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Tales

He doesn't quite touch the uglier parts of his story, the parts she must know anyway, by now. He outlines them with asides in his other stories--mundane anecdotes that take place in inpatient treatment or other people's houses where the power's perpetually off. A story that starts with Taym waking up to the sound of a dog barking might suggest a mental image of him lying in a bed somewhere only for him to mention absently in the middle of it that he's interrupted by someone trying to shelter from the rain under the same overpass.

"I don't really remember much about that day," he finishes one story. "Or that week. Or that month."

This is a running theme. Much of the time before Deus, especially in the months leading to his final break with his addiction (and he tells her about this too, in abstract and matter-of-fact tones), seems lost utterly, water poured over the pages.

But for all that his stories, even if they cannot compete with the many that he coaxes from her of her uncles, her boyfriends, her high school escapades--his stories are normal stories. They're stories like That Time Alex Left His Car Window Down and Found a Possum In There, and stories like That Time Taym Got So Nervous He Tripped On His Words And Said "I Think I Need You" Instead of I Love You Too (shut up, he says), stories like The Worst Cat Ever.

They are stories about a man, or a boy maybe, with friends and a social life, with interactions and petty troubles, stories populated with parties and family get-togethers. And for every one he gives he demands another out of her, thinking of a minnow cupped in the palm of his hands and her wish to have known him when he was a little boy.

"Sometimes I think about what would've happened if we hadn't come here and we'd met out there," he tells her. "And then I remember that we probably would never have said a word to each other."

Loaded Question

"How are you feeling?" he asks, not that there's any reason to, although maybe that's why he does. There'd been the nightmare the night before and he hadn't asked then, because the answer was obvious. He'd instead persuaded her, patiently, to unlock the bathroom door and let him sit on the cold floor with her. And then: "If you want me to stop asking that I will."

Tell Me I'm Pretty

"Not in the traditional beefcake way, or glossy prince charming sort." She's lying half off the bed, shoulders curled against the floor and a joint between her lips. Every so often, she lifts a foot up to admire the sparkly polish and then drops it back down, pleased in the way it bounces as it hits the bed. Holding the smoke, the girl tries to consider attractive, and finally exhales with a little a cough and sigh.

"But I already told you before, you're kinda..." she waves her hand vaguely in the air, "...you make people look twice. And not necessarily a bad twice. That's what I remember from before." She didn't bother explaining before what. "Like I'dve tried to coax you into a dungeon make-out last Halloween if you hadn't seemed such miserable company. An I woulda let you sit in my lap for a kiss on Christmas, get a nice feel of my holly jolly titties. But that was a different sort of attraction, yeah? Passing interest, a possibly maybe but nothing fixed into you." She left out the period of definite no, when she'd thought he'd been dying of some wasting sickness, months left to live.

She began to lift her head up to look at him, but only managed part way before letting it drop with a thump, "I'm all sorts of feelings about you now, though, so I'm not like...objective anymore. I'm attracted n'want you, generally n'physically n'all that s**t."

Tell Me I'm Pretty

He captures and kisses the top of her foot exactly the same way he is forever kissing her fingers and the inside of her wrist.

"That answer was so female," he tells her with disgust. Not too much, though. It's not like he has any use for the other kind.

Tales

She listens and takes in the picture he paints of his Before. The world, its people, and himself among them. The wish grows stronger with every story, growing teeth instead of contently fading back.

In turn he receives her own stories. She is a girl raised in a huge family of enthusiastic rednecks, lining the coast of Florida. A girl who has never been truly shy or retiring, and so there are many stories, a large swathe of them with an incredulous edge, that merited an If I didn't know you to be honest...

But she tells him the other stories now, too. She tells him a lot about Aunt Prudie, and all the small bitter hurts and big ugly ones, tempered by a sort of bone deep respect. The influence of the woman on her niece becomes clearer and clearer.

She didn't give him all the details of Jonas Delmarr, but she gave him more than anybody else.

He said he was in his early twenties, but I figured him for a well-kept late thirties. Don't know why he lied, 'cause it didn't make much of a difference. Met him at the library when I was fifteen and he helped me find what I needed for a report. I wanted to just ******** google it, but my teacher at the time hated computers and was snooty as hell about it.

That was the start of things. I'd find excuses to go walk among the nerds, and he'd give me just the right amount of attention. Played a long, slow game with me, and I ate it right up. Said I was too young, when I started pushing the lines about, but eventually sixteen turned into the magic number. Went down to his summer place in Miami that summer and we played house for awhile.

He was cruel. But in ways that were hard to point out until you took a step back and saw the whole of them. You know how you like to couch all your sweetness in irritability and insults? Well he went the other way. I...I've always had a need to prove myself in some way, even said as much in that ******** seminar, remember? Counselors told me that all the time, and they weren't wrong...just boring about it. But damn if he wasn't fully ******** aware of it. Whenever he upset me, he'd get me so turned around, saying he was wrong and sorry and what a bad idea it all was. In the end, I'd be apologizing for getting upset and begging him to give me another chance. Got hard to recognize myself.

And then I left. Went a bit crazy and just wrecked the inside of that ******** house. Didn't have a bit of money on me, though, and I wasn't gonna steal his, so I had to hitch back up until I got picked up by the hi-po. It was a learning experience all around. Start of the next school year I broke a boy's heart on purpose, 'cause he had the same color eyes and I wanted some of my own back.

It shouldn't have helped but it did. After, though, I started taking things out on men instead. Boys are too sweet to be hurting like that.

She gives him her normal days alongside her adventures, and here and there, those pieces of unhappiness that linger for years.

"Well most folks gotta have a reason to stop and talk to a stranger, so I think as long as we had that reason, we'd have talked just fine," she answers with a sort of calm confidence. "Maybe you'd have gotten locked up for the night by Uncle Jr, he'd have tried to make sure our cells were a fair bit apart, cause he knows how I am, but I think we'd have chatted for a good while despite his efforts." And so begins an odd detour, into all the reasons and places and times they might have spoken had their decisions been different.

Loaded Question

She gazes at his neck for a long while, and then her hands. In the end she simply takes his hand in hers and squeezes it, because sometimes it's hard to find the words when a plain thank you couldn't possibly do.