her chest, her eyes wild. “I’m a pit stop to you. I’m the halfway mark until you find a woman who will kneel in and out of the bedroom.”

“If I wanted a wallflower out of the fucking bedroom, then I’d never even talk to you, Rose.” What gets me off is the way a strong woman can give herself to me the moment she passes through a door, the minute I can overpower a girl during a fit of passion. And then we can go back matching each other once again. Why would I want someone who can’t keep up with me? What enjoyment is there in that?

She shakes her head, not believing me. Why can’t she fucking believe me? It’s the goddamn truth!

“You need someone who will be by your side twenty-four-seven,” she says. “Who has no greater obligations that will divide her attention from yours. I have been a ten-year-long chase for you, Richard. Nothing more.”

 I try not to expose my hurt, but it literally tears at my face, too livid to conceal. She’s driven something hard and cold inside of me. “No,” I force. “No, Rose. You’re so fucking wrong.”

She breathes heavily, clutching the towel with a firm grip.

I near her, cupping her face with large rough hands. I stare down into her yellow-green eyes. “You’re not a pit stop. You’re my finish line. There’s no one after you.” I kiss her powerfully, my tongue parting her lips, and she responds. But not as much as I hoped. So I break apart and add, “I want you for eternity, not for a brief moment in time.”

I don’t understand why every time I speak it sounds like an empty pickup line.

I can’t lose her.

Not because of this.

I try to imagine a life without Rose and I see something gray, something motionless—a world without time and a place without color. I see mundane and dreary and lackluster.

I can’t lose her.

Not for anything.

She places a kiss on my cheek. “I want to believe you, and I’m going to trust you, but just as a forewarning, it may take more than words in the future.” With this, she opens the shower door and she leaves me with a new challenge. But I’d be with her without all the tests—all the hoops she makes me jump. I do enjoy them.

But I enjoy her more.

I’m late.

I fucking hate that I’m late. Even with my legitimate excuse—five hours of Wharton lectures and another two hour business meeting at a New York City restaurant—I’m still unnerved. Time is obstinate, constant, and undeniably aggravating. No matter how hard I try, time will not bend to my will.

The traffic on my commute from New York to Philly resurfaces my frustration. A man in a green truck lays on his horn to my left, as if noise will magically part the congested freeway. I hold back the urge to roll down my window and remind him that he’s not Moses and magic does not exist.

I pinch the bridge of my nose as I reread the last text from Rose.

It’s on soon. I’ll tape it just in case. – Rose

The first commercial for the reality show airs tonight. And Rose is already preparing for me to miss it. For most, being late for some stupid thirty-second television promo spot wouldn’t be a big deal. They’d shrug it off.

But it’s not okay.

All it takes is one time. One single moment where I walk through the door ten minutes late and everything could change. The what ifs in life aren’t impossibilities. What ifs are parallel paths that could happen—that could be. In one moment, a what if can be fact.

Scott Van Wright is a what if.

If I hadn’t heard the shower turn on, the pipes rumbling through the walls and ceiling, then I would have never gone upstairs. If I had no desire to tell Rose to go back to bed, to take a shower later, then I would have never heard Scott’s voice through the door, tangled with hers.

What if I never entered the bathroom to break apart what could have been?

Scott forcing himself on Rose is an image that cripples all the others in my head—it’s what makes my spot in this car and not with her so painful.

Another honk fractures my thoughts. I accelerate and close the small gap to appease the asshole behind me. My eyes shift to the exit signs and the words blur together, almost unreadable. I blink and try to focus, but it barely helps.

Don’t worry. Do not fucking worry, Connor.

I’m starting to feel the effects of 36-hours without sleep. The night is my graveyard shift. Proposals for class. Business emails for Cobalt Inc. Everything and anything that needs my attention. I’ve pulled all-nighters before, sure, but I have a rule to never exceed the 36-hour mark. Sleep deprivation promotes brain inefficiency.

This is what I get for ditching my limo. I could have taken a nap in the backseat while Gilligan drove me to Philadelphia. But as soon as filming began, I opted to drive myself in a silver sedan. I may have been granted luxury, but I work hard. And if I’m videotaped being carted around in my limousine, all anyone will see is a lazy son of a bitch.

My eyes sag, and I feel the exhaustion weighing on my muscles. I make the conscious decision to carefully pull off the next exit and park in front of a drug store.

I take out my cellphone and walk inside.

“I need you to prescribe me Adderall,” I into the receiver. My loafers clap against the tiled floor and the attendant gives me a narrowed look. With my black slacks and white button-down, I look better suited for Wall Street than some drug store off a freeway.

“No.” Frederick doesn’t even hesitate. “And next time you call, you can lead with hello.”

I grind my teeth as I stop in front of the boxes of decongestants. Frederick has been my therapist since my parents’ divorce. My mother’s words: I can hire someone if you need to talk. So I spent weeks combing through potential psychiatrists to give the whole “talking” thing a go.

Frederick was on the college fast track, and I met him when he graduated med school at just twenty-four. He had this air about him. He was hungry for knowledge, and that kind of passion was lost in the other thirty and forty-year-old shrinks that I had interviewed. So I chose him.

He’s been my psychiatrist for twelve years. I would call him my best friend, but he constantly reminds me that friends can’t be bought. He earns a staggering sum from me every year, and I overpay for these moments—the ones where I call him up at any hour of the day and he gives me his full undivided attention.

Our last session, we discussed Scott Van Wright, and I tried (rather poorly) not to call the producer names like I was seven and spitting on a bully. But I think I may have used the words “fallible, conceited human bacteria” when Frederick asked me what I thought of him.

 Thankfully psychiatrists have an ethical duty to keep secrets.

“Hello, Frederick,” I say, trying to keep my tone even. He’s the only person who has seen me at my worst. Broken. Unusable. But I like to keep those moments as infrequent as possible. “You can call the nearest pharmacy in Philadelphia. I’ll pick it up there.”

“I can, but I won’t.”

I let out a long breath as I scan the shelves. “This is not the time to be obdurate. I’m late as it is.”

“First, calm down,” he says, and I hear rustling on the other end. Papers shuffling around maybe. He likes to take notes.

“I am calm,” I say, layering on the complacency in my voice for further effect.

“You just used the word obdurate,” Frederick refutes. “Usually you just refer to me as a stubborn swine. Do you see the difference?”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“Then don’t patronize me,” he rebuts. Normal therapists shouldn’t be this argumentative, but I’m not a normal patient either. “You remember our conversation right before your freshman year at Penn?”

“We’ve had many conversations, Rick,” I say casually. My fingers skim over two different brands of nasal decongestants. I check the labels for the ingredients.

“The conversation about Adderall, Connor.”

I clench my teeth harder, my back molars aching. Before college, I told Frederick that if I ever came to him for Adderall to deny me the prescription. No matter what. I wanted to succeed in college on my own merits. Without stimulants or enhancers. I wanted to prove to myself that I was better than everyone else and that I didn’t need a goddamn pill to do it.

“Things have changed.”

“Yeah, they have,” he agrees. “You’re in your first year at grad school. You have a long-term relationship with a girl, and your mother is preparing to hand over Cobalt Inc. to you. And now you have to deal with a reality show. I fully admit, Connor, you’re able to juggle work and stress better than ninety-nine percent of people on this planet. But this might be humanly impossible, even for you.”

This isn’t the first time he’s told me that I’m taking on too much, but I don’t have a choice. I want everything. And if I work hard enough, I can have it all. That’s always been how my life runs; I refuse to believe this is any different.

I grab the decongestant with the highest milligram dosage of pseudoephedrine and then walk further down the aisle towards the caffeine supplements.

“I agree, it’s not humanly possible. At least not without losing some sleep. And going through my day, like a body without a brain, half-coherent and lazy-eyed, is not an option for me. I need stimulants.”

“What happened to never succumbing to frat boy tricks?”

“Guilting me? Really, Rick? Isn’t that a little low for you?”

“You’re the one that told me to use whatever means necessary to talk you out of it,” he says. “There was a time in your life where you’d rather jump off a bridge than take Adderall. I know things have changed, but just think about that for me, okay?”

I stare at the caffeine supplements, trying to unbury an alternate path. But I see none. To have it all, I must sacrifice something. That something begins with sleep.

“If you don’t prescribe me Adderall, then I’ll be purchasing pure ephedrine on the internet,” I threaten. Buying pills on the internet is dangerous.  I can imagine all the other unknown, untested ingredients accidentally laced in them.

I’m smarter than Frederick, and he’s aware of this fact. A long time ago, he made me agree to be honest to a fault. To never manipulate him.

I won’t. Which is why this isn’t a bluff.

“What are you taking right now?” The tone in his voice has changed considerably. It’s tempered like his syllables are carefully placed. He’s concerned, and I don’t ask how he knows I’m grabbing medicine off a shelf.

He’s had twelve years inside my head.

“Decongestants and 5 Hour Energy.” I bring the items to the counter and the attendant rings me up at a sluggish pace. I have to show my ID for the decongestants, and she gives me a long, harsh stare. Yes, it’s a little suspicious buying these items together. But I’m twenty-fucking-four. Not a child.

“That’s a trick that teenagers use to get high, you do realize this?” Frederick says over the phone, still trying to convince me to stop.

I take the paper bag from the attendant and leave the store, the bells on the door clinking together on my way out.

“I’m driving,” I refute. “I can either take stimulants or cause an accident. Would you like a four-car pile-up on your conscience?”

“How long have you been awake?” he asks.

“Isn’t that the question you should have started with?” I uncap the pill bottle and toss a couple into my mouth and wash them down with a swig of the 5 Hour Energy.

“Start answering me straight or I’m hanging up on you,” he says sternly. I roll my eyes. Frederick has his limits, even with me. I lean back in the car seat, waiting for the pills to kick in to where my eyelids don’t feel like lead.