CONTAINS CONTENT:
Sexuality, brief, minor language, dark sexual themes.
{{Unedited}}
By the time that a week had past, Austin had slipped into a cycle that was unrelenting and entirely dissatisfying every…single…night.
The time involved a dark room, bright screen, entertaining his familiars with high anticipation, and low satisfaction.
However, that evening he had an idea that flickered across his mind in bright neon. The intrigue and nature of it perked something inside of him that caused his pulse to rush with excitement – for the first time in his attempts to satisfy himself in weeks – as he hurried to the computer.
He went to social media, and found several photos of Marielle, copying, screenshotting, and examining each of them; her at the beach on that Mexico trip from a few years ago, her at an event with Han; they were both dressed up, and Marielle was grinning in a way that he wished she would smile at him again.
Once he’d collected no less than fifteen more photos (from the forty-five or so that he already had saved to his computer) he sat back and drummed his lip for a moment. Was he really going to do this?
“Alexa, scan the images, focus on her face.” And the A.I. began to create a comprehensive idea of exactly who it was studying and creating. Then he started looking for a body… And that is when he froze, his mouth agape in horror.
A body… He thought, and his heart started to speed it in horror… A… body…
And the images of what had been in Tundra’s wallet flashed in his mind for a moment. He stood away from the computer, holding back vomit.
Marielle wasn’t a body; she was a woman. She was a woman with a smile, and a laugh, and thoughts and feelings, and words and when he was with her, he saw her as his equal, his other half, his partner… His wife.
He wouldn’t do this to her. He couldn’t. Her voice rang inside of his head. -You said the other night, I’m not a whore… so stop turning me into one! You turn me into a whore, Austin, and you make me do whatever you want me to do. That’s disgusting. And you do it when you have a minor inconvenience. You told me the other night that you’d stop pushing me and stop making me into something that I’m not… You use these women, and you use them to turn me into something that I’m not! You force me, Austin.
With a heavy sigh, he turned to his computer, “Alexa, delete it all,” he whispered. “It wouldn’t have been her, anyways,” he told himself.
Halloween was tomorrow and the party at Valorant was at six o’clock. Austin was already dreading the memories that were going to flood his conscious. The last time that he’d been in that room, he’d lost her. She’d snuck away – he didn’t know where at the time – but guessed later on that it was to be with Vincent. He remembered that last fleeting look before she disappeared into the women’s restroom. He’d lost track of her after that, but regardless he had known that she was with Vincent, that Vincent was making love to her, and that he’d just made some of the biggest errors of his entire existence. The list was pretty short and sweet.
The first error was sleeping with half the planet and indulging in addiction.
The second error was allowing it to take root and control him as he used it to help ease his intense anxiety.
The third error was preying on Marielle.
The next error was getting close to her in deeper ways in his first few weeks at Valorant.
His last error – and he was aware that he could do nothing about this, now – was falling desperately in love with her. There was no escaping that at this point.
As he looked at the costume that was hanging on the back of his bedroom door from his computer chair, he swallowed hard. He wasn’t going to wear it. It was Superman, but despite his black hair, blue eyes, and the fact that he had enough lean muscle to pull it off, Superman he was not.
He stroked his bottom lip, “What am I?” He wondered. After a beat, he chuckled… Double O Seven, right. He decided that if he did attend the party, he’d go as himself; black slacks, white coat, bowtie, fake gun. He wondered who – besides Marielle – would get the joke. Maybe the entire thing was pointless. He shook his head and flopped onto his mattress. “I miss joking with you every other moment,” he whispered.
He scribbled on his notepad again.
“If I could melt you like chocolate
then I could drink you whole.
So you would be with me forever
and warm my empty soul.
When I lay beside you
you are the very thing I breathe.
The powerful scent of roses
time spent, I do not grieve
The taste of you is fine wine
And I am drunk, it’s true
I admit that I never knew addiction
until I tasted you.”
When he lay in bed trying to tell himself not to go to the computer again, the anxiety and the unease moving through him became so intense that he physically curled in on himself, and prayed that somehow, she’d just appear; that she’d knock on the door, the way she had after Tundra’s attack. He pressed the pillows against his naked chest and buried his face in them. Her scent was gone. It’d been there the night before, but faintly. Now, it was gone.
Austin stood and paced, glancing at the crown that was sitting on his nightstand next to the empty boxes that once contained the jewelry that imprinted his name onto her wrist. She’d taken them, they were hers. He had no idea what she was doing with them, whether she’d kept them, or if they were in the garbage. If she’d kept them, certainly she’d hidden them away from Vincent.
He turned, putting both hands behind his head as he moved from one side of the bedroom to the other, trying to breathe deeply, and his foot found something… he bent to investigate. It wasn’t much, and it must have happened a few nights before when he’d taken his shoes off for the night, but there it was just as he’d imagined it would be… sand.
He felt some of it between his fingers as he closed his eyes; just a few grains, no more than seven or eight.
My Austin, my Austin… My Austin. Make it snow…
He rubbed the grains over his lips, feeling himself fall into madness as a strange mix of arousal at the memory of her words, anxiety at the reality of losing her, and hatred at her choosing Vincent opened his chest cavity. -I’ll make it snow for you every night, darling.
-You’re mine… his mind remembered kissing her, tasting her, feeling her heartbeat pound with excitement and elevated need for him, his caress, his body; a thirst that he’d never be able to quench.
-I am. She’d breathed, and for one perfect and peaceful moment she had been. She’d been his. His name was on her, his mouth had been on her, his fingers through her hair. It was all torture, and the torture hadn’t ended it just continued to go on and on without any sign of stopping and it was all empty, and it was all too full. How could it be both at once?
He paced excitedly, then angrily, then glanced at the crown. -My Ice King.
-My Red Queen.
His expression grew dark, and a sly smile crept over his lips. “We need a kingdom,” he whispered, and he went to his table and threw a piece of brown paper across it as he sat down with sketching pencils.
“A house,” he thought aloud grinning like a mad man as he drew a room, then another, then another; his hand moving feverishly. He was possessed. “A special place for you…” he drew a yard with a she-shed where she could sit and be alone. “What do you want, darling?” he breathed. “I’ll give it to you. Then I’ll give you my body every night… Just say what you want.” He started to draw plants in the garden space. “Trees, a garden… walls,” he growled, and he began to draw layers and layers of walls surrounding the space. She’d be able to go through one an hour… so there’d have to be at least eight or nine for their sleep schedule. What if he got sick and needed extra time to rest? He drew another wall, biting his lip hungrily. “You’re mine,” he heaved, drawing the finer details of another wall. What was it now, ten? This structure was huge, with grass in between each round space, and benches, and flowers… their endless maze of passion as he imagined putting her down in the grass and taking her over, and repeatedly, endlessly. “You’re gonna do it whether you like it or not!” He shouted.
Shouting had caused him to stop for a moment and look down at what he was doing as if he hadn’t realized it or seen it before. He hadn’t just drawn plans for a prison. No, he’d drawn plans for a kingdom, right? The kingdom… Kingdom… Oh my god…
He put a trembling hand to his mouth and dropped the pencil. It rolled somewhere off the table. “What am I doing?” His voice came out broken, terrified, and thin as he looked over the round maze of walls, and at the center, a small cabin. It was a prison. Not paradise, and she would never ever forgive him, nor would she love and stay with him. She’d find a way out, and if he thought about it, he’d have wanted her to, because he couldn’t keep her. She wasn’t a thing! She wasn’t a toy! He shook his head as tears rimmed his eyes, “what’s wrong with me?” he sobbed. “I’m him, aren’t I?”
He tore away from the table, scrunching the paper up and realizing what he’d just done and what he’d told himself that he’d do if he’d actually gotten to that point.
Slowly, his eyes wandered down to his right hand and arm, eyeing the beautifully crafted white snake that was spiraling down it toward his hand and fingers. “How ironic-” he whispered as he stretched his fingers out, tears filling his eyes as he felt the gun form itself in his hand. “That my own body would kill me…”
***
Marielle sat up in bed, piercing the silence with a deep gasp as she clasped her hands over her heart. It was pounding wildly, threatening to explode out of her chest and her throat had gone dry with terror. She knew that she was afraid long before she knew that she was awake; and she wasn’t just afraid, no. She was terrified.
She dashed out of bed and ran to the living room knowing exactly what was going on. She opened her laptop, her eyes scanning frantically… who was on? Han, Han was on. She messaged her, typing quickly. She knew that Han was sitting there because her end started typing instantly, then stopped as if she’d been writing something and Marielle’s window popping up had interrupted her.
“Han, please just listen and do what I say. It can’t be me, reach out to Austin. He’s in immediate danger. You’re his friend, just do what I’m telling you to do, please and do it right now.”
A quick reply. “Ok.”
And the computer went still, as Marielle sat, drumming her fingers to her lips for a moment, then biting back tears as she looked up at the ceiling. “Please God, please…”
Vincent trailed out after her then, yawning and leaned in the hall arch to the living room.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, “I’m okay,” she whispered.
“Austin?”
She nodded. “I think he might be trying to kill himself. I’m not- I don’t know how I know it’s the…connection thing. I’m having Han call him, don’t worry, I’m not reaching out.”
Vincent nodded, and went to the kitchen, covering a second yawn with the back of his fist to start some coffee as he checked the time. It was two thirty-six and Marielle knew that he’d stay awake with her until she could confirm that Austin was okay.
***
Austin’s phone buzzed on his nightstand, implying a call.
He sat back against the wall, still holding his pearlized arm gun in his hand. He had been gently rubbing the tip of the barrel up and down his temple, wanting to fire it straight through the middle of his head, between his eyes. He’d even tried the pressure and had the bravery to put the barrel right between his eyes and stared down the gun for a moment, considering. He was just playing, right? He wasn’t really going to shoot himself. This was so dumb.
He wasn’t really going to kidnap Marielle and take her to a cabin in the woods, either. He wasn’t. He was just joking around a little, right? He just wanted to release those feelings into the void.
But some small part of him tickled and itched for both. The need to take her and keep her for himself and himself only, and the need to pay for it and thus die.
He shook his head with every intention of ignoring the phone and putting the barrel into his mouth. Then he wouldn’t see the bullet coming, right? That was his reasoning. He wasn’t going to bring up the fact that the bullet would be so fast – faster than a speeding bullet he chuckled, glancing at the Superman costume again – that no matter where he shot himself from, he wouldn’t see it coming… Okay, he just had to work up the courage to pull the trigger.
He’d made up his mind. He was overthinking this. The facts were as follows, he wanted Marielle, he couldn’t have her. He loved her, and she loved him, but didn’t want him. He’d seen the image of himself clearly in a mirror… the picture of Dorian Gray, perhaps… and that picture had shown him what was truly at his core. The image that reflected was Tundra, and no matter what occurred now, Tundra was going to eat him from the inside out, wasn’t he?
The phone rang again.
He let out a grunt and a long, exasperated sigh before removing the barrel from between his lips, and sucking the entire gun back up into his arm. It wasn’t like it wouldn’t still be there after the phone call.
“Han?” He answered, casually.
She was driving, he could tell. “I’m five minutes away. You’re coming out with me, beee-otch.”
He found himself chuckling. “What?” He glanced at the clock. “It’s like two forty in the morning.”
“Yeah, and you’re throwing some jeans and a hoodie on and getting into my truck the moment that I pull up.”
“What the hell?”
“You know what this is about,” she explained flatly. “Get off the floor and stop with the pity party. There’s a café on fifteenth and Olan that’s twenty-four-hour service, and you know that I like giant turkey sandwiches at three in the morning. Now it’s almost three and I want my damn sandwich, Austin. Jamie isn’t available tonight, and there isn’t a peacock in town that I’m going home with. So, get in, loser, I’m almost there.” There was a pause as he shook his head, chuckling low and quiet in his throat. “I said go get your clothes on, I ain’t playin’, and don’t make me come in there and beat your sorry, naked ass, because I will.” Now he was really laughing. “You think this is funny? I might not have the moves, okay, but I can uh… I’ll figure out a way. I’ll come in through the window if I have to. I’ll just like fly- around your head as you try and ice blast me or whatever, now we can do this the easy way, or the hard way, yes?”
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” He was already slipping a sweatshirt over his head.
“Good.”
He hung up and stumbled around his room, hardly know what he was doing at this hour. He needed sleep… but sleep wouldn’t have mattered too much in about five minutes if she hadn’t called.
He pulled a sneaker on as he went out the door, and closed it just in time to see her pull up in her little pick-up truck.
He slipped in beside her, and pressed his temple to the glass, looking out. “Yeah, that’s right… act like nothing’s wrong and then get into my truck like a homeless guy ready to meet his maker.”
“I didn’t say that nothing was wrong,” he sighed. “Everything is wrong,” he added, pinching the space between his eyes. “I just tried to kill myself,” he said bluntly.
She jerked the truck over to the side of the road and got out, flying to his side, and tearing the door open. “Get out!” She barked loud enough to wake the neighborhood. He threw a glance over his shoulder at all the dim, quiet houses. “Austin Rancor, get your ass out, right now!” She demanded, gesturing wildly at the street. Feeling that he was everyone’s burden, he nodded defeatedly and slipped out. But he expected to be kicked the fifty feet back to his house… not enveloped around the middle in her arms. He looked down at her white head with wide eyes. She was hugging him… no, she was holding him… and she was crying. What? “You don’t kill yourself!” She sobbed at him. “You understand me? You don’t do it!” He was beginning to understand. She… cared about him. “If you swallow a bullet, I swear to God I will come and kill you!” She wailed. He chuckled, through hot tears, and shook his head. She pulled back enough to punch him in the forearm. “Do you hear me, Austin Rancor?”
“Ow?” he growled, holding the spot with his other hand. She punched him again. “Okay, enough with the torture,” he seethed. “How come all of my friends,” he put finger quotes around friends, “torture me?”
“Maybe because they know what’s good for you, you greaseball!”
“Okay, racism aside…” he raked his hair and sighed, flicking his gaze down at her. “Marielle called, didn’t she?”
“We’re not going to talk about it!” She pulled back and looked up into his face with glassy blue eyes that were tear filled and pleading and slammed a fist into his chest a few times. “You…cannot…die…”
“Why?” he asked shakily.
“We need you!” She intoned.
He scoffed, and turned around, trying to break free of her arms. She grabbed him, and slammed him back against the truck. “No, you stop it! Stop it! You don’t get it! We don’t see you as him!” She cried.
“Yeah, and what about what’s up here?” He gestured wildly to his head.
“You think that anyone would be okay after what you’ve been through in the last five weeks?” She squeezed both of his arms, and gently shook him. “Look at you! You’re a mess, and you know it, but you don’t know what to do about it… you’ve been traumatized how many ways since the beginning of the month? She’s not doing any better, regardless of how it may seem, and regardless of how it may seem, Austin? She needs you too.”
He breathed, and it came out in clouds of smoke. He lifted his arms and they fell and slapped against his sides before he stuffed his hands into the front of his hoodie. “I wanted to take her away. I wanted to kidnap her and keep her… and make her mine.”
“Of course you do!” Han shouted. Someone’s light flicked on and a dog began barking. She saw curtains rustle. “Get in the damn truck,” she growled, pushing him back up into the seat.
“You told me to get out of the damn truck,” he replied, pulling himself back in.
“Don’t make me tie you down, Rancor, because I will cut you,” she hissed, whipping a kunai around her finger.
He flicked an interested brow at her, but it was in jest. Four months ago, he would have slept with her if she’d asked him, but not because he was attracted to her, just because he would. He never turned sex down. Now, not only did he think it was inappropriate, but he saw her differently… she was a friend back then, but she was more of a friend now. Now, that he’d seen her tears, and her eyes he knew; she actually cared about him.
She drove to the café and they meandered in, yawning, and plopped down into a booth, waiting for the waitress to come by. The waitress spent the entire time looking at him, but took their orders, and swayed exaggeratedly away.
When she gave them their coffees, she smiled and did something akin to a curtsey before she went back behind the counter again.
Austin held the coffee between both of his hands; the white mug radiated heat, warming him. “So, Marielle called you?” Austin repeated.
Han said nothing. She was typing on her cell phone, and even though Austin couldn’t see her fingers or the screen, he detected a clear ‘I’m with him, you were right. He’s okay, we’re at Darcy’s, go back to sleep…’ kind of thought coming from her facial expression as she hit send and looked up at him, setting the phone aside. “Listen to me, Austin. Of course, you want to take her away, bond with her, and keep her,” she said pouring a mini half and half from the glass bowl at the front of the table into her cup, and three packets of sugar. He watched these motions. Marielle liked her coffee like that, too. “You’re in love with her, right?” She gave him a knowing look, then flicked her eyes back down to her cup, stirring.
He reached over, took a packet of sugar and poured it into his coffee, forcing himself not to think about the fact that he had to be up running in an hour. He wasn’t going to sleep tonight. He made the coffee exactly the same way. “Desperately,” he finally said, and he swallowed his entire cup in a matter of a few swallows.
“Yeah, and you both have suffered severe trauma over the last few weeks. She’s been the thing that’s made you stable. I don’t know what you guys endured in Kingdom, but I know that it was horrible.”
He paused, thinking. “It was a lot,” he whispered distantly. After Tundra, he had hardly had time to consider Kingdom and what they’d been through together. “I killed a lot of people,” he murmured. “They made her go through me.”
Han set the spoon that she’d used to stir her drink aside and her eyes flicked to her phone in a way that told him that she was kicking herself for not trying to spend more time with Marielle and make sure that her friend was okay. “Which makes you high as a kite.”
“Yes, ma’am…”
“And you’re not seeing the connection between wanting to keep her and all of this? Austin Rancor, you are not this dumb.”
“I understand the train of events and how it’s connected. My thoughts frighten me.”
She waved a hand, dismissively, “they’re just thoughts.”
“How do I know?”
“Did you go through with them?” He shook his head. “So, what did you do?”
The waitress came by and gave him a refill. He was going to need it. “I started making plans.”
“Did you keep them? Are you planning on using them?” He shook his head again. “Then you know. You’re traumatized. You’re confused. You’re having thoughts that are confusing.” She reached across the table and took his hand. He flinched for a second, but settled into the comfort of skin touching skin without it needing to lead to the bedroom. Inwardly, he chuckled. If there was anyone in this group that he felt was going to comfort him physically, but non-sexually, she was not it. “Austin, you are looking for a very powerful drug to overpower the abuse that your mind is trying to work out right now, and it doesn’t help that the two of you snuck off for the weekend to have a torrid affair.” His eyes widened and he opened his mouth to speak. She shushed him with a hand, “Don’t even, we all know what happened,” she explained. He closed his mouth and looked down at their hands. She was stroking her thumb across the top of his knuckles and he wasn’t thinking about the bedroom, or even aroused. “You two are ridiculous,” she explained with a light snicker. “You are so desperately in love with one another that it literally shows on both of your faces… the way you light up when one another are around. The way you look longingly and desirously at each other… do you want me to go on?”
He smirked sleepily. “You should have been a profiler.”
“All of that aside, you completely ran off to send out for sushi-”
“-we didn’t sleep together,” he said, his gaze pointed at the tabletop.
She pulled back a little, tucking her chin into her collarbone and narrowed eyes at him. “All this and you still didn’t get laid?”
He wiped a hand down his face and glanced down into his palm for a second before he looked at her with desperate eyes, “it was part of the contract,” he whispered faintly. “I got to kiss her a lot.” His gaze wandered out the window. A man with a little girl with big brown curls who was asleep over his shoulder was wandering into the diner. “Play house,” he added, distantly. He shrugged his left shoulder and closed his eyes tightly. “She was mine; I was hers. I loved her as much as I could in that time.”
Han looked like she couldn’t comprehend what he was saying, as if her mind was a computer and Austin had just given her an impossible equation. “Hold on, hold on… You guys had an affair, and you didn’t fool around?”
He shrugged his left shoulder again, “Depends on what you consider fooling around? Did we make out a lot? Yes.” He took several swallows of his new coffee.
“Does Vincent know about this?”
Austin nodded as he stared into nothing before him. “He knows,” he whispered.
“Y’all are a weird group, you know that?”
“Sono.” He took another sip.
“Like, Vincent knows that you love Marielle. Marielle loves you… but she loves Vincent, too… and she refuses to be with you.”
“You pretty much captured the essence.” He pinched his pointer and thumb together. There was silence for a moment as Han tried to keep her head from exploding. “I think,” Austin began then screwed his eyes up for a moment as if trying to understand all this as well. He started again, “I think that it’s confusing and that it all is the way it is because of what has happened in other dimensions,” he said as if trying to explain it to himself. “She loved us both. Me first, him second. So, she’s confused.”
“So like… what happens in other dimensions affects other dimensions or something like that?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” he whispered distantly. “But she did love both of us. And based on the track record… Vincent wins.”
“There was no winning, Austin,” Han said. Then there was a pregnant pause. “She died.”
Austin used the inside of his sleeve to wipe his nose as tears fell, “I know,” he said with a nod. “And I can’t let that happen again, no matter what.”
The waitress came back, “Orders?”
“I’m going to eat everything, I’m starving,” Han growled under her breath as she poured over the menu. “Turkey on sour dough, please. Extra tomato, extra seasoning on the fries, and I want a piece of apple pie, do you guys have that now?”
The waitress scribbled, nodded, and turned to Austin with a visibly changed disposition, “You, handsome?”
He leaned over the menu, scanning quickly. “Midnight Special?” It was French toast, eggs, bacon, and sausage. She nodded. “D- do you happen to have any butterscotch syrup?” he asked before she pulled away.
She cocked her head at him, and popped her gum. “We do ice cream sundaes here, so I can’t imagine that we don’t. I’ll check with the kitchen?”
“That if you have it instead of maple?”
The waitress nodded, took their menus, and walked away.
Han chugged the rest of her coffee, and drew a knee up on the booth. “So, you love Marielle, and she loves you.”
“We’ve established that…”
“But she won’t just give in to you.”
“We’ve established that as well.”
“What the hell is that chick doing?” Han grumbled as she tore her empty sugar papers apart in strips.
Austin shrugged and rolled his head back against the booth seat, staring at the ceiling as he wrapped his arms around his upper half. “She’s doing something, that much I do know,” he explained.
“Do you think that she’s trying to force you to grow?”
“I think she may be…” he said with a hard swallow. “The problem is that ultimately, I know that even if I grow in the direction that she wants me to? Or that- let’s just say that I need to? She could be gone and married to Vincent, hiding away in the French alps somewhere, I donno,” he sighed and put his forehead to the table in despair.
Han shrugged, “We could just get married. I mean, I’d hate it, but we could do it. I wouldn’t mind bedding you every night, you know?” Austin was in stitches with his head pressed to the cool tabletop. He knew she was joking. Han bit her bottom lip, and a pregnant pause past between them. “I could comfort you,” she began, and meaning of what she was implying was hitting him right between the shoulders. He lifted his head to look at her. He wanted comfort, and physical closeness…badly. Their eyes met and the full weight of what she was offering reflected in both of their expressions. “But I think it would hurt our friend.”
He looked to the man who had walked in with the little girl who was asleep on his shoulder. She was still asleep, and he was holding her against him, tightly, gently rocking. He could only guess that they were on a road trip, and she’d fallen asleep, and daddy needed some food at this hour. He was gently calling her awake, and when she rubbed her little eyes and called him daddy, he sat her next to him and the waitress came and took their order. His heart ached for the family that he didn’t possess.
He wanted physical closeness… wanted, not needed. “No. I don’t need that,” he replied finally. Then he dragged his eyes away from the father and daughter. “I need to be alone for a few days. I need to be grateful. And I need to dream,” he said with a sigh as he looked down into his empty coffee cup. As if on que, the waitress refilled it. “I need to dream about what I really want and need, and weigh the two. I need to go through the suffering and feel it fully and completely until I can move on,” he whispered.
There was expectant silence for a moment, “healing hurts, doesn’t it?” Han asked, tears behind her tone.
He nodded. “I mean- Did I even get to choose any of my life? I was born into a situation that no one should be born into, perverted by it… then, yes, I was rescued from it and put into a situation that I also didn’t choose, and a job that – while I said yes to it – it was just something to do, you know? I just so happened to be good at it. I didn’t really choose any of it… I want to choose her! And I can’t. She loves Vincent.”
“She loves you, too.”
“Then why does she just keep choosing Vincent?”
“Because Vincent is safe, Austin. Even if he lies to her, he’s safe. He won’t ever leave her, or cheat on her, or wander off with the girl next door, or the stripper at the local club. He’ll always be there. Can you say that you would?”
He swallowed and his throat felt like sand. “If I did… would it mean anything right now?” She had no idea, so she said nothing. “Exactly.” He hung his head silently, hugging himself around the middle again. “I know what I am, and I don’t want to be that anymore. I’m not the same, I’m not.” The waitress came by and set the food onto the table. Sure enough, there was a little silver cup filled with golden syrup. His eyes watered. “I didn’t deserve an hour of her time,” he lifted one hand and dropped it, as if shrugging, “she gave me thirty-six, and they were p-perfect.” He stared at his plate, and drizzled the syrup over his French toast as memories flooded his mind. That kiss on his couch that day, her singing to him while he was in bed, forcing him to eat. “I guess-” he sighed, shakily, “I guess if I didn’t deserve anymore th-then I have to be grateful for that, right?” Han nodded, but it was obvious by the look on her face that she was merely agreeing with him, the entire situation was lost on her. “Will you do something with me? I mean- you and I… we’re friends, right?”
Han’s expression changed to one of compassion. They were friends. She knew that he had probably never had a female friend that wasn’t a bed buddy. “Of course,” she said, tenderly.
He wiped his face a few times, trying to both force himself to wake up, and not to cry again. “Come out with me tonight?” he asked. She wasn’t sure what he meant, “I’ll buy you dinner, but… I’m going to go to the mall.” He looked out the window, distant, but sure of his decision. “I’m going to buy a ring…two. One for me…and one-”
“For when she’s ready.” Han realized in a soft whisper.
He nodded. “Whenever that is.”
“What if never?”
“Then I’m a widower,” he replied looking at her, sadly. There was a long silence. “I just… I know what I’d get her, but I need your help anyways, you know? I don’t want to be alone.” She nodded, understanding completely. He flicked his gaze to her, “Don’t try anything,” he chuckled, ironically. Marielle used to tell him this very thing.
The ghost of a smile rested on her lips, “I won’t,” she whispered. “You’re married.”