Just Me, Him, and Ten Others - (Ruth Harris Series)

Chapter 3

'You're a house mouse too, huh?' Salieri muttered as I returned to our dorm and flopped down on my bed, exhausted. She was reading 'To Kill a Mockingbird'.
'What's that?'
'A house mouse? It's someone who likes their comfy chair and book and doesn't embark on many adventures. Like me, and apparently, like you.'
               Her tone was cheery but her face was blank.
'Ha, I suppose you're right. I am a house mouse. How did you know?' I smiled warmly, hoping she would reciprocate, but her eyes never left the page.
'You seem way too happy to be lying on a loony bin bed.' she said. I frowned, but then she glanced at me and added, 'And Nurse Charlie told me you're writing a book.'
'Oh. Yeah, I am.'
'Thanks, Nurse Charlie. A little discretion would have been nice.'
'What's it about?'
'My life.' I admitted, pulling my notebook out from under my pillow and turning to where I left off last:

'As long as you're safe, and know that I will love you for the rest of my life, I don't care about anything or anyone else.'
               With a heart bursting with love and a head flooded with lust, I leant forward and kissed Hunter. He kissed me back, and for the first time in a week I felt like Ruth Harris again.

'I like writing.' I confessed. 'But I'm not much good. It's mostly just a way for me to talk about how I'm feeling without having to say anything out loud.' I held the book against my heart and smiled. Hunter bought me this notebook last February, when I turned 22. It had a big butterfly on the front flying high over a beautiful pastel meadow. On the front inside cover I had stuck a photo of Hunter with a butterfly on his shoulder. That memory was only four months old.
               'You should try it.'
'Huh?' Salieri took her eyes off of her book and looked at me blankly.
'You should try writing. If you like reading, I'm sure it'll agree with you.'
'It will agree with me as much gluten does. And I'm a Coeliac.' she joked icily.
'Have you ever tried it?'
'Writing? Yeah.' As Salieri spoke, I left the notebook on my bed and started brushing my hair by the mirror. (It was about eight o'clock in the evening, which meant I had an hour before I had to go to sleep. I had eaten before I came back up to my room but I still felt hungry, so the early night would actually put me out of my misery.) 'We all have to keep diaries in here, right? Plus the therapist in my old hospital would make me write stuff in our sessions all the time. I kept telling her I weren't a mute but she liked things her way. I didn't like it. I'm not a writer. I like numbers. Maths, science, things you can depend on. Things that fit together and make sense.'
               I pondered on her words for a moment. I like dependable things too. I like things that fit together and make sense. Fortunately, love had been those things to me. My family, my Hunter, my friends, support workers, they had shown me all the security I needed.
               'I can understand that.' I said. 'We all like being able to depend on something.'
'Can you depend on your boyfriend?'
'Completely.'
'See,' Salieri lowered her book to her lap and looked up, thinking, 'stuff like that, the whole romance shebang, that just takes too much faith for someone like me. I don't like putting my trust in something I can't see, or prove.'
'So you've never been in love?'
'Nope. Like I said before, institutionalised girls don't have queues of guys waiting to whisk them off their feet.' Salieri put her book down now and came to sit on my bed. She picked up my book.
'I guess. I didn't have a proper boyfriend until I was twenty one.' I said, watching her reflection rifle through my notebook. Strangely, it didn't bother me. 'But as a teen I was pretty...promiscuous. I felt lonely and desperate for someone to think I was pretty.'
'I understand.' Salieri looked at me briefly. 'But I've never bothered with the whole thing. One night of pleasure doesn't seem worth the loneliness the next morning, when they leave.'
'But the more it hurts in the end, the happier you were when it was good.' I said, more to my reflection than to her.
               I meant it. My teenage one night stands would barely upset me at all when the guy left the next morning. They never meant much to me or my alters. Mike, on the other hand...
               I continued, 'I had a boyfriend before Hunter, y'know. He was, well, he was a bad guy. He was the bad kind of crazy. But when we first met, he swept me off my feet. He made me feel good about myself. If he had dumped me near the beginning, it would have stung. But over time he just got worse, and then abusive, and then...' I trailed off in memory.
'What happened?'
                Salieri's question brought me back to the reality that I was in a room with her. I was telling her my innermost feelings, but I wasn't scared. I could talk to this roommate. She could listen.
'Hunter saved me.' I said, biting my lip which still tasted a little bit like him. I smiled. 'And Mike went to prison. He'll be in there for another month or two. But anyway, my point was, because I saw his abusive side eventually, it didn't hurt that much when we broke up. It felt more like, being set free.'
'Blimey.'
'Yeah, blimey.' I hadn't realised until then that I could laugh about it now. But there I was, with an almost stranger who named herself after a male composer, laughing about it. But then another thought struck me and I froze.
'What is it?' Salieri asked. I blinked a few times.
'I, I just thought...if Hunter were to, y'know, break up with me...that would really hurt. It would really, really sting and ache and burn for a bloody long time.'
               Salieri looked up at me in the mirror, sympathetic.
'That's how I know it's good though, right?'
               I sent her a fragile smile.
'Yeah. That's right.' Salieri smiled back for just a second, then shrugged the emotions off and lifted my book high into the air.
'I like this page.' she said, and started reading.
               ''Ah, there you are, handsome.' X flirted brazenly, once downstairs, and she pushed Hunter in the chest so that he fell onto the sofa. Hunter dropped his phone as he tumbled backwards and nearly bumped his head on the wall.
'Woah...Ruth! What are you doing?'  I glanced around.
'Mama's in the garden. Perfect, this shouldn't take long.' With that I dropped on top of him and started kissing his neck, as he yelped and tried to push me away.
'What are you doing, Ruth?' Hunter squeaked.
'Oh be a man, Hunter. I know you want this.' No matter how hard Ruth tried, she couldn't stop us from unbuttoning my shirt. In seconds I was intertwining our legs and attempting to lift Hunter's top up over his head, but he was blocking it and pushing me away. Oh come on, Ruth, you have to tell me what this is about!'
               Cheeks red and heart racing, I covered my face and tried not to explode. Nobody was supposed to read that: at least, not yet.
               'Who's 'X'?' Salieri asked, scanning the page over again. 'And why was she kissing your boyfriend!?'
'X is...me.'
               Salieri's face lit up with intrigue.
'What?'
'X is one of my alters. That day, when she threw herself at Hunter, was the first time I'd ever properly met her.' I sighed and rested back in my chair. 'Back then I was dating Mike, but I was having a rough time so X came out to give me a break. She, she went for Hunter, - because she's a sex addict and he's gorgeous - but my mama stopped her. It was so embarrassing.'
'Oh, my, gosh. That's gold!' Salieri couldn't help but roar with laughter.
               I felt so exposed, so naked in front of her just then.
'It was terrible!' I cried. 'Hunter was wary of me for ages afterwards - not to mention I gave my whole family a good look at my bra!'
               Salieri continued to laugh, and soon enough I was joining in. I suppose it was amusing in hindsight. I wondered if Hunter thought so.
               'And what is all this stuff in italics?' Salieri asked, when her ribs had stopped aching, pointing to X's lines.
'It means an alter is talking, not me.' I explained. 'Otherwise it can get a bit confusing to read.'
'Oh, oh, this is too good.' Salieri started flicking pages again. 'What else is in here? Oh! Here's you and Mike saying I love you, presumably for the first time? 'Mike.'
'Yeah?'
'...I love you.'
               He tensed and gripped my hand more harshly. I wormed it out and glanced worriedly at his face. When he said nothing, I kept walking, much faster this time.
'Ruth!' He jogged back to my side and put his hands on my arms. 'I'm sorry, you just, you took me by surprise, that's all.' I looked down. 'And... I love you too.' He lifted my chin and kissed me. For a long time. How romantic!'
               Salieri put on silly voices for Mike and I, and then collapsed in a fit of giggles again. By this point my breathing was getting heavy, and the tingling of blood in my cheeks was enough to make any amusement on my part subside.
               'Stop it, Salieri.' I said. 'Please.'
'Oh come on, Tyler, lighten up! This stuff is hilarious.'
'It's not supposed to be 'hilarious'! These are personal moments in my life -'
'Oh please, the second you wrote them down they stopped being personal. You want someone to see this, deep down.'
'No, I don't. Not yet.' I snapped. 'It's not finished, and if you're just going to judge it -'
'Hey, hey, chill out alright?' Salieri dropped my book and lifted her hands in surrender. 'I'm just messing around. No need to get touchy.'
               Swallowing the anger arising in the pit of my stomach, I snatched the book up and hid it back under my pillow. I would move it later. Something in me knew Salieri wasn't finished reading it.