V. H. King's Ink

He was told to look for someone with really cool braids.  Black dress, long legs, kind of muscular.  Not a girl, even if she might look like one and respond to feminine pronouns.  It wasn’t a lot to go on—a bit too abstract, he’d thought–and yet the person who approaches him is exactly that. 

“Are you the writer?” he asks. 

“Would it be weird if I wasn’t?” 

The smirk is easy, the head tilt somehow kind and coy at the same time.  He’s not impressed.  He’s not surprised either.  If you take her at face value, then you already know she is not what she seems. 

“It would certainly be random,” he shrugged, gesturing to the empty booth. 

“Is anything?” she tilts her head as she slides into the seat.  “Everything aligned for this.”

“Hm.”

She digs through her tiny backpack, decorated with a pin for a skull and crossbones coffee company.  A plush frog dangles from the keychain attached to the zipper.  Her thumbs fly across the screen—he assumes it’s to let their mutual friend know that she made it. 

On the other hand, it could be to warn one of her own friends that she was meeting a stranger, and in case she happened to go missing, The Slide Diner was her last known location. 

“To say I’m the writer sounds almost grandiose,” she said, stuffing her phone back in her bag and then shoving it against the wall.  An electronic gurgle rose from underneath the table.  “Shhhh—sorry Mr. Ribbits.”

“Almost?”  He leans his elbows on the table, taking a sip of his ice water.  “Aren’t you named after a queen?”

“I’m a writer.”  She pauses, fingers toying with another keychain, this one with something orange attached to it.  “Took me a long time to own that.”

“How much longer until you’ll admit it?”

“What?”

He raises an eyebrow, wondering if she had unconsciously responded to both points.  While pretending to figure out what she’s holding, he watches her replay the conversation in her head.  She shrugs when the dots connect, even though the picture is more a mess of scribbles than, say, a duck. 

He understands it to mean: Probably never.  He wonders how long it takes until someone finds the deflection annoying.  Her hands settle on the table, but her fingers still cradle the orange creature.  A dinosaur?  Its tie-dyed shell suggests some prehistoric relation to something reptilian.  A turtle?  Were turtles even considered reptiles?   

“Anyway—I’m happy to read your stuff.” Her expression is eager, even though she’s not exactly smiling.  “What type of feedback are you looking for?  Or do you just want someone else to appreciate the fact that it exists?”

“Fair’s fair,” he tells her, narrowing his eyes. 

She blinks, but then she laughs it off.

“It’s funny.”  She shakes her head.  “I always panic that I’ll be terrible at these sorts of things.” 

She takes a sip of her drink—lemonade and sprite, straw please, no ice—and lets her gaze dart through the diner.  He smirks, leaning back on his side of the booth he’d requested after the server had first tried to offer him a table.  The smirk puts her at ease, and the grip on her glass loosens.  She pushes her glasses up her nose, her eyes wandering to the window. 

When the server returns to take their order, he opts for a burger, because why the hell not?  The house-specialty tray of sliders won’t be as messy as a mega-stack of meat and cheese on a bun.  She orders a salad with fried chicken on top—not because she’s trying to lose weight, but apparently it’s what she craves.  Besides, the double order of dressing—ranch and honey mustard—and the side of onion rings don’t exactly cut down calories. 

“Salads, baby carrots, and sorbet—it’s basically what I eat all summer,” she says.  “My taste buds like to be temperamental.”

She scrunches her face a moment, then sips more of her soda.  He tries not to think of her as adorable.  It doesn’t work.  All their talk is a test to see if he is intimidated by her flaws, and the conversation makes him more comfortable with his own short-comings.  It’s not so bad, being human—and he’s fascinated by how much she struggles with it. 

“Do you ever laugh at how far deep into your own head you are?”

Her gaze finally lands on something other than the menu or the world beyond the window.  Ruefully tongue in cheek.  Her expression is the voice he will later hear on her blogs; her face bears the tone of her memoirs.  When she speaks, she sounds like her true self.  

“Better than having my head up my ass.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“Sometimes I wish I was.”

He hears the lie loud and clear, even though she probably thinks she sounds sad.  The anger is there too—but sometimes sadness and anger are the same thing.  He sighs past the sudden tightness in his chest, his expression carefully smooth. 

“You would take the blame for people even if you were Jesus Christ.”

The blunt observations scattered through their conversation will become a habit.  Sometimes he’ll enjoy it.  Sometimes it’ll break his heart.   

“Isn’t that what he did?”

The desperation isn’t in her words.  He’s surprised that she meets his eye when she says it, but it’s not in her face either.  She looks too young to be so self-demanding.  What does she have to prove? 

“What makes you think you have to do what’s already been done?”

He wants to laugh, but he frowns when he says it.  The humor he usually defaults to, the wit that wins him friends instead of sympathy or pity, is nowhere to be found.  It’s rare that he’s ever serious with someone, especially upon first meeting.  

Their mutual friend had sung her praises with loving yet bittersweet exasperation—and he realizes a part of him already understands why.  The rest of him is curious to know her better, and stupid enough to try anyway. 

---

Instead of sitting across the booth in a diner—or sharing one side, as they do more often than not, now—they sit at the coffee table in her living room.  Him in a chair to one side, her on the couch.  The table, an exact square, is comfortably large in the room’s limited space.  Not crowded, but it makes a statement—it has presence, he supposes.  The same way she does. 

“I wasn’t looking for a relationship when I met you.”

He’d been trying to think of a good way to say it, but like most important things, it just kind of slipped out.  She glances at him from her end of the couch, fingers still sliding across the keyboard with ease.  Except this time, there is the rhythm of taps instead of the ghost-burps of haptic feedback. 

“Isn’t that the cliché thing to say?” 

She doesn’t smile when she says it, but the kindness is in her voice.  Inviting her to speak took more convincing than offering to critique her writing.  The effort it took might have been part of the reason why he liked to hear her—not on the page, but in person. 

“More cliché than loving long walks on the beach and sunsets by the sea?”

Her laughter is easy.  Some things are so easy with her, and yet others are so complicated that it’s like figuring out an underwater maze with less than 4% oxygen left in your tank, all to discover that there’s a treasure chest with a combination lock at the center of it all.  He shakes his head, because the image is absurd.  Just like her. 

“That’s a lie.”

“Fine, you caught me—” he says.  “I get cranky on long walks.”

They both did, but it didn’t stop them from the occasional nature hike.  Secluded trails in state parks were always the most difficult.  They usually opted for straying from the path a half-mile in, getting just lost enough to rest in the quiet before finding their way back to the car. 

“Not that lie,” she says.  “The other one.”

“What?”

“You were looking for something.”  Her fingers pause as she stares at the screen, searching for the right words.  “Closeness.  Connection.”

“New friends are nice.” He watches her face, trying to keep his voice neutral instead of sarcastic or deflective.  “It didn’t have to be romantic, but—”

“Is this romantic?”

He shrugs.  It’s an answer she would give, were their roles reversed.  But he wonders if she needs the answer from him.   They have a weird way of speaking for each other.  The Freudians would call it projecting, but it’s creepier than that.  To hear your fears from another person, to speak their fears as if they were your own—it wasn’t finishing each other’s sentences, it was stealing them entirely.  Did people really want romance?  Or did they want to be known?

She leans to set her laptop on the couch, then tugs the blanket around her feet.  It would be easier to wear socks, except those don’t keep her feet warm.  Socks just make her angry, unless she’s wearing shoes.  Sometimes, when she’s doing laundry, she puts them on her hands and presses her hands to her face.

“Well, here’s another cliché for you,” she says quietly.  “I’ve been hurt before and I’m a little unsure what to do moving forward, so…  I care about you, and I enjoy your company, but—”

“That’s not cliché, that’s honesty.”

“Is it?” 

She smirks, as if to imply that she could be lying.  And while she very well could be, she’s not.  They both know it.  He doesn’t often say it, but at times it merits pointing out.  He keeps his voice soft, the accusation gentle. 

“They said you were like this.”

She looks down.  Their mutual friend aside, he’s gotten to know some of the other people who care deeply about her, although she remains unsure of her place in their lives.  He leans forward from his side of the coffee table, nudging her blanketed calf.  She looks up, and he knows she’s kicking herself for her words before she even says them.  Then why do it?  Because she can’t help herself.  There are some things that she can’t let go of just yet. 

“Hope I didn’t disappoint—unless that’s what you wanted.”

Everything about her is bold yet understated.  Loud and somehow unspoken. 

I don’t know, sometimes I feel like I absorb things, but if I try to explain it, it feels like I don’t make any sense. 

Did she know that she tended to have the same effect on others?  You could easily get to know her, and never know exactly what led you to that knowing.  But did everything have to make sense?  Did the meaning—the mystery—always have to be explained?

“Do you want this to be a relationship?” 

His face remains serious, his voice quiet.     

“With a capital R?”

He wants to reach for her hand, but he nods instead.  Her hands curl into the blanket as her gaze shifts to the kitchen window.  The space between the living room and the kitchen isn’t long enough to be called a hall—just room for a half-bath on one side and a coat closet on the other.  The light from the window behind her is muted, the liquid gold pouring into the kitchen thick and strong. 

“Where does it go?” she asked.  “Like if this is a Thing…where does it go?

“Wherever we want.”

“I don’t know what I want.”  She shakes her head, clearing the lie in order to make the way for a better version of the truth.  “I know what I want.  I don’t know if I want it with you.”

That’s fair.  Before he can say it, she looks at him.

“But what do you want?”

“To figure this out with you.”  Although he doesn’t take her hand, he offers his own, palm up, thumb nudging her leg.  “If you’ll let me.” 

It is her answer: the one she needs to say, both to herself and to him.  For a while they sit in the quiet, holding hands.  Holding hands is one of her favorite things.  He admits that he didn’t think much of it before, but the amount of joy it brings her has given him a new appreciation for such a simple touch. 

She casually sprawled across him the first time he came over.  They sat shoulder to shoulder at plenty of tables.  He’d fallen asleep against her thigh in her sanctum of stuffed animals.  But holding hands was still that special thing.  The thing that made her go all shy.  The thing she did to let him know that she was fighting to be strong.  The thing he used to tell her she could feel whatever it was that couldn’t be put into words.   

Eventually she sighs, bringing her knees up to her chin.  She wraps her arms around her legs, fetal position but upright.  He leans forward, elbows on his knees.  Palms up.  But she can’t get herself to move just yet.  She always has to pull away before she can push herself closer.  Two steps back.  Twenty steps forward.  Her jaw tightens as she swallows.  He can see the tension in her shoulders, and knows she is literally holding herself together. 

She’s trying to let herself fall apart.  His silence lets her know that it’s okay if she can—and it’s okay if she can’t.  Does she wish he would catch her?  Is the thought just as terrifying as it is desirable?  She takes a breath to steady herself.  The rise of her shoulders as her breath hitches; he can tell she’s fighting tears.  Struggling to speak through everything crowding her throat, instead of around it. 

“Is it weird?” she whispers.  “That when things are easy, that’s when they’re scary?”

“Is it easy, though?”

He’s not trying to discredit her, but he just wonders if that’s the word she really means. 

“I get scared when I start to feel safe.  Not right away, but after a while….”  She presses her lips together, heels digging in deep as she tightens her hold on herself.  “It’s like a warning goes off.  Because should I feel safe?  Is there something I’m missing?  Have I—should I have known—”

He shakes his head, gently accusing her once more. 

“You can’t know everything.”

But I do! 

She doesn’t say it, but it’s in the way she shakes her head. 

I already know everything, but how do I—

She could never get the rest of the question into words.  There were too many questions to ask, too many responsibilities to uphold.  What must that war be like?  Always fighting herself for what she has learned and needs to unlearn and is learning again.  She takes another breath, and this time the steadiness slowly flows in as the tension creeps out. 

Her gaze shifts, as she peeks from his open hands to his face.  It is slow, shy, hesitant.  It’s looks like that that make him melt.  That make him love her all the more.  That make him want to tug her into his arms and keep her close—or at the very least, coax her to continue her journey. 

Don’t give up on yourself. 

Except that’s not really it.  She’ll never give up, but she’ll push herself too hard, trying to be a version of herself that she thinks she should be. 

She slowly unfolds herself and sits on the floor beside his chair.  He half-laughs as she leans her head into his thigh, but his arm goes around her shoulders and gives a reassuring squeeze.  He is relieved that she allows herself this.  She’s still adorable.  Sometimes it still hurts to think that, but it doesn’t stop him. 

“I’m trying,” she mumbles.  “But then I tell myself that I should stop trying because I don’t need to try so hard, but then how do I try to not try?  

He lets the silence linger for a moment, wondering if she’ll say more.  Another sigh as she tries to rally her thoughts to order, organize them into something coherent.  Does she realize how much she does that?  How much of an effort she puts herself through? 

How do I try not to try? 

Touché, he supposes.  Gods, she was dizzying. 

“Self-improvement is a bitch.”

Her mumbled words lift the corner of his mouth, but he can’t quite manage a full smile.  His arm curls even more snug around her shoulders.  His thumb absently rubs back and forth.    

“Who says you need to be improved?”

It’s a quiet question, one she’s asked herself in the many arguments she has between her own ears. Coming from him, it’s more comforting than it is threatening.  She looks up at him, face wrinkled in something like confusion and embarrassment. 

He wants to tell her she looks cute.  It’ll embarrass her more, he knows.  Compliments don’t work, unless you’re speaking her language—and he’s managed to absorb some of it, aware that it is similar to his own and yet entirely different.  Her layers are exquisite, and he is in love with each and every one of them. 

“To quote one pop singer with a planetary pseudonym,” he said, letting his smile spread a little, “You’re amazing.  Just the way you are.”

She laughs—not a full sound, but genuine.  She begins to relax, and he realizes that he was holding on to a bit of his own tension.  Watching.  Waiting.  Wondering if she would let herself be.  That part was exhausting. 

Where did he draw the line?  Or had he already passed it by getting this close to her in the first place?  And how close were they, again?  He gives her a little shake, not resisting the urge to lean over and kiss her head. 

“In all honesty, you’re not an easy person to be around.”

“Thanks.”

There’s no sarcasm to her whisper.  There’s not even hurt.  Instead she sounds relieved.  He slides out of the chair and sits next to her on the floor.  Shoulder to shoulder, she leans into him more fully. 

Who made you think you had to bury yourself down here?   

There are so many—too many—answers to that question.  Most of them lead back to her blaming herself, so he doesn’t ask. 

“It’s weird when everyone tries to assure you that you’re not so bad.”  Her tone remains quiet as her discomfort surfaces.  “It makes me feel crazier.  It’s worse because I know I have problems, but people insist on telling me I’m so great, or they try to cover it up, and it doesn’t help me get any better.  You can’t just…”

“Pretend?”

She thinks it over for a while, looking at her hands as if wishing they were inside a pair of socks.  She surrounds herself with so many soft things, and he wishes she could be soft with herself more often.  He lets the silence stretch out.  It’s not awkward, and it’s not uncomfortable, but it’s different.  Honesty is the gravitational pull that dictates her orbit.  Sometimes she spirals out of it, yet even in that state, you could be a stranger to her and still be pulled into her atmosphere. 

“Even if you’re forgiven—you have to say the hurt,” she mumbles the words, doubting if they make sense, wondering if she is making excuses for herself, afraid of being unpolished—and afraid that being unfinished means she is unreliable.  “You have to name it.”

He lets the wordlessness linger a little while longer.  Letting her lean into his shoulder.  He turned a few minutes later, gently taking her hands.  She blinked, but doesn’t look at him.  Her grip on his hands is cold and tight.  Vulnerable and vicious. 

“Have you ever tried that with yourself?”

Instead of the quirk of smile that he expected—the defensiveness that would have been annoying—her mouth twisted in something like frown.  She swallowed, struggling for words.  For grace. 

“I—It’s so easy to name everything, and to punish myself for it.  But it’s harder to let it go.”

Of course.  Why would he expect the answer to be anything different?

“I forgive you for not forgiving yourself,” he said, squeezing her hand.  “Can you?”

Don’t you see that I’m trying?

The question shouts from her face, the despair rolling off her in waves.  He presses her fingers again, shaking his head. He doesn’t want them to get lost in her layers right now.  He needs to make this clear. 

“Can you forgive yourself for not being able to forgive yourself yet?”

The tension unwinds.  The building storm she was ready to unleash on herself somehow unravels, dissipates, disperses back into the outer edges of their shared atmosphere.  And all it takes is a gentle accusation that happens to be a quiet affirmation.  An encouragement.  

“You don’t have to answer.”

He can see her thinking it over—and knows she will keep thinking about it.  He just hopes it doesn’t become another thorn for her to crown herself with.  I think too much.  It was one of the first things she’d said—the sort of self-deprecating humor that could have gotten annoying.  Would have, if…  If what?  Maybe it didn’t matter. 

“You always give me something to snack on.”  She tries to look up at him before realizing that he’s right beside her.  “Like sugar stuck in your teeth.”

“Glad I can give you cavities.”

He grins, showing off perfectly white teeth that slant a little to the right.  When she scowls at him, he feels a sense of pride. Whatever they are, they have potential. 

“I’m the sweet one, remember?”

He snorts, because she hates when people say she’s sweet.  She is a storm, but—and—she still has her softness.  He wraps both of his arms around her, and she slouches a little so he can rest his chin in top of her head. 

Won’t that make you sore? 

But he’d learned that she liked to tuck herself into small spaces.  There were parts of her that would always ache, parts of her that would both need and fear feeling safe—and she was strong enough to try to love anyway.