What does Spencer taste like?
Paint and cinnamon.
Spice and sawdust.
A little bit like blood, but that's okay.
No one's bleeding. Not out in the open, anyway. That's okay.
Spencer shifts on the couch, eyes reddened by the unglamorous joint that's been shared. The spliff doesn't taste like Spencer. It tastes like a pathetic attempt at anarchy and bears the aftertaste of teenage depression.
Makes me feel sick, too. That's okay, too.
Spencer shifts on the couch, a second time, and now she parts her lips for me. I'm dressed in a clean pair of her boyfriend's boxers and a shirt, a dress shirt with buttons all the way down the front that's the same of green as the logo of the toothpaste in Spencer's bathroom with the broken tap. I kiss her for a while, trying to knead my pain with her tongue, trying to pretend there's little pieces of affection tucked beneath the meaningless actions of our mouths.
There's blood between my legs. That's okay too. Spencer doesn't notice for a while, courtesy of the weed, but when she does she jumps.
Spencer hates blood.
Ironic when she tastes like it.
"Isla, you're fucking bleeding."
She hates blood, and she swears when she's scared. It's endearing.
"Yeah," I say, watching it soak into the couch. It should look scary, because the couch is a light shade of baby blue. It comes thick and heavy, like somebody's got some of that sticky strawberry syrup that Chiara has a sweet tooth for and poured a bottle of the stuff between my legs. Paul's boxers are seeping.
I think her boyfriend's name is Paul, anyway.
"What's happening?" she asks.
Spencer isn't like most other girls, so she doesn't stick to the script that should follow. If this was a movie, she'd scream. If this was a movie, she'd faint. If this was a movie, she'd gather me in her arms and carry my weeping, bleeding, broken body right out of her shitty studio whose bathroom has a broken tap and take me to the hospital that's always conveniently nearby.
But this isn't a movie. She doesn't.
That's okay.
"I don't know," I reply calmly, but of course, I do. Spencer isn't like most other girls, so I tell her. She's never minded liars so there isn't a point in apologising for my poor attempt at one. "I'm having a miscarriage. I think."
Spencer sets down her wine glass, pursing her lips. She looks like that when she can't process what's just hit her. She looked the same when Paul told her that he loved her, and when Kieran burst into tears on her doorstep.
The Cure was wrong. Boys do cry.
I hate that song.
"I think we should go to a hospital," she says at last. I don't. I'm okay.
"Or we could make out." I say.
Spencer's dark sense of humour doesn't seem to be in the mood to humour mine, for she doesn't smile at that.
Thing is, I really want to kiss her.
I just need a bath.
"I just need a bath."
"Fuck's sake, Isla."
She plays me a little symphony by jangling her house keys and clicking her glass against the coffee table as she knocks it over. The remainders of the white wine spills onto the burgundy carpet, which matches my burgundy blood on her couch. There's a lot of it.
