Seven Days in June(3)

“Just like Gia,” gasped a petite woman with a clip-on bun. “In every book, she fights her way back to Sebastian—despite knowing that when they have sex, they’re cursed to lose each other again.”

“It’s a metaphor,” said Eva, her vision blurring. “No matter how perilous the journey, it’s never over for true soul mates. Who doesn’t want a connection that burns forever, despite distance, time, and curses?”

She didn’t. The thought of perilous love made her nauseous.

“Confession,” whispered a flushed blonde on her fourth glass of rosé. “My son plays Ohio State basketball, and I get so horny during games. To me, all those beautiful Black players are Sebastian.”

Speechless, Eva gulped down her seltzer.

This’ll be my legacy, she thought. I have friends organizing protest rallies and writing Pulitzer Prize–winning New Yorker essays on race in America. My own daughter’s so militant that she begged a cop to arrest her at the Middle School March on Midtown. But my contribution to these troubled times will be inciting white women of a certain age to sexually profile Black student athletes who’d really just like to make it to the NBA in peace.

Then Eva’s head was seized by a thunderous hammering. She clutched the edge of her seat with trembling fingers, bracing herself for each blow. The world went fuzzy. Features were melting off faces like Dalí’s clocks; the competing perfumes in the room made her stomach lurch, and then the hammer slammed into her face harder and faster, aiming to maim, and she heard everything at a punishing decibel—the AC, clanging silverware, and merciful Christ, did someone open a candy wrapper in Connecticut?

They always escalated so fast, the ruthlessly violent migraines that had tortured her since childhood and baffled the most decorated specialists on the East Coast.

Eva’s eyelids started to droop. In a well-practiced fake-out, she raised her brows to look alert, shooting a dazzling smile at her audience. Looking at those bawdy broads, she felt the low-grade envy she always felt in a group. They were normal. They could do things.

Regular-ass things. Like diving headfirst into a pool. Holding up their end of a conversation for more than twenty minutes. Burning scented candles. Getting tipsy. Surviving an F-train ride while a subway saxophonist blared “Ain’t Nobody” for nine stops. Enjoying sex in ambitious positions. Laughing too heartily. Crying too mightily. Breathing too deeply. Walking too swiftly.

Living, period. She’d bet these women could do most of these things without shredding agony smiting them like punishment from an angry god. What was it like, the luxury of not hurting?

I’m an alien, Eva thought. She’d always felt as if she were impersonating a human, and she accepted it. But she’d never stop fantasizing about being unsick.

“Uhhh…excuse me for a sec,” Eva managed. “J-just need to call my daughter.”

Calmly clutching her tote, she swept through the red velvet door of the private room. Weaving through tables of suburban theatergoers gushing over Hamilton, she spotted the ladies’ lounge behind the hostess area. She rushed in, burst into a handicapped stall with a sink, and vomited into the toilet.

For moments afterward, Eva stood there, breathing deeply through the pain, the way her team of neurologists, acupuncturists, and Eastern healers had taught her. Then she vomited again.

Swaying, she grasped the sink rim for balance. Her eyeliner was a mess now. This was why she wore it smudged. She never knew when an episode would strike—so if her makeup aesthetic was Rihanna-at-3:00-a.m., then she could pretend it was intentional.

Eva pulled her box of disposable painkiller injections out of her bag. Yanking up her dress, she exposed her scar-addled thigh, jabbed in a needle, and tossed it in the trash. For good measure, she grabbed an Altoids tin and chose a medical-marijuana gummy bear (prescribed by NYC’s top pain specialist, thank you very much). She chomped off an ear. Fuck it, she thought and tossed the whole thing in her mouth. This would take the edge off until nighttime, so she could get through mommy-daughter after-school rituals and then crash.

Gingerly, Eva leaned back against the tiled wall. Her lids shuttered closed.

Sickness wasn’t sexy. And her disability was invisible—she wasn’t missing a limb or in a full-body cast. Her level of suffering seemed impossible for others to fathom. After all, everyone got headaches sometimes, like during coffee withdrawal or the flu. So she hid it. All people knew was that Eva canceled plans a lot (“Busy writing!”). And was prone to fainting, like at Denise and Todd’s wedding (“Too much prosecco!”). Or forgot words midsentence (“Sorry, just distracted”). Or disappeared for weeks at a time (“Writing retreat!”—definitely not an in-patient stay in Mount Sinai’s pain ward).

White lies were easier than the truth.

Case in point: what would the Orgasmic Ohioans think if they knew she wanted to strangle Sebastian and Gia? To banish them to wherever those Twilight fuckers went?

She loved her books at first. She wrote to tickle herself, the ideas sparking like wildfire. Then she wrote for her readers. Now she lifted entire plot points from the comments sections of Cursed fansites—the depth of author-cheating.

She just couldn’t peddle “tortured romance” anymore. Years ago, she’d thought love wasn’t real unless it drew blood. She, Sebastian, and Gia were all teens once, sharing the same twisted brain. Sebastian and Gia didn’t grow up. But Eva did.