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It had been Brodie who suggested they paint their faces. You could have it done at the parade, she had said, but she and Rene always painted each other’s colours.
“It’s nice, ya know?” She said, her face softening with a look of rare, unguarded tenderness. “Gets us ready for the day.”
So, as if they had taken on a rule, rather than a sweet idea, Jay and Silent Bob hopped on a bus into town and marched themselves to the Halloween store. There, they picked up an armful of face paints, and a pack of cheap brushes.
Jay had been chipper enough when they were buying the paints. Bobbing up the aisle and twitching over the display, flipping the tubs over in her hands, scrutinising the colours. As the days leading up to the parade crept by, though, something seemed to take hold of her. She dulled. Her frenetic energy turned to a sort of twitch. Spasmodic tremors through a stiffer, heavier body, that made Bob wonder if she was coming down with something. A summer cold, maybe. And when she came traipsing into the living room to find Bob popping the lids off the face paints and lining them up on the coffee table, she froze. She looked as if she had found Bob laying out the evidence of some betrayal with her name on it. A lipstick stained cigarette, or a soggy condom.
With an encouraging smile, Bob ushered her into the room, patting the cushion at her hip. Jay obeyed, tottering over to the sofa and easing down beside Bob, for once, as silent as her. Bob could count on one hand, the times that Jay had done as she wished without a word of commentary, or protest. The last being the night she had first asked, openly to kiss her, tapping a finger on her lips and bracing herself as Jay pounced.
Bob decided she would paint Jay, first. She rearranged the tubs on the table in order of colour, from sunset to twilight. The twilight where Bob ended and Jay began. She cracked the packet of brushes open and plucked out a small, square bristled one. Perfect for painting a little flag. As she dipped the brush in water and swirled it over the deep blue cake, she stole a glance at the speechless ghost of Jay.
The look in her eyes sent a prick of worry through her gut. It reminded her of the time Jay had taken her to A&E with a cracked head. A particularly tight customer had managed to topple her, right into the sharp edge of a brick wall. The wait for a painkiller had been long, and Bob very nearly wept with relief when the nurse rolled up with her cannula. She had turned to smile at Jay, share her joy, but Jay was not looking at her. Her pale face was pointed at the needle, puncturing her vein, filled with such bewildered sorrow that it was all Bob could do not to roll out of the nurse’s hands and hold her. Jay looked like that now, watching Bob load up the brush.
She dropped it onto the wet cake and reached for her Jay. She laid a hand on her arm, thinking she might shake her from a reverie, but Jay slowly looked up at her with pained resignation. Her eyes shone pointedly at Bob, as though she were about to confirm a diagnosis for something terminal. Then, she seemed to check herself, and tried to pout, instead.
“What’s up, Lunchbox?” She croaked.
Bob lifted her hand to her face, tucking her hair back from the cheek she had intended to paint.
What is it? She asked with a pinch of her brow. What’s wrong?
Jay swallowed, almost tilting her head into Bob’s hand, before drifting away. A tether of cotton-soft hair slithered through Bob’s fingers. She gazed back at the three colours of paint they had found for her, and Bob saw that little muscle in her jaw swell.
“D’you really-...” Her hands played in her lap and ten years suddenly seemed to fall off her. “I mean...You sure about this?” She peered at Bob for an answer and received a shrug and wave of a hand.
Sure about what?
“I mean, do you want people to fucking know?” Jay took in the bafflement in Bob’s eyes, and her own suddenly turned oily. Her lips pressed into a furious, reddening line that unfurled with an audible snap of spit. “Do you want them to know what I am, Lunchbox?!”
She had tried to shout, but her voice broke off into a sob. She choked out another, blistering with frustration and shame, and she hefted herself around on the sofa, shrinking away from Bob, as though she had just found her in a wet bed.
Bob was moving before she realised it. She shot across to Jay and pulled her foetal body to her, with a frantic strength she might have used to wrench her from a burning wreck. Jay’s throat squeaked and bubbled as she tried to gulp her tears back down, but her cries forced their way up like bile. Bob did not care what might spill out of her mouth, she kept her close. She nosed the wool cap from her girl’s head and buried her lips in her hair, breathing warmth and gentle sounds over her scalp.
Her head was buzzing. Jay had not cried like this in years, not since her Grandma died. And then, as now, it had taken too long to happen. It was not until almost a month after the funeral, a month that Jay let pass slow and sour, just like this last week, that the floodgates finally opened. When Jay cried, it was like a haemorrhage, and Bob would try to plug with mouth and tongue and stunted fingers, and happily let the blood cover her if she could quell it. And here she was again, soaking in Jay, feeling stupid for not expecting to. Only, this time the reason was not quite so plain.
“Jaybird, you don’t have to get your face painted, if you don’t wanna.” The words sounded feeble, even as she spoke them.
Jay still rattled and panted, but she had calmed enough to settle into Bob.
“No, I-...fuck, I-...fuuuck.” Jay sounded so young. Her burbled words rang as wretched and remorseful as a those of a kid, cradling the corpse of some little animal she had broken with her own hands. It was tearing Bob’s heart at it’s seams.
“I don’t wanna hurt you, Bob.” She managed, at last. “I don’t wanna be like Amy.”
The seams burst, and the hot tears that sprang up in Bob’s eyes seemed to flow straight from her ruined heart. She gathered Jay up into her lap and hugged her as tight as she dared, curling a fist in her hair.
“Amy wasn’t the one who hurt me, Jay,” Bob tried so hard to keep the anger from her voice, because she did not want Jay to think she was angry with her, “and neither are you.”
“I want you, Bob. Okay? I only want you. I only-“
Bob trailed fierce kisses over Jay’s forehead, tender ones on bridge of her nose where she petted her to lull her to sleep on restless nights.
“I’ve done a lot of shit, Jay.” She muttered against her cheek. “A lot of shit I didn’t wanna do.” Jay wriggled up in Bob’s arms to rub their noses together, and heat spread through Bob’s aching chest. “But that was me, Jay. That was my shit, my pain, not Amy’s. Not your’s. And you’ve gotta stop thinkin’ that I’m wasting myself on damaged goods, because you’re not. You’re fucking not, Jay.”
She pressed their mouths together, hard, again and again. In the seconds they were apart, Jay shifted in her lap, taking Bob’s shoulders and pressing her into the back of the sofa with renewed strength.
“Perfect, Bobby. You’re fuckin’ perfect.”
Bob pushed her back. One hand still bound with flaxen silk, she took Jay’s face and made her look at her.
“I know you want me, Jaybird. Whoever you wanted before, that’s nothing to do with me. What other people have to say, though? People who don’t even fucking know you? That’s everything to do with me. Jay, this parade is for people like us. People like Brodie, Rene, me and you. But even if everyone there turned on you for wearin’ your colours, or me for being seen with you, we’d say fuck the lot of them and leave. We’ll leave together Jay, ‘cause you’re mine. You’re all I want, Jay.”
They kissed again, Bob’s own cap getting knocked off as Jay reached for her hidden hair. Jay’s sharp hips canted, lightly into Bob. The movement was not an invitation, Bob knew, but a uniquely Jay flavoured assurance. It was getting better. Everything would be alright.
Jay sat back on Bob’s thighs and coughed, scrubbing at her sticky cheeks.
“Shit, Big Girl.” She still sounded embarrassed, but in a wearier, moodier sort of way. The sadness had all bled out. Bob shrugged against the cushions, smiling easily this time. Jay peered at her a moment, then tugged her sleeve over her knuckles and began to wipe the last traces of tears from Bob’s face, dabbing carefully around her eyes and lips. “Don’t you fuckin’ start. Shit, it’s like a fuckin’ disease.”
Once Bob’s face was dry, Jay twisted around to the table where the forgotten paints sat. She shunted off Bob’s lap, deliberately catching her plump hip with her full weight on the way down. With a resolute sniff, she snatched up the crusty little brush and dunked it in the water.
“Keep blubberin’ like that, Tubs, your colours won’t stay.”