The End: Part One.

Jake returned from California the same way he left for it. Determined to have her, to marry her, care for her in every way she’d never had. Except this time it was easier to settle down into the middle of someone’s living room and take a nap. He was coming home to “friends” not just to an airport in an unfamiliar city. She had tried everything to get him to stay in California, threw around harsh words, lied about her heart and cried and begged, but he still came. The night he arrived Emma sat on a washer and dryer in the house of the guy she was currently fucking and drank a fifth of Jack. Jake didn’t call. Jake didn’t text. Jake didn’t come running up with fire in his eyes and flowers in his hands. Jake didn’t want her. This infuriated her more than his return. She hated him for this, she felt so worthless at times she thought she’d choke on it. “Why the fuck did you come home if it wasn’t for me? You stupid selfish prick!”

The truth being she wanted him to want her. She needed him the same way he needed her. They were lumps of flesh both born with half a back bone, and together, they shared one. Jake is the kind of person who is not going to do anything unless its outcome is one hundred percent. Jake will never fail because he will never give himself that opportunity. Emma knew this, and she knew that he was twiddling his thumbs, waiting for her to give the go ahead as in “Yes baby, I’ll take you back” so she called him. They met at Cal Anderson, the park of parks when you’re talking about the heart of Seattle. There are fountains, swings, tennis courts, and wide green lawns covered with girls with tattoos and guys riding bicycles. Cal Anderson is right off of Capital Hill’s epicenter and if you ever need a breather or a safe place to crack open a bottle of wine there’s your haven. The sun wept that day, every inch of the city was drenched in heat.

“I just want to say a few things,” she started, “I fucking love you. I love YOU. I love that you’re completely torn between heart and animal, I love that you fuck up, I love your darkness, your insecurities, your fear. I love you. I want to be with you, and I’m willing to do anything it takes to do that. I am willing to allow you to do whatever you want. If you need to fuck, go out and fuck. If you need to take a week long break and go drink with your idiot friends, do it. But I fucking love you.”

Jake stared at her like he was waiting for her to say “April fools”, there had to be a catch, there always was with her.

“The only thing I ask is for you to be real with me and for your truth. And not real like when I ask you what you’re thinking you tell me. Real like when I want to run into the ocean you let go of everything and jump in too, real like we’re a team, real like I won’t ever have to guess my standing with you again, no more surprises. Can you do that for me baby?”

Hesitation. “Yes, but does this mean you’re going to go out and fuck and do these bad things too?” He would.

“No, I don’t want anyone else but you. Ever, ever again”

“Alright, let’s do it.”

That night they rode the bus home together, fingers dancing, her head on his shoulder, his head on her head, sleepy eyes, shifting to kiss every few minutes. Home. She loved looking at him when they were on the bus together. He’s always so different in public places, so stern, like a statue of the man she dreamt of when she was little.

This summer’s intensity made what they shared in Los Angeles look like a joke. Everything was real this time, she knew it. It was vivid, it was raw, and it was fucking real. They were planning on leaving in September to go traveling. They would Greyhound it to every major city on the west coast and then follow the sun down south. They would sleep outside and talk about the stars, and then decide that they didn’t care about the stars and fuck. They made lists of the things they would need, went to army surplus stores and tried on silly hats and shoes. They practiced sleeping outside at Cal Anderson, and Silver Lake. They smelled like liquor, cum and piss but they didn’t care because this was finally fucking it. This sleeping under a tree, waking up saturated in sweat and shuffling the blanket a few inches every half an hour because the sun was rising, this was it. This touching each other in public, kissing so severely they forgot there were families picnicking around them, their lips tasting of each other, this was it. One day at his apartment where he was crashing on the couch, one day at her apartment where she was crashing on the couch. Seldom had they spent nights apart. The plan was that they would both find jobs and save up for the next month, and then they’d leave Seattle so quick a tornado would start from under their feet. Usually just when one or the other had a job interview would they wake with out each other, but not without a message, or phone call wishing them good luck. Jake landed a job interview Forever 21 as a manager.

“Okay fish butt, I know you’re really set on traveling but I’ve been kind of thinking about staying here.” The first time she heard that her ears stung like a freezer burn. “I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day, about how for you, since you’re so young that you can take a year off and fuck around and no one looks down on you for it, but I’m almost twenty five, and have been managing for years, if someone sees a break in my work record I’ll have no answer for them, it’ll look bad”.

From that day similar conversations became more frequent. Forever 21 dragged him in and out of the interviewing process for a month. All along he was saying “It’s only going to be for a month, unless I get paid over 19$ an hour” and then as the weeks went on the dollar amount starting lowering the more he wanted to stay here and “nest”. Nest was a term they had come up with for creating a “life” together: the house, the kids, the wedding vows. The whole big show.

Emma wasn’t stupid. Working at Forever 21 is like any guy’s wet dream, especially guys like Jake. A big, well lit room with 60 twenty somethings running around in ripped up tights and heavy eye make up. The place was a factory turning preteens into light weight sluts over night. “Baby I don’t know how I’m going to feel about you working there, I get that it’s probably like a dream job for most guys, but I know you, and um, yeah… I’m not really into feeling sick to my stomach every day that you’re falling in love with someone else. It’s not like you’ll just fuck these girls, you’ll get to know them. That makes me sick”

“Fishy, the only person I could ever love is you.”

And from there she stood still, mouth shut and she watched the entire world they had spent the last couple months creating tumble down around her, like she had been living on a set and everything was just backdrops, one by one they were lifted and taken away. No more ideas of traveling, no more ideas of traveling babies, of vans, of drugs, of the prettiest cities, of never seeing any of these low lives again. New backdrops replaced the old, pretty ones, a job, an apartment, talk of getting a dog. She taught herself how to cook.

She trusted his eyes and hands for the very firs time. She followed him wherever he was going to take them. Their apartment was the basement of a house that shared with a dikey, but straight, thirty three year old women named Carla. It had that rustic, half finished, concrete poking through every two pieces of dry-wall look, it was just perfect. The kitchen though, was Emma’s favorite place. Black and white flooring went along the long rectangular shape, one long counter covered in copper, a gas stove, a bar running along the other side of the counter cluttered in vintage cookbooks and action figures. The parallel wall was half covered in wooden shelves that held all their dishes. The ones that they had picked out by hand at the thrift store, a plethora of mismatching plates and mugs, each one set out like a flawless show of art. They had covered the concrete showing in the kitchen with chalk drawings of Sesame Street characters.

Jake was always gone at work. Emma “nested”. The mornings were the worst. The light flicked on it angered her like a fly in her food, but then she’d peak out from underneath the comforter, there he was. This “man” of hers in one of the flannels she had picked out for him. They had a conversation months before hand that he needed to stop dressing like Wayne from the Wayne’s world (black tee shirt and jeans) and get some actual “style” in his life. He’d stare in the mirror but not for too long, he didn’t want to seem like he cared. His whole mission in life was to seem like he didn’t care. She would always wait to use the restroom until he left to brush his teeth or trim his beard. She’d casually stroll in, usually wearing nothing but a pair from her overabundance of boy-cut underwear and catch his smirk in the mirror sneaking a peak at her.  And then before he could say a word she’d scurry into the bedroom and hide under the covers like she’d never left, like she had never woken. He always saved ten or fifteen minutes to say goodbye to her. Plopping himself of the bed and scrunching his way toward her face under the covers.

“Fishy, I have to go”

“No, no, no! Don’t do it. Call in, pretend you’re sick! Your mother died”

“Ha, I wish my mother had died, but I have to go babe, I’ll be home later, we’ll get sandwiches, or you want to try that new café you saw down the street”

She’d just sit and pout and refuse to answer any questions. “Okay babe well I’m going to go now, have a good day, get out of bed, go do something!” She’d latch herself on to his arms and shake her head as if it could stop clocks. “I’ll miss you fish butt, especially your butt!” He’d left the covers and a chill would come over here that woke her whole body up. He’d roll her over roughly and kiss the backs of her legs, and each butt cheek a million times over, and he’d leave, and she was alone then.

Mornings like this one, ones they’ve shared for three years started becoming shorter, and shorter. Winter came on strong, and Emma peeled away the layers to her cocoon and stood her ground inside of it, just as she did every winter. Each flaming path of her mind became solid and she could walk to the places she blocked out every season but this one. While Jake was gone at work her thoughts were of nothing but sweaty cunts and every lie he ever told, she wrapped herself up in them and they drove her completely insane. The self-loathing and insecurities built themselves up so powerfully she could have sworn that at any moment blisters would start popping up on every inch of her skin, breaking their seals one by one and oozing their nastiness ubiquitously. Emma sent Jake text after text while he was at work and his responses became fewer and fewer. Everything started slipping away from them, and Emma blamed it all on herself. The weight, the thoughts, the cocoon was all becoming too much; Emma was seeing red.

But as soon as she heard the key in the door, and Jake’s vans being unlaced and thrown in the coat rack, she wiped the tears with the backs of her hands, and offered to cook dinner. He’d lay next to her, waiting for her to say something.

“I just… I can’t get them out of my head, all of the girls, every lie, what is real? Am I not enough? We’re never going to be able to make it, I can’t trust you, there are demons eating my stomach. You did this to me and you don’t even understand it!”

“What do you want me to do Emma? I can’t take away the past.”

They’d watch a movie and go to sleep. Sometimes Emma would try to fuck Jake, and he’d just sigh, like he could see through her and there was something more interesting on the other side. Emma never saw what was coming next. She had just decided that all of this was due to her seasonal warfare and that come Spring they’d be like glue again.

Callie was a friend that Emma had made over the summer time. They had only hung out a few times but had a decent time every time, she felt a sister like connection to her, so when Callie called one day saying that she was back in town Emma was all excitement. Her, Callie and Jake all walked to the store to get some beers and listened to Callie’s stories of her travels. Callie was an attractive enough girl, a body that sort of hung like she may have been fat at one time, but an adorable face and with the amount of make up she coated on to it she looked like a doll who’s legs might spring open at any moment. Emma had forgotten this before introducing her to Jake.

Emma is terrified of raccoons. She had never seen one until she was seventeen years old, and even then she had no idea what the creature before her was. She yelped and ran inside after the sighting, yelling for her mother to come and see what she had found. Some kind of alien? Possibly. Her mother just shook her head and called her an idiot for having never seen a raccoon before but since that day she could not get the sight of the their glowing eyes and tiny, perfect black hands out of her mind. She once read on the internet that they can rip the flesh off of a human in minutes. To say the least: Raccoons did not excite Emma.

The whole night Emma had been noticing Jake turning on the charm. Or, what most eighteen year old Seattle party girls view as “the charm”. She’d catch him staring at her, making her shift in her chair, ignoring Emma and only talking to Callie. And even though Emma was terrified on the verge of tears in the bathroom, Jake continued to try and lure a raccoon inside of the house with some turkey meat, the harder Callie laughed the more substantial his efforts became. With each beer a tension between them became so thick you could almost tug on it.

“Do you want to fuck Callie?” Emma asked, point blank, as Callie stumbled into their bedroom to lie down.

“Uh, what?”

“Do you want to fuck her? I mean you’re not fucking me lately, and you sure as seem to have your dick hard for her, so why don’t you do it?”

“I couldn’t do that to you Fish”

There was a long silence after this, both of them holding back laughter, this was no where close to true, and he’d proven that.

“Jake, I think you want to fuck her, and I think that now’s your chance.” Emma shoved Jake into the room and closed the door. She sat quietly on the couch. She sat the way that you would sit in a dentist’s waiting room, like she was waiting for her turn. If she hadn’t read all the magazines on the table forty times she probably would have picked one up. Ten or so minutes passed. Callie came out of the room. Jake came out of the room. Callie went to use the restroom.

“I couldn’t do it, Fish”.

“Ugh, fine, whatever, I’m going to sleep then” Emma replied.

Emma went to their room and laid down, a tear falling softly on the comforter. She had picked out this comforter only a couple months ago. A white down comfortable, with soft white sheets to match, she always wanted to fuck him dirty in a white bed, early in the morning. A few minutes had passed and she got a punch in her gut that threw her half way across the room. What the hell are they doing out there?

They were outside smoking. Callie didn’t smoke.

Emma stared at them through the window in the living that looked out into the mud room. She over heard Jake explaining “I really want to fuck you but I just couldn’t do that to Emma, but man… I really, really, want to fuck you”. Emma had to take a second to judge how she felt about this. Had Callie known that her and Jake had been discussing this she would have jumped in the air about this conversation. But Callie didn’t know, so the only thing sprinting from side to side of Emma’s mind was why the fuck does he need to be explaining to her why he can’t fuck her? Just then Jake’s eyes caught her eyes and he opened the door, “Uh hey babe” he gulped.

“Hi.” Her veins turned to lava, she looked around the room for something to throw at him and her eyes stopped dead on the guitar laying on the floor about three feet from her right foot, she lifted her leg up to her chin and stomped it in hard. Callie ran up the stairs and to the car. Pussy. Emma’s foot beat like a hammer until all she could see were wire and wood.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing!” He yelled

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Why the fuck are you out there explaining to my friend how bad you want to fuck her but wont? How does something like that even start?”

She pushed him.

“What the fuck Emma? Fuck you” He spat at her. “You just ruined one of the only things I’ve had my whole fucking life. This meant a lot to me, god you’re so fucking stupid”.

“Oh I’m so sorry I ruined your fucking shitty ass guitar. Maybe you shouldn’t been such a deceitful fucking prick”

She pushed him and he pushed back. Alcohol grabbed a hold of both of them and threw them around the room. Emma pulled out a knife, and Jake grabbed it and stabbed it into the couch, picked her up and brought her to the bedroom. She’d never seen him like this, the ocean in his eyes froze over, he was livid and she was out for blood. Each time he came close to her she threw a punch, and he’d try to pin her down, both of them screaming so hard their voices cracked. He stormed around the room throwing her stuff everywhere, “I want you out, you fucking bitch, I want you out of this fucking house right now!”

Her retaliation was almost always violence and words that she hoped would burn as much has he had burned her, but there were a few times when she turned inward, and lit her insides on fire. She sat on the bed, that white bed, and her mind became sinister, when she came to her entire leg was covered in blood. This is not the first time that she’s done this, this is not even the first time in the last few months that she’s done this. And both times the same. Jake would explain it slowly, like a movie he saw years ago, he told he that she’d just scream and scream “Is this what you want? Look at me, I’m nothing, I’m nothing! Why am I not enough for you”, She says this over and over again, while she pounds her legs raw with whatever weapon she’s chosen that night. Her mind unfolded and there he was, on top of her, pleading for her to stop. It took a second to remember the night’s happening and all over again she was enraged and spit in his face.

“You’re nothing, all you do is fucking hurt people, and ruin your life. You’re just like your god damn father!”

His arm raised and came flying toward her with no time to move. When his hand hit you could hear glass shattering, babies crying, hearts breaking. A wind this cold had never run between them. Emma thought she had been hit before. She’s the kind of girl who drinks a fifth of whiskey and starts fist fights with the crust punks that haven’t slept in three days. But she’d never been hit like this. The world spun, she tried to talk herself through focusing in on one thing but the second her mind could grasp what an object formed, it would move and she’d be at the beginning again. The room was one mile long panoramic photograph that she couldn’t touch.

“Oh… my god” she cried

“Baby, baby, baby, I’m so sorry, I’m so fucking sorry. I never wanted to hit you, I never wanted to hit anyone, baby, Jesus, I’m sorry” Jake was crying. Jake was crying like he meant it. They laid with their heads together, knowing that this was the end and crying for it like the harder they cried the more likely it was that they could take the night back.

The Airport: Part One.

She sits; usually she sits but this time she sits with conviction and a smirk that couldn’t be wiped off with a hammer. Wouldn’t that be adorable, a striking, dainty young thing with a punched in face and chip on her shoulder? She wouldn’t fall for something so ludicrous, not anymore. The strength that she’s found in the last few months could withstand the weight of the ocean, hell, of three oceans. At night though, it pours over her like hot wax: She should have known it was an empty promise, his eyes were vacant when he said it, even over the phone one thousand miles away.

“It’s been months; I haven’t thought or touched anyone else. All I want is you. I am coming for you. I am leaving everything behind for you. I am going to marry you”.

Everything? Really? She thought. Oh excuse me that you’re love has taken you away from your low-life, beer guzzling, whorish friends who couldn’t give two shits about you. Everything, pff. He had taken thirty seconds to spout off those words and it only took her a year and a half to realize that they weren’t even close to being true.

She had moved from Riverside to West Hollywood and settled into an apartment with two men she found on Craig’s List. They were outrageously gay and both shared the name Javier. The living room was lined with teddy bears, pictures of their family, and designer pillows. Frightening? Well you try meeting ten people in the greater Los Angeles area and you’ll see that none of them can beat even that low standard of normalcy. Besides, they seemed welcoming, and in the grasp of their handshake she couldn’t imagine them hovering over her bed at night envisioning what her insides looked like, so it was there that she waited. She waited weeks, but it felt like two short breaths. The day crept up the way that winter does right when you’re just starting to enjoy Autumn’s pallet. She looked up the buses she needed to take to LAX. There were three. The last one was bus 111. Great.

Her nerves ran a stampede in her stomach like the over taking of Jerusalem, and she did all she could to keep her dinner from last night where it belonged. At the airport she found Alaska Airlines and stood there uneasily. Her pocket vibrated. His text: “I’m here”. Shit. Not wanting to look like she was as elated as she was she ran outside and smoked a cigarette. When she went back in she saw the back of a man, tall, thick bushy head of hair and her heart climbed down her rib cage and cannon-balled into the pit. He slowly turned around and their eyes met and they ran to each other.

“Uh hey, yeah, so I’m here, it’s been crazy, yeah… Uh, Hi”, He stuttered.

“Um, okay, so now is when you hug me or fucking something!”

He picked her up, she poked her head into the clouds and wrapped her arms around him as he spun her round and round, when he planted her back into the ground, her head was in a tango and he kissed her hard. Minutes may have passed by, it didn’t matter, the game was back on. He smelled of malt liquor.

On the buses back they laughed and commented on the silly miniscule things that they thought no one else ever noticed: Their secret language.

A key cracks open the door, “Welcome to our new home. This is the living room, ignore the creepily staring stuffed animals and come this way. This is the bathroom. It’s topped off with a pink toilet and tub. And this… This is our room.”

She shut the door and he hijacked her to the bed. She had almost forgotten how warm his blood was, almost boiling with eyes that threw flames even in complete darkness. His taking off her clothes felt like skin peeling off, her heart finally beating. His tongue lapped between her thighs, her clit pulsated, and he could hear it, a tiny baby drum begging. He flicked and danced around and over it with his tongue and just as she burst he slide himself inside of her, the deepest he’d ever been. If you could pop your cherry more than once this would’ve been the time it happened for her, he had a dick you could feel at the pit of your stomach. Three minutes later the “magic” was over.

“It’s been a while”, he said.

The next few weeks blistered, they were heavy and full. They traveled everywhere the bus system would let them. Up down, downtown, Chinatown. They ate LA up like taffy, it had a town for anything. They’d buy a fifth of whiskey and sit like bums on Sunset Boulvard.

“What does Pinches mean?” She inquired one night.

“Fucking” Jake responded.


“So you’re meaning to tell me that that place over there is called ‘Fucking Tacos?’”

He sighed with a slight laugh, “Yeah fish butt, you wanna go?”

“Did you even need to ask? I mean COME ON! Let’s go get some fucking tacos baby!”

They’d run along the boardwalk of Venice and Santa Monica beach. She would carry a bag that hung to her knees, packed with beer, canvases and books. They’d plop down anywhere they felt like it and start painting.

“What are you painting baby”, She’d ask, knowing he’s never held a paint brush a day in his life.

“Um… you know I’m really just to go for the abstract late 70’s look. Yeah, no really, I have no idea, I’m pretty sure this looks like an angry banana hurting an angry pepper.” He adds a few more strokes into the jumbled mix of color, and exclaims “I shall call it the eruptions of the Javier’s!”

“That’s just lovely Birdy, just lovely”.

Passer Byers would curiously watch them. They'd think: So young, with their faces fresh and their hands moving quicker than their eyes can catch. Some would stop to chat with them, telling her the painting she had done showed “promise” and his was “interesting”. She couldn’t help but wonder how many of them could see the reality, the inevitable? How many of them could see her disfigurement after the last two years of slowly draining tub-water. But they were happy now, everything was better now.

Those blur of days were nothing short of enchantment, every-day was absolute home. She realized that she had never fallen in love with Jake before this, that it was now watching him bum around with vagabonds on the boardwalk, and try things he’d be too scared to do in Seattle that she saw the purity of his spirit like crystal. For the first time she swore she could melt into him but there was always the knocking of rational thought.

This romance skipped a beat one night when Jake and Belle were having one of their mis-firing phenomena nights. These nights they stayed up talking all night, revealing the most inner-workings of their brains, dancing together on moonlit streets. These nights usually ended in fists and restraint and tonight would prove not to be an exception to that rule.

“We’ve been through so much babe… and we’re happy now, we’re like one of those really gay success stories that people write books about” she said. They both lay there replaying the last two years in their heads. Hers automatically went to re-living the sting that stung the longest. Ashley Perkins. “Hey how long has it been since you talked to Ashley? Was it when you fucked her back in December?”

He choked. He blinked so concentrated she could hear it, like a judge’s wand. Something snapped out of place inside of her that she knew she could never repair. He was lying, he had done something before he left, she knew it, she knew him better then he knew himself and it was with this certainty that raised a drunken fist and started a forty five minute wrestling match that resulted in a black eye, and her head on his belly, softly crying.

The Wine Motel: Part One.

She groped his neck with her tongue and collapsed on the motel bed.  He fucked her hard. He fucked her good, and without thought. Alcohol rolled off his back as a beaded necklace. 

She lay there finally aware that she (in-fact) did only exist from the shoulders down and to make matters worse her vagina felt like it had just been abused by the sharp side of a cheese grater. A drunk wave warmed her thighs and her clit throbbed of un-satisfaction. She sank into the bed next to the man second on her list of “guys never to fuck” and rubbed herself raw She rubbed herself to sleep.

The still morning light intruded threw a crack in the curtains; stale cigarette smoke glowed and gloated like a ghost. Upon awakening she examined the aches and pains of last nights “love making” and begged the stranger to shower it off with her. After 30 minutes of light whines she was beginning to annoy herself. She burrito-ed herself with the stiff blanket and glanced around for her underwear. They lay, still damp, under the pillow cherry-topped with the head of one of the many bodies that litter the floor. Just then there was a knock at the door. A four-walled cage of sleepy eyes slit open.

Jake moved with the pace of a slug. He moved with an uncertain swagger to open the door.

A mid-thirties Mexican woman whose face went from polished to disgust when she realized she had just knocked on the door to hell. “Um, hello, check out time was at eleven o’clock. You guys are two hours late!”

“Oh well excuse me, next time maybe you should try not to be such a bitch!” Jake said and slammed the door.

The group all pitched in for an uncomfortable laugh. They all knew he had it in him but were still surprised when Jake was so forwardly a raging asshole. An hour later they checked out. The group swarmed around the car, adjusting shirts and lighting cigarettes, she lifted an arm to wave, dropped it quickly and headed down the street. Happy fucking father’s day, this hang over wouldn’t go away if she could tangibly kick it’s ass to Olympia. She caught a bus across town to her boyfriend’s house, her underwear almost dry.

Casino: Part One.

She detested this place. Twelve buildings identical surrounding a half-assed pool like a goddess, all with mauve colored letters on them. She lived in "C", "C 210", of course her mis-firing mind had made that number into a phenomena. C being the third letter of the alphabet, 3-2=1, 2-1=1, 1-0=1 (111). On a whim, or rather, an uneducated leap of faith she had moved in here with him. Him, being the king of all trades, the thief of the night, Jake, previously mentioned in this book. Together they molded a sensational vision of what life would be in this recently remolded hell hole off of the worst street in the worst part of Everett. Sign one.

It had been two months since she kicked him out. He had nine shirts, two pairs of pants, a booklet of scratched to shit indie flicks, and that crummy old guitar. She had washed, folded, and packed all of his stuff neatly, hoping he'd miss her, hoping so hard her knuckles might break threw her skin that he'd see that she was "it", that the other bodies of flame didn't matter, and bite on to her thigh so hard she herself had to beg mercy. But, words were exchanged, the door slammed and the "game" began. Jake and a friend that would withstand the test of her time, but not his moved into building "B". "B 308" 2-3= -1, 3-0= 3, 0-8= -9 (-13-9), 246 inches away from her building. With every step he took outside of their door she could smell him - a rabid dog.   

They lived as two separate souls glued to shelves in the same cupboard. It would be wrong to say there was a ying and yang to Jake, that would imply that the two sides worked equally to create a whole, but there was definitely two sides. One where he took to the image of a beaten down romantic begging at her feet, kissing her forehead in her sleep, a sappy texting maniac. And the one where he sat, sewn taught to a chair in the living room, playing poker and planning which pair of legs he would pry open next. A lie is a truth the second you say it aloud to a party besides yourself. She was swimming in them. A little fish.

In a hot, sticky moment the night before she had written him a letter: a plead to (if he loved her & could be true) show up the next day, she'd be waiting. On the cover of the envelope, she licked closed with wicked excitement, she wrote "Will you please teach me how to drive?". After wedging the letter between carpet and the front door she walked the thirty seconds home, her head hung lower than the deepest root on the oldest evergreen. Her room had a fog of nag chumpa and marb reds that couldn't be aired out if fifteen industrial fans were blowing and wall was knocked out. There she sat, and sat, and sat. It is strange to look in the mirror for no other reason than to know that you're really alive. Your face starts to rearrange itself, Salavador Dali couldn't get that creative. An eye for a mouth, a tear for a nostril, a tooth becomes a chapel. The morning knocked harder than usual. She woke, head against the two mirror closet doors, her body in a knot, folded into it's self. The night before came rushing back in flames. Today is the day, he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me. In the shower she scrubbed herself cleaner than she'd ever been, applied her make up like the world's very core would cool if it wasn't precise. "I am the captain of the ship" written in dry-erase marker was scrawled across almost every inch of the bathroom mirror. A favorite quote, so fitting for the time, something she strove to be but could never fully grasp. Jake's actions, or lack there of, his breath, his dick, his spot in her universe had been steering for her for a year now. Every salty lie was another suicide attempt. Her and her bathtub created a lukewarm relationship that no one could touch. But all of that could change today, the black bleached from thought.

The bedroom was flooded with light. Every symbol of "personal expression" lit up to to an almost holy extent. The Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, and Floyd vinyls glistened and danced with the vibration of the melodramatic lust of Simon & Garfunkel. She slid her window open, flung her legs over the ledge and wondered what it must be like to be a "bird". Feet and thought shuffled against spring winds, "What would it be like to just fly... like nothing matters?" It was mid-day and still no sign of Jake, the sound of footsteps interrupted thought, she hadn't seen him but perhaps he took the stairs on the other side of the building, just then the noisy, nosy neighbor from the apartment above hers landed on the lawn in directed underneath her. She peered over, trying to hide her smoke.

"You're not going to jump, are ya?" He shouted with an overly done sarcastic tone.
"Excuse me?" She snapped.
"I mean... I just worry about you girl. The police have been 'round more than once this month. One time twice in one night! I'm always hearing crying and screaming, just making sure this 'ledge sitting' isn't a cry for help"
"I'm fine, thank you"

Even with the doubt eating her stomach alive, she couldn't let the humor of that escape her, she giggled to herself. How fucking ironic, but then she starting taking the thought more seriously. If she were to jump from this window she would only break a limb and look like a complete idiot. What if she jumped head first? She could only hope to break her neck, and if she failed in that, maybe a shoulder blade, a bad gash on her skull? Not worth it, she needed a show stopper and falling two stories wouldn't do anything besides raise her medical debt by a couple grand. Jake  had used the back stairs, just as she was considering how much higher the roof was he came up behind her, his arms lifting hers and swinging her around in the air. He was here, he loved her, he loved her, he loved her!