This Sucks But I Haven't Written In A While So. Here You Go

this sucks but i haven't written in a while so. here you go

Everyone was horrified by your lack of tears. You could see it on their faces. You were supposed to keel over with your knees pressing into your stomach and wail, pounding on the floor like the vibrations would shake through his body and start up his heart again. If that was going to work, he would’ve come back days ago. The night you got the call, you wished you’d been more shocked. You hung up the phone politely, always cordial with his mother despite everything, and screamed. Screamed like the release was enough. Enough to feel better? Enough to wake him up? Who knows. Certainly not you. Now, you don’t cry. You hardly move. Where was there to go when pinned down by a loss this big? Not to sleep. Not to the awakened world that reality brings, either. Not to the middle ground. It’d be easier to snap your fingers and just phase out of existence. You wonder how it’d feel to be sucked into a black hole. You wouldn’t necessarily mind if it hurt.

You didn’t want to see the body. The worst thing you possibly could do for yourself would be to see the body. When you first heard, you tried to imagine what he’d look like, all paper white and green like the veins beneath his wrists. You had a hard time picturing it, initially, because how could you? He had been livelier than people gave him credit for. He lit up during movie nights, grinned like the sun had shone down just for him when he got the curve of your nose in a drawing just right. He’d been so alive. Soon it got easier. You could wipe off the cheap foundation holding him together just enough to look lifelike while lifeless and see if your imagination was correct, but it’d do you no good. It still hurt to see him all colorful, rosy like the blood beneath his skin still flowed. He looked the same. It feels like he’d been dead this whole time. You fear he had been.

The dirt in the ground beneath you had hardened with the cold air, bunching in on itself to create an uncomfortable, constant press against your spine. You tossed, turned, and the earth didn’t move. Nothing had ever bent at your will, really. You weren’t one of the lucky ones. You learned about this once, how cold slows down particle movement, hardens things, molds them into one set form. The smell of misty, post-rain air was still dancing around, the remnants now shining, silvery coatings over the deep green blades of grass which tickled the skin of your cheek.

If you reached out your hand just enough, it would touch his, and it would still feel like lighting on fire from the inside out. The cigarette between his lips, which bobbed when he swallowed around nothing, sizzled a bit on the inhale, glowing redder with each breath in, and simmering down when the connection was lost. You think you understand how it feels. You could’ve kissed him if you wanted to, but you’d never liked the way that cigarette smoke lingers on your tongue, wraps around your hair like ivy and burrows itself between the fibers of your clothes. So you just watched as he breathed life into it, cherry glowing brighter, brighter still, a flaming, striking orange, then reducing down to a deeper red.

If it weren’t so cold, maybe the stars would;ve seem less hazy. The world always seems muddled this time of year, all soft lines and blending colors, like each texture was bleeding into the other. Then again, maybe it was just your eyes. But still, they glowed for you, for him, maybe for the pair you made up.

“Do you think that you’ll ever be okay knowing this is it?”

He had a way of speaking that makes everything sound significant, like a weight off his chest comes with each syllable that funneled up from his throat. It’s one of those things you love about him, one of many. Sure, he’d had his flaws, like all people do, but when he made something as simple as a greeting sound like a poem, it’s almost indescribable, the sensation of hearing him say that he loves you.

“I think that’s fine with me. It’s not like things are stuck here. I can still move around a little bit. You know, make friends, get a job. Things that aren’t concrete.”

He hums, tilting his head up as if he’s going to nod, but he never drops it back down. He just keeps staring up, up and away. Almost like something is looking back at him. You hope whatever God is holding his gaze is one of the pleasant ones, all white, flowing dresses and feathered wings.

“Do you think you’ll be ok with it?”

He shrugged, took a breath.

“It’ll have to be enough.”

You itch with disgust at the memory. The stupidity you’d always had. It’d never be enough. Maybe ‘it’ wasn’t anything you could ever understand. He’d been the smarter one. You step outside of the funeral parlor, hands shaking as they dig through your purse, pulling out a small box of cigarettes you haven’t yet learned to stop coughing around. You hope the smoke which fills your lungs doesn’t leave, settling into a hard soot against you. You settle it between your lips, the lighter setting it aglow. You breathe in, choke at the harshness, and suck in harder. It better stick into each and every hair. It better turn your teeth yellow with damage. It’s like kissing him all over again.

A Night Over

an: enjoy this cute picture of mike because i literally finished this like 2 hours ago and spent so long worrying about making it aesthetic i stopped caring

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He brushes past you as soon as you open the door, barely even a wide enough space to squeeze a body through. You huff, turn around just in time to get knocked into by his overstuffed messenger bag. It’s the same one you recognize from kindergarten cubbies and middle school lockers.

“Well, hello to you too, Connor.”

You’ve done this all before. You recognize the sound of his body against the couch cushions before you see it, back turned to him to pull some blankets from the coat closet by the front door. You can feel his eyes, though, the way you always can. Intense in everything, even just in observing you move through your home. The home he’s been to more times than he can count on both his hands. He can’t help but to be fascinated by you, though, no matter how many times he’s been around you, bombarding his senses until the only thing his brain has a concept of is his existence relative to yours.

He keeps a bag packed for nights like these, nights that are more frequent than they should be, and have just been growing more persistent. There’s a tone to his father’s voice he knows too well. Not necessarily anger, but a growing displeasure at everyone and everything around him, including the son that ruins his Facebook family photos and general public image of being a perfect, upper-middle class suburban family. He wouldn’t mind being in a miserable family if everyone agreed on the best way of doing it, but they still clash in that sense. So disjointed they can’t even find the same ways to hate each other, hate themselves.

You sit on the coffee table across from where he rests, hands clasped in your crossed thighs. There’s no need to talk about it anymore. The argument, the topic it took, isn’t the issue. It’s not what drives him out of his house at odd hours of the night to seek refuge in yours. It’s the feeling that if he stayed, there would be no escaping the idea that maybe, just maybe, his father is right. That he is ruining things. Sure, he’d internalized that feeling since birth, thinking and feeling it before his father could confirm he shared the same opinion, but it still hurt to know that he wasn’t his daddy’s little boy anymore. Now, he was the son that could’ve been better, should’ve been better with the resources provided to him. But he’s not normal in that sense, never has been. He wishes he could hit himself on the head hard enough to knock loose whatever is festering in his skull until it comes out his ears. Whatever neurochemical imbalance, whatever parasitic thought, whatever version of himself nestled its way in.

You unclasp your hands, find your palms redder than they’d started, grabbing at his ankles to place them in your lap.

“You can sleep in my bed, you know. Your back will thank you.”

You say absentmindedly, beginning the minutes long task of unlacing those scuffed, softened leather boots he always wears. They’d been a product of saved-up birthday money and weeks of not smoking, and he couldn’t help but to feel a little proud for having done something semi-responsible with himself. And now here they are, in your lap, sprinkling wet dirt onto your skin. It’s the same offer you’ve been extending his way for months, held in your palm like it’s fragile, like it means more than just a bed. He never takes it, curls your fingers back over it, nudges your hand back to your side. He means well. He means not to impose the way he does everywhere else. He knows how few places he’s truly welcome. He knows that the best one is wherever you happen to be. He won’t lose it, or he loses himself. But he can’t impose where he is invited. Welcome at all times. Your home is his home, because he doesn’t have one otherwise. Here he is wanted, and he just won’t let that be.

You curl the undone laces around your fingers, watching the coils turn your skin just that little bit paler under the strained blood flow. He doesn’t stop you. He just watches, like he tends to do. You can feel his eyes follow the movement, whether it’s yours or the lace’s, you can’t quite make out. You look back up at him through weary eyes, the time of night clear in each fleck of color. It’s fairly late, but not late enough for you to look so worn. You’ve been tired for ages, and no amount of laying beneath woolen blankets has been able to rejuvenate you. Remarkably, there aren’t any real bags beneath your eyes. The one way you could cry out for the help you’d so desperately like without verbal confirmation of being anything less than mundane, and you can’t even supply yourself with it. How pathetic. He recognizes the look in your eyes, the plea for him to help himself so you can live vicariously through it. Feel better for having done something. He doesn’t give in though.

So fine. He can have it his way. Boots are tucked beneath the couch, left to drip onto the wood beneath them. They can rot the whole house away for all you care. You squeeze yourself into that sliver of space he isn’t taking up, face to face so closely that it feels like this is the first time you’ve seen him at all. His left eye has a little spot of brown in it, stuck in amongst blue. A black sheep. He looks behind your head to the wall. It seems easier. He’s met with a framed photo of the two of you. No such thing as an easy way out. So, he does what he does best. Watches. Watches you move some humidity-frizzed hair from his face as if it won’t fall right back where it was, watches you attempt to get comfortable with the singular foot of room allotted to you, watches you pretend the proximity isn’t what makes your eyes look far away and yet so concentrated. He can’t point that part out, he’s sure he looks the same. He watches you sleep, too, for a while. Features softened, smushed, unfurrowed by stress. You look your age this way. You’ve shed years of forced maturation in a single shallow breath. He doesn’t feel it’s an invasion if it’s something beautiful to look at. Artistic, even. Biblical. He shivers, pretends it’s from the cold, the rain, the dampness of his clothes. You hadn’t actually put any of those blankets you’d grabbed to use. He doesn’t want to move. He can feel your heartbeat if he focuses enough like this, breath mixing with his own on your exhales. He thinks it’s almost kissing. It’s better. It’s nowhere near enough. He looks to the ceiling, then back at you. He smiles. Maybe someday he’ll say the obvious. Maybe someday he can impose. But for now feigned relative indifference will do. You know he cares more than he says. You will wake up rejuvenated.

92 notes View Post

asheepinfrance

2 months ago

i want to line them up and tuck them into bed with the blanket just below their chins all snuggly

meet… STANFORD ERA LESBIAN!ATP .ᐟ ★

a/n: hi guys the much promised part two of lesbian!atp headcanons… stanford edition! so sorry it took me three weeks to get these out i am in an insane slump right now…… i’ll be free soon (hopefully) i have so much i want to get out. and also thank you @peariote some of these are taken from conversations we have had… and thank you @diyasgarden my lovely for helping me flesh out tashi. anyway. please enjoy. smiles.

CW: hints at nsfw

ART - VISUAL ARTS MAJOR .ᐟ

– VISUAL ARTS MAJOR ART who swears you’re her muse. Always begging you to let her use you as a model for whatever she’s working on, he’s positive her work simply turns out better when it’s of you. Nevermind the fact you’re almost always nude.

– VISUAL ARTS MAJOR ART who is always covered in charcoal and paint, to the point he’s like a magnet. Even if she’s not doing a project with those mediums, it still finds its way onto him. Little do you know it’s because you said you loved the way she looks with it one day, and she’s never looked back.

– VISUAL ARTS MAJOR ART who loves that he has to learn photography because it means she can always capture moments of you for forever. Always has a camera on him whenever he’s with you to make sure she doesn’t miss anything. Anything from being in the shower to falling apart under her. She even teaches you photography just so you can take photos of her between your thighs or when her hands are too busy elsewhere to hold a camera.

– VISUAL ARTS MAJOR ART whose exhibitions always feature at least one piece of you, whether it be painting, photo, or sculpture, and are always dedicated to you. Whenever he sneaks you in for ‘early access,’ he always shows you these with the biggest grin on her face. She swears one day he’s going to do an exhibition solely of you (Never including the nude pieces. Those are hers and hers only). You know she will.

PAT - FINANCE MAJOR .ᐟ

– FINANCE MAJOR PAT who went into finance for his parents, who want her to take over after graduating. He absolutely hates it, but listens and goes for the four years anyway. Their grades are average, simply because she cannot care enough to do more than scrape by. Despite the hatred, she still becomes the biggest finance bro possible.

– FINANCE MAJOR PAT who has in fact been attempted to be recruited to a frat before. Walking past a tent during rush week had them handing him a form until they opened their mouth and spoke. This is his favourite story to tell when trying to get someone into her bed (“Come on, I was basically a frat brother. I can show you a good time too.”).

– FINANCE MAJOR PAT who is somehow at a new party every night. Brings a new girl home every night too, partially in thanks to the frat story above. Is known around campus for being the biggest sleazebag ever, but no one really cares if it means they get a night with her.

– FINANCE MAJOR PAT who meets you and decides maybe you can change them. A one night stand where you treat her the best he’s ever been treated absolutely changes her world, and one night turns into two, and then three, and then she decides maybe there is more to life than just sleeping around and finally locks you down for herself (but it does take time for her to get used to just the one person, and there are some flirting incidents in the beginning).

TASHI - COGNITIVE SCIENCE MAJOR .ᐟ

– COG SCI MAJOR TASHI who is the most disciplined person in college. Like poster girl of discipline level discipline. She creates a schedule and actually sticks to it. As you spend more time with her, you eventually catch onto it as well, and start doing most things together.

– COG SCI MAJOR TASHI who is incredibly dedicated to her studies. One of the top students in her classes. She is always studying whenever she has time, but hates not being around you. Her favourite kind of date is studying with you at a library or cafe, where she doesn’t need to choose between you and her work.

– COG SCI MAJOR TASHI whose favourite courses are the natural sciences, particularly chemistry and biology. Something about learning how the body’s natural chemicals and processes draws her in, but she wants to make a difference with it, to make it mean something. So she minors in sociology alongside cog sci.

– COG SCI MAJOR TASHI who eventually takes the MD and PhD route, so she can do research and help in a medical setting. She spends her time in class one day, volunteering at a hospital and shadowing a doctor the next, and uses what she learns to do exactly what she wanted to. To do something bigger than herself.

tag list: @artstennisracket @glassmermaids @jordiemeow @cha11engers @kaalxpsia @apatheticrater @tacobacoyeet @tigerlilywl @newrochellechallenger2019 @compress1repress @artspats

want to join my tag list? fill out this form!

115 notes View Post

asheepinfrance

1 month ago

Big Shoes to Fill

or, lily follows in her parents' footsteps.

an: i've only ever written small portions of stories from lily's perspective, and i think this was a fun little challenge at expanding that. i feel she needs more love. thank you @tashism for choosing this story, i hope i did you justice. extra thank yous to @newrochellechallenger2019, @artstennisracket, @ghostgirl-22, @grimsonandclover, and @diyasgarden for their willingness to help me out. it is not unappreciated.

tag list: @glassmermaids

Lily’s new shoes are pink, and the white rubber toes shine when the sun hits. She had wanted the pretty ones with the rhinestones, the ones that light up when she stomped her feet, but Mommy said no. She insisted the tennis ones were so much prettier, baby. That they were ‘professional’, the kind the big girls wear. As she looks down at them now, laces tied in a haphazard tangle by small fingers on the left, and a precise, delicate bow on the right by her mother’s hand, she thinks she should’ve fought a little harder for the light-up shoes. Her skin is tacky with sunscreen and perspiration, cheeks flushed, hands just a bit too clammy to hold the racket the way she’s meant to.

“Fix that grip, Lils!”

And then a flying yellow blur floats over the net and to her side, she stretches her little arms to reach, and hears that little tink of connection. It bounces, rolls, rolls, rolls… then stops like it’s proud of itself, right against the bottom of the net, the white line amongst the yellow fuzz beaming smug and stuffed to the brim with schadenfreude. Lily hears a sigh, the steady tap, tap, tap of a foot against the clay court, and then the half-hearted smack of hands against thighs. Mommy does this sometimes, when she’s upset at Lily. Or upset because of Lily’s playing, as Mommy insists is different. But, as far as she can tell, it’s still her fault. Mommy wouldn’t be sad if she could just figure out the tennis thing. And she just can’t. Not with all the coaching, or the miniature rackets, or the nights spent falling asleep on the couch because Mommy and Daddy are up too late watching matches to tuck her into bed.

Mommy went inside, probably for a break, maybe a little AC, maybe to stare at old photos of herself and breathe just a little bit harder. Sometimes, she swaps Lily out with Daddy. In terms of tennis, he’s rare to disappoint the way Lily was. He racked up win after win after win, smothered in trophies and sunscreen and something blue and bruised beneath his skin, and that’s what he was known for. So, he became therapeutic, in a way. A distraction, a lover, a means of vicarious victory, and the target of misplaced frustrations. Lily sits on the grass for a bit and blows some dandelion fuzz into the breeze. She thinks about what it’d be like to be a flower.

Mommy went to bed right after dinner (Mommy and Lily had a burger and fries, Daddy just ordered a salad), complaining of a headache that just wouldn’t quit. Her lips are quirked politely, something like a smile that never quite made it all the way resting on her cheeks. Lily knows that’s a fake one. She’s learned the difference. Lily knows it’s fake because her chest isn’t burning with that warm, golden feeling. Mommy really smiles when Lily makes a good serve, or when her drawings are deemed good enough to hang on the fridge with a little U.S. Open magnet. And Lily watches her face lift and her eyes crinkle and thinks, for a second, she really is as special as her parents say she is. She doesn’t feel that now. Daddy brushes Lily’s back with his fingers when he passes behind her to put the used forks in the sinks, Mommy doesn’t like the plastic ones, and she doesn’t move.

“What’s going on in that big brain of yours, Lilybug?”

She shrugs, huffs a little bit, doesn’t giggle when he blows a raspberry into her temple. She wants to, but she’s got to make it clear this is serious. Adults never laugh when things are important, she thinks. That’s why Daddy looks so angry during matches. He pulls back and frowns a bit, hands on his hips. She turns his way, and the visual makes her lip puff out and tremble a little. She can’t help it, really, but she just keeps upsetting people. She’s tired of making everyone so sad.

“Do you think Mommy is mad at me?”

He does something funny then, curves in by his tummy. It looks like the fallen Jenga tower from last week’s game night. Daddy always chooses Jenga, says he’s too good to beat. Lily always beats him, and it’s the only time he looks happy to lose. She thinks that’s silly. He pulls up a chair at her side, and she doesn’t like the way the metal sounds against the wood floor. It’s easier to be sad when it’s quiet.

“No, baby, ‘course not. Why’d she be mad at you?”

She shrugs, places a small chin in a smaller hand, stares at the granite countertop like it’s personally offended her. Like it’s staring back.

“‘Cause I’m supposed to be like you guys, and I’m not. It makes Mommy angry that I’m so super bad at tennis.”

He wants to smile, but he can’t, not when this little girl at his side is feeling things bigger than her body, than her vocabulary can provide her with a word for. Sweet girl, too, that she cares. That she just wants her mama to be happy, proud, something that isn’t going to wrack her with guilt for being herself. Still, he takes in that miniature pout, the one her mother so often wears in moments of her own frustration, and places his fingers in her hair, puffing up what had been pressed flat by a ponytail moments ago.

“She’s not angry. She’s just… well, it’s hard. You know what happened to Mommy. You know how bad she misses it. She just wants to see you grow so, so strong, like she was. That’s all.”

Lily nods. She knows. She knows as much as she’s been told, at least. Not with words or stories, but through little tell-tale signs. Through her mother’s insistence on long skirts, or taking extra with her lotion at the bend of her knee, right where the little white line is. She got hurt. Something band-aids and boo-boo kisses couldn’t make go away. She’ll get an ice pack for Mommy next time she sees her.

“But, what if I can’t grow big and strong like she did? What if I can only do it the Lily way?”

He pauses his hand’s movement in her hair, breathes through his nose like the air was pressed out of him. He wants to say that Tashi could take it, that she’s an adult woman who’s worked through these things, because she’s supposed to have done so. She’s meant to be able to feel pride in other people’s successes, rather than hate that they’re doing what she can’t. But, Art knows the resentment. He feels it some days, when he loses a match she’d have one. When Anna Mueller wins. So, he smiles, presses his lips to the curve of her nose, watches it scrunch.

“Then you do the Lily thing, and we watch you shine.”

She hums when she smiles, the way Daddy does sometimes when things are only a little funny, but mostly make her feel like her head is a balloon, and it’s flying away from the rest of her body.

“But she’d like me more if I did it the Mommy way, right? If I was good at tennis?”

He squeezes her shoulder with his palm, and finds that it doesn’t fit right in the cup of it. He thinks she’s grown too fast, and yet she’s still so small. And she’s too smart to lie to. He’s too dumb to know.

“I’m not sure, Lilybug.”

The answer is yes.

A few months later, Christmas lists were being made, toy catalogues searched, circled, conspicuously left by coffee machines and Daddy’s yucky green ‘First thing in the morning’ drinks. But they don’t make her all jumpy and giggly, the way a good gift should. So, when Grandma calls, her face shaking in and out of view on the screen of Mommy’s phone, and Grandma asks ‘What does our Lilybug want for Christmas?’, she replies,

“I want more tennis lessons.”

And she watches Mommy smile like she’s never smiled before, even though she tries to bend her head down into the paperwork she’s doing at the coffee table to hide it. It’s still see-able, and Lily can feel herself fill with that gold feeling again, from her toes to the top of her head. She just wants to make Mommy smile.

She’s been staring at this assignment for hours, and for all her might, she just can’t make sense of these numbers. Stupid logarithms. Stupid math. She shuts her laptop, watches her face turn a glowing white to a healthy gold in her vanity’s mirror. She’ll do it tonight, probably. Or in the morning, before early practice. She hopes her eyes are functional enough to write real, understandable symbols at two in the morning. She hopes she gets enough sleep to even wake up in time. She knows she can help it, but she still feels her stomach sink at the sight of a big, red ‘F’ on a page. She’s glad she does well enough in tests to make up for it, or her spot on the National Honor Society would be someone else’s, and, most importantly, Mom and Dad would flip their shit.

She flips her phone over where it laid next to her laptop, the screen flashing a text from Amy.

“Sorry babe can’t do tonight i’ve got dance and sth with andrew at like 7 :((( tm tho?”

Dance. It’s always dance. She remembers watching those clips of Amy on her Instagram story like they were miniature blockbusters, watching the way the fabric of her skirt moved when she bent her leg a certain way. How her arms flowed like waves, even if they were made up of jagged bone. Fucking dance. It’s not even a real sport, and Amy breathes it more than air.

“That’s alright :)) tomorrow then”

She pushes herself out of the spinning chair, pockets her phone and snags her earbuds from off the foot of her bed. Ignores the way her knees pop a bit. She’s been sitting for a while. Besides, she could use the practice.

“Where you going, Lils?”

Her mother calls from the kitchen, not looking up from some ad mock-up. Looks like another Aston Martin thing, if she can read it properly from where she is.

“Practice.”

She calls over her shoulder, stuffing one earbud in. She sees her mother nod, hide a smile behind the palm of her hand. Rare Tashi Donaldson, nee Duncan, approval. Her shoulders roll back, and her spine straightens just a little bit before she makes it through the sliding glass door.

She came back inside at 11 pm. Four missed calls from Amy and a ‘Hey plans got canceled you still free???’ lighting up her lockscreen, blocking out the tennis ball in the photo of a little her, fairy wings, missing front teeth, and a racket half the size of her current one. Maybe she should change it to her with friends.

She walks past the empty dinner table, bowl of something still steaming and waiting for her at her usual spot in the corner, dropping with a haphazard flop onto the couch, clicking the TV on.

“So, pick me, choose me-”

“Fifteen found dead in Oakland, Cali-”

“And little Ms. Duncan, daughter of famed tennis couple Art Donaldson and the former Tashi Duncan has had a great season so far. So far, undefeated, and with just a few weeks before the Junior Opens, she really has a shot at the win. Thoughts?”

She sits up a little, watches pictures of her flash, half-way through a grunt, braid whipping behind her. There had to have been a better photo of her.

“Well, Rog, I’d just like to see a little more out of her. I mean, what with her mother being what she was, it’s just a shame to see it look so much more aver-”

The TV is off with a click. She shuts her eyes, rubs at her temples, lightly raps her knuckles against her head like it’d knock out the sound. She thinks they’re wrong. She hates that they’re right. She wishes it was more natural. Everyone knew her mother was dead in a living body till she stepped on that court, and it all clicked into raw, animalistic passion. With Lily? Procedure. She didn’t feel adrenaline, or a spark, or anything but duty. Steps. Tired. She falls asleep in the fetal position, alarm unset. She only has enough time to step out the door before early morning practice when she’s up.

Her opponent’s get a birth mark on her right shoulder the shape of a ballet slipper. It’s just a little darker than the rest of her skin, only visible when she served. Her mother is sat on the stands behind this girl, hands braced on the rails like she’s ready to pull herself over and onto the warm clay ground beneath her if things go south. But, for now, the score’s even, like it has been the whole match, and that wedding ring is glinting in the light. She’s not even the court and she’s controlling it, back straight and face stony like an emperor watching two gladiators in the colosseum. She just hopes she’s not the one ending with her head detached.

She can’t see Dad, thinks he’s probably gone to get a hot dog, now that he can eat them again, or maybe he’s just too non-threatening to matter to her right now. But, vaguely, she thinks she remembers hearing a ‘That’s my girl’ in that stupid, slightly nasally voice she pretends to hate as much as she can. You’re not supposed to like your parents at her age. Her mother is staring, she can tell. Those sunglasses don’t hide a thing. She can read her mother better than that, and they both know it. She’s thinking. Something. Something sharp, biting, maybe hurtful. Maybe hurt. She doesn’t see her opponent set up to serve, she doesn’t see the birth mark slip into view, just a bright yellow blur headed her way. She lunges as best she can, practically on the tips of her toes to make it, and she hears a tink. And then a crunch.

She kisses the concrete like it grabbed her by the hair and pulled her in, and her teeth scrape her tongue and leave gapped indents there, heavy and bleeding. She doesn’t hear her mother, or the gasps of the spectators, or the medics asking the other girl to clear the ground. She can hear her own breath, her pulse, and laughter. Wild, hysterical laughter she only notices is coming from her when she looks down and sees her stomach contracting with it. And then she sees it, that abnormal, jagged looking leg of hers. Bone not made to wave. And she cries as hard as she’d laughed.

“Hey, Dad?”

It’s later than he’s normally up. Generally, he’s out at 9 p.m., still careful to be healthy where he can be. Where it’s normal.

“Shouldn’t you be in bed? You’ve got prac… what’s up, Lily?”

She bites her lip, shifts back and forth on her feet the best she can. Her right leg is just a bit more bent than the left, wrapped in soft, beige bandages. She didn’t like the brace. She doesn’t want to look at him, so she looks at the wall. There’s a photo of Mom, fist raised, mouth agape in a scream, dress white and pristine. The Junior Opens. She sniffs.

“Can I just… I don’t know. Can we pretend like I’m little again?”

He shifts, pats his lap, smiles like it’s the only thing keeping something aching and raw at bay. Something that’s needed to be touched for years.

“‘Course, Lilybug.”

And she falls into place like it hadn’t been ages. Like she’s allowed to like her Dad, head on his thigh, eyes trained on the coffee table. There’s a letter from some college there with her name on it, somewhere cold and rainy. Somewhere they could use a name to their tennis team.

“How’s Mom?”

He tilts his head to look down at her, the side of her head, the shell of her ear, the soft lashes of her eyes that are slightly damp.

“Oh, Lily… how are you?”

She swallows, places a hand on his thigh and squeezes there, not tight, but firm. Like it was a natural place to settle. Something unharmed and soft and a healthy, functional leg. Her throat tightens. The world looks blurry. She thinks the letter says Yale. The water makes it hard to tell. Her voice is just a bit too quiet when she responds.

“‘M fine.”

It’s silent for a moment, one heavy breath, then his lighter one. A volley. She rolls onto her back to look him in the eyes, and finds a spot of brown in the left one. How had she never noticed that before? It looks like the color of Mom’s eyes. Even he’s got her little territorial marks on him.

“Can I say something stupid?”

He nods, hums his affirmation, waiting like it’s all he wants to do. To look at her and wait and let it just be quiet. She appreciated the stillness. It’s easier to be sad when it’s quiet. It’s easier to love then, too, melancholic and bittersweet and sticky like saltwater taffy.

“I always wanted to dance.”

He buries her face into his stomach when her lip trembles. She wouldn’t want him to see. He doesn’t want her to see his watching teartracks. In the room over, Tashi sits with her head in her hands and her eyes downcast. She hopes Lily would consider a coaching position.

the road trip

or, how they spent their last summer.

an: not reallyyyy proof read, so if you note any grammatical errors, mispellings, etc. feel free to let me know. creds to @ithemes for the border, and a special thank you to my dear friend @blastzachilles for reading most of this. you will never fail to bring me out of a well-practiced shell. i hope you enjoy, and, as always, likes, comments, critiques and reposts are very appreciated.

Despite what everyone thought of him, and his general raucous demeanor, Patrick was a good driver. Maybe it was the devil-may-care attitude that kept him from getting that clammy-handed nervousness that Art defaulted to behind a wheel, but it earned him the title of “Pre-Graduation Road Trip Driver”. He only pretended not to be insulted when everyone clapped Art on the shoulder and told him to say a prayer before getting in the passenger seat. Patrick was reckless with plenty of things, sure. Reckless with girls, reckless with his body, reckless with the amount of Four Lokos he drank the night before Ms. Anderson’s logarithm test, reckless with himself. But not Art. Never Art. It’s the only reason Art had stuck around so long, he thinks.

He was proud of himself and his little Honda, one that he’d gotten with his own money and a smile so bright it exposed the chip in one of his bottom teeth. Art had asked him about that when they’d first met, why he only ever smiled with the right side of his mouth. So he pulled down his bottom lip with his index finger, exposing that little semicircular inconvenience, the one that hissed when it met with cold. “‘S from a fight”, he’d added with a lax shrug, hoping the nonchalance wouldn’t betray the fact he was dying to tell the story. But Art couldn’t read him that well, not then at least, and nodded. Said something about being ‘more careful next time’. Art didn’t notice the sag of his shoulders, either.

It’s funny, now that they’re on this trip, commemorating their last summer together, 12 to 18 went by so fast. The woman at the gas station in Maryland had said it was sweet for two boys of their age to be so close, ‘Usually sibling rivalries only get worse around college, what with the competition for the better letter and all’. She had no way of reading why the boys had winced, Art shoving his hands into the pockets of his cargos, rocking back and forth on his heels like a guilty toddler. Patrick just said, “Not brothers”. That seemed to throw her off kilter more than that thick tension growing in the inch of space between Patrick’s hoodie sleeve and Art’s bare arm. “Sorry, sorry. You two just… seem like brothers.” They laughed in that way only two people who want to be anywhere but their current standing is, grabbed their cigarettes from off the cracked countertop, and left with the ring of the bell above the too-heavy front door.

That night, when they’d curled up on the scratchy sheets of their motel beds, which groaned beneath each movement, Art turned towards Patrick, picking at his nails and flicking the detached skin somewhere across the room. “Why’d you say that?” He asked, mumbled through concentration, like lifting his lips just a micrometer further apart was some Herculean effort. Patrick turned over, staring at the blinking orange lights of the digital clock on the nightstand. “Say what?” Art looked up then, rolled his shoulders back, the thin pillow letting out a puff where his head met it. “That we aren’t brothers”. There wasn’t offense in his eyes, stormy and addictive in all the ways that made Patrick remember he was the worse of the two, but curiosity. Well, the obvious answer was that they weren’t. Patrick grew up one place, under some surname attached to ‘dignity’, ‘family pride’. Some surname no one ever bothered to remember the proper pronunciation of. And Art? He grew up under the setting sun in mid-July, allowed to dirty his clothes because they were never expected to remain white. Somewhere where grass was allowed to grow without getting cropped down to just above the root. All-American, sweet as cherry pie, golden retriever boy with a starched collar for church and an ever-burning fire on the grill. Art grew to know what softness was, and Patrick could play parrot, replicate it with enough accuracy to be recognizable, and enough lingering signs that it was an approximation to make people hope it just got quieter with time.

Then again, what really made someone a brother? If it was just the DNA, then that meant nothing. Patrick knew just what it was to be related to someone, and not have them be family. To love someone, but never like them. And wasn’t Art doing better then? Art had seen Patrick laugh, cry, trip over an untied shoelace and fall face first into a puddle. He helped him up after snorting a little, rarely one to fully laugh, like the sound was some kind of finite resource. And Patrick had seen the worst of Art, from his slobbery first kiss, the one where he bit the girl’s lip too hard and she’d pulled away bleeding, to the one summer he’d dyed his hair black. He fancied himself a philosopher at the time, something about ‘reflecting his inner darkness’. Even if Art claimed it to be there, that Patrick had grown so accustomed to seeing it he hardly recognized it as being bad anymore, he could never quite pick through his own admiration to find it. So that night, stereotypically, Art dug out his grandfather’s old pocket knife, the one from one of the World Wars, and cut a line across their right palms, Art’s just a bit straighter than Patrick’s. When they pressed their hands together, wincing at the pressure against the weeping gashes, they didn’t shake their hands, like the men they were growing into. Just held them there, flat palm to flat palm, dripping into the non-descript, darkly colored carpet, just looking. Brothers now. Art wrapped his hand in toilet paper, flicked off the rickety lamp with stained, formerly white lampshade, and went to bed. Patrick just watched himself bleed for the night, and then watched Art sleeping.

It was harder now to drive, with the pulsating behind his hand, like a miniature heart had grown there, occurring with each day spent driving. But they’d arrived in Colorado a night or so ago, spent yesterday making good of those cigarettes by a lake they didn’t bother to check the name of. Two girls had come by, never shared their names, and the boys didn’t share theirs. They all just passed cigarettes back and forth like they were secrets in their own right, like they weren’t all sharing saliva, like they didn’t recognize the sunkenness in each others’ eyes as matching the sunkenness in their own brains. Patrick thinks sometimes that he’s got cinder blocks tied to his feet, one’s he can’t see, and that’s why it’s so exhausting taking that first step out of bed each morning. He wondered then, if he walked out where the water swallowed up his lower half, and he tilted his head back to greet the invisible face of God, with eyes of stars and flashing plane lights, stretching his arms out like he’d catch the breeze in his embrace, if he’d sink to the bottom. When the girls left, and Art had passed out against the trunk of a tree, he’d tried. He was only slightly disappointed to find that it wasn’t all that deep. Art woke up when the press of Patrick’s wet boxers touched his thigh, and he didn’t seem mad. He smiled, actually, with the left side of his mouth exposing moonlit teeth. Patrick wanted to ask what there was to smile at, but realized maybe it was just him. He doesn’t know why he kissed him, or who started it first, but Art slinked off afterwards into the backseat of the car, leaving Patrick to curl his hands into the dirt until he knew how to carry his own weight again. They didn’t talk about it the next day, or the day after.

After Colorado, they’d gone to Nevada. Something about Art ‘needing the ocean’. They’d found an empty little dock to perch on, Art sitting at the edge to allow the soft, mid-ocean waves to lap at his skin like a dog. The ocean had always reminded Patrick of Art. He thinks it’s the stillness among the chaos that bears the resemblance. Patrick had always loved the ocean, some of his fondest childhood memories spent jumping over the incoming crash of water on the shore. If he had to forget everything, he hopes he’d fall in love with the ocean all over again. He’s sitting behind Art, but only by a bit, bare, crossed feet in line with his hips. “I was reading something the other day. Did you know Patrick means noble?” He huffs, watches the way Art’s back dimples and ripples with muscle, the way that his hair looks a richer gold in this light. His hair looks like the sun. Or maybe, the sun looks like it. “I don’t know about that.” He replied after a breath. He wanted to tease back, say that Art meant… well, art, but he realized that there’s not one way to define what art is. People argue on it all the time, and he’s not intelligent enough to be the one to define it. But it’s usually beautiful, even where it’s ugly. It usually evokes something. And Art’s all unscathed besides where he tore a patch of skin off his knee, wet and pink with the newly exposed layer awoken before its time. He’d fallen off a rock while trying to get a picture of the sunset. He deleted it afterwards, anyway. The colors weren’t right. Art was holding a bottle of something, unopened and dark, the condensation dripping in and out of the divots created by the spaces between his fingers. He sits back on his elbows, squinting under the glare of the sun, and in it he thinks he can see disapproval. He flicks his shades over his eyes. “Hey, Art?” Art doesn’t turn his head over his shoulder to meet Patrick’s eyes, just hums a little, shoulders moving with it. He’s staring at something. Thinking, maybe. He usually is. “Do you think, you know, after you go to Stanford, we’ll still be friends?” Art lifts his head, softens like he’s fourteen again, and Art, who fancies himself a philosopher to this day replies, “I think we’ll always know each other”.

Patrick heard something, maybe fate’s, breath hitch, as if something had clicked into place. Something had been decided for them, and for the most part, they were none the wiser. Patrick grins that right-mouthed smile of his, rests his back against the splintered wood of the dock, hands crossed behind his head. For now, he can only hope that decision is something good.

This Sucks But I Haven't Written In A While So. Here You Go

More Posts from Asheepinfrance and Others

A Night Over

meet… STANFORD ERA LESBIAN!ATP .ᐟ ★

Big Shoes to Fill

the road trip