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/ / /
It's easy when Kevin asks her to marry him.
Easy and a little bit terrifying, too. Like agreeing to get on a roller-coaster when maybe heights aren't your thing, because all your friends are doing it and so you'll do it, too. But your palms sweat anyway. But you think about puking while upside-down. But you grip the bar like you're about to be flung from the surface of the earth.
Oh, but then its fun, too. Isn't it? That fear and fantasy, that rush and that rumble in your chest. And then you hit the ground again, soft and silent, hair everywhere. And you guess you'll go again. And again. And one more time. Chasing a high that gets less impressive the more you roll around.
That's what hitching her wagon to Kevin is like. Accepting the reality of one good moment – one delicious spike in feeling – and yet knowing, deep in the gut, that it'll be nothing but diminishing returns from here on out.
But the dress is on and the priest is swearing and Kevin is giggling like a kid and the bar is dropping down across her lap...
...and Allison can only close her eyes and hope the ride is fast enough to help her forget such bad choices.
/ /
Sam is a shining thing, clean and clear, and it's easy when she presses her lips to his again after all these years.
It's easy to sever all ties to goodness, to right and wrong, now that she's got the hang of it. Snip snip snip – a busted glass case, shots in the daylight, her tongue in Sam's mouth with files falling off the desk and burnt grease coating the air around them.
Sam was always a bit of beautiful trouble to her, even back when they were young and dumb. They joked. They flirted. They made out for their own reasons, horny and stupid and unhappy and bad. And she figures they haven't changed all that much since then – Sam with his girlfriend, Jenn, picture-perfect... Sam in the storeroom, eager against Allison's thigh... Sam with his wife, Jenn, a ring and a big house... Sam in this shitty little office, breath fast with wanting...
Allison knows what she's doing, though. Not running just to run, not really. She's blowing everything up, left and right and center. She's detonating from the inside-out, pills in her pocket and Sam in her pants and secrets upon secrets upon secrets.
Allison is taking herself down, a boom loud and strong enough to to be heard out of state, grinning and wild as all the cinder-blocks come tumbling down. Boom, boom, boom.
Allison is demolishing the world. Her world. This world. This horrible, sickening, wasted world.
And then up from the ashes, right?
Brand fucking new.
/ /
To win more than lose. To have a real home. To be heard.
You don't ask for much. You don't ask for so goddamn much, do you?
And this cut burns. And your throat hurts. And your whole life hurts. And there, by your side and holding your hand, is something you've wanted, too. Wanted in ways that don't even make sense to you, not fully, but you want. You want her holding your hand, giving a shit if you are happy or sad. You want her to talk to you, with you, at you – and you want her to hear you, too. You want her to crash and burn with you, spin madly into the disaster, to hold on even tighter, tighter and tighter still, until neither one of you knows how to let go.
“Are you okay?”
Patty, with lips of dark red. Patty, with barbs sharper than knives. Patty, a wall you have slowly scaled.
Patty, in your living room, on the stoop, being an asshole. Patty, knocking out truckers and breaking into basements. Patty, always in your peripheral vision, mocking and magnificent and now... and now...
“'I'm fine.”
...yours, she's yours and you are hers, and you don't ask for much, do you? You don't ask for much, you just want everything... and you want someone to want that with you, too.
Want enough to kill for it. Want enough to lie for it. Want enough to do anything to be free.
You hold her hand a little more firmly. And she does the same. And up up up you go, higher into the sky, and the sun feels bright on your skin, and this is better than mistakes made willingly – a wedding day or making out in the shadows or the last ten years or so of your life – and your heart beats a little harder and you feel a little lighter and you feel so fucking alive.
And if you had a language for it, you'd call it grace. You'd call it hope. But maybe even better than that. Hard and easy at the same time. Broken but better for it.
And if you had a language for it... for Patty's fingers curled around your bloody palm...
...you'd call it love.
/ / /
(end)