You were holding me
Like someone broken
Unable to stand seeing her this distraught, I pulled her into a tight embrace. And she let me. For once she just let me.
“Shh.” I whispered, stroking my hands along her back in small circles, feeling her cling to me. It felt selfish but in that moment I felt content and strangely drowsy, sitting there with my arms wrapped around her knowing that she needed me. If only for the moment.
And I couldn't tell you but I'm telling you now
“It’s going to be okay.” I whispered into her curls. She didn’t pull away, but she laughed in between her muffled sobs.
Just let me hold you while you're falling apart
“I just needed a hug, not any comforting lies.” When I opened my mouth, she pressed her finger to it. “Shh.” She sighed, before kissing my lips. “Just hold me.”
Just let me hold you and we'll both fall down
I was glad she didn’t want me to talk. I didn’t have anything other than the generics to say anyways. She stayed with her head buried in my chest for so long that I had nearly fallen asleep with her in my arms when I felt her shift.
Opening my eyes, I was greeted by a smile on her tear-stained face. As I reached to brush them away, she leaned into me. Our lips meeting in a sigh.
She pulled back just enough to break the kiss, but still hovered over me, a stray tear falling from her chin onto my cheek. When she reached to wipe it away, I took her hand and linked our fingers.
“Fionna?”
“Yeah?”
I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want her to move away. “I can’t breathe.” I laughed, watching as she rolled off and away from me. “Don’t go all the away over there.” I frowned, following her. “What do you have there?” She’d taken out a picture from her bag and was staring at it. Taking it from her, I said, “Who’s the hottie?”
Snatching the picture away, she said, “My mom, asshole.”
I laughed and took it back, glancing from it to her and back again. “That doesn’t make her any less hott.”
“Stop drooling over her.” She sighed, taking the picture from me. She seemed more tired than annoyed.
“So where is she?”
“Dead.” She said, her voice flat. “Been dead most of my life.” Sighing again, she moved as if she was going to get up and leave.
“Where are you going?” I asked, reaching for her.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.” I held her wrist with one hand so she wouldn’t leave me and with my free hand I wiggled my fingers to get her to come closer on her own. She rolled her eyes but didn’t come into my arms. With a sigh, she gave in. Holding her again, her face buried in between my neck and shoulder, my hands lost in her curls. “Do you wanna talk about her?”
“Do you wanna talk about all the women you’ve been running through lately?”
I frowned feeling her start to pull away from me. Tightening my grip around her waist, I said, “I haven’t been running through women, I’ve just been…”
“Fucking a new one every week.” She said, not pushing away, but creating some distance between us.
I couldn’t think of something to say to that that wouldn’t be a lie. So instead of denying it, I said, “How do you even know about that?”
“You’re Justin ‘Paparrazzi Loves To Be Up In My Shit’ Timberlake, everybody knows. You might as well do a reality show so then you’d at least get paid for it.”
I laughed, until a thought occurred to me. “Are you mad?”
“About what? Those women?” When I nodded, she sighed. “I don’t have any right to be.”
“Right or wrong, doesn’t change how you feel.”
“True, but it does change what you express.”
This time she did push away. We lay there together, alone in our thoughts. Shoulder to shoulder again. Turning just my head to face her, I watched her profile. She looked peaceful but there was a tension to her body that hadn’t been before.
Without looking at me, she said, “Don’t start one of your idiotic staring contests.”
“It’s not a contest with just one person staring.” I scooted closer, kissing the side of her face until she turned to face me. My eyes fell to her lips, staring, but not moving in, tracing them with my index finger. When she puckered up, eyes fluttered to a close, I smiled and gave her the kiss. “There’s no point in feeling the way you do if you’re not willing to express it, Sugar Pie. Everything just grows and festers if you bottle it up inside. So…” I watched her eyes open, studying me. “Is that all that happened?”
She frowned. “Is that all? As in that wasn’t good enough drama for you?”
“No, no, no. Nothing like that.” I sighed, licking my lips nervously. “I was just wondering, y’know if maybe there was something else you might like to say.”
“Sounds like there’s something else you want me to say.”
“I was talking to Janice and she said…”
“Ah, some of the worst word combinations…” She laughed, softly. “So what did Janice tell you? Did she tell you to come down here? Come down here and baby poor Fionna for a bit, make her feel better because she seems so sad.” She said, doing a pretty damn good imitation of Janice’s motherly sympathetic voice.
“I mean, I just thought we could use this as a sharing time. Y’know a time when we can just say whatever’s on our minds. Whatever we’re thinking.”
She sighed, tiredly. “I’m trying very hard right now not to think.”
Fall on me
I let a few minutes go by in silence, as I went back to staring up into the sky. The grey clouds were building. “I was in an accident a few days ago.” I felt her turn to me, but I kept my eyes on the sky. “Drunk driving. Brilliant, I know. At the time, I dunno, everything just seemed to be a fast-forward of…of shit. And more shit. Just a blurry…shitty sequence. Drinking didn’t make it less blurry, actually just blurred it some more. But…” I sighed, shrugging. “I’m not saying I’ve had some kinda life-affirming moment. I’m not saying that now I see the world differently or that I suddenly want to be different in it. I’m not saying that we should have some Post-9/11 Nick and Jess moment.”
“You mean, you don’t want to get married?”
Tell me everything you want me to be
I smiled at her then. “I’m saying, I don’t know what I want.”
“Yeah, you do. Between the two of us, you were the one who always knew. I guess, I kind of did too. But it wasn’t as clear to me as it was for you. You just seemed like that warm mother kinda love, unconditional, stable love that I used to run in the wrong direction to and I wasn’t about to get rejected like that twice.”
Forever with you
Forever in me
“But you knew I wasn’t going to do anything like that. So instead you rejected me.”
Ever the same
“Twice.” She smiled and shrugged. “I broke it off with Richard.” She said, with her eyes on the sky. “I know that’s what you really wanted to hear this whole time. So I’m single.”
“So,” I licked lips, watching her profile. “You’re single.”
“Who was the first person you thought about after that accident?” She asked, watching me now.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged.
We would stand in the wind
We were free like water
Flowing down
She shook her head. “No cop outs. This is our sharing time, remember?”
Under the warmth of the sun
“Well, I’m sharing that I don’t know.” When she just kept watching me, I said, “Tom Cruise.”
“What?”
“Tom Cruise. I dunno, it was surreal to me. Like watching a movie. Might as well have been some Mission Impossible type shit, escaping the car just before it burst into flames. Surviving”it makes you feel invincible and vulnerable at the same time.”
Now it's cold and we're scared
And we've both been shaken
She was quiet for a moment, her eyes on the sky, before she turned back to me. “You thought of Tom ‘I love this woman’ Cruise?”
“Yeah.” I nodded.
“You ass.” She frowned, hitting me in my arm. “You could have at least lied and said it was me for the sake of romance.”
“I didn’t know we were being romantic. We were talking about car accidents and mothers who aren’t really mothers.”
“It was almost romantic until you said Tom Cruise.”
Yeah, look at us man,
This doesn't need to be the end
Laughing, I said, “Then in that case, you need a new definition of romance.”
“And where am I gonna find this definition? In the Book Of Cheese & Corn by Justin Timberlake?”
“Cheese and corn are good staple foods to not only nurture the body, but stimulate the soulmance of a relationship.”
“You keep talking like that and I’m going to get lactose intolerant.”
“You wanted romance, I gave you romance and you get lactose intolerant on me. What the hell am I supposed to do with you?” I smiled at her.
Call on me
Watching me with a growing smile of her own, she said, “Love me.” Looking up into the sky now, she took my hand, linking our fingers. “Love me for me.”
And I'll be there for you and you'll be there for me
“Damn, cause I really wanted to love you for being Beyonce.”
“What? Stupid.” She hit me again, in the same spot as before. “Why do you have to keep ruining the romance?”
Forever it's you
“What I’m working on is beyond that silly romance mess. I’m talking soulmance, baby.”
“Please don’t start with the cutesy ass pet names. Sugar Pie is bad enough. And this ain’t no damn soulmance.”
“It could be if you’d do that Beyonce booty popping dance for me at night.” I said, turning so my booty was facing her, before backing it up into her. “You know the one. Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh.”
Forever in me
Ever the same
“Oh, no, no.” She sang back, shaking her head and slapping my ass. “Why do you always gotta be such a freak?”
Crawling over her, stroking the hair out of her face, I smiled down on her as I hovered over her. “Do you wanna get freaky with me?”
One eyebrow rose in question, but that was a helluva lot less protest than I’d expected. “Right here? Right now? On the beach, in the middle of the day?”
“Yeah, why not?” I laughed, kissing her forehead.
“What if someone sees us? It’s not like we’re alone.”
Kissing both of her cheeks, I shrugged. “Let ‘em enjoy the show if they wanna get their Peeping Tom on.”
“This is not romantic at all.” She frowned.
I smiled. “Since when did Ms. Fi-on-na care about romance so much?” I asked, kissing her collarbone.
“I hate my collarbone.”
Just let me hold you while you're falling apart
“Why?” I kissed it again, this time running my tongue over across it, dipping into the curve. When she shuddered under me, I smiled.
“I hate my elbows too.”
I leaned back and brought her elbows one by one to my mouth, kissing them, licking the bend of her arm, sucking slightly on the very tip her elbow. She squirmed, biting her bottom lip, but did nothing to stop me.
When she didn’t say anything, I said, “Say you hate something else. Something lower.”
As I was waggling my eyebrows at her, she laughed and swatted me away. “Always a freak.”
Just let me hold you and we'll both fall down
I just smiled and went back to laying beside her.
You may need me there
To carry all your weight
She sighed, scooting closer to me, curving her body against mine. “I care about romance because I’m kinda starting to not hate the Book Of Corn & Cheese.”
But you're no burden I assure
I laughed, my arms going around her without a thought. “Kinda not hating? Damn, that’s almost love ain’t it? I’m not even gonna front though. I knew this was going to happen. It always happens.”
“What always happens?”
“Women fall in love with me.” I sighed, as if just the thought made me tired. “It’s inevitable. It’s just the curse of the Timberlake charm, I guess.”
You tide me over
“A delusion freak, wow, I really know how to pick ‘em.” She laughed, but nuzzled into me.
Smiling, I kissed the top of her head. “You knew it. I knew it. Everybody fucking knew it.”
With a warmth I'll not forget
“Nobody could knew it because there wasn’t anything to know until now.”
But I can only give you love
“You’re so transparent.” I grinned, laying with her head on my chest now. “It was so obvious that you’d fall for me sooner or later.”
“And you’re so fucking…” She trailed off with a cry of frustration.
Fall on me
Tell me everything you want me to be
“Cute? Unbelievably sexy?” I laughed, flipping us over so that I was on top again, this time pinning her hands to either side of her head.
“Stupid.” She finished with a smirk.
Forever with you, forever in me
Between kisses to those soft, sweet, insulting lips of hers, I smiled as I said, “That was my third guess.”
Ever the same
________________________________
This chapter featured:
OK Go “Here It Goes Again”
Pink “Long Way To Happy”
Pink “Leave Me Alone (I’m Lonely)”
Rob Thomas “Ever The Same”
