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Dry, cool wind brushed over your contemplative features, each step of your boot to the sidewalk creating a lonesome melody. Letter after letter bounced around your mind, crafting some melancholic ransom note from whatever dregs of love still remained. The bullet wound in your heart bore a sharp grin promising nothing but smoke-addled dust devils, yet its exit wound would always seem to pour your crimson right back into his malt glass.
From the first moment he danced into your life it became filled with colors more striking than the stars’ prismatic glow. It seemed only natural that you were caught by his intensity; the security of having a partner in crime more addictive than the cigarette on your lips. Among the haze, you were blind to his thieving ways. Until now, that is. There was no returning to the past, to your old manipulated mind.
Resignation lie in your slumped posture, eyes downcast to the sun’s shine over black leather. You tried to make it work, time and time again, but what did you really expect from someone so spirited? Who always seemed to be on the run? Evasion was a word so perfectly Boothill. Every attempt to learn more about him, every attempt to resolve an argument, even every attempt to be the wild one – unchained from expectation and opinion – only served to push him further away.
Yet, every morning there he would be. A cup of coffee and the “cowboy’s breakfast” ready for you to enjoy. Every Friday night you’d shut down the most popular bar in town, feet sore and breath stolen. He’d kiss you every chance he got, share with you everything he knew about animals. Taught you how to play the guitar and smile wider than you ever had before him.
He knew how to spin you out one moment and right back into his arms the next. This push-and-pull game was more exhaustion than entertainment now. You would do anything he asked of you, simple or outlandish – lawful or illegal. What kept him so locked up, then? What, after all of these years, kept him so far from you? You simply sought to understand him in return, to know every bone and fracture and fall even further in love. To be partners and equals. This one-sidedness was growing too much to bear, and his greedy lips only continued to drink up your scarlet generosity and care.
Ash dragged over the concrete like a sullied spirit, the scrape of your boot its dissonant shattering. In just a few steps, you’d finally be facing him again. You wanted anything but another argument – another duel. You wanted the honesty you were due. The answers and resolution owed. The only question left was if he could handle that vulnerability.