It was twenty to eight.
"Actually, it's almost quarter-to."
He was such a pedant.
"I can see what you're writing, and I'm not, I just like to be precise about these things."
Once again, his obsessive compulsive need for exact timekeeping
"I don't have OCD."
He had completely missed the fact that he hadn't been diagnosed with any kind of disorder, just displayed some obsessive compulsive behaviour. It was more of his paranoid ideation, presuming that an innocent
'You haven't interrupted me.'
"You're being boring. It's just bitching now. Although now it looks like you're the paranoid one."
'I'm not...
He wasn't certain he believed her, or that he'd heard her correctly.
She believed it, though. That much was obvious, from the earnest look in her eyes, from the way she clung to her coffee cup with such a tight grip, as if it was the only thing tethering her. As if it was what was keeping her real, keeping her here.
"How did it happen?" He asked finally.
Althea seemed to relax a little at that, as if she'd overcome a hurdle, as if she was relieved - finally, somebody believed her. "I don't know. If I did, I...
My feet ached, but it was well worth it.
I wonder who had said that? They were idiots, whoever they were. My feet ached, and it was not worth it at all. I hated every moment of it. Every moment of the scorching heat, the desperate gulps at tepid water, the people by me, and the sweat, like some gift from a relative you hated, anyways. Anyways. I don't know why I did it. Wasn't for her, that much I know. I was past her, and was glad to be rid of the stupid promises. But it wasn't for myself,...
We are falling, steady. We are falling a little bit. We are falling into a mass dream, an illusion that is as good as reality for now. We are falling so slowly, so gently that it feels like we are floating. We are together and we are kidding ourselves. But it is noble and good and we are falling. What reality is greater than this? What is it we are here for? We are this: we are weight: we are what makes it possible to fall.
We are falling and it is enough.
He ran into the room, his heart pounding, and his clothes soaking wet. There had not been a storm, at least, not that one could have seen. But rain fell on him nonetheless. A ghost of a storm, haunting him.
It was like some cartoon raincloud that hovered over him, that soaked him. He carried an umbrella everywhere, drawing strange looks. In an effort to avoid this, he had gone fancy, eschewing the utilitarian umbrellas, the ones meant to fold up, to fit in a purse or a pocket.
No, he used full length umbrellas, massive black umbrellas with gold...
She began a cigarette.
She thought about the beginning, when both of them wrestled with being simultaneously addicted to and afraid of each other. The fear was its own pleasure: they both noticed that the adrenaline of their hours apart was worth infinite foreplay.
She watched the first part of the logo turn orange and then grey. The image lasted in the ash for a second before mixing in with the image of the paper.
Later, she began to notice a strange emotional trajectory in their evenings together: the impulse, the sex, and then sadness, or disappointment. The sweat turned...
Once upon a time I thought that I was a bird flying through the sky.
And then I realised that I'd just dreamt it. But once I realised that I was able to control my dreams, I decided to fly whenever it occurred to me that I was asleep. I would fly over my Grandma's house, I would start running as fast as I could and my arms would reach out beside me and I would just run up and up and up and there I was, able to fly anywhere. Able to see above all that was happening and...
She didn't look at him. She couldn't. He was standing there, and she didn't recognize him. Alex hurt Keri. Beyond hurt. Four years of sleeping together during summer and winter breaks from his Catholic college in Ohio HAD to mean something. Didn't they?
Not to him. Not anymore. He wasn't in it for the same reasons. Maybe he knew Keri loved Zak, too. Maybe Alex knew that deep inside Keri really loved them both (she hoped neither of them knew about each other, at least). Maybe he hoped that Zak would love her back so she wouldn't be so hurt...
It was easy to sit at the beach.
The sea could've been swirling around her toes, if she so wished, she could've been leaping up and jumping over the waves with gay abandon, giggling, squealing with delight as they tickled the hem of her skirt.
Or the sand could've been squelching between her toes, getting stuck in niggling places, to be found later on as she padded barefoot through the house (except that she wouldn't be barefoot, she'd be sandfoot - grains attaching themselves to her skin and not leaving for days - weeks? - on end).
Or she could...
Lola hummed a song she barely remembered as she sat on the middle step of the front porch. She would have sat on the top step but it had been snapped in half since the previous winter. Jeremy said he was going to fix it. Either later or tomorrow or the next day.
He had been saying that for months. Since spring.
By now she had gotten used to hopping over the hole. Lola hardly even cared if he fixed it or not.
He couldn't even mow the lawn. It was tall in some place, yellow and burnt in others...