Page 41 of Her Sloth

My jaw clenches so hard I can hear a buzz in my ears.

“Then she died. And I went off the rails,” I say, rubbing my eyes and pushing myself off the railing.

I turn and look where my Hellcat is waiting.

“I took the Porsche, and sped it right through this railing here into the water.”

I don’t look at Addy. I don’t want to see the shocked face or probably more tears.

“I needed to destroy everything. Had to stop feeling. Stop existing. So I sank down with it. Didn’t fight. Didn’t want to be here. Some idiot saved me. The car was pulled out. And since then, all I ever feel is nothing. So I race. Like hell. Because it’s the only time I don’t feel empty.”

I close my eyes and lean backward against the railing. I don’t know why I am doing this. Telling a random stranger my deepest wound. But somehow, she doesn’t feel like a stranger. Since that night in the garage, she feels like someone I knew for a lifetime.

“You don’t feel empty because there is a chance that it finally ends,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say, looking at her for the first time.

She leans next to me onto the railing, her arm almost touching mine.

We just stand there, looking at both cars throwing long shadows from the parking lot’s lights.

“We used to sit up there on the tower,” I say. “Whenever the world was too much, promising each other if the day comes, we’d just jump together. She broke the promise. And since then I’m falling and falling, no ground in sight.”

“When I got the news about what happened, I felt nothing. A paparazzi asked me if my father fucked me too while I was walking to my car. I thought he tried to catch me off guard, construct a story, because that’s what they do. I don’t consume anything online, because it’s too much about me in there. I thought he was joking. So I walked to my car, got into it, and kept going on with my day. That night, my manager freaked out with the news hitting. I felt nothing. Got in my car, drove to the Hollywood sign, climbed onto it with a bottle of tequila and hoped I’d just drop dead,” she says, staring up at the spot on the tower.

I don’t know what to say. I am not a master of big words, and everything I could say wouldn’t be enough.

“You’re standing on ground right now,” she says after a while, pushes herself off the railing, and walks away towards the parking lot and our cars. “Can’t fall deeper than this.”

She opens the door of the Eleanor and leans onto it with the hint of a smile on her face.

“Wanna see some backlights?” she asks.

It is such a beautiful image, with her face half in the dark, half illuminated from the floodlight, the Eleanor in all her beauty. I frame the image in my mind before I say, “I think you need to get humbled this time.”

“Yeah, not happening,” she says and laughs.

A laugh that isn’t the elitist I-come-from-money-laugh. But the laugh of a woman who knows the pain of losing everything. The one knowing not to allow joy, because if there is joy, there will be pain when it’s taken away.

“We’ll see to that,” I say. “Winner is who’s back at the garage first.”

“Deal,” she says and slips into the Eleanor.

I look at her for just one moment before I get into my girl.

We drive up to the line separating the parking lot.

“Ready?” I say through the open window.

“Always,” she says like a different person. The person who knows she can drive. The person who doesn’t drown in pain. The person who trades the shit show of life for those rare moments of freedom.

We race through the night.

Squeeze through tight spots.

Overturn each other.

It’s like a dance we practiced for years.