“We are young, heartache to heartache we stand
No promises, no demands
Love is a battlefield”
“Pat Benatar
Have you ever just looked at someone and knew? Knew that, that's the person for you. The one you were meant to spend the rest of your life with?
Yeah, me either.
At first sight, what can you actually see about someone? Hair, lips, eyes, nose, ass, legs… Other than the physical what is there? The way they move perhaps. Nothing to really know that you want to be with that person for the rest of your days.
But then again maybe physical attraction is half the battle. And you fight the rest when you decide if it’s worthy of your time and energy. Love is a battlefield and I’ve got enough scars to prove it to be so. Once in your life though, you find someone worth fighting for. Someone worth dying for even.
At first sight I couldn’t see that with Fionna. At first sight I saw what I wanted to see, what my superficial eyes had allowed me to see at the time.
When I first looked at Fionna I saw a tall girl. A tall, tall“I mean really tall girl. Like giraffe tall maybe. Okay maybe that was mean, but oh well that’s what I thought. I saw she had light brown skin, dark chocolate eyes that had flecks of bright caramel which was only visible when the light hit just right or on the extremely rare occasion when she happened to smile. I saw that she didn’t just walk into the room; she strutted, sashayed in a way that displayed what on a surface level at least appeared to be self confidence. But her eyes gave her away.
Her swagger said, “I’m all that and I don’t need you to say it for me to know it.” While those sad brown eyes told a tale of insecurity and self-doubt. Her gaze rarely settled on one item for very long as they surveyed her surroundings.
I saw that she must have not noticed when I walked into the room, because at the sound of my voice she jumped.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” was her hesitant reply back, her gaze settling on me. I got the feeling she wanted to look me over, but instead choose to continue on with her eye bouncing ways.
“Yo-you, uh, you have a lovely home.” She said, with a smile looking like it was being forced unto a face that was unaccustomed to the action “ as if she was only bothering with it because someone had told her to. “I was just admiring some of the artwork on your walls.”
“Oh, you’re into art? Do you collect?”
Her nose wrinkled up at my final question like it was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard, before she replied, “No, but I paint, sometimes.”
I nodded. “Well, I’d love to see some of your work sometime.” I grinned the same grin that had been known for its panty-dropper effect on many women, young and old.
For some reason it didn’t have nearly the same effect on her, whereas other women probably would have turned to pool of mush at my feet, she merely gave up a smile so small, that had flashed across her face so fast if you blinked, chances are you’d miss it.
“Nah, I don’t think you would like it.”
I shrugged at that, not really knowing where to take the conversation next. I’d never been very good at making small talk, unless of course I was in the right frame of mind. And right now I was too distracted with thinking about how to deal with my slut of a girlfriend (Britney Spears) who thinks she can just fuck around on me and come back to me with a smile acting like everything’s all good. When everything’s as fucked up as her stringy ass blonde hair usually is.
I don’t know how she even got it in her head that she could pull some shit like this on me and I wouldn’t find out. It’s one thing that she was creeping around on me, but it’s a whole ‘nother thing to step to a man’s friend. And if that fake ass muthafucka (Wade Robson) thinks he’s gonna play me too, smiling in my face like we’re still homies “ he’s got another thing coming!
At first I thought I was just tripping, just being extra suspicious of them. Gave them muthafuckas the benefit of the doubt too many damn times. And the guys (JC, Chris, Lance and Joey, but it’s just easier to call them ‘the guys’) had the nerve to tell me that I should calm down, that I should just break it off with her and let bygones be bygones. But fuck that! Those two have been playing me like a fool for too long for me to just be civil about it now. So, sorry, but it’s just too late for me to get my Ghandi on now. I ain’t going out like that.
Justin Timberlake ain’t nobody’s bitch. And I’ll be damned if someone don’t get my foot broke off in their ass for this.
“So are we going to have the interview now? Or has it already started?” She asked quietly, breaking into the heavy silence the room had acquired.
Glancing at her, I reigned in my temper as best as I could - not wanting to unnecessarily blow up at an innocent person. “It’s started, but you can have a seat if you’d like.” I said, gesturing toward a nearby couch.
Watching as she took a seat on the very end of the couch, sitting very straight and stiff, her gaze still haphazardly wandering about the room, I wondered where Janice was. She after all was the one who had recommended Fionna for the job and I could have sworn she said she was going to be here for the interview.
Picking up a piece of paper I’d purposely left on the glass table that separated the couch I was sitting on from hers, I glanced it over. The paper was basically a background check that I’d had done on her to let me know what kind of person she was. But even that wouldn’t tell me everything, I mean, I’ve heard of cases where parents have left their child with a nanny who they did an extensive background check on only to find on their nanny cam that their child has been damn near shaken to death, body slammed and a whole slew of unmentionable things that no one”especially a little infant should have to endure.
And yeah, sure I wasn’t entrusting the life of my child into this stranger’s hands, but still, it’s my doggie. I love my Sadie. I couldn’t just leave her with any ol’ body.
“Fionna Mackenzie Houston, right?” I started, reading her name off of the paper.
She eyed me suspiciously upon my use of her full name, but nodded anyways. “Right.”
“You’re 19?”
“Yeah.” She said, her voice sounding bored on the verge of falling asleep.
“Birthdate: 5-21-1986?”
A small sigh escaped her parted lips, before she slowly licked them. “Uh-huh.”
“Height: 6 foot even? Weight…”
“Whoa,” She said, the life coming back into her eyes suddenly as she frowned at me. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Nothing.” I shrugged, nonchalantly. “It’s not even on here.”
“Good.” She muttered.
Seeing that she’d relaxed slightly, I continued. “Says you’re from Reno.”
“Yeah.” The boredom growing in her voice again.
“How did you wind up all the way in LA?”
“I lost my wings, trying to get to San Francisco, took a wrong turn walking and wound up stuck here.” She said, with a completely straight face.
I just stared at her, waiting for her to tell me she was joking or to crack a smile at least. “You’re a lost angel, cute.” I finally decided to say, resisting adding a roll of the eyes to that. “So what’s in San Fran?”
“Rice-A-Roni.” She answered again, without so much as a twitch of a grin.
Laughing lightly, I shook my head. She was definitely…uh ‘special’ to say the least. “Uncle Ben’s is better.”
She just shrugged; her face blank.
“You weren’t serious, were you?”
“About what?”
“Everything. How you got to LA…and everything.”
Cue awkward silence as she just sat, motionless except for breathing and blinking.
“So anyways,” I breathed deeply, breaking into the silence. “What’s your educational background?”
“Everything you need to know, you learned in kindergarten so I think I’m smart enough to take care of a dog, even if I don’t know how to count how many legs it has.”
The previous awkward silence came back for an encore, while I tried to figure out from her body language whether or not I was supposed to be laughing at that? Or was she serious?
With a sigh, she continued, “I never finished high school but when I left I had a 3.94, all honor classes.” She added, sounding disappointed in herself for not leaving with a perfect 4.0.
“Why did you dropout?”
She shrugged, but this time her usual annoyed demeanor wasn’t there. Her head was downcast, her shoulder length curly hair falling into her face to hide the hands that moved to swipe at her eyes. She sniffled once, twice and then straightened up again, fully meeting my eyes. Glaring at me, her eyes burned with a fiery strength that I suspected had only developed after years of having to be on the defense, she whispered, “Next question.”
Wanting to ask something light, I said, “What’s your favorite color?”
She laughed lightly, looking up as she wiped her deep chocolate flavored eyes once more. “Is this a deal breaker?”
“Oh yeah.” I nodded, with a small smile. “It’s a very serious question, so answer carefully.”
Rubbing her chin as she pretended to think long and hard about this as if she was in deep concentration, I couldn’t help but notice how much nicer her features looked relaxed like this. Instead of the frown or bored out of her mind look she’s been giving. “Red.”
“Is that your final answer?” I grinned.
With not even a hint of a smile and what appeared to be an annoyed roll of her eyes, she replied, “Yeah.”
“Why red?” I asked, fully expecting another sarcastic remark due to her sudden change in mood.
“Because it represents so much. Red is everything from love and compassion to anger and rage to the very essence of life.” She paused. “Blood.” She added, with a quick roll of her eyes.
“Yeah, I got that.” I smiled.
“So what’s yours?” She said, in more of a challenging way than merely asking.
“You don’t know?”
She frowned at my arrogance. I was only half serious though. “I don’t have the lawyer line of questioning style you seem to have. So every question I ask is because I don’t know the answer.”
Babygirl had attitude out the wazoo, but I was used to dealing with smart asses. Truth be told I was one at times. “Baby blue.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
Rolling her eyes, she retorted, “How philosophical of you.”
“I know. I try.” I smiled.
“So do I get the job?”
“Yeah, you already had it before you walked through the door. I just wanted to try to get to know you a little.”
“Do you feel like you know me now?”
“Not really.”
“That makes two of us.”
For the last twenty odd minutes or so, we’d taken a tour of my house. A tour in which I could tell by the unenthused glimmer of indifference in her eyes that there was a reason why she hadn’t asked to be taken on one: she didn’t give a good goddamn about what the place looked like. But I gave her a tour nevertheless, because I liked to show off the place sometimes. To watch how other people reacted to what I’d grown accustomed to, to remind myself that it hadn’t always been like this. And besides what’s the point in living in the lap of luxury if you can’t brag about it every now and then and since I was probably never going to want to do an MTV cribs, especially after those bastards had me punk’d, this was the only way to do it.
Anyways, yeah, I know showing off all your stuff to people with less is a pretty fucked up way to stay grounded. But hey, it’s what I do and if you could, let’s keep my shallow reason for doing that between me and you.
She’d glanced at the furniture, the rugs, the aquarium, the variously displayed artwork which really I hadn’t cared too much for but had gone with it since the interior designer (my mom) kept insisting that I needed some ‘culture’ in my new place. What the hell does some randomly splattered paint on a canvas”looking like something a blind-folded second grader could have easily done”with a price tag that had one too many zeros on it (and by that I mean one zero was too many)”show that I had ‘culture’?
If anything it showed I was a dumbass who purchased ridiculously expensive art to hang on my wall for others to look at and appreciate, as I put on airs like I actually knew something about art. My best analysis of artwork was: “I like it. Nice colors and shit.”
Anyways, like I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself, she’d just merely glanced over my stuff, not really commenting, not really caring. Which then got me to wondering, what the hell did this girl care about? She had seemed less than pleased to be here from the moment I laid eyes on her. I had half a mind to just straight ask her if she even really wanted the job, but I resisted on account of how I needed someone to take care of my dog while I was away. And since it was such short notice”I was leaving that night”I didn’t really have ground to get picky over who was the one to do it.
After the tour, we’d settled back into our places on the couch with her back into her spot”the furthest from me”which made me wonder if I smelled bad or something. With a sly”or at least I thought it was sly”sniff of my underarms by way of appearing as if I was merely wiping my cheek to my shoulder”I decided that it couldn’t be my smell that was driving her to sit so far away. Unless those Axe commercials had lied and it wasn’t an attraction to girls after all but rather a repellant instead.
But I couldn’t be bothered to ask her what her repulsion from me was, I had more important things to talk about. Like my dog, you know the whole reason we were even sitting together in the first place. After all the details of dog care had been squared away that good old awkward silence from earlier settled down in between us again.
I couldn’t wait until Janice got here to put both of us out of our misery.
“Do you want something to drink?”
“No.”
“Something to eat?”
“No.”
“Something to kiss?”
“What?”
That got her attention.
I laughed, before dismissing my previous words. “Nothing.”
“Uh-huh.” She murmured with a knowing half smile that she was trying to fight down.
The doorbell suddenly rang loudly, signaling that I was saved by the bell from having to conjure up so more awkward small talk. I gratefully strolled to answer the door”trying not to run”not wanting Janice to feel like I was so excited to see her and not wanting to offend Fionna by having her think I was jumping at the chance to get rid of her. But actually, both were true.
“Well it was nice meeting you, Ms. Houston.” I said once all three of us were positioned by the door as I shook her hand, making sure to give her lots of eye contact. Her nervousness was kind of cute, in a girl giraffe kind of way.
She nodded, forcing her lips upward, but it fell before it could get high enough to reach her eyes. “El gusto es mio, Senor Timberlake.”
I had to smile at that. Didn’t even have a beginning of a clue as to what she’d just said, but that was only a minor detail. The extent of my Spanish was ‘Donde esta el bano?’ And I’d only learned that phrase to help me out for my trips overseas. But it was the way she said it, the way the words flowed smooth like a waterfall off the tip of her tongue that had the corners of my lips northward bound. She could have called me a pompous, arrogant son of a bitch and I couldn’t have been offended as long as she said it like that. Even if I knew what the hell she’d just said.
At first sight she didn’t seem like the type of person I would normally be into. At first she wasn’t the type of person I would normally be into. At first sight she didn’t seem very ‘normal’ by however normal was being defined nowadays. But the problem with ‘at first sight’ is that it’s only good for one thing: figuring out whether or not you want a second or twenty-third.
