I know Facebook owns posted shit, but I don't see myself particularly treasuring this one, so what the hell.
Maybe it's fiction.
Maybe it's truth.
Maybe those are the same thing.
Maybe it's romance.
Maybe it's lifeblood.
Maybe it's more than either.
Maybe it's less.
Maybe it's fleeting.
Maybe it's forever.
Maybe it's somewhere in the between.
Maybe it never was.
Maybe it's catharsis.
Probably it's misguided.
Undeniably it's painful.
Maybe it's unimportant.
Maybe it's all-important.
Maybe it's irrelevant.
Most likely it's misread.
Maybe it's heartbreak.
Possibly it's misdirected.
Maybe it's my only hope.
Maybe it's freedom.
Maybe it's captivity.
Maybe it's my last chance.
Probably I should get over myself.
Maybe it's something I can't fix.
Maybe it's something that will always be.
Maybe I can live with that.
Maybe.
Maybe it's a necessary hurt.
Maybe it's a useful injury.
Maybe it's a useless care.
But damn if it doesn't seem another way.
***
The nighttime roads blurred as she drove.
"Where's Wendy's?" Alton asked.
She shook her head. "Not hungry."
"I thought you wanted food?"
"I got pizza in the fridge at home," she dismissed him. Her appetite, ravishing moments before, had vanished.
She had to get over herself. She had to stop letting it affect her this way. It wasn't healthy. It couldn't be right.
Every time. Every single time, it hurt like this. Like a knife, directly through her chest. She struggled to breathe for a moment. Alton gazed at her concernedly from the passenger seat. The stars rushed by overhead, uncaring, and beautiful. Shining, faraway dots of light.
She hated being this vulnerable in front of Alton. He was kind not to acknowledge it. He saw her pain, of course. He was observant anyway, and he knew her. Knew her like the back of his own hand. Behind every movement, he saw the motivation; every glance, every word and inflection, had a twofold meaning for him as he read her like a psychic reads a crystal ball, interpreting her world as no one else could.
So she always felt vulnerable with him. He saw through her; her walls were no obstacle to him.
But he was good. Kind. He saw the extent of her current injury, and was quiet, stepping tenderly, choosing his words with care - because he knew, too, how she hated to be vulnerable.
"What can you do?" he asked, shrugging slightly, carefully not looking at her as the streetlights sped by, white, black, white, black, blinded, nightblind.
She nearly growled. She hated to be so angry, but she did not know how not to be. She hated being hurt, but she didn't know how to heal herself.
"Fuck him," she hissed, her voice nearly cracking.
"You don't mean that," Alton gently reminded her, twirling her brimmed hat in his hands, his head inclined at an angle towards her, so that his words were not stolen by the wind that rushed around them in the dark.
"No, I don't," she begrudged, "but he's been a dick for days now. It pisses me off."
"What can you do?" he repeated softly, shrugging again.
"Be angry," she replied with a snarl.
"What does that do?" he asked, in his undeniably irritable logical way.
"Makes me feel better," she answered, knowing already that she had lied.
He knew, too. "Does it, really?"
"No," she answered, and would have sighed but for the pain that curled into her chest like a trapped animal. "Makes me feel hurt."
Alton said nothing. She drank her tea and sang with the song that played on the stereo, all trumpets, saxophone and heart.
"You know, you have a really lovely singing voice," Alton said, gazing over the side of the convertible at the passing white lights strung through the trees. "I don't really remember it, from before I left."
"I didn't really sing, before you left," she answered with a small, pained smile.
"What changed?" Always blunt, Alton. Asking the right questions, the questions that needed asking.
"I'm a lot less reserved nowadays," she explained slowly. "I kind of just decided to stop being on the sidelines. Antics happen, right? Wouldn't you rather be one of the ones causing them, than one of the ones observing?"
They were nearing his car. She pulled slowly into the parking lot. There was a couple, a man and a woman, in the corner of the lot, standing beside another car, laughing in the streetlights. The woman shifted her weight back and forth, awkward and infatuated.
They sat for a moment next to his car, dully red shadow in the dark. He moved undecided for a moment, uncertain whether to exit the car through the door or by climbing over the side, as he had before. "I don't know how to get out," he admitted.
"There's a handle," she smiled and pointed. He opened the door and stood, tapping her hat gently back on her head. "Drive safe," he murmured.
"You too."
She sat for a moment to make sure he got into his car okay, and drove away.
The night grew colder as she headed North, but she didn't want to pull over to put the top up on her car, so she tolerated the chill air as gooseflesh rose across her arms. I give in gifts and words, she thought as she pressed the accelerator to its limit, to outrun the pain, and I receive in time and touch. How was one such as me designed, to receive love in the ways most difficult to deliver, and to feel discarded so easily?
She knew it shouldn't upset her, his otherwhile interest. But it did. It upset her a great deal.
"Fuck him," she said again as the road home became shorter.
She didn't mean it this time, either, though a part of her wished she did.
A single tear rose in her eye as the cold around her deepened.
You're crying for him?! a small, enraged part of her mind cried. For him? Fuck him! You don't need him!
But she did. She knew she did. She hated it, but she knew she did. He would always own a part of her soul, though at moments like these she wished it any other way.
She wanted to thank Alton for his understanding, for not accentuating her vulnerability when she was so badly hurt, but she didn't know how. It would have to wait for the healing of her heart that she knew would come - that came each time, not soon enough, but that would come, at some point.
She could never tell him how much power he had to hurt her. It was only that she loved, that she could be so hurt.
-Avalon
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