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atinylittlepain · 7 hours
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Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan for I'm Not There, 2007.
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atinylittlepain · 8 hours
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definition of bi panic
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atinylittlepain · 8 hours
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my gender is Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan
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atinylittlepain · 19 hours
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And I got another rejection this morning so
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im gonna rant a little sorry about it but, so
i know that ninety-five percent of putting your writing out there - submitting to lit mags, querying, submitting to contests - is rejection. i know that. i know that it's all subjective too, right? there isn't really one Objectively Good piece of writing - one person loves it, one person doesn't get it, one person hates it etc
that being said, i have been getting a lot of rejections lately, and i am starting to get seriously weighed down by them. i'm already in a bit of a slump with my writing, and add the rejections on top of that, i start to question if i'm actually any "good" at this thing, or if i should just quit while i'm ahead.
i don't know, just feeling really fucking sad and discouraged about writing rn (this does not include fic writing) and i guess i just wanted to say the quiet part loud if there's anyone else who reads this and is feeling the same way - it's fucking brutal out there, and i'm starting to not even want to play the game anymore
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atinylittlepain · 1 day
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im gonna rant a little sorry about it but, so
i know that ninety-five percent of putting your writing out there - submitting to lit mags, querying, submitting to contests - is rejection. i know that. i know that it's all subjective too, right? there isn't really one Objectively Good piece of writing - one person loves it, one person doesn't get it, one person hates it etc
that being said, i have been getting a lot of rejections lately, and i am starting to get seriously weighed down by them. i'm already in a bit of a slump with my writing, and add the rejections on top of that, i start to question if i'm actually any "good" at this thing, or if i should just quit while i'm ahead.
i don't know, just feeling really fucking sad and discouraged about writing rn (this does not include fic writing) and i guess i just wanted to say the quiet part loud if there's anyone else who reads this and is feeling the same way - it's fucking brutal out there, and i'm starting to not even want to play the game anymore
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atinylittlepain · 1 day
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If there’s one lesson I’ve learned as I enter year four of my foray into farming, it’s that lambs love to be born during the darkest hours of the coldest nights in the most inconvenient way possible. But we still love them, ‘cause they are the sweetest creatures around.
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atinylittlepain · 1 day
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Ptolemaea - the Prologue
rust cohle x f!oc
series masterlist
the case was closed and they parted ways. but time has a way of eating itself, and turning back to where they began.
series warnings | 18+ smut, dark themes surrounding crime investigations including murder, child abuse, religious trauma and corruption // marital infidelity, boy-man go to therapy challenge, familial trauma
wordcount | 2.5K
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“We’re not doing this if you’re on something right now.”
“It’s the middle of the day.”
“My point stands.” There’s a heat, a heaviness that passes from skin to skin when he steps closer. Familiarity, and a surprising openness when he widens his eyes and lets her look for the swim and spread of his pupils. She doesn’t find it, only an unwavering stillness, his eyes that won’t leave hers even as she holds the hilt of his jaw in her hand and turns his face this way, that. The slightest curl of her fingers into bone stitching to feel the way he’s grinding his teeth, waiting for her with a thin patience. 
“Am I sober enough for her righteousness?” 
“What have you been taking?” She rubs her thumb over the knot of tension that furls high in his cheek, jaw stilled, and she knows she’s flirting with the thin line of too much, of him flinching and flickering away. But he stays for now, still held in her palm, mutters a low answer to her question, usual stuff, nothing new. 
“Are you sleeping?”
“When I’m not sober, sure.” Half a smile pulls muscle taut, his words cracking and shimmering in that slow, low melt he tends to. It has taken work, practice, for him to be so quiet, so slow, she knows. She’s heard him get loud, get quick, and she thinks that is his more natural state, distilled. He’s a man who’s meant to be a hair, a tooth, a nail out of control, and he muscles all of his effort into avoiding that, when he can.
“Marty said you showed up drunk to his house, again.” And he doesn’t like that, finally too much, shaking his head out of her grip, curled honey hair slipping sweat damp into his face. Livewire man, all shock and simmer.
“He keeps inviting me to dinner. You’d think he’d learn not to do that by now.”
“He’s trying to be nice, Rust.” And he is, she knows that. Marty trying to extend an olive branch, an anything that might get Rust to soften. She had told Marty to forget it after he told her about the last dinner attempt, a worn down and wan Rust showing up with an unfortunate sway in his gait and a thousand-yard stare that turned dinner as silent as a funeral. He seems easy enough around you though, and she had schooled her face at that comment, no chance to respond anyways as Rust sat down at his desk alongside them. 
“Don’t have much use for nice, do we?” That we is everything, she knows. Rust has decided she is like him, and she can’t really argue with that. Something beneath the skin, more animal than human, a shared grief understood, similar but parallel. At the very least, she thinks she understands him. At the very least, she lets him think he understands her. 
“If you want this case to move you’re gonna have to throw him a bone. He doesn’t trust you, thinks you’re weird.”
“Weird.” A little flicker of amusement as he steps back into her orbit. She doesn’t flinch, gives nothing away when his fingers press into the nape of her neck, sticky heat blooming beneath the skin. 
“You smell.”
“I mowed your lawn.” 
“And you smell like it, come on.” 
He would never admit it, but she’s near certain he continues to show up on Sundays because he knows he’ll get this. Care, simple and plain and without expectations of what that care means. They get into the shower, wordless, body knowing body, making space for body. She places index, middle, and ring over the three raised snarls of skin along his ribs, presses in just a little until he grunts, makes it hurt just a little, catch and release, a sigh when she smooths her palm over tan, wet skin. 
She makes him smell like her, soap and shampoo and enough pressure behind her hands to make muscle move, to make his eyes heavy, watching her work with his chin tilted down. It is some of the best silence she gets from him, the gentlest she gets from him when he returns the favor, a particularity in his hands. Something aches inside of her when he curls over himself to soap her ankles, fingers working over bone and ligament, a meticulous accounting of her body that works up and up and up until his fingers are playing the highest vertebra of her spine again. 
“What about Cohle and Reed?”
“What about them?”
“They were close, were they not?”
“Well, they worked pretty damn good together. Sometimes I felt like they were in on a joke I didn’t know about, if you get what I mean.” 
“Were they romantically involved?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. I don’t think she would’ve gone for that, but I always thought he had a little crush on her, in his own way, I suppose.”
“In his own way?”
“Rust wasn’t exactly a romantic, but he liked her, seemed different around her, more at ease.”
“Maggie says she wants to set me up with someone.” 
“Oh yeah?” It’s stifling in the bathroom, the warm afternoon haze mingling and crushing with the remnant steam from the shower, tacky skin and cloistered lungs, a faint breath of relief stepping out into her bedroom, box fan whining and kicking up more hot air. He sits down on the edge of her bed, towel loose around his waist, watching her make nothing out of the movement of opening and closing dresser drawers, turning the fan up another notch. A pretense of disinterest, though there’s a held breath in her chest.
“I told her no.”
“Why? You should go, do a double date with mister and missus normal.” Eventually, when there’s nothing left for her to fret with, she steps between his legs, water drying cool on bare skin. His hand curls at the hilt of her hip, a little bit of hurt behind the pressure that she tries not to give away, though she knows he sees the quick catch of an inhale that holds high in her sternum, his eyes dragging over muscle and matter. 
“I don’t want to.”
“Well, you are pretty shit company.” 
“And here I thought you liked my company.”
“You make up for your faults with your dazzling sense of humor.” Something always softens, his brow settling, mouth drawn in the slightest smile, more muscle twitch than anything else. She runs her hand back through his hair, still damp, and he lets her, leans into the touch, the heavy drop of his lashes over hollow cheeks. He murmurs into the lines of her palm, come here, come here, and she does, hitches one knee up onto the bed, the other, thighs draped over his hips and him leaning back, muscles jumping and folding to make room. She’s already wet, already wanting, but theirs is a game of patience, this she knows, so she settles around him, arms hanging loosely over his shoulders, little tilt of her head. 
“Has Maggie tried that with you?”
“What, playing matchmaker? Mmm, she gave up a while ago after I kept saying no.” They touch each other with an unwavering certainty, her palm at his chest, curling over his shoulder blade, and his finding the line of her thigh, over her ass to the base of her spine, splayed, fingerprints kneading at the skin. 
“Not interested in a double date with mister and missus normal?” Always give and take, faking and feinting in and out, her chin tilted down and the line of her nose brushing his, the graze of her top lip against his before she pulls away, just a little, just enough to make him show his own hand of want with the way he ducks forward, lips parted and eyes wide. She gives him what he wants the next time, no teasing, open mouths, open sighs, licking at each other’s teeth. 
“Rust was comfortable around me, yes.”
“Why do you think that was?”
“Well, we had both lost someone. Someone young, you know. I think we understood each other because of it.”
“It was your little sister, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago. And anyways, Rust’s was worse than mine.”
“His daughter.”
“Do you know about it?”
“He told us the details.”
“So you’re talking to him too?”
“We are, yes.”
“How is he?”
“It would be imprudent for us to discuss that with you.”
“No, right, right, that was a stupid question.”
“Marty told me something else.” Salt on her tongue, open mouth against warm skin, she has him how she likes him, splayed in rumpled sheets, and here, and here, heat pressed across his chest, teeth to clavicle and his sigh hitches, halts high in his throat, making her mouth curl into a grin.
“Marty sure tells you a lot.” She unfurls her spine, sitting back on his thighs, taking in the amused tilt of his head.
“Must be my womanly nature.”
“Right, that’s what it is.” He follows after her, curling up, mouth meeting the dip between her breasts before letting his chin drag up to look at her. Hands wander, ribs expand and contract in an easy choreography, easy synchronicity.
“He said you got a little fresh in the locker room.” She punctuates her point by taking one of his hands in hers, fingers working between his fingers, bending them in a way that she wants to hurt a little, and she thinks it does when she sees him wince, quick to school his face even though he’s been caught. 
“He had it coming.”
“Everyone knows he’s fucking that girl, it’s better to leave it alone.”
“Maggie doesn’t know.” 
“No.”
“She should.” She sighs at that, finally smoothing out the hurt she caused, her palm fitting against his.
“No, I don’t think she should.”
“Why?”
“Because if she did, then they wouldn’t be mister and missus normal any more. And they need that, they both do.”
“How do you know what they need?”
“They aren’t like us, they need simpler things.” Easy like this, ease like this, both of them deciding that they’ve toyed with one another enough, waited enough, she takes him inside her with a sigh, with stillness, both of them settling into each other’s warmth. Curled into and around each other, still seated so deep, shared respiration, where she breathes in, his forehead against the inhale rising in her sternum, and his exhale pulling her closer into him.
“And what do we need?” Breathed out on a sigh, his words starting to syrup and stick together thick, close heat against her skin.
“I don’t think either of us know the answer to that, do you?” He gives her no response, hands coaxing movement, coaxing hips. They pull pleasure taut and strung from between each other’s ribs and hold it between their teeth, aching jaws, soft jaws, each other’s names resounding in their throats. 
“What happened between you two?”
“When Marty and I parted ways, we did too, it’s not really a difficult equation to sum up.”
“But you two were close, that’s what Marty said.”
“We were partners, sure. I liked her better than Marty, I’ll tell you that much.”
“So you and her never?”
“No, no, we weren’t the type. Passing ships, wandering souls, whatever it is that people call souls anyways.”
“Was she satisfied with the way that case ended?”
“Think you oughta ask her that question, seeing as you’re talking with her and all.”
On Sunday nights he sleeps in her bed. There are no pills, no drugs, no drinks, and yet he sleeps. Bare, on his stomach, face softened like a child’s in sleep, scrunched to one side by how his cheek rests on her pillow. Nothing seems to wake him when he’s like this, even when she slips out from under the heavy weight of his arm draped across her stomach. 
She makes it through half a cigarette before he stirs, surprising her with a questioning sigh of her name. She leaves the window cracked, a still warm breeze and the drone of crickets filtering in, gets back into bed. And in the darkness, in the faint wash of night sounds, they have no need for pretense, for faking anything, being too cool, too cold for anything. Their want, and maybe even their need, is young and unashamed. 
The weight of him settling over her, his face tucked into the stitching of her throat, is a relief, the soft give and press of her ribs against his body with each breath slowing everything down, simple, and just this, and only this. Her palm settles between his shoulder blades, running a circuit over muscle and bone, feeling his own inhales and exhales. 
“You really think I should take Maggie up on it?” At first she isn’t sure what he’s referring to, a beat, a blink of silence within which she remembers. No, feels good threatening in her throat, but she swallows it, her hand curling at the nape of his neck, taking something for herself in some other small way.
“I think it could be a good bone to throw. You only have to do it once. It’d get them off your back, at least.” His fingers are running up and down her side, razing something deep and warm in the nonsense patterns he’s drawing. She wonders how many people have seen him like this. She doesn’t think very many.
“Hmm.”
“Hmm?”
“I don’t know if I can do that.”
“Suit yourself then.” Nothing left to say, sleep returns easily to the both of them, pale darkness washing over the tangle of their bodies. They will wake up in the morning and forget this closeness, this care for another week, a sort of cyclical amnesia, and an eventual returning and remembering every Sunday.
“I’m not really sure why you’ve called me in when I haven’t touched this case in nearly twenty years.”
“We’re just trying to be thorough, get as much information as we can.”
“I had a feeling, you know, back when we thought we closed it. It felt too easy, too simple. Marty didn’t believe me, but Rust, well, yeah, you’ve talked with him.”
“You both had doubts then?”
“Are you gonna show me the new file?”
“We’d like to hear your accounting of events first.”
“Right, well, there’s not much to tell that you don’t already know. Case was closed in 1995, I worked in Vermilion Parish for seven more years with those two, and I left in 2002.”
“Can you tell us what happened in 2002?”
“There was– a disagreement between myself and my partners, and it became clear we could no longer work together, so we parted ways.”
“What exactly happened between you three?”
“I don’t see how that’s relevant to this current investigation.”
“So you haven’t had any communication with Rust since you parted ways, as you said?”
“No, I haven’t spoken to Rust since 2002, and I imagine I won’t be speaking to him any time soon.”
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atinylittlepain · 1 day
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JOSEPH QUINN AS MICHAEL & SAURA LIGHTFOOT LEON AS MARIA IN HOARD
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atinylittlepain · 1 day
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atinylittlepain · 2 days
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well they blew up the chicken man in philly last night & they blew up his house too down on the boardwalk theyre getting ready fr a fight gonna see what they racket boys can do now theres trouble busing in frm outta state & the da cant get no relief gonna be a rumble out on the promenade & the gamblin commissions hangin on by the skin of its teeth well now everything dies baby thats a fact but maybe everything that dies someday comes back put yr makeup on fix yr hair up pretty & meet me tonight in atlantic city well i got a job & tried to put my money away but i got debts that no honest man can pay so i drew what i had frm the central trust & i brought us two tickets on that coast city bus well now everything dies baby thats a fact but maybe everything that dies someday comes back put yr makeup on fix yr hair up pretty & meet me tonight in atlantic city now our luck may have died & our love may be cold but with you forever ill stay were goin out where the sands turnin to gold so put on yr stockins babe cause the nights getting cold well now everything died baby thats a fact but maybe everything that dies someday comes back i been lookin fr a job but its hard to find down here its just winners & losers & dont get caught on the wrong side of that line well im tired of comin out on this losing in so honey last night i met this guy & im gonna do a little favor fr him well now everything dies baby thats a fact but maybe everything that does someday comes back fix yr hair up nice & stand up pretty & meet me tonight in atlantic cit
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atinylittlepain · 2 days
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lads, i think we've found The Apartment
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atinylittlepain · 2 days
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weed strain called potatoes and molasses
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atinylittlepain · 2 days
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making moves in silence at the half price books
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atinylittlepain · 2 days
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chat, give me a reason to go to class pls :')
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atinylittlepain · 2 days
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Still waiting for someone to make the Believe by Cher x Downbound Train by Bruce club remix
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atinylittlepain · 2 days
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femme cassidy and the sundance kid
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atinylittlepain · 2 days
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Part One
no outbreak!joel miller x f!oc
series playlist
joel miller masterlist
series masterlist
She's tired. He's tired. They're neurotic. They're in love. Something needs to change. They need to change.
word count | 4.5K
chapter content info | 18+ angst, discussions of pregnancy, people being WASPy, marital squabbles that become something more serious some of the time, but also real, persistent love
a/n | listen, don't look at me. not gonna lie, it feels good to be back in the ring and i'm excited to share this one with y'all. special thanks to @wannab-urs for beta-ing and for encouraging me along with this one - love ya, twin.
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He looks handsome and he’s getting on her nerves. She looks beautiful and he still doesn’t think it’s a good idea for her to go to this. She knows he doesn’t think it’s a good idea for her to go to this, but she thinks that’s bullshit, kid gloves that she doesn’t need from him, or from anyone for that matter. 
He could, but he doesn’t tell her that her left eye is twitching a little bit. Her left eye is twitching a little bit, she blinks hard every time she feels muscle starting to spasm, keeps her face turned away from him and toward the passenger side window. 
“What is it?”
“What?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“You keep sighing.” 
“I’m just tired.”
“It’s ten in the morning.”
“It’s been a long week.”
“It’s Sunday.”
“I meant last week then.” 
“Are you taking those multivitamins I got you?” 
“Uh, yeah.”
“I checked the bottle this morning and the safety seal is still on it.” 
“Cass.”
“What?”
“I don’t think a multivitamin is going to be the thing that makes me feel less tired.”
“I hate it when you say my name like that.”
“Okay, how should I say it?”
“Nevermind.” 
“What?”
“It’s fine, okay? Let’s just drop it, I don’t want to start the day like this.” 
“We’re not starting the day like anything, we’re just having a conversation.”
“Joel, please, I’m not doing this with you right now.” And he asks it before he can think much about it, knee-jerk and maybe a little mean, did you take your pills this morning?  Right, going for the nuclear option this morning, she lets out a clipped sound that could be a laugh if it wasn’t so sharp and he wishes there were a way to pluck words out of the air and swallow them back down. And she knows that whatever she says to that is going to be a failure. If she gets angry, if she blows up, she’s crazy. If she informs him that she did, in fact, take her pills, then she’s a liar, because she did, in fact, not take her pills, so she’s even crazier, right. 
“You know, that’s a fucked thing to ask me.” Ring the bell because she’s won this round. He thinks about offering her an apology, a glance while they’re stopped at a red light that only affords him the slope of her cheek and her hair tucked behind her ear with the way her face is turned away from him. He sighs and it makes her shoulders hike up a little higher. 
There’s a spiral of pink balloons wrapped around the porch banister when they pull up, and of course there is a spiral of pink balloons wrapped around the porch banister, she thinks, because Tommy and Maria are having a girl, and that’s lovely, and she is going to smile when she gets out of the car because of how lovely that is. Already thinking about what her face will have to do to make that smile happen while he parks at the end of the driveway because they’re a little late, always a little late these days. At least they have a clear and present escape route, he thinks. 
“Here, let me.” He does, stays still while she runs her fingers up behind the collar of his shirt to smooth it down, and she thinks that she’s not the only one trying to buy a little more time. Made it out of the car, but still standing in front of the car, he has always liked the feeling of her palms splayed over his chest, hums and thanks her for fixing his collar, leans in for a quick smacking thing of a kiss that she gives back to him all ease, and he thinks that maybe they’ll get to be normal today. 
“Remind me again what we got them?”
“Bottle warmer and a set of swaddling blankets.”
“What, they can’t use hot water from the tap like everyone else?” That gets him a clipped laugh from her, and he knows he’s bordering on something tender that could snap and snarl if he says any more, so he takes the laugh and leaves it at that. She laughs, feels stupid for the heat that thickens and closes in behind it and hides the flush from him by collecting the gifts from the trunk. Pastel pink and perfect wrapping paper with thin ribbon curled and bouncing. She briefly considers how it would feel to rip it all to pieces. But no, none of that, because this is Tommy and Maria, and she loves Tommy and Maria, really, she does, so happy for Tommy and Maria. Happy, happy, happy. 
Maria is the one who opens the door, all smiles, all round because she made it to the third trimester. He glances at Cass as they enter into the usual greetings and congratulations, leaning hugs and Tommy somewhere in the fray. Cassandra thinks she’s doing a good job of smiling but she can’t really feel her mouth, letting her lungs collapse a little when Tommy pulls her in for a quick squeeze, hey, Cassie, good to see you. And maybe it’s the lack of pills in her system but is he? Is it? Verging a little close to hostage negotiator territory? Talking to her like she’s a skittish horse? Because, apparently, it’s not just Joel, but the whole clan who seems to expect her to have a hard time with this. His and Tommy’s parents smile and pet at her shoulders when they see her, that same so good to see you, as if they didn’t just see her a month ago for the fourth of July barbecue, as if she’s the one who’s–
“I appreciate y’all being here, I know Maria does too.” Everyone in the backyard even though it’s already pushing eighty degrees, linen dresses and blue jeans and fluted glasses filled with orange juice and something a little stiffer. He squints at Tommy, nods, of course, lets his eyes drift out over mingling friends and family, settling on Cass. She’s smiling, mouth moving around easy words in a small cluster of women. Her arm is curled across her stomach, elbow held in hand, drink held aloft. She is doing fine, he thinks, good. And of course she’s doing fine, everything fine, and he’s fine too. Her eyes catch his and her smile stays, and he feels one of his own, there and gone. They are doing fine.
“Is Cass, you know, doing alright?”
“Oh yeah, she’s doing fine.”
She can feel sweat starting to collect along the waistband of her underwear, a cool, nauseous shiver, so terrible running beneath the skin. Someone, she can’t remember the name, a friend of Maria’s, is saying something about tits. Well, she doesn’t use the word tits, no, that word couldn’t come out of her baby pink painted lips. Breasts, and Cassandra curls her lips back into her mouth to stop herself from offering up mammary glands, if you want to be so proper about it, smiling and mmhmming instead about stretch marks and leakage and sore, seaming skin. Not that she’d know anything about it, not really. But all the other women do, something close to sharing war stories, all the space the body can make, and what remains when it’s empty once again. Now that, empty, she knows a thing or two about empty. 
“You hear from Sarah lately?” 
“You wanna know what I hear from her? Is mom there? And then can you put her on?” Tommy laughs, continuing to make quick work out of carving up another watermelon, pink, pink, pink while Joel enjoys a second to breathe in the air conditioned kitchen. Almost eleven, and they’re going to do cake at almost eleven, and he supposes he doesn’t really know what the etiquette is for things like these so sure, he thinks, cake at almost eleven.
“I guess dad’s advice can only work for so long, huh?” 
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“She’s a freshman in college, man, you don’t remember what we were like at that age?” 
“I’d rather not, thanks.” And the truth is he remembers very little of that time. Playing at boy king, at living forever, and then the flashbang burst and bloom, obliteration and letting the shrapnel boomerang back together when Sarah came. And then, he thinks, back out on the porch and squinting at the sun threaded through the branches of an elm tree, then, it was a sort of crawl in those first few years. 
What he remembers, very little eye contact from anyone, and wanting it more than anything. Never expecting the father to be the one to stay, the very young, very bleary-eyed father who eventually learned to stop looking for other eyes to meet his. Yes, a crawl, kept his head down until one day, two-year-old in tow in the grocery store, looking at pouches of pureed sweet potatoes and peaches, someone ducked her head down alongside his, looked him in the eye, and asked him if it was his wallet she found at the end of the aisle. For the record, it wasn’t his, but he can’t remember who it got returned to any more. That Tina Turner song was playing over the speakers, he remembers that. What’s love got to do with it, what’s love got to do with a HEB on a Wednesday night? Just enough for him to keep going to the HEB on Wednesday nights, hoping to run into the woman who looked him in the eye and told him his daughter was beautiful and had his smile.
“How many do you and Joel have, Cassandra?” Must have been smiling and nodding a little too well to get that question from Sally, Sammy? She doesn’t know. She doesn’t care. Maria needs better friends, she thinks, or maybe just less of them for her to keep track of. 
“Oh, just one. Sarah started college this year actually.” And the usual sequence of snobbery that follows her sharing that detail. Yes, had her very young, yes, must be so proud, and she is proud, she can mean that yes, at least. 
“But she’s not yours, is that right?”
“Excuse me?” Excuse you, Sally, Sammy, whoever the fuck you are. Excuse you in your baby blue linen dress and your fuckass bob. Sally, Sammy, whoever the fuck she is, eats her words fast, quick flickers of french tips and well, I just mean, not yours biologically, you know, I think Maria mentioned something about you adopting her when you and Joel got married. Said with that pitch that winches higher and higher with each word like a question going nowhere. She clasps her hands behind her back and digs her nails into the soft of her palms until the urge to throttle Sally, Sammy, whoever the fuck she is passes.
“Yeah, well, she’s not mine in that way. But I’ve been in her life since she was two so, I think that matters a little more than if she slid out of my vagina.” Shit, slipped, should not have said that, gets a glossed gasp from the peanut gallery and she’s just glad Maria is off hostessing with other people right now, not bearing witness to the way she just slaughtered this conversation with the sharp of her words. Excuse her Sally, Sammy, whoever the fuck you are, and excuse her, all the rest of you, she needs to get out of the heat, out of the sun, out of whatever this is. 
He knows what looks mean what by now. A pinched brow, a frown that’s just barely a frown. She breezes past the kitchen with one hand pressed high against her stomach as if to make sure the rise and fall is still happening. Says her name once and she waves a hand behind her, already halfway down the hall and not turning around now,  sorry, just need the bathroom. Tommy’s eyes do that thing, that softening, slipping thing, looking at him and not asking the question, though it hangs in the air somewhere between them. He excuses himself, walks slowly enough that the bathroom door is already shut and locked by the time he gets to it. The faucet is running, all he hears when he says her name again, feeling like a perfect fool knocking on the door. Not the first time this has happened, and she feels more foolish every time it does. But he’s already asked her if she’s taken her pills today so at the very least, that question is out of the way. Or maybe he’ll ask it again, and maybe she’ll break something, and then report back to her OB-GYN who, for some reason, is the one prescribing her these pills, and tell her OB-GYN that she’s getting crazier and needs more pills that she’ll forget to take. Repeat ad nauseam. No, she thinks, too tired for any of that, two years too tired. She presses her fingers into her temples and closed eyes until the throb in her skull begins to still.
“Do you want to go home?” He doesn’t know how to handle this, not really. Seems to get it wrong more often than not, and sometimes his own frustration turns into meanness that makes it worse, he knows that. He doesn’t know how to deal with her any more, she knows that. The truth is she doesn’t even know how to deal with herself any more, everything always raw and hurting, blistered brain and aching heart and wilting like a frail, flimsy thing. She does alright keeping it tamped down most of the time, keeping it cool and closed off. But, there are times when it flares, like a thin flume of disease nested somewhere deep inside of her. During things like these, around people like these, and the month of April, forget about it. 
“I said something a little awful, I think.” Sheepish, the door still only cracked, enough that he can see that she isn’t crying so, little lift of relief in his chest, at least. 
“What’s that?” He slips in through the half-opened door and she lets him, shuts the door behind him and tells him, may have snapped, may have used the word vagina. It’s a relief to hear him laugh, a single breath of it like he’s not sure if he should. He touches her hand, her wrist, her elbow, little pulse points, half a tired smile.
“There are worse words to use.”
“Could have said cunt.” She shrugs and you’d think he’d have gotten used to her surprising him like that after sixteen years together, but it’s still a giddy little shock to the system, her brass and brash. Like another vital sign, so long as she has her fang she’s fine, at least he thinks so.
“Yeah, that.” He laughs again, coughs, heat flushing down fast in his face and there’s a quick kick in her chest at the sight, something dormant getting stirred up. She likes that look, coaxing that look out of him. The first time, way out of line and out of place, she thinks. Fresh out of college and buying condoms and pretzel rods at the HEB down the block from her apartment and she shouldn’t have, pretty guy, man, father with pretty brown eyes and a little girl in the seat of his shopping cart with pretty brown eyes like his and she shouldn’t have. Thought she was so smooth, pretending like the wallet she showed him wasn’t hers, like she had found it on the linoleum floor, yeah, so smooth, just looking for a reason to shuffle down the baby food aisle and talk to pretty guy, man, father. That same flush, that same smile, little shock, though he had caught her too, taking a sharp glance down at her basket before she could tuck it behind her legs. And then her turn, little shock when he made some joke about little late for me, for that, shrug and smile and yes, she thinks, she didn’t exactly love him right then and there, but whatever comes right before love, it was that. 
“Listen, if it’s getting to be too much for you we can–” Wrong, all wrong, sound in the back of her throat like a scoff that’s how wrong those words were.
“Why does everyone seem to think this is too much for me? It’s a fucking baby shower, not a, I don’t even know what. I’m fine, it’s fine. It’s Tommy’s and Maria’s day and I’m so happy for them that they’re having a–” It catches her off guard, the way the sound gets stuck in her throat, not quite a sob, but verging on it, hiccuping out the rest, a baby. He reaches for her arm again but she jerks it away, hands clasping opposite elbows, all tucked in on herself. 
“It’s okay if it’s not fine, you know, nobody is expecting you to–”
“Nobody is expecting me to keep it together, right?”
“Would you let me finish speaking?” No, never winning any points for patience, ever. Not too many for thinking before he speaks either. Her face crumples for a breath, if that, smoothing back out with a scoff, I’m so sorry, Joel, what were you going to say? No, not normal, not today. He wonders briefly how long they’ve been in the bathroom now, and whether they’ve been speaking loudly enough to draw attention to the fact of how long they’ve been in the bathroom now.
“You know what, forget it. If you say you’re fine then I guess you’re fine. Can we just get through fucking cake and leave, please?” She’s very good at this, at turning herself off, something cool and distant slipping over her eyes, her face, shoulders rolled back sharp. Of course, she says, whatever you say, she says, doesn’t give him another glance as she opens the bathroom door. 
“Oh, I’m sorry, I wasn’t standing here long, just waiting to use the–” 
“Cunt.”
“I’m sorry?” 
“Cut– I had a cut and I needed Joel to look at it but I’m fine, right, Joel? Aren’t I fine?” She doesn’t give him a chance to answer that, doesn’t give Sally, Sammy, whoever the fuck she is a chance to say any more either, already moving past both of them and back toward the sound of laughter and cake, fucking cake about to happen. 
He needs to keep his mouth shut, all he can figure. Keep his mouth shut and maybe, maybe, they’ll get through fucking cake without any more seams splitting. Nothing like this when Sarah came, no balloons, no perfectly frosted and tiered cake with a whole cluster of people around it, and he thinks briefly that maybe he’s the one who isn’t fine being here. Like an ache, or an absence, a place inside of him that has been scooped out and left empty. He doesn’t let himself get sad about it often, mostly because he’s too busy being angry about it with (at?) Cass. But he feels it now, a sinking, swimming feeling that weighs everything down, slow to smile when Maria hands him a plate with a slice of cake on it. 
She takes a plate and pushes around globs of pink icing with her fork for a while, standing in another cluster of people she doesn’t really know, one of the women commenting on how good she’s being when she sets her plate down on the kitchen counter, smile and laugh, though the truth is she’s not sure she could stomach pretty pink icing right now. A small mercy when Tommy steps over alongside her and effectively relieves her of having to continue pretending to be interested in a conversation about kitchen remodels. 
“Looking a little green, Cassie, you alright?”
“I think the heat got to me, but I’ll survive. Congratulations again, you guys are going to be great, really.” And she hopes he interprets the pitch, the little catch of her words as a good emotion that is entirely for him and his family. Not anything else, not anything that would be entirely ridiculous and well, crazy, on her part. 
“I just want to say thank you again for giving us all that furniture, and the clothes, we really–”
“Oh of course, Tom, you did us a favor taking all that stuff. It’s not like we were going to–” Going to what? She doesn’t finish that sentence, and Tommy doesn’t need her to, already nodding, already that look in his eyes that she has come to recognize as thinly-concealed pity. Not like they were ever going to have a use for that furniture, those clothes, not again, not after. A foreclosed room in their house that stayed as silent and shut up as a tomb, and then the happy, happy, happy news from Tommy and Maria and of course, they said, take whatever you want, take it all, actually. The room is empty now. The door stays closed. 
He wants to leave and he wants to leave now. The walls creeping in closer and that hollow thing in between his ribs starting to ache and twinge. He catches her eyes from across the room and it takes little else for a knowing to pass between them, both of them already moving, already starting a string of polite goodbyes, friends and family, sorry, yes, really have to go, it’s becoming hard to breathe, really have to go. 
Early in the afternoon and the sun so bright it makes him a little dizzy when they step outside. He follows the sound of her heels on the sidewalk back to the car, relief in the closing of the door, in settling into the driver’s seat. 
She feels like her brain is deflating in her skull. Enough normal for the day, don’t ask her for any more than that. She props her head in her hand and lets her eyes unfocus, turning the suburban streets they're driving through into pale blurs of minivans and basketball hoops. And there is little fanfare to what happens next, she glances at him once, then looks out the window, hears a metallic clink, and when she looks at him again, there’s a cigarette dangling from his lips. It’s so absurd, so out of nowhere, that she has to laugh. 
“Since when do you smoke?”
“I don’t know. Tommy’s a bad influence.”
“Tommy quit.”
“Well then I did him a favor finishing off all his packs.”
“Joel.”
“Yes?”
“How did I miss you picking up smoking again?”
“It’s not like I do it around the house, I know you don’t like the smell.”
“Oh, but you’re happy to trap me in the car with it?” 
“The windows are down.”
“Secondhand smoke.”
“Would you prefer to get out at the next red light?” 
“You know, you’re probably gonna die before me. Then what the fuck am I supposed to do?”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I’m serious. Statistically speaking, men die first–”
“I wonder why.”
“Cardiac events.”
“That tracks.” 
“You’re already two years older than me and now you’re doing shit like this and I’m probably gonna be like, sixty-eight and a widow, and then I’ll die of stress from being a sixty-eight-year-old widow.” 
“Are you done?” 
“Oh fuck you–”
“Hey.”
“No, what next, huh? Are you gonna ask me if I took my pills again?”
“Well, did you?” 
“That’s not the point.”
“Jesus Christ, Cass, it’s like you don’t even want to get better, you don’t even try.” Silence, she doesn’t fire back, doesn’t make a sound, her lips parted around a wordless frown. The only noise is the turn signal clicking as he pulls into a gas station, his heart sunk down low in his chest, shrinking back in on itself. Too far, too mean, and not even knowing what he was saying until he said it, until she was looking at him in a devastated crumple. 
He parks beside a pump but doesn’t get out, doesn’t move at all, really. Waiting. For what, he isn’t sure. When he looks at her again, that stricken look is gone, something slackening, something tired settled in its place. 
“Do you remember when you stopped shaving and you asked me if your beard looked stupid and I told you it didn’t?” 
“Uh, yes.” 
“I lied. Your beard does look stupid.” And with that, she’s out of her seat, out of the car, and clipping fast toward the convenience store, not sparing him another look. He doesn’t know whether to laugh or scream. 
The light flickers a little in the convenience store bathroom when she flips it on, locking the door behind her just as the first sob shudders up and out of her throat. She doesn’t look in the mirror, she has no use for that, just grips the edge of the sink and allows herself this, a few minutes to get the worst of it out. 
He had finished pumping gas ten minutes ago when she comes back out with a bottle of snapple lemonade tucked under her arm. She has been crying, he can see. He doesn’t know why she always hides it from him. It catches him off guard when she walks around the front of the car to stand in front of his rolled-down window, something bordering on sheepish in the set of her expression, her eyes doing a quick loop from her feet back up to him.
“I didn’t mean that.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t think your beard is stupid.”
“Okay.”
“I like it, think you look handsome with it.”
“Honey, will you get in the car, please?” She does, offers him the bottle of lemonade and they both take a swig, waiting for whatever words are supposed to come next. A car honks at them, still at the pump, and he has enough sense to wave an apology behind his head and pull over into a parking spot instead.
“I’m sorry for what I said. Cass? That was a stupid thing for me to say. I didn’t mean that.” She wants to say no, not a stupid thing to say, not unfair, not really. But that would be an admission she doesn’t want to make, so she nods, accepts his apology, both of them having a hard time looking at the other, suddenly so interested in the brick wall of the convenience store. 
“We can’t keep doing this.” She doesn’t realize how much she means that until she’s done saying it. Finally saying it, this truth they have been scrapping and snapping around for months now. He says, no, we can’t, and she braces for impact, anticipating the worst, the nuclear option, and she wouldn’t blame him for it. But that blow doesn’t come. He takes her hand over the center console, as simple as anything, and she is reminded again of how much she loves him. 
“Something has to change.”
“I think so.”
“We can figure this out, can’t we?”
“It’s us.” As if that’s an answer, though he still nods, repeats it back to her, it’s us. It’s them. They can’t keep doing this. They have to change. They can figure this out, can’t they?
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