Another crying fit, another "fight," one of those that consisted of Eve doing the only thing she knew how to in the face of adversity: running away. Rubbing and rubbing at the bruise-colored skin under her eyes, shining with tears, drops of tears clinging to the pink pads of her fingers. "This is right, for me," he whispered in the dark. "This is the most wonderful, the most right thing I’ve ever had in my life. This is who I want to be when I grow up." She cupped his dear face in her hands, his blue eyes liquid in the dark, and anointing the sensitive bit of skin behind his earlobes with the salt tears on her fingertips, she kissed him. Holy, holy, holy.
"You never get to see the shooting stars."
A long pause while she looked over his shoulder into the night and felt his heart beating against her chest.
"Maybe I'm not supposed to have a wish."
"Where did he go?"
She turned and saw Eve standing there, hair all-a-mess and eyes still dark from sleep. She hated Eve a little bit in that moment, clearly co-dependent, just waking up in the car after their last performance. She looked haunted and slightly panicked, picking at the sleeves of her oversized white sweater, still sleep-fuzzed and wondering what happened to the other half of her existence.
She gestured over her shoulder and Eve smiled as she saw him and caught his eye.
"I'll say that I walked into a door."
"And they'll say, 'Oh honey, we all know that's code for "Mark hit me in the face."'"
"Exactly. No, wait...knowing me, they'll probably think I really walked into a door. So I'll just cut out the confusion and tell them you hit me in the face."
"And they'll say 'Oh honey, we all know that's code for "I walked into a door."'"
She cuddled up under the covers, pale and tired-looking, holding her book in one hand and her green eyes staring at him dolefully from above dark shadows that had appeared with her illness. He held up the bottle of NyQuil, waggling it entreatingly at her. "Do you want the Green Death?"
"No," she pouted.
"Do you want me to get you chocolate milk?"
"No."
"Do you want chicken soup?"
"No!" she pulled the covers over her head. "Stop asking me questions."
"What's the capital of North Dakota?"
"...Bismarck?" came the voice from under the blue comforter. A pause, and then she popped her head back out, "I didn't even know that I knew that."
He grinned at her, and left to go get her some chicken soup.
She stared at herself in the mirror, waxen and white, a corpse-bride if ever there was one; her lips a chewed-on pink and her eyes, in this light, anyway -
Grey, she thought. Grey like fog, grey like rain clouds. Her eyes, almost the same colour as the dark smudges underneath them. She pulled her hair back from her face and wondered what she had become. She shivered and looked away, recalling all the nights she'd spent crying herself to sleep.
That's it, she decided. It's done. There's nothing left for me there, and it's done.
She had only half-convinced herself.
I wish someone had told me, she thought, lighting her second cigarette ever, that this boy is poison, and once he touches you, you're marked forever - scalded and burnt and bruised.
And then he smiled at her, and she despaired that even had she known, she would have let him bruise her anyway.
"What are you doing with that?"
"I'm leaving it in the glove compartment. No one is going to be calling me that I want to talk to."
"But...what if I want to call you?"
Several seconds of stupefied silence.
"But that doesn't even -- you'll be with me! Why would you call me if you're --"
Wistfully, "Sometimes I just want to hear your voice."
"But --"
"Shhh."
"But you can --"
"Shhhhh," insistently. A pause, and then wistfully, again. "This isn't one of those times."
Maybe someday, she thought, licking the ice cream off her fingers, someday I shall tell him what he did in a past life to "deserve" this. Though I'm not sure he'll like it better than what he's already thought of.
