Pretty Lizzie Gets A Little Handsy

“What the fuck is this?” Lizzie cries out, looking at the dating app open on my phone.

“I know you don’t like this, but there’s an explanation. Here, let me show you,” I say, reaching out for it, but she reacts faster.

She hops out of the covers in an instant, snatching my phone into her hands. I try to grab it back from her, but she holds it behind her and I swipe the air. There’s a steaming anger that boils in her eyes.

“I can’t believe you would do this to me,” she yells.

“Give the phone back to me,” I say, trying to be firm, but she refuses, shaking her head. I see her swiping out of the app. She’s going to see the Affection Multiplier, and God knows what’s going to happen if she clicks into it.

I dive after the phone, gunning for her outstretched hand, but Lizzie wrenches it to the side, so that I land face-first onto my bed.

“I can explain,” I say, rolling around, trying to grab it back, but she crawls to the side, getting out of my way. It is no use. My room is small, and so she has cornered herself already, stuck between two walls on top of my sheets. I slowly approach her with outstretched hands, hoping to reason with her.

“Just hand me back my phone, and we can sort this out,” I plead. It doesn’t sound good aloud, and from the flash in her eyes, I know it’s just made her worse.

“We had something. We have something,” she says, and I nod, playing along. And then, the burst of anger: “So why would you fuck it up like this?”

My eyes widen at the last word. She hurls the phone at the opposite wall, my hand instinctively reaches out to try to catch it, but it flies past my reach and slams straight into the drywall with a painful thud.

Then comes the first fist. It connects with my nose, and my head snaps back from the ****. I’m dazed, but I put up my hands, shielding my face as the next blows come raining down.

“Stop,” I shout, “Stop this shit, just stop!” But she does not.

“Who do you think you are!” She’s screaming into my face, clawing at my arms, nails digging into flesh as she tries to peel my hands away. “Who the fuck do you think you are?!”

I don’t answer. I let her continue to scratch at my arms while she yells her voice raw, waiting this shit out. It can’t last much longer.

It is true, but it hurts every second of the way there. I feel her nails digging into skin, the slices of pain that open up, knifelike, the hoarse heat of her breath stinging across the length of my arm, breaths which come in half-ragged as she grips me tight, shaking me, now striking out with small fists, and my arms take the brunt of it. I will not fight back.

“Fuck you, you shitbag, you sack of dogshit, you shitcan on a fuckstick, you fucking…”

She works herself out of it after a minute or two. She is panting, heavy, tears glistening in the corners of her eyes. She lets out a frustrated scream and stomps across the floor and into her shoes.

“You’d better have an apology ready when I come back,” she says, glaring at me. She’s coming back?

The door slams shut and I am left in the room alone, faintly illuminated by the wash of the streetlights outside and the corridor’s dirty fluorescence that seeps in from beneath my door. Rivulets of blood run down my arms. My nose is ginger, and I touch it lightly, but I don’t think it’s broken. Amidst the fresh silence, my computer’s red camera light winks back at me, and I fall asleep amidst the throbbing pains, the day’s exhaustion finally hitting me.