Unzipped

Asher

I woke up on fire.

Skin gone up in caustic flame and heart beating way too loud. Head misplaced and chest like an inferno. Dizzy enough that my skin started to prickle, vision started to spin, blood grinding down to a slushy, jammed-up halt somewhere below my knees. The sun was trying to crawl in through the window like a transient teenager, trapping me in a molten puddle of hellfire on the bed and Nora was on the phone.

“It’s like the break of fucking dawn, can’t you at least call at a decent hour?” I groaned and dug my elbows into the mattress, sheets slick as mud, straining to reach the edge of the curtain. Tugged the fabric over the hellfire falling through the window and everything went blissfully dark again. There was nothing to be done about the hellfire in my ear, so I let her ramble.

“Well, aren’t you just a ray of sunshine,” she muttered. “It’s actually like one o’clock in the afternoon and I’m calling to make sure you’re going to be here tonight. I know the invite said seven, but Ben will pick you up at the gym.”

“Why so early?” I whined, flopping back to the pillows, rubbing the sunshine out of my eyes. Sweating in the sunlight. Shivering in the shadows. Sick of the little sister phone calls. She was always inconvenient, usually frustrating, but loved me with that unabashed kind of adoration only little sisters could have.

“Because I haven’t seen you in a month.” More muttering. “I’m worried about you.”

“You’re always worried about me.”

“Are you eating? You know they said that you’ve lost weight since the last time-”

“Fucking cut it out,” I snapped and she fell silent. “I don’t need the mothering bullshit from you right now. Not today.”

“Fine, no mothering, I promise. But you have to come tonight.” She sounded like she was pouting, just like she did when she was ten years old because she knew I’d cave for it. She was probably right, but I tried to fend her off anyway, summoning up the same excuse I used every single time. I could practically hear her scowl through the phone before I even opened my mouth.

“I don’t know. I’m not exactly in the right mindset for company, if you get my drift.”

“Stop being such an antisocial asshole!” she screamed, loud enough to splinter bone. I dropped the phone and grimaced, rubbing my ear, listening to her shriek at me from the sheets. “It’s been five years. Five fucking years! It is time to move on, and that time is tonight. I don’t care what you want, or what you don’t want, or if you’ve even considered wanting it yet. You’re coming tonight and you’re going to fucking enjoy yourself,” she hissed.

“Ok, ok, I get it,” I grumbled, picking the phone up, but allowing it nowhere near my ear, speaking loudly from a safe distance away. “Enjoyment is obviously the plan for the evening. Are you going to make it to my game?”

“I have a party to throw honey, and I’m behind. Happy birthday, by the way,” she exhaled into the phone.

“Yeah, yeah,” I sighed in response. “See you soon.”

---

It took two hours to get myself ready.

That was only after the two hours it took to finally drag myself out of bed.

Two hours of lying on the sheets, staring at the ceiling, trying so fucking hard to reconnect with my body. Sink into my skin, but I just couldn’t do it. Couldn’t get my bones to ache. Couldn’t get my skin to crawl. Couldn’t even get myself off the mattress, and my legs weren’t the only problem.

My head felt like a goddamn sandbag.

I took it too far last night.

Drank myself too deep and I barely remembered any of it. Ended up at a bar around the corner with a bunch of nameless girls flopped all over me. Girls with names like Clementine. Roxanne. Chastity. Girls with tits that looked better than they felt. Girls with bleached out hair and peroxide smiles, lipstick fit for a street corner. Girls like that, they love guys like me.

They see something broken and they’re all over that shit like flies.

What they didn’t know was that even flies eventually get tired of shit. They didn’t know that I was the permanent kind of broken, the kind that got tiresome and weary after the novelty had worn off. The kind that would push them away. They definitely didn’t know that I got way too much satisfaction out of letting them down. Out of letting them rub their faces all over mine and sit on my lap, telling me that they had been waiting their entire lives for a guy like me. Out of letting them kiss me senseless, grind all over me and fuck up my hair, before I left them exactly where I’d found them.

Upright.

Whispering to their friends about their momentary brush up against the ragged remains of disaster. Look at my rugburn. It was hot, but it hurt.

 

I eventually gave up on my body and dragged myself into the shower, trying to wash off some of the dirt and grime and booze. I didn’t even bother trying to scrub away the bitterness, that shit was just as permanent as scar tissue and it wasn’t going anywhere. My muscles felt soft and mushy, uncooperative, and I slipped trying to get out of tub. Fucking up my wrist in favor of fucking up my face. By the time I was struggling to get dressed, I was moving slower than ever. Pulling on jeans and tugging on a t-shirt, fumbling with my socks. At my wit’s end. Trying in vain to push my feet into boots that made it look like I could kick the shit out of someone, if only I could get them on.

Never mind the actual kicking.

Any faint taste of control was just totally fucking nonexistent. My fingers were frustratingly slow, grip slipping off the smooth leather four times before I gave up, relinquishing the  tenuous hold on the crumbling lip of my sanity.

“Fuck!” I screamed, hurling the shoe across the room, but it didn’t even make it. Just thumped limply to the floor a couple feet away.

Might as well have been another planet.

I slumped off the bed, moving too fast as I reached for the shoe, when the pain hit again. Full force. White hot agony that sparked somewhere at the base of my spine and launched a firebolt clear up into my brain, scorching right through me like everything in the way was just a casualty of war. Collateral damage. Bones on fire, nerves gone molten. Heart beating out the rhythm of death song. I had to sit there on the carpet for a few minutes, dizzily clutching the mattress to hold myself upright, until the agony ebbed enough to blink again. Breathe again.

Exist again, even if it never was quite the same as before.

“Yeah, happy fucking birthday to me,” I muttered to myself.

---

“You know, you should really quit smoking.”

Jesse was only saying that because I was breathing ragged enough to do damage to my lungs. I scowled at him as he taped my wrist, methodical as a math nerd, avoiding my glare. The game was still in full swing, scattered cheering from the meager crowd in the bleachers, and I’d just gotten my fucked-up wrist jammed. Again.

“I’m like half a fucking person and you’re gonna give me shit about smoking?”

Like adding a tenth cherry to the sundae, if you ask me.

“I’m not trying trying to read you the riot act,” he huffed. “I’m just saying, it would make playing ball a lot easier if you could actually breathe.”

I pulled my glove back on over the tape, flexing my fingers through the open tips and my wrist still hurt, but not as bad. Not as bad as other kinds of hurt, so I took it with a smile and returned to the court.

We lost.

Not by much, but still, it would have been nice to win something.

Especially today.

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

Ben was in the back of his pickup truck, moving stuff around, when I finally made it out of the gym. He used the pickup for work, which meant he was just coming off a construction job and was probably going to smell like sawdust and shit, of the body odor variety. He grinned at me as I neared the truck, jumping over the side and landing nimbly on his feet. Knees bent to catch the pressure, a grunt of air in his chest as he hit the concrete. The guy was quick on his toes, I’d give him that, even if he was annoying as fuck most of the time.

“Hey man, how’s it rolling?” He chuckled as he opened the door for me and I glared at him as I threw my backpack inside.  

“I’m not going to put up with you tonight. I will hit you,” I warned. He slammed the door shut behind me and disappeared to fiddle with more crap in the back of the truck again, shoving shit aside to make room for me and all my fucking baggage.

“Ah, I don’t know about that,” he mused, puffing around behind me. “Eleanor has a little secret for you and I have the feeling you won’t be paying much attention to me at all.”

“Do I even want to know?”

“Nah, if I told you, you wouldn’t act surprised and I can’t be having that. Do me a favor and at least try to act like you’re having fun tonight. She’s been planning this shit for weeks and I’d hate to have to kick your ass if it goes sour.”

“You would actually try?” I grumbled and he flipped me off as he was getting in the truck, even though he was smiling.

“I’ve wanted to for years, brother. Don’t give me an excuse.”

“I could take you.”

“No, you couldn’t,” he shook his head, still smiling. “But I’ll be nice and let you think that you could.”

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

“Ow, Asher! Fuck, can’t you watch where you’re going?”

Not when you’re halfway to trashed, honey.

I waggled my half empty beer at my sister, not even trying to control my slosh. Nora clutched her toes and shook her head at me, face done up with that constipated look she got when she was coughing down her anger. Ten years ago she would have just launched it right at me like an explosive but, now, she was all stopped up. Trying not to hurt my feelings.

It was my birthday after all.

“At least I waited for your kids to go to bed,” I told her, draining the rest of the beer.

“At least you did that,” she sighed and smoothed my hair down. I didn’t try to stop her because I could probably use all the help I could get. My hair was unruly on its own, but I added a unique level of crazy to it that didn’t exactly work in my favor. I had a tendency to yank the shit out of it when I was depressed. Or horny. Or pissed off.

Lately, that’s all I was.

“There are too many people here,” I grumbled, picking food off her pretty party platters. All the faces were the ones I expected. They had never changed all that much over the years, the same group of friends who managed to keep themselves close despite my efforts to scare them off.

“They’re your friends, and they’re here because they want to see you. Yet you’re in here, with me, fucking up my food,” she admonished, but she didn’t try to smack my hand away so I kept picking.

“You don’t want to see me?” I popped a cherry tomato in my mouth and smiled at her around it, my cheek bulging.

“Of course I do. Are you sure you’re ok?” She sashayed around the counter, heels clicking against the tile, a staccato Morse code across the floor. Spinning through the kitchen, always on the move. Always with her feet barely held to the ground like she could fucking defy gravity or something.

I felt so solemnly chained to the earth, I was tempted to hate her for it.

“I’m fucking fine, ok?” I snapped and then took it back when her face fell. “Sorry, I just try not to think about it and it’s easier that way. If I need something, I promise I’ll tell you.”

“You can always move back in, you know? If it gets to be too much.” She didn’t look at me when she offered, focusing instead on laying out perfect rows of sliced cheese with her shoulders up around her ears as though she was waiting for me to explode. She had enough experience to know that it was a distinct possibility, so I tried to take it easy on her.

“And let your children use me as their full-time race car? No, thanks,” I chuckled.

---

Come midnight, I had arrived at fully trashed.

Ben and I had been sitting on the couch for over an hour, passing a bottle of something warm between us, watching everyone mill around the house. Nora had fucking outdone herself, which wasn’t abnormal, but I hated this kind of attention. Birthday streamers and burning hot spotlights. Most of the guests had stopped by to make mindless small talk before walking ever-so-easily away, leaving Ben to deal with me so that they could enjoy the party. I held my seat on the sofa like movement had gone out of style, chipping away at that bottle of liquor, studying the groups that formed around the house. The couples that spun around the room as the songs changed, the way they clung to each and twirled around until one of them stumbled over the other’s feet. The way the guys just shuffled their shoes and their eyes while the way the girls jumped around in groups like unstable electrons, spilling their drinks.        

Everything else ceased to exist the moment I spotted her.

In a pretty purple dress.

Sporting big blue eyes and thick dark curls and legs for fucking days. Long and slim, with fragile looking ankles and toenails painted up in pink. Shoes lost somewhere, the pads of her toes flashing at me as she danced. She was twirling along to the music, laughing with Nora, watching her skirt spin around her thighs with an abject fascination that reminded me of a little kid. The kind of woman who only crossed your path once in a miserable lifetime, the exact kind of smile that I liked the best. Easy and sweet, or absolutely fucking stunning, depending on what angle you caught her.

“Was she the surprise?” I pointed out the girl and Ben made a funny face, shaking his head at me as he passed the bottle back.

“No, I was just talking about the cake, man. Red velvet. I thought it was your favorite?”

“It is, but I am much more interested in that kind of sweet.”

Ben winked at me before cupping a hand to his mouth to call across the room. “Violet!”

Of course that’s her name. Pretty name, pretty girl and I want to get my lips on that pretty, pretty mouth. I get grabby when I’m drunk, the urge to get my grip on something firm and female and alive just sort of spills over, and it came as no surprise that my hand drifted out in her direction. Offering a silent, long-distance invitation across the room that she accepted immediately. Didn’t even hesitate, didn’t even flinch. I curled my fingers at her, lost, watching her flit toward me like a hummingbird through a greenhouse. Tiptoeing her way through the other dancers, careful to keep her bare feet clear of wayward heels. She slipped her fingers into mine and took the proverbial flower out of my palm.

Started plucking my petals.

Ben gave me a knowing look, eyeing our clasped hands before glancing up toward her. “Violet, this is-”

I didn’t let him finish. Just gave her the strongest tug I could and she fell right into my lap.

“My name’s Asher,” I muttered, licking my lips. “And I’m gonna call you Sugar Blossom.”

“You know my name,” she giggled, adjusting her knees to straddle my lap. Hooking her feet over the cushions. Smoothing my shirt down over my chest with her fingers spread wide and lordallfuckingmighty, that shit felt good. I bet she tasted like flowers. Like filtered sunshine when it was cloudy and overcast. Like lush wet pink and deep throated red. Like the numbing sting of bees and the warm burn of liquor.

“I do, but I know you taste as sweet as you look.” I lowered my voice, exhaling against her mouth before I tried to suck it off her face. Pushed my tongue between her lips and dug my hands up under her dress, fondling everything I could reach with absolutely no shame. I was only going to get a limited amount of this and I needed to make every second count. She was soft and smooth and smelled like violets and powdered sugar and I was such a fucking goner for girls like her. The ones that smiled all shy as though they couldn’t believe you were actually talking to them, much less shoving your tongue down their throat.

The kind that put their fingers to their lips to hold the feel of you there when you finally set them free.

“Like fucking sugar,” I panted, pushing her hands away and pulling her back in for more. I gripped her hips and let her gentle grind pulse right up through my arms, feeling it everywhere I shouldn’t and nowhere that I should. The perfect pace for the slow kind of fucking, the kind I’d never really liked before, but she was so devastatingly sweet that it worked for me. Tasted so good that I was plotting how to convince her to let me slip my fingers into her panties and get her off right here on the couch, right in front of all these people. Drawing battle plans on her skin with my fingers when she went and ruined everything.

Clutched my shirt and licked my neck, sighing her request into my ear.

“Dance with me?”

There’s that fucking heat again.

Hotter than before. Hotter than it had ever been, even when it had been at its worst. The burn I couldn’t control. Everything flamed molten red around the edges, heralding the acid soaked shiver down my spine that felt more and more permanent every time it happened. I shoved her off me and barked at Ben, breath gone ragged from locking my mouth around hers, from smoking too many cigarettes and coughing up self loathing every morning. From choking down the ball of burning rage in my throat.

“Get my chair.”

“Asher-”

“Just get my fucking chair!” I yelled, punching a couch cushion for good measure but getting absolutely no relief from it. She jumped to her feet, the pretty girl in purple, her bottom lip going right between her teeth as Ben sighed in defeat. That same sort of horrified awe on her face that I’d seen a hundred million times before as he leaned over to grab the wheelchair he’d stashed against the wall, out of the way of anyone wanting to use their feet for actual dancing. I yanked it away from him. Hauled myself into it, struggling with my numb, useless fucking legs. Cursing at my stupid, clumsy good-for-nothing feet. Glaring at him and her and anyone else who dared to look in my direction, the pounding in my head the only sound breaking the deafening silence.

Parting the crowd like Moses and not stopping until I was out the door.

---

I have this therapist. She’s nice and all, but she gives me homework like I’m in high school and asks me every week if I’ve made progress.

I tell her progress is for people who have somewhere to go.

Progress is for people who can see some sort of light and have the ability to head toward it. Progress is standing up and walking away, far fucking away, from all of this. Progress is just a nice way of saying how’s that semi-permanent band-aid treating you? Has it ripped off yet? Do you want a new one?

She tells me I have a zipper, one that stretches from my throat to my belly and that I can open or close it as much as I want. Whenever I want. That I can control how much of myself I give away and that it can be different for every person in my life. Open for Nora. Halfway down for Ben. That I can let new people in if I pull the zipper down a little.

I tell her my zipper was busted right along with my spine.

She tells me to locate my feelings. Don’t try to analyze them, just locate. Are they in your head? Your eyes? In your lungs? Your stomach?

Your heart?  

I tell her that they’re in my fucking feet.

---

The pretty girl caught up with me underneath a streetlight, on the corner of Grant and Emerson. I had to give her credit, I could fly when I want to. Rage makes for efficient fuel. I heard her from far behind me, a small cry in the distance that I just couldn’t fucking ignore. My insides still ached, full of her weight and her smell. Mouth still watered, her words still throbbing through my head like a never ending echo.

You know my name.

Dance with me.

“Wait!”

I tugged on my wheels, rubber stilling beneath my gloves, and tried to level my breathing.

“Wait,” she panted, stopping in front of me with her feet splayed out and her hands on her knees, breathing hard. She was still barefoot, still fucking beautiful. Shuffling in front of me looking embarrassed and nervous, lifting a foot off the ground to rub the back of her calf. Scratching an itch. Barely wavering as she balanced on one leg like it was the easiest thing in the world.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” she wheezed. Which was total bullshit. She came to my birthday party for fuck’s sake, but she didn’t look away. Didn’t glance down. Didn’t even blink for an entire minute and I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I just stared back at her and willed her to drop her eyes. To take a good look at my pointless legs and my broken zipper. At me and my cages, the one I sat in and the ones I had built all around myself.

She didn’t fall for it.

“We have to go back,” she whispered. “Eleanor said so. It’s your birthday.”

“I don’t want to fucking go back,” I muttered, gripping hard at my wheels.

“Well, if you don’t want to go back, let’s go find cake somewhere else. You’ve gotta have cake on your birthday.”

What a thing to say right now. “How old are you?” I questioned, eyeballing her blatantly enough to make her blush. Fuckme, she didn’t look old enough. Looked too sweet and too soft. Too perfect. There were only smooth curves and flawless, creamy skin. If I could walk, I’d leave my footprints all over her.

“Twenty two,” she whispered, slowly stepping closer as though she was trying not to spook me. “How old are you?”

“Thirty one,” I grumbled. “Look sweetheart, you’re probably really nice and someday you’ll make some guy very, very lucky, but I am not that guy.” My zipper was obviously on the wrong side of my body. And even though they’d opened up my spine to try to fix it, they couldn’t.

“Tell me what happened to you,” she stuttered, but her eyes never left mine. She was biting her lip hard enough to chase away the pink and her hand fluttered between us, landing soft on the grip at the back of my chair.

“No,” I snapped. “Go back to the party, tell Nora you couldn’t find me.” I tried to pull away, cursing under my breath as she clung tight to the handle of my chair, letting me go nowhere. She dug her heels and held on tight, fingernails buried in the rubber grip of my chair, stubborn as fuck.

“Please don’t go,” she stuttered.

“You’re just holding on to make a point,” I hissed. “I’m not some goddamn volunteer project. You don’t get extra karma points for putting up with me and my mess, so step the fuck off.” I yanked free and used my hurt and my hate and my tired fucking arms to get away from her, since my worthless legs wouldn’t do it for me.

If I had been on my feet, I would have been running.

---

High school again.

She asks me about my progress and I tell her about the zipper. That it’s really in my back. That it’s calcified shut.

She doesn’t agree.

She asks me about my birthday, but I don’t tell her the truth. I tell her some fuzzy story about red velvet cake, Nora’s crappy taste in music and even crappier dancing. I tell her about how I made Ben take me for a drive down a lonely stretch of highway on the way to the party and how he’d let me cry for a while without saying anything, without even acknowledging it, until we at the front door and he was pulling me in for a hug that I tried to shrug off, but ended up giving in to instead. I leave out the booze and the girl. I always leave those two things out.

Except this time I almost tell her.

I almost tell her about Violet and her purple dress and the girlish temptation she left in my mouth, but I don’t. Almost tell her that something deep down at the very base of my broken zipper felt warm and tingly, but I don’t. I leave the office and go to the bar. Find some girl to finger into submission. To drape over my lap and work into a panting stupor. To rub away the pungent smell of violets, leave her own cheap scent all over me. To deflect the girl who didn’t know there was a brake pedal right there by her foot.

A way to pin me down without putting so much effort into holding on.

---

I was the last one out of the locker room.

Sat in the shower until water ran cold and I couldn’t feel anything amore, much less my legs. Shivering, trying to douse the fire in my spine and the ache in my chest. It didn’t work. It never worked.

She was there when I emerged. A lonely spot of color in the vast stretch of empty bleachers and she just looked at me again, like she always did, with her eyes on my face. I rolled slowly to the base of the stairs and watched her drop down them, one by one, feet hidden in ratty sneakers that hit the metal with a dull echo. Every step bouncing through the empty gymnasium until she plopped to floor in front of me.

Pigeon-toed and just as fucking pretty as I remembered.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“A while. I watched your game.” She bit her lip and I looked away. At least we won this time. “I got you a cake.” She held out a paper bag embossed with fancy script from a high-end bakery downtown. I took it, but only because she gave no indication that she planned on allowing me not to.

“Why?” I asked, settling the bag precariously on my lap.

“Because I ruined your birthday.” Her legs were bare, knees knocking with nervous anticipation and she looked too hopeful to let her down like I should. Too pretty to make cry, because she probably would. Years of practice hadn’t made me any smoother and I never disengaged with any sort of grace. Usually left them in tears, covered in my signature hot-rash rug burn.

“You didn’t ruin it, you just made me think too hard. I don’t like doing that,” I sighed. I hated that I met her here. Now. Like this. Wished it could have been a decade ago, a century ago. Wished that she could have met me when I wasn’t fucked up. When I was whole and and not broken, still sort of happy and not completely fucking pissed off at everything. Including myself.

“Well, nothing’s that hard about cake,” she shrugged, the vague hint of a smile. “Let’s go find somewhere to eat it.”

“You don’t have to do this,” I shook my head at her. “I mean, it’s nice and all, but you really don’t have to take it all the way.”

“You’re not getting off that easy,” she winked at me. “I have candles.”

---

“Boo!”

She hopped in front of me and I damn near ran her over. Landed in a fluff of skirts and curls at my feet and nearly killed my heart. Set it to double-time speed, the tempo pumped up a couple million notches, even though it wasn’t all from fright. Some of it was from the split second glimpse of her pale pink underwear when her skirt flew up, just before she landed.

“That kind of shit ain’t exactly good for me,” I gasped, clutching my chest and sort of glared at her.

“Oh, sorry. My bad,” she mumbled, looking a little worried, clutching handfuls of her clothes and twitching nervously. “So, where to? My place isn’t really,” she bit her lips, eyebrows furrowed, “accessible.”

“Point taken. Let’s just go to my place, at least I know I can get in.” I winked at her, trying to ease the tension as I pushed off in the direction of home.

She followed me the four blocks to my apartment, talking nonfuckingstop. Playing hopscotch with the cracks in the concrete and weaving through parking meters, chattering about my sister and her cute kids and how she babysat them four days a week while she went to school. She wanted to be a philosopher or an interior designer or a zoologist, but she couldn’t decide which. She had a parrot that stole her jewelry and a truck that was probably twenty years older than she thought it was. Running up steps just to jump down them. Dodging other pedestrians like they were only obstacles in a giant maze. Jumping frog-style across the white lines of a crosswalk, rubber soles to wet pavement with a splash. She picked dandelions from the cracks in the curb and tucked them into the back of my chair where I couldn’t reach them. Ducked in to grab my hand when I caught enough slope to free-roll and skipped along beside me all the way to the front of my building with her fingers threaded through mine. Pranced into the elevator, demanding to press the button herself.

“This is fancy,” she twittered, bouncing on her toes as I unlocked the door, all too eager to get inside. She didn’t disappoint, a squeal in her chest as the door swung open. She launched toward the big wall of windows like a bird on suicide flight, smashing right up against the glass, her breath in a foggy halo around her head. The heavenscape of city lights glowed right through her clothes, the ghost grey shadows of her thighs appearing through the fabric. A slender strip of light in between.

“Go on.” I unlocked the patio doors and swung them open, the automatic catch pulling the glass wall aside, flooding the room with nighttime.

“The cake,” she glanced back toward the kitchen where I’d abandoned her confection, but I waved her off.

“I’ll get it. You go enjoy the view.”

She gave me that brilliant smile and dashed out the doors, flinging herself up against the railings and throwing her head back to gaze up at the sky. I got a couple of forks, giving up entirely on dishes, and made my way to the deck with the cake box on my knees. Dumped everything on a low table just in time to catch her before she fell on me, trying to wrap her arms and legs around me and my chair. I laughed as I pried her loose, pushing her back to her feet despite her protests.

“I’m not glued to this thing,” I chuckled. “Let me get out of it for this.”

She scrambled across the furniture, settling beside me as I shuffled out of my chair. I pushed it roughly away so that I didn’t have to fucking look at it, droopy dandelions sagging all across the back of it like christmas lights, and was adjusting my legs, trying to find a comfortable position, when she was back at it again. Knees bookending my hips, fingers to my clothes and her breath in my face. Holding a tiny cake between us, coated in fluffy white frosting and big enough to eat in like four fucking bites.

Crowned with giant wax numbers that had been set on fire.

A great big two and an equally big six.

“Those are wrong,” I laughed, glancing up at her, getting a little starstruck by the candlelight flickering up her face like that. She shook her head at me, chewing on her lip for a minute, letting the candles burn down between us before she spoke.

“Eleanor told me about you. Actually, it was the kids who blabbed, she just confirmed it.” I looked away, not wanting to have this conversation right now, tonight, but she grabbed me by the face and looked me right in the eye again. “You know what I think? I think you deserved a fresh start, here with me. I think that this is the year you take it back. Make a wish,” she whispered, her breath making the flames wobble. I stared at the candles melting slowly onto the icing, the two nearly gone and the six nothing but a fallen crescent moon.

Truth was, I died when I was twenty six.

The last five years have just been some sort of agonizing nightmare, stuck in a body that I didn’t fucking understand. A body with needs I didn’t know how to meet and adjusting to it had been almost more than I could handle. More than I could be asked of. I’d never had that much patience with myself to begin with, but this body required a fuckton of patience.

Wishes were a crapshoot.

I gulped a solid breath of air and blew.

Violet set the cake aside and dug her finger deep into the soft icing, hiding a healthy mouthful behind her teeth. I gripped her hips, watching her swallow, eyes locked on the slick wet flash of her tongue as she licked her lips clean. She smiled at me again, something smoking and sultry behind it, eyes hooded like she was daydreaming, sticking her finger back into the cake for another dose.

The brightly colored cake staining the frosting pink.

Red fucking velvet.

“Mine,” I demanded, holding onto her tightly, eyeing her finger like it was the motherfucking holy grail. I wanted it in my mouth. I wanted to suck the icing off her finger and then off every other inch of her body. Wanted to spread her out and compare her to high grade vanilla. Declare her the winner. Denounce sweets forever. She stuck her finger between my teeth and I bit down hard enough to keep her there, sugar flooding my mouth as the icing melted in the heat, her fingerprint pressed firm against my tongue. She bit her lip, watching me intently, letting me lick her clean before she attacked me. Clung to my shirt tight enough to dig it into my neck and bit me right at the base of it. Hard. Ground her hips against mine and sucked on my skin, everything in me screaming to grind right back but nothing moved. I groaned in frustration, torment, fingers itching with the need to compensate, frantically grabbing at everything all at once. Throat frozen around a big burning ball of fear and want.

I wanted my name under her tongue.

Wanted her hair on my pillowcases. Wanted her to scrape eight identical lines into my back and really wanted know what she sounded like when it was dark and quiet and she moaned. I couldn’t say any of that, so I yanked her roughly against me and bit her back. Rid her of her dress as she rid me of my t-shirt. Kisses to collarbones, tongues to lips, teeth to skin, everything I should be feeling smashed up into the little space left that actually could.

“Holy fuck,” I hissed, pulling away. “Be gentle.”

“Did that hurt?” She fingered the spot she’d just bit, my chest smarting like the white hot end of a frayed electrical cord.

“No exactly, it’s just . . . everything I can feel is twice as sensitive.” I rubbed my nipple and she leaned in to kiss me once on the mouth instead. Sweet and soft, before pulling away.

“I want to suck your dick. Will you let me?”

“How do you know I still work?” I panted, trying to keep my head on straight as she dropped to her knees in front of me, draping herself over my legs and rubbing me right through my jeans.

“Because I can feel what I do to you. I think you work just fine.” She pressed her face into my lap, nose to the button of my jeans and her hot breath melting right through the fabric. I gripped the cushions and struggled to catch my breath. Even if I couldn’t exactly feel it, I could see it, and yeah, she’d gotten something out of my dick. A weak bulge in my lap, nothing like it had been before and definitely not hard enough to do anything to her with. The doctors told me erections were possible and I’d gotten close, but never like this. Never with a girl. Never so achingly pent up.

The odds of being able to finish were slim to fucking none.

“I don’t know if I do, actually.”

There it was. Truth. Long time no see, you inconvenient bastard. I wasn’t brushing girls off because I was an asshole, even though I sort of was. I wasn’t so egomaniacal that I deemed them all less than worthy, even though I had pretty high fucking standards. I was brushing them off because I was scared. Scared my dick was useless. Scared that the faint hint of potential failure would become a promise, cemented into reality.

“How long has it been?” She stopped, gazing up at me solemnly. I wanted her too badly to lie, so I didn’t say anything at all. Just shrugged and looked away. She dug her hands into the waist of my pants and tugged hard to get my attention.

“I want to make you feel good,” she murmured, fumbling with the button, the zipper, the elastic of my boxers. Digging underneath for something I couldn’t promise she would find, groaning to herself as she pulled me free. Low and fucking behold, I was stiff. The head was purple, blood obviously flooding into it and I wished so fucking bad that I could feel it. Her hand around me. Her breath. Her lips as they pressed soft and wet the very tip. Murmuring against my skin.

“My mouth is gonna feel so fucking good. Hot and wet,” she purred. “Slick and soft and tight, but my teeth are kind of sharp.” She let her tongue flick out, wetting me before she sunk down just enough to take the ridge behind her teeth and tug.

Holy fuck.

I pressed myself back into the cushions, angling my head to watch her dip slow and soft and, fuck me, almost all the way down my dick. Pink lips to my flushed skin and she moaned again, a heavy hum in the back of her throat. I swear I could feel it in my brain. A shivering reverb that ran clear up my busted spine and shuddered to a captured stop inside the cavernous hole in my head. Banging around like a moth under glass, smashing itself to smithereens.

“See what I did? How hard you are?” Violet whispered, breath billowing across my belly like a goddamn hurricane. “Give it to me. I want it.”

I pushed my hands through her hair, gathering it away from her face and holding on tight as she licked up the entire length of me, sucking hard on the head. Gripped most of me in her hand and rubbed her teeth against the tip, sucking me off hard enough to hollow out her cheeks. Pulled her lips up the shaft and when she sank back down again, I lost it. “Oh fuck,” I stuttered, the white hot burn in my brain plummeting down my fucked up spine, singing in my gut where that line cut me off. Right where I couldn’t feel anything anymore. Instead I was seeing it. Tasting it. Hearing it flood through me like a hurricane, the rushing noise of wind and the blinding tingle that skurried across my skin. “Fuck fuck fuck,” I growled as she pressed her nose to my stomach and caught my first orgasm in half a decade in her mouth. Sucked me dry and swallowed every last drop. Licked her lips and the head of my dick before tucking me back into my boxers and smiling that smile at me.

“Holy shit,” I panted, staring down at her. “That was fucking incredible.”

She grinned and wiped her mouth on her sleeve, going limp and soft enough to pull her off her knees and back into my lap. “Get back up here,” I muttered, finding her mouth with mine. “I’m twenty fucking six, goddamit, and I want to eat my cake.”

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

I woke up to her in my bed.

Naked and warm and clingy.

“Good morning,” I murmured, pulling her in close to press my lips to her face and she sighed into my neck, warm and limp and damp, the back of my hand lodged conveniently between her legs. She squirmed around against me and she didn’t even have to ask. I followed like a lost dog. Strapped bricks to my feet and hopped right off the plank, over the edge and into her mouth again.

Sunk right to the bottom.

Shoved four fingers into her, lavishing her clit with attention, counting how many licks it took to get her there. Rolling my mouth against her as she ground up into my face, fingering the tight and wet and warm and slick that my dick was missing out on. Thrusting hard and dropping my head to her stomach when she cried out, squirming against the sheets with her toes to my shoulders, drowning in the overwhelming flood of her. The clench around my hand. The violets in the air and the sticky drip off the ends of my fingers. The way she rolled around like she could feel everything all at once and the taste of her when I stuck my fingers in my mouth.

The pink lacy underwear on the bathroom floor.

This was where it was supposed to end.

Where I was supposed to end it.

It had gone way too far already. I’d brought her home, a first. Let her feed me cake and fuck me with her mouth on my porch, another first. Took her to bed and returned the favor, exploring every nook and fold of her body. First. Woke up to a one-two-three blink of soft morning light, heartbeat slow and steady, breath calm and peaceful, beautiful girl in my bed instead of the pain.

First, first first.

It was late, and I’d already missed practice. With any luck I’d make it to my high-school/progression-check on time. Nora would pitch a shit fit if she found out I missed a session and I did not intend to come under scrutiny. Violet watched me shift in my chair, naked ass to the cushion as I maneuvered around the room, searching for clothes.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ve got places to be. I’m late,” I muttered, picking up a shirt and sniffing it suspiciously.

“Can I come with you? I don’t have class until two and-”

“Look,” I sighed. “If I was five years younger, this might work,” I gestured between us and she scowled at me, gripping fistfulls of the sheets.

“You are five years younger, remember?” she said, voice wobbling precariously at the end.

“That candle bullshit?” I fumed. “No, Violet, this is bigger than that birthday crap. I’m no fucking good for you, can’t you see that?!” I gestured wildly at myself. At my chair and my legs and my dick, which sort of worked but not the way it should. “You can’t fucking fix me,” I growled.

“I don’t want to fix you!” she yelled. “I like you the way you are. I don’t want you to change.”

“If you knew me before all of this, you wouldn’t be saying that.”

“But I didn’t, so I don’t care about that.” She scrambled off the bed, naked and fucking gorgeous, grabbing both of my wheels and jerking me back and forth a few times. “This is what I know. This is the you that I want to be important to.”

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

Nora showed up six and half minutes after Violet left.

“You had a girl here, didn’t you?” she asked, stepping into the apartment.

“How the fuck would you know that?” I scowled at her as she breezed by, her patent leather shoes clomping across the carpet. It wasn’t like there was fucking underwear hanging from the chandelier or anything.

“I can smell her. It’s kind of soft and flowery and . . .” Nora trailed off, twirling on tip toe in the middle of the room with her nose in the air, her eyes going wide before she looked at me in horror. “No way. Not Violet.”

“What the fuck does that mean, not Violet?”

“I don’t want to lose my nanny to my older brother!” she squealed in horror, bunching up her fists like she wanted to hit something. “Keep your pervy hands off her, she tucks my kids into bed at night!”

“I’m not defiling her. If anything, she’s defiling me,” I smirked.

“Ew!” Nora shrieked and slapped her hands over her ears. Belting out a chant of monotones in an effort to drown me out. I laughed out loud and rolled toward the kitchen, but she only followed, pulling out her mommy-card and cleaning anything that looked mildly dirty. Absently wiping counters as a cover for her snooping.

“I hear you didn’t make it to practice this morning.”

“Yeah, I hear you’ve got a big fat mouth and that you passed it along to your kids,” I backhanded. She gave me a dirty look and started wiping a little harder.  

“They adore you, Asher. They can’t help but talk about you,” she grumbled, scrubbing nonexistent dirt. “And when she came to me asking questions, what was I supposed to say? Oh, he broke his back, no big deal? It is a big fucking deal! And it wasn’t just your back, it was your heart too and I-”

“Stop!” I yelled, shattering her sentence in mid air before she could say any more.

She froze, eyes wide in my direction, mouth on a kamikaze death wish. “She would have-”

“Don’t say it,” I held my hands up in defeat. “I can’t take if you say it. Please don’t.”

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

I go to therapy and don’t say a fucking word.

I go to the empty gym and miss twenty six shots in a row before I give up.

I go to the bar and flee the moment one of those trashy girls looks at me sideways.

I go home and haul myself into bed where it’s warm and soft and the memories smell like violets.

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

“She’s ba-ack.” Jesse was grinning at me like a complete fucktard and I knew exactly who he was talking about, but played dumb anyway.

“Who?”

“Your cute stalker. She was here the other day too, but since you were a no-show . . .” he trailed off, taping up my wrists.

“She’s not my stalker,” I grumbled, resisting the urge to look behind me.

“Whatever, I’d give my left nut for a non-stalker like that. You should invite her to the bar.”

He was talking about the team’s plan to drink ourselves stupid in celebration of the end of the season, but I didn’t think there was much to celebrate. Basketball was really the only thing that broke up my tedious days, other than that therapist in her shitty little office. I was already wondering what I was going to do with myself now that it was over.

“Just let me win this game first, huh?” I shoved myself back out onto the court and got my hand smashed within the first fucking minute.

Sunk two baskets to tie us, but only after three botched attempts.

We still lost.

Jesse was chatting up Violet by the time I got out of the locker room, even though I’d foregone a shower completely, hoping to beat him. I probably smelled like shit, but I knew he would pounce on her the second I was out of sight. Violet was listening to him blab, absently bunching her hands up in her skirt, giving me a sneak peek of the pale skin above her thigh highs that made my mouth go dry. I rolled up beside her, tugging the fabric from her hands and her skirt fell to the floor just as Jesse kicked my wheel to get my attention.

“I invited her to come tonight. She said yes,” he grinned at me while Violet eyed her shoes. We hadn’t talked yet and my whole apartment still smelled like her. It had been two days, which felt more like a million, and I was itching to see her. Find her. Get my mouth on her. Shove all my apologies between her teeth. Between her lips. Between her legs. Tell her that I was an asshole. Tell her that I’d definitely be one again, a lot, and that she probably deserved someone a little less fucked up.

Get whatever kicks I could out of it while she would still tolerate me.

Let her break my heart for a change.

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

The Columbine wasn’t exactly a shit hole, but that’s only because there was a decent jukebox.

It was, however, one of the only places in town that could hold fourteen wheelchairs at one time and we still took up damn near half the dancefloor. The waitress was perky and cute and way too accommodating, flirting her way through our group like a pre-teen girl nursing a crush. Giggly and sweet, taking the boys for every dollar they were worth while they ate that shit up like dogs.

To say we were a sexually repressed bunch would be putting it lightly.

Violet let Jesse interrogate her for a while and I learned more about her in his ten minutes of twenty-questions than I had in my entire evening with her. She liked pistachio ice cream. Elephants and labradors. Maples, because they flamed the brightest in the fall, and cold peppermint tea. Her favorite flower wasn’t even a flower but some weird lacey fungus that stitched itself to a tree like a wedding dress, and her favorite animal wasn’t even real. A lion with wings. And she looked at me really weird when she said it, like she was trying to tell me something.  

Fucking wings.

I couldn’t even walk, much less fly.

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

I watched some guy hit on her at the bar.

Standing tall above her like a damn giant with big leering eyes and enormous groping hands. I gripped the arms of my chair and watched her blush from across the room. Watched her glance up shyly when he put a hand on her arm. Watched her giggle at something he said with a funny smile on her face. Not the kind I was used to, the dazzling one, but more secretive. Something in it made me fucking furious. I resisted the urge to flip the table over in front of me and rolled myself all the way out to the parking lot instead.

Sunk my fist into the side of a car, just to alleviate the ache.

The paneling crumbled as I screamed out loud in frustration. Chock full of rage out of nowhere, even though it really wasn’t unexpected. I glared at the crease in the metal and took off too hard, catching the edge of my wheel on the bumper. The chair lurched to a halt, but I didn’t. Toppled right out of my seat, palms to the pavement, legs twisted awkwardly beneath me and she appeared at the very worst moment.

Right when my eyes blurred over, throat clamped down.

“What are you doing out here? Are you ok?” She fell to her knees beside me as I tried to shake it off, but I just fucking couldn’t.

“Any of those guys in there, and you want this?” I waved a hand up and down my body, pinned to the pavement like a butterfly to a board, grimacing around the rasp in my throat.

“You don’t get it,” she shook her head, sounding sad. “You just won’t get it.”

I pulled myself back into my chair, my hands sore and scraped, stamina run dry. She silently followed me back inside but jerked me to a halt at the edge of the dance floor. Stood in front of me with a tight look on her face for a long time before she came in for the kill. Didn’t ask, just curled up in my lap. Ear to my chest, hair in my mouth, knees hooked over the arm of the chair. I spun us slowly around the dance floor, eyes closed, content to let everyone else avoid me for a change. Let her listen to my heartbeat and breathe into my neck. Warm up my cold dead spine, my icicle heart.

I missed her the moment she stepped back onto her own two feet.

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

“Want to meet me somewhere?”

It had been three days since I’d seen her, but the pillows still sort of smelled like her if I buried my face deep enough.

“Where?” I mumbled through cotton, mouth full of violets and feathers.

“The park. It’s warm, and the leaves are falling. Come play.”

I dressed myself in record time, hoodie and a hat against the breeze, gloves and glasses and my jaw set tight as I slowly made my way the seven blocks to the park. Getting through the city was always treacherous and I tended to let groups of people clear the way for me, rather than fend for myself. Skittering after them like the little fish on the underbelly of a giant beast, skipping my wheels up over the curbs at the last possible second. By the time I made it to the relative safety of paved pathways, I was panting and feeling a little lightheaded, palms clammy within my leather gloves.

She was sitting on a bench near the sandbox, two small dark heads hunched together over something that looked like the lair of an evil snail.

“They’ve been productive,” I said, rolling up beside her and she smiled. I didn’t even have to do anything for it except show up. She dug her toes into the earth and scooted along the bench, close enough to pull my hand into her lap. We sat there in silence, watching Three push Five right over into the dirt, smashing half of the snail lair. Five came up covered in sand, laughing her little head off for a full minute before pushing Three out of the way. The little one stood by with a shaky lip and grubby fingers, watching as Five went Godzilla on the remainder, prehistoric reptile noises and all. Literally one of the more terrifying children I’d ever come in contact with. Her mother called her little-she-demon behind her back while her father claimed she was a mistake, and I believed them both.

Violet leaned in to whisper in my ear, “They’ve been telling me all about you.”

“Oh, have they?” I fought the urge to cringe, wondering just what Three would say about me, much less Five. Little brats probably totally ratted me out.

She sounded serious, but she was grinning like a loon. “They think you make the very best racecar in the world. You could win all the famous races.”

“The Grand Prix? No way,” I chuckled.

“Way,” Violet winked at me. “They said you can go like a bajillion miles an hour.”

I sighed heavily, weaving my fingers through hers. Of course they would say that. They were too young to see anything but freewheeling fun and I was too fucked up to show my true face around them. They only got the best of me, what little there was left of it, and here she was, searching for more. Like digging for diamonds in the mouth of a copper mine.

“I’ve been stuck in the same place for a long time,” I muttered, but she didn’t say anything. Just held on tighter and stayed silent. The icy breeze had turned her cheeks pink and the tip of her nose red. “I’m not sure how much you know.”

“I know that there was a terrible accident. And that you haven’t been the same since.”

Terrible accident. That’s what Nora was calling it these days? Horrendous nightmare was much more fitting. Ironic twist of fate, more like it. Some giant cosmic joke and I was the sad, pathetic punchline. I stared at Three and Five while I spoke, using them to push the blood and gore far enough away to to think clearly.

“Everything was really good. We were in love, happy. She wanted to have a baby. We were gonna buy a house, she found a wedding dress. And she was fucking perfect.” I licked my lips, dry and chapped and Violet wasn’t breathing at all. Her palms had gone clammy, or maybe it was mine. “We were on our way to surprise them, show them her ring, tell them we were finally getting hitched. They hit us.”

“Who?” she whispered, looking as though she didn’t exactly want to hear the answer and I sure as fuck didn’t want to give it to her, but what else was I gonna say? Blame it on some stranger? Some random person on some random road, when the truth was so much fucking worse than that?

“My parents,” I spit. “They were fighting, they were always fucking fighting. He wasn’t paying attention and came down the driveway like a goddamn bat out of hell and hit us. Hit her.”

“She died?”

“They all died. I should have died too.”

“But you didn’t.”

I shook my head. “I lived with Ben and Nora for a couple of years. They were really good to me.” That was a lie. Nora was a saint. A newborn and cripple, but she never complained.

“What was her name?” Violet asked, staring off across the park, the snowfall of leaves tumbling to the grass, trees burning with the last flame-touched kisses of autumn, just like her cheeks. Blushing red beneath the frosted breath of winter.

“Sarah,” I choked, swallowing down the ache. It was the first time I’d spoken that word since her funeral, five years ago, and it hurt so fucking bad.

“Sarah,” Violet whispered, her voice gone soft and pensive, making it sound heartbreakingly beautiful as it fell off her tongue. Dipping it in gold, rolling it in diamonds. The goddamn loveliest sound I’d ever heard in my life.

“Come home with me?” I whispered. “Let’s drop the demons with their mother and go back to bed.”

“I’m not happy with just half.” She shook her head, denying me the easy way out. “I want the whole thing. All of you.”

“Then fall in love with me,” I tried again, lightheaded and heavy hearted, everything in between was just meaningless static nonsense.

“Are you ready for that?” She finally looked over at me, sad eyes and tight mouth, looking for all the world like she was mourning something that wasn’t even dead yet.

All I could see was fire. Car accidents and birthdays. Half melted birthday candles spluttering out in a rush or sugared smoke. Twenty six and falling in love all over again. Enamored of the possibilities, fucked up on all the feelings, and so scared she was gonna slip away if I didn’t do something. That she was gonna run if I didn’t try. Disappear if I didn’t take a pickaxe to my broken zipper and hack that shit open, no matter how badly it hurt.

Wishes were a crapshoot. I took a deep breath and blew.

“For you? Yes.”

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

She straddled my chest, hot and damp and completely naked, throbbing through my breast bone, making my heart lurch. She was smiling that devastating smile, holding something in her hand like a knife. A vibrator. Thick and black, velvety smooth with a little bit of curve and wide, flat head. She held it between us with her eyes sparkling.

“This is for you,” she grinned.

“For me?” I asked warily.

She set it near my head and repositioned herself, on her knees with her pretty heart shaped ass squashed against my chest, right up in my face. The long smooth dip of her spine. The mouthwatering curve of her hips. Trailing her fingers through the hair on my stomach, digging her fingernails hard into the skin of my thighs. Telling me in a whisper what she planned to do to me. What she planned for me to do to her. A sordid little game of mind control, tempting my brain with visuals to enhance the feel. Tying the two together with a bright red ribbon.

“You’re gonna fuck me with that vibe, baby. Just like you want to,” she purred and rolled her hips languidly against my ribs while I gripped her bones, fighting back the urge to bite the tempting curve of her ass. “Slow and soft, or hard and fast.” Another roll, but quick and insistent this time, grinding down hard enough that I could feel the slick streak she left on my chest from the wet between her legs. “You’re gonna hit so deep, so fucking good, and I’m gonna follow you, baby. I’m gonna suck your dick the same way, and you’re gonna watch yourself fuck me.”

She gasped when I wrapped my arms around her waist. Squealed when I yanked her to her knees, her slippery skin hovering just inches from my face and her hot breath across my belly. I didn’t waste any fucking time, mouth already gone dry with anticipation, and dipped into her pussy like she was the last lost oasis in the middle of an endless fucking desert. The only drink of water I was ever gonna get. I set my lips over her to give a long, soft kiss and glanced down to see her do the same, lips pouting around the very tip of my swollen dick.

Another kiss to her pussy, ducking in this time to lick her clit, and she followed suit with a deeper full-lipped suck before tonguing my slit.

Holyshit.

“Fuck me, Asher,” she whispered against my cock, brushing her tits against my stomach as she arched her hips toward my face. “I’m so fucking tight,” she dropped her mouth over me once. “So fucking wet,” twice. “So fucking ready,” three times.

Yes ma’am.

I sank the vibrator when I felt her chin brush my belly. Deep and slow and firm, all the way to the hilt and all the way back out, watching breathlessly as she pulled up my shaft and popped off the end. She swirled her tongue around the head while I circled the vibrator around her entrance and sucked me deep me again when I pushed back inside. I didn’t know what to do. Couldn’t bring myself to watch one and not the other, her mouth around my dick or the way her pussy tucked in around the vibrator. Folding it inside and flowering open when I pulled it free, lips stained a deep flush at the edges, red and pink and rose and god, she smelled so fucking good. Dripping down my chin and coating my fingers, the pretty pucker of her asshole and the origami hood over her clit. I pressed the vibrator back down and clicked the button on the end, the toy springing to life, and she hummed down the length of my dick, gripping the base firmly in her fist and pushing my skin up and down over the half hard underneath.

“Goddamn, you have no idea how fucking hot that looks,” I mumbled, mouth struggling to keep up with my head. “Suck it down, girl. Take it all the way.”

I shoved the vibrator as deep as it would go, watching her deepthroat me clear to the motherfucking base. “Shit, shit, fuck. Your mouth, oh fuck.” I ground my teeth together, unable to come up with anything less obscene, full of filth and longing and her sighs of approval when I finally met an end. Found my release deep down her throat. Thrusting the vibrator into her faster and faster and faster, biting down on her clit and absolutely revelling in her come-down. In the give-out of her knees and the way she fell against my face. In the rush of something that tasted like tulips and fresh snow. I tossed the vibrator away and sunk my face in its place, letting her clench around my tongue and gag around my cock. Letting her ride my face and leave bite marks on my hips that I couldn’t feel. Letting her burrow beneath my skin and blood and guts, right into the soft, squishy marrow of my bones. Right into my severed, deadened spine. Up against every nerve ending I still felt.

Pushing back my darkness with her floodlight smile.

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

I go to therapy and, when she asks me about my progress, I tell her what a pretty purple dress looks like when it’s crumpled on the floor.

I tell her that the sun in the mornings isn’t quite so fucking harsh and that there are moments when I think I can feel my heartbeat.

I tell her that my zipper isn’t fucking working at all anymore.

That I broke it.

Just to keep it open.

The End.

Author's Notes:

This story caused a lot of heartache for me. It was written at a very volatile time, inspired by an extremely volatile person, abandoned and reexamined more times than I can count. It's been my bad dog who chews up my shoes and sleeps on my bed all day.

It has no home, so I'm putting it here.

Hadley Hemingway was priceless when it came to the writing of this. Not only in therapy for both Asher and I, but she marked this document up with more literary-flailing comments than anything I've ever given her before. I blushed a lot when I got my first draft back from her.

Let me know what you think.

XO

HBM