Chapter Twenty : Act One - The Befores
December 8th, 2008.
This is the day. The day where it all changes. The inevitable day you all knew would come, sooner or later. And truthfully, I knew it too. At least, I kind of always knew. Because I’m a worrier at heart, blood, and soul. I own the world championship belt in over-analyzing. I’m an over thinker to the point of exhaustion. I live my easy life the hard way, creating something out of nothing.
Every time.
Except for today. Today I’ve hung up that gaudy and over sized belt. I’m not wearing it and I’m not worried. Today, I’m not over-analyzing, either.
Not really. No. Today, as Madison and I drive to my childhood home, ready to change my life -- for the better or the worse -- I’m only looking back.
I’m only looking back and reliving.
And I'm taking it from the top.
My camera clicks into the silent air, as Ashley sleeps soundly inside my bed, beneath my thick white blanket. Safe from the white snow blanketing everything outside. Safe from the bitter real world, warmly isolated inside ours.
Today, later on, when the sun goes down, Ashley and I will tell Glen. Ashley and I will come clean.
But we’re not really thinking about that yet.
We’re only thinking of each other and the sleepovers we’ve had these past two nights.
It's still early morning, maybe seven. Maybe not. Who knows. Who cares. The only reason I’m not sleeping is because I had to see her this way. From this view. This angle. See her from a distance, a new perspective.
And all I see is how painfully beautiful she still is. No matter where you're looking. No matter where she's lying. No matter how out of reach or how small she looks through my viewfinder, she's still so close.
Picture after picture snaps from my trusty 35 mm. Locked and loaded with a full rolls worth of film. Doing things the old way. The real way. The hard way. No longer caring about being quiet and letting her sleep. No longer caring about perfection and technique. Blur and exposure forgotten. All I want is to freeze this moment. This beautiful lying-on-her-stomach girl in time. Freeze her in my time.
Freeze her in my life.
In black and white.
Something I never do. Something I savor. Something that is sacred. Early on, before I even knew about photography, I knew how I wanted to paint this world. I knew how I wanted others to see it through my eyes. I knew that in a world of color, I wanted my black and white world to mean something. Used rarely. Used so rarely. Used on only something so unbelievably beautiful. Something you'd never see again. Something you knew you'd have to see years later, when the memories have begun to fade.
Something you never wanted to have to remember. Because it was something you were already forever holding onto.
And on that fateful day where I first saw Ashley, I felt my clustered colored world close in. I felt it simplified and concrete.
Finally, I saw my world in black and white.
"Stop taking pictures and get back in here. I'm coooold." She mumbles sleepily into her pillow with eyes still closed, "I need my personal furnace back."
I can’t stop the smile forming on my face, because really who wouldn’t smile after hearing that? Who wouldn’t jump back in a bed inhabiting that amazing human being?
"Well it's not my fault you're so pretty." Whispers from me, so softly and so sincerely, I wonder if she even heard me. But, as I slide in next to her, feeling my warmth from before, I know she heard me. I know from the honest smile her sleepy lips are forming. And I feel the warmth escalate as my body fits perfectly with hers. As her leg gently swings over my hip, hugging my body closer. Perfectly close.
Her face wears the cutest smile I've ever seen.
And I freeze it. I store it and save it. Backing it up on every memory drive I have.
"So pretty?” Eyes forming shy smiles, she looks genuinely surprised. “Really? This early in the morning?"
"Of course." Breathes from my mouth, nodding gently, as I sweep my fingers along her forehead, brushing her hair to the side. "Bedhead and all, you're the prettiest girl in the room...” My eyes flick to her lips, letting my open words breathe over them, “...prettiest girl in the world.”
I mean it. I mean it with all my heart. And she knows it. She knows it and she needs to feel me. So she does. Lips melting mine between hers, she kisses me so slowly. She freezes time. She freezes me. Freezing everything so much stronger than any camera could.
Cause I'll never forget kisses like these. I never want to have to.
But something seems like all we have are memory kisses.
Something tells me, remembering is the only way I'll feel this mouth.
And as she pulls away, eyes watching every sweep her thumb makes across my wet lips, I know she feels the same. I know she's tracing this moment, etching it inside her overwhelmed mind.
She finally looks at me. Strong and straight. And I know just what she's thinking. I know just where she's going and I'm more than ready to reassure her, even before she asks.
"You ready for this, Spence?"
"You ready for this, Spence?"
My eyes glaze out the car window. Distant and unfocused, I'm still rooted to Madison’s front seat, looking right through my parents house.
As if it weren't really there.
"Yeah." I glance down to my tied hands resting on my twitching knees for a brief moment, before looking towards the house again, drifting to the driveway, fixed on their car, overdosing on Ashley and Glens joint life. "Yeah, I think I am."
Taking more time than a tortoise, we make our way to the front door. We walk together, step for step, and as Madison loosely links our hands, whispering a sweet "You got me, babe" I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
By the time we walk inside, I think I'm doing a little of both.
Slowly and gently, her hand reaches for mine, intertwining our foreign fingers. Making sure they become reacquainted after going so long without touching each other.
"Do you remember now?" Eyes looking right through mine, never feeling someone stare at me straighter in my entire life, before her voice rasps so close to my lips, "Can you see how brown they are now, Spence?"
Ashley's chocolate eyes are the first one's I see inside our overtly packed front hallway. And I already feel weak in the knees. I already need to push her inside a dark place. Needing to have her all to myself.
Even if it's just to sit and talk.
"Sweetie, you're just in time!" My mother squeaks, excitedly, wrapping me in a too tight hug, as if she hasn’t seen me in years. And after everything that's happened with Ashley, she kind of hasn’t.
"Everyone’s in the kitchen taking orders for dinner. Pizza, of course. You know how much that little girl loves her pizza.” Pulling away, my mother looks me up and down, as she does every week. “You better hurry in there and eat. You’re looking awfully skinny Minny these days."
My mother always says this, and it always unnerves me. But tonight, it comforts me. It's familiar. It's a constant. And when everything is only a few hours from breaking routine, from possibly breaking me, I need my regularity.
She finally lets me go, wrapping an arm around Clay as they stroll towards the kitchen, taking the full hallway of just arrived guests right along with them. Leaving only Ashley and me. Alone. Leaving me with those eyes that say so much more than words ever could. Leaving me inside a black and white world.
And we seep inside it. Letting our colors blend and mud together. Looking. Staring. Freezing. Frozen in time. For one instant.
Melting the second she speaks.
“Hey Jelly.”
It’s merely a sweet breath from her lips, with antsy hands crisscrossed mid air before her waist. Needing them to hold each other as a means to not smother me with her love. With her unadulterated want.
“Peanut.” Leaves my lips in the same swollen and swallowed air, and it's all it takes for her to finally move to me. For her to finally hold me. Holding me as if we were the best friends everyone believes us to be.
However, they don’t catch my fingers tied and threaded behind her back. Clasping her between my arms.
Locking my biggest love with my weakest chains.
"I'm dying inside, Ash. It's killing me because I can't imagine going on like this. I can't imagine Glen coming home tomorrow, and still...still sneaking around with you like this. But then...then I think about not being able to hold you anymore." Whimpered like a wounded puppy, I keep sputtering and stuttering, "...or...or not kissing you, or sleeping beside you..." The tears are back in full force, mirroring the ones spilling from her eyes, "...I think about not being able to love you anymore, Ash, and I feel like I literally can't breathe."
Like a little girl so far and so lost from her home, I try to talk through that stifling air.
"What are we going to do?"
She remains before me, just a few feet away. For a moment, she looks around this room. This room full of her dust covered dreams, before her safe and direct eyes spear into mine.
"We figure it out." So simply stated she strides to me, holding my neck strongly between her shaking hands, lowering her mouth to mine, whispering inside it "Because I'm so in love with you too, Spence, so much it hurts..." Our trembling lips tremble together, "...and you can breathe. You can breath because I won't let you suffocate."
I’m finding it hard to breathe inside this crowded room, a room so sheltered and so unknowing. Inside this living room where all of us, family and friends, are packed freely, as if it were our spacious backyard. Four little girls run around with my niece. Sprinting between adult leg skyscrapers. Swerving around furniture curves and bends. So unaware. So naive. So young.
So lucky.
“Hey stranger.” Aiden plops down on my living room couch, wrapping a buddy arm around me, and I smile softly. I whisper, speaking the only word I can. "Hey."
His fingers pinch my shoulder, supportively, caring for me without even realizing I need him too. Without ever needing to know. And it feels good. Because he’s Aiden. Because he’s familiar and worn-in, like an old TV room recliner. He fits so well inside my past, that my present can’t help but feel comfortable if he’s inside it.
And I love him for it.
“She looks good.” He seems hesitant as he nods towards her, throwing a careful look my way. “I mean she seems happy. You know?” One firm shake of his head, “...She seems good.”
Of course I don't even need to see who he's nodding towards to know he's talking about her. My eyes were already on her long before he sat down. My eyes have been right on her pretty face in the space where living room meets dining room. Watching the reason for my breathlessness. Watching the air that allows me to breathe. Realizing how surreal it is that she manages to do both.
She stands between my parents, idly and comfortably chatting. Right smack in the middle of my creators, looking like she’s in the middle of hers. The way her lips smile instinctively. Just for being close to them. The way my mom wraps an easy arm around her shoulder, looking towards my father with proud eyes.
The way my mother holds Ashley as if it were me.
“Yeah.” I have to look down on my bottle, hoping no one will see the blatant proud smile on my face, as I whisper a screaming confession from my own shaking heart. “She is.”
“I want to see you,” Shakily breathes into my ear. “...I want to see you as I do this.”
And then her fingers are inside me. But they’re not really inside me. They’re just close enough to feel that way. Fumbling over my entrance. Feeling me out like we felt lips earlier. Tips of fingers trace over my every angle and plane. My every curve and dip. My every nerve.
Tips of fingers move far too easily against me. Drawing everywhere, scribbling outside every one of my lines.
The kitchen is packed with lines of people. Looking for a slice of pizza. Looking to get theirs first, as if it somehow won’t be there if they wait too long. As if the five people before them could eat it all. As if they'd take everything, leaving nothing behind but feeble crumbs.
“How you doin’?”
Madison leans over and whispers in my ear, and while it warms me. While her concern eases me the slightest bit. I can only shrug in return. I can only hope with a tiny smile. A small sad smile.
“It’s gonna be good, Spence. You’ll see.”
Her hand tugs lightly on my wrist, reminding me once more how lucky I am to have her. But I still don’t say anything. Because it’s so pointless. Because I really don’t have anything to say.
Because how can she possibly know how anything is gonna be after today? And how can I possibly let myself believe her?
And she knows. She’s always known. My fear and insecurity. My need to prepare for the worst, before coming anywhere close to hoping for the best. And some days I wish she didn’t know so much.
Either way, she accepts my silence. With a quick hand squeeze, she accepts me for who I am, with all my little faults. And some days...some days I wish she didn’t accept so easily.
But it’s too late to worry about that, she’s already walking off into the fray. Looking for her own slice. And I’m already staring behind me.
Looking for my slice.
I find her easily. I see her right away. Because I already knew where she was. Because I've always known. Standing in the dining room, right before the open doorway, she wraps her arms around her tiny frame, watching all of us. Just watching. Eyes distant and fazed, she's freezing time. She's collecting moments and memories with those eyes. And I’m wondering what she’s thinking.
She gives me a look. A look with a thousand words that I don’t know how to read. Words that mean more than letters can provide, and I’m about to walk right towards her.
But I’m too late.
She’s already walking away from me, heading for the stairs.
"I shouldn’t have - I mean, we, maybe…” She starts, full of insecurity. “…We shouldn't have done that.”
She finishes in a whisper that would have shot through my heart if I believed a word it. If I believed she meant it at all, even in the smallest percentage. But she doesn’t, and I don’t either. We should have done this. We so should have done this.
Following Ashley's trembling trail, I make slow steps along our second floor hallway, hearing every one of them creak beneath my heavy feet. I stop outside the first open door, finding everything I’ve been looking for. Everything I’ve been needing. Standing right in the middle of my bedroom, she looks a million miles away.
“Please, do something. Please be the one to do it. I’m so tired. I’m so tired of always being the one...”
I’m crying so hard as she stands crying so hard before me. I’m crying for her bravery. For her honesty. For her vulnerability. For putting all of herself out there. For putting everything she keeps safe and hidden inside of her, right in front of me.
Her back's to me, watching her stare out the window, knowing she needs to look at something that won’t look back.
“They’re all going to hate me.” She whispers into the space, not even needing to hear my voice. Not even needing to look to know I’m right behind her.
“Who?” Asks quietly and so foolishly from my nervous mouth. Because I know exactly who she’s talking about. Just like I’ve always known. Just like I've always feared.
“Them. Your parents. Your brothers...Your family.” She finally turns around, fully, staring at me with blinking and weary eyes, lips wet with the tears. “It’s ok for you Spence, cause you’re one of them. You’re permanent, they can’t hate you. But me?” She points one single finger right into herself like a knife. “Me, who was merely invited into the family. I only have a paper invitation, Spence, one that can be so easily thrown away.”
She's always had a way with words, but this time. This time she's ripping through me with them. This time they're not just words. This time it's her fears personified. It's her nightmares realized and I need to go to her. I need to run to her.
And now I have to run. I cough without even realizing it, looking out to my brother and best friend keeping my eyes nowhere near her as I try and find my voice "Hey guys, I think I gotta be going, big day tomorrow..."
Her eyes shoot through me, right through me, as I slide out from my chair. But before I can leave, something stops me. Something in the form of her hand grabbing onto mine beneath the table. Holding mine like I held hers mere minutes ago.
“Hey no, Spence, don’t go.”
I have her wrapped inside my arms, hearing her murmuring lost words into my neck. Not understanding any of them, not able to hear them between my reassurance. Between my every no they won't and it's going to be ok.
Not even able to hear her truths through my lies.
For an instant, she pulls away, shaking her head profusely, going straight into emotional overdrive. “Please Spence. They can’t hate me. I can’t lose...” Is all I hear before she hugs me again. Hugging tighter, with her life, feeling my lungs constrict with the weight. Feeling my body working to actually breathe through her gripping hold.
“No one will hate you, Peanut, I promise.” I lie, because how can I promise something like that?
“Ok? I won’t let them.” I tell the truth, because it’s all I can do. Because I’d stop the world if I could, if it meant she’d be safe. Safe from hate. From hurt and pain.
Her eyes softly trail over the features of my face, and I’m thrown completely off guard as I realize my hands are cradling her hips. My hands are softly holding her close to me, where I’ve always wanted her. And I wonder...I wonder if I’ll ever let her go.
My thumbs brush away her tears, neglecting my own. Realizing, for once, I don’t have any. Realizing I’m trying to be the strong one. Realizing, that for once, I actually am the strong one.
And it only makes me feel stronger. “We’re gonna be ok, Ash.”
Her wet eyes look up to mine through clumped together eyelashes, breath stuttering out, looking like she's searching through me for an answer to this world's every question. Needing to know the rhyme to every one of life's reasons.
“How do you know that?”
For once she needs me to reassure her, she's looking at me with eyes that used to be only reserved for me. And for once, I will do anything to make this better. No matter how scared I feel inside. No matter how unsure I am of everything.
No matter how sure I am of things not being ok.
“Madison told me." Smiling sweetly, I try to give her as much lying honesty as I possibly can, while cupping her precious face between my clumsy hands. "And I'd believe her, because, well everyone knows she’s the smartest kid on the block.”
“Because I’ve always known that that hand is out there. I’ve always known that that person is out there who’s hand I’d never hesitate in grabbing, because I couldn’t not hold them. Because I’d have to always be connected to them. Always.”
She finally breaks, laughing and crying all at once, as her hands move to grab mine. Squeezing them white with her desperate fingers. Letting out all her worry. All her pain, all her everything. Letting it all drip from her mouth with each chuckle.
“God, I love you Spence.” She kisses my hands joined between hers with wobbly lips, connecting with me in any place she can, wherever the skin is exposed, wherever I am open. “I love how you always do that.”
Her lips on me, any part of me, pulls me away from this situation and forces my voice into oblivion as I whisper, “Do what?”
But it’s her solid and sure voice that pulls me back into the moment. “I love that you make me laugh when all I want to do is cry.” She takes a deep breath, to further cement her in time, inside this moment, to build strength to keep going. “That you help me breathe when all I feel is strangled.”
“No, Spence. He doesn’t have me.”
And then her lips are slowly moving towards mine, trying so hard to back out, but knowing it's pointless. Because even though I'm only feeling her mouth now, we've been kissing all night. We've been meeting lips with our eyes, with our words unspoken. With our shared moments behind closed doors.
Like what we're doing right now.
We're doing everything we absolutely shouldn't inside my childhood bedroom. With it's own innocent memories. Tainting them. Deprecating them. And I could care less. Because all I feel is her love inside my mouth. All I feel is my need inside hers. All I feel is my desire to never let her go, instead of worrying about who might see. Instead of living inside this very real moment, I’m reliving my life. Reliving my memories. Reliving them all at overwhelming once.
“He doesn’t have this.”
I’m seeing every nose wrinkling smile, as her lips break and slide across my mine.
“He doesn’t have any of it, Spence, and he never has.”
Tasting my tears on her tongue, running along mine. All I hear is her adorable high pitched laughter. Laughing at every silly word out of my mouth.
“Please, Spence, take it. Keep it.” She nods once in a punctuating way, ending any chance of me giving back her gift. “I want you to have my 2005.” I can hear her breaths stuttering as they shake from her unsturdy lips, “I want you to have my hardest year...” Her hands squeeze over mine, “...because you’re what got me through it. You’re what saved me from it.”
Feeling every one of her heartfelt words inside my beating heart. Flowing through the pumping blood coursing through my entire body as her hands cup my cheeks. Doing what she always does, always taking control. And I let her, because I always want her to have it. I always want her to take it. I always throw myself right into her trusty hands, never feeling safer.
She looks up at me with new, warm eyes, “Yeah. That’s when I came here and that’s when I found a life again because...” For the first time in awhile she smiles with a shred of happiness, “...that’s when I found you.”
Her mouth breaks from mine, pulling away from me, causing my body to fall forward slightly. Leaning on her for more support than I already do. Needing even more than she already gives me.
“Please say you love me that way. Please, Spence. Please, just do something...”
“We shouldn’t be doing this.” Her eyes look down on my lips, uncertainly, desperately wanting to believe the words she’s whispering, “Not here.”
“You’re wasting your time on someone who doesn’t hold your hand.”
One hand loosely links with mine, "We can't do this." Once more, she pleads and preaches to herself, needing to convince herself, she turns with a heavy breath. Ready to walk away from me.
“You’re my Jelly.”
But I can't let her go. I just can't. Unable of letting her go at this point, I hold her back. On instinct, on stupidity, I pull her back to me, because I don't want to lose this feeling. This moment. This time. I'm already in this too deep. I'm already lost inside her touch and taste. I'm so lost I don't even know where I am. I'm so inside I forget everything and everyone who is outside.
I'm too careless to care about who might find us. Who might be looking for us.
“Leaving so soon?”
“Leaving so soon?”
And I want her to feel it too as I whisper, sweetly, against her lips. Replaying our first memory. Replaying when time stood still for the first time.
Reliving the first frozen frame of my life.
"See, I think you should stay. You don't know what you're missing out on."
And she knows it. She knows it so well, she can’t stop smiling. She doesn’t even let me finish the memory before she pulls us back, closing the door behind her with her foot. Lips colliding with mine in a bruising kiss.
A freezing kiss.
And I feel time suspended, once more, and maybe...maybe forever.
Pushing me to my no-good bed, we get lost in limbs, tongues, teeth, and regret. We get lost in our love, tears, and neglect.
There was something in her voice, her words, that made me believe her. I knew I’d be missing out if I didn’t hang around.
She kisses everywhere across my neck, leaving me in a wordless puddle. Leaving me in a place where I'd never be able to stop. A place where I no longer can hear the cries and pleads that we need to stop this. The shouting at how wrong this all is.
Because all I feel is how right this is. How right she is. All I feel is that last and first memory.
So I stayed.
And as she whispers in my ear, reliving it all with me, "I'm glad you stayed."
I can't help but wonder if we'll ever leave. Because time is frozen now. We are frozen, with our hot bodies pressed together. Wrapped in only each other.
Because that's how life goes.
Because that's what happens seconds before everything changes.
Just like oblivious smiling passengers before a deathly car crash, we're seeing our lives flash before our eyes.
Completely neglecting those same precious lives heading right for a hopeless collision.
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Chapter Twenty One :: Act One - The Break