#UGHSDFSDFSDF

[alicelillianshaw]

Alice thinks about, when she's getting ready for bed tonight, plunging her phone into some pool of water simply out of spite.

Email only!

She can only be reached now by email only!

As fucking wonderful that would feel — a big middle finger — Alice cannot, unfortunately, indulge herself in this.

But she can send Ronald bullshit. An outline of things he expects to see; tailor-made, so he'll get off her back, allow Alice to soak up the last days of this trip.

She wants— needs — New Mexico to be perfect. Alice wonders what it would feel like to kiss Jack under that endless sky. Hopes to God she'll get to.

Maybe she can even read more of her writing to Jack there; there was something like a poem sitting in her drafts, and Alice thinks about polishing, like a stone, crafting it into something worthy of the man standing before her.

Alice didn't even compose a lot of poetry! Which it makes it all the more important for her to show Jack the kinds of things he inspired in her.

'Well. Whatever it is, I hope you don’t bring up my card collection. And the magic tricks. Can’t have people thinking I’m some nerd.'

Her lips twitch.

"I haven't even seen your magic tricks yet. I can't even report on if they're any good..."

Oh, yeah. Yet another thing to love about him. Alice hasn't seen him so much as produce a dove, vanish a coin, but she already knows that she's charmed— she's dying to see his vintage cards as well.

Alice needs to corner him about it before they leave for New Mexico.

"Besides. Maybe I don't have a right to say it, but there are some things I wanna be selfish on. And don't wanna share."

A beat.

"Not all of it," she clarifies. "But some things."

It wasn't as if Alice wasn't going to share all the things that made Jack great; she wanted, no, needed to see the kind of person Jack was. And how kindly he treated her, how he stoked feelings in Alice that felt fucking novel.

But certain things ... Alice felt covetous over. Like a bird, hoarding the bright objects another had brought just for her. Did the world even deserve Jack? If they weren't really going to see him?

Alice would just have to right extra well.

Already, Jack felt more relieved when Alice promised to send her editor something. Anything. Breadcrumbs. As long as her job wasn’t on the line, as long as Ron was happy — even though he didn’t fucking deserve it — then Jack felt better.

Still, there was a little bit of residual guilt. He liked Alice. He more-than-liked Alice. He wanted to spend time with her, and he didn’t want to feel bad about it. But Jack couldn’t control his impulses — not even for a few days — not even long enough for her to provide Ron with a rough draft.

Jack had always struggled with that. His impulsivity and bad decisions controlled his life. Why couldn’t he just be different? Why couldn’t he be patient? Why did he feel like he was entitled to everything in life?

Jack sometimes imagined that somewhere in his parents’ basement, there was an old, decrepit portrait of Jack, deteriorating more with each bad decision he made — like Dorian Gray. Jack was vain and selfish and had committed his fair share of sins over the years. Would he ever find absolution, or would it only come in death, like it did for Dorian? Did he even care about absolution?

Sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes he just wanted to keep living the way that he was.

"I always try to write true to what I experience. And feel. I just think a straight, facts-heavy political piece would feel … disingenuous." 

Jack wasn’t sure what to do with that information. For now, he simply processed it. Not a political piece then? What would she write about?

Part of him was afraid of asking for clarification — not because he feared it would be bad, but because … well. Jack really didn’t think he deserved to be written about in a public way like that. People might think that he’d paid her off to write whatever she wrote, or they’d call it a strategic PR move.

Jack would find some way to mess all of this up, and he was scared of Alice being caught in the crossfire.

“Well. Whatever it is, I hope you don’t bring up my card collection. And the magic tricks. Can’t have people thinking I’m some nerd.”