Wildfire

Chapter 27

27. Apologise

My favourite movie in the whole world is Moulin Rouge. Not for the obvious reasons; sure, it was one of the only musicals I could stand without cheese exploding from my ears, maybe Ewan McGregor was almost inhumanly attractive in it, and it was directed by Baz Luhrman, one of the most creative (and possibly insane) directors in the world. But that wasn't why I loved it so much.

I loved it because of Satine.

When I was younger, I had been fascinated by her character. I thought about things the movie had barely touched upon, like how difficult the life of a courtesan must have been in the nineteenth century, what with the lack of contraception and the fact that a creepy, old guy sold her every night to the highest bidder. The woman was dying of freakin' tuberculosis, but somehow she still found the energy to go out and dance and seduce... and fall in love.

Some people criticized Nicole Kidman's performance because her character never seemed to change throughout the story, but for me, I think that was the point. She never gave up. Even when Sidler told her the truth and when he forced her to give up Christian, she never truly gave up. She walked out on stage and became the actress she'd wanted to be all along.

The show must go on.

Perhaps it wasn't the healthiest thing in the world to relate my life to the life of a fictional prostitute, but as Charlie and I lay on the bathroom floor (á la Grey's Anatomy), half-asleep and staring at the ceiling, the image of Satine kept flashing through my mind.

It wasn't until late in the night that I started to feel calmer and the red haze surrounding my thoughts began to clear. It helped that Charlie hadn't immediately jumped to the conclusion that I belonged in a psych ward. Her first reaction had been, "I knew it wasn't a coyote!" and then, "You're right, that is fucking messed up." I probably should have given her more credit in the first place, but I was starting to realize that I had been so caught up worrying about Lexie for the last year and a half that I had taken Charlie for granted.

I blinked slowly and turned my head towards her, my cheek grazing the cold floor. She was curled up on her side, her head resting on the inside of her arm, and she was drawing absentminded circles on the tiles with the tips of her fingers.

"You know, we've never really talked," I whispered to her.

Her eyes lifted slowly and she squinted a little at me, a little furrow of confusion appearing between her brows. "What are you talking about?" she whispered back. "We talk all the time."

"Not really," I said. "We talk about stupid stuff, but we never talk about important stuff."

Charlie shrugged one shoulder, her lips curving into a barely-there smile. Her red hair was starting to frizz a little and the curly wisps framed her face like a halo under the fluorescent lighting. "I'm not much of a talker... and neither are you."

I frowned. "Are you joking? You know what I'm like when I start rambling."

Charlie shook her head, her curls bouncing. "That's not what I meant. You don't talk about real stuff. It was kind of a testament to how bad things got that you had a meltdown earlier."

For a moment, I was jolted back into the memory of being in the truck, and hearing him speak all over again. It was like a punch to the stomach; I felt nauseated, my heart squeezing painfully in my chest. Then, like shutters closing on a window, I stomped down on those memories ruthlessly and shoved them away.

The mental exercise came with a peculiar sort of ease, like I'd grown so used to suppressing memories that my brain automatically stored them somewhere dark and unreachable before the effects of them every fully touched my psyche.