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 Posted: Mon Oct 07, 2013 7:19 pm
5 October 2013 Marissa was no stranger to mistakes. She had nearly four decades of them at her disposal. Small mistakes, big mistakes, easy mistakes, stupid mistakes, little white lies and dumb, impulsive decisions. Admittedly, with age they'd come less and less, so she supposed with them she'd gained a bit of wisdom, but if she could go back and not make some of them, she thought she might have taken the opportunity to do so.
Or maybe she wouldn't. Maybe not making them would've led things to be even worse. She wouldn't want things to be drastically different, just... not carrying around so much guilt would be nice.
Tonight was just another in a long line of careless mistakes made throughout the years, and would continue unbeknownst to her in that general direction—not quite regret and with very little guilt involved for once, but a rather poor decision nonetheless. The long work week had given her enough to gripe about; now she couldn't even enjoy her Saturday when the date glared at her from the calendar on the wall in the kitchen. Nothing drew her attention to it but memories, the glum look on Paris's face over lunch, and a lonely jaunt through the cemetery.
Best not to think about that. Which was probably why she'd ended up here in this bar in the first place. Not a high class place by any means, but surely not the worst she'd been to. She'd been drawn in by the 90s music overhead and the call of her long-time friend Tequila, and had sat on her stool by the bar proper for the last hour staring morosely into a succession of drinks and trusting a case of bitchy resting face to take care of any unwanted company. One or two had tried regardless, but Marissa had subsequently shot them down.
She could buy her own drinks, thank you very much.
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Posted: Wed Oct 09, 2013 4:48 pm
“You don’t look like you’re enjoying yourself very much.”
Michael hadn’t been in the bar for very long before spotting Marissa, by herself, drinking alone. He obviously thought it was a grand idea to give her some company; however, the look on her face wasn’t the most welcoming.
“Rough day?” he asked as he took a drink from his bottle. His typical smug grin was not present, nor was the glimmer of mischief he often had in his eyes. No, it was just one of those days where being the center of attention was second to just being left alone.
He pulled a stool out to sit beside her, despite not receiving an invitation. Hopefully he could avoid being punched again if he stuck to his melancholy mood and didn’t bother her too much. Around most people he felt the need to put on an act of mirth and playfulness, but since he’s gotten to know Marissa, he was glad that sometimes he could just chill.
Or at least he hoped so. If she wanted to pick a fight with him for bothering her, then whatever… he’d give her hell right back.
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Posted: Sat Oct 12, 2013 3:22 pm
For a split second Marissa wondered if she should be concerned that she and Michael often frequented the same bars. But the thought was gone as quick as it came when she couldn't muster up the will to care. This was becoming a common occurrence. If she'd really wanted it to stop she would have seen to it the first time.
Let him be an a** or joke around and act smug or whatever he felt like doing. She could deal.
“Pull up a chair,” she said sarcastically when he sat on the stool beside her, making an exaggerated motion with one of her hands as if to welcome him.
“What, no snide remarks?” she asked.
Her voice was somewhat thicker than usual but free of a drunken slur. But then she wasn't drunk, just nicely tipsy. She could hold her liquor.
“Rough day, rough week, rough year,” she said, and motioned to the bartender for another drink. “Rough nine years. Or longer, I don't know. Nineteen or more, whatever. Christ, nineteen years. Friggin' long time. What's with you?” she turned to him with an expression that tried to seem unimpressed but just ended up looking tired. “Harassing me more enjoyable than...”
She made another vague motion, this time indicating the crowd of twenty-somethings across the way. She lacked her usual scorn. She was too weary to pretend to be sufficiently annoyed by him. Michael wasn't always bad company anyway. He didn't seem to be in the mood to snipe back and forth, in any case, which was just as well.
He was much more pleasant this way.
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Posted: Sun Nov 03, 2013 8:23 am
”I wasn’t aware I was harassing you,” he commented, leaning on the edge of the bar to get a better look at her face, but since the empty glasses had already been cleared away, he couldn’t exactly guess how many drinks she’d had.
Michael didn’t even comment about how he wasn’t making snide remarks, or comment about her sarcasm in return. He figured he deserved it after what he’d already put her through. He knew he hadn’t been the most forthcoming with information on the war, and now she probably didn’t even trust him to tell her when things did happen.
“Did something happen?” he asked, wondering just how much she would tell him. He had a suspicion about why she was like this, but he didn’t want to jump to conclusions. Obviously the nineteen years had been in reference to her kid, but… there was more to it than that.
“Look, I’m not going to harass you, alright?” he finally circled back to her previous comment. “Maybe I’m not always an a**,” he suggested with a shrug, wondering if she’d take that or not. He didn’t care either way, but that was as much of an effort he was going to put forth at the moment.
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Posted: Fri Nov 22, 2013 9:16 am
“You are always an a**,” Marissa insisted. “Always.”
Mostly. There were moments—very brief moments—in which she could tolerate his company. But that was all it was, wasn't it? She tolerated him. Because he was family (ugh, he was family), and because when it came to the war she needed him. A bit. Not a lot. She could get by on her own if she needed to. Some things were just easier with the company of someone who'd been doing it for a bit longer than one month shy of a year.
And it certainly didn't feel like it'd been a year since she'd become Palatine, but then it didn't feel like it'd been nineteen years since Paris either.
Marissa took her next shot and downed it quickly, placing her glass back on the counter with a firm 'thunk' as she said, “Henry'd've been forty-eight today.”
She meant to leave it at that. It wasn't really any of Michael's business how she felt about her dead ex-husband and everything that had happened between them (and all the things left unresolved), but she felt compelled (probably by her any drinks) to continue speaking.
“It's been a year and a half since he died and here I am still sitting at a bar drinking less to his memory and more to my guilt,” she said. “I look at Paris's face and think about how miserable he is... Christ, I'm a terrible mother... how miserable she is without her father, and I know I did that to her, and I know there isn't anything I can do to fix it, because how do you fix someone dying?”
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