Your Ticket Home - A Jeff/Annie Mix
It isn’t the feelings that are tight and small and girl-ish inside her chest that catch her by surprise. Because they have been there for so long now, those uncomplicated sort of emotions that can be explained in one word: lust, crush, infatuation. They are not shocking, not in the slightest. It’s this strange growing feeling inside of her that doesn’t feel right, like a sneeze that just won’t come out. This feeling is like a tight, small bud of a flower that curls against her chest and one day she finds it start to unfurl slowly. She doesn’t know what to do at first, and this frightens her: she is Annie Edison and she has a plan for everything, an extra folder to file away documents, always everything in (laminated) triplicate, a day planner that is divided by highlighted color to indicate urgency. She files her nails and uses moisturizer. And Annie Edison did not plan on falling in love with this man, this older man who has as many Daddy issues as she does and tries as unsuccessfully at her to hide these feelings.
She’s not sure when it starts, or if it really starts persay, because it has been a thing a long time coming. Thinking back, she can see it like one might see something black against the horizon as you come closer and closer. She does remember the moment when this thing inside of her, this tight bud, bloomed strong and fresh against the center of her chest. She remembers the night as fresh as new snow. The evening was still warm from the leftover of summer and they stood on the sidewalk to his condo.
How did she get here, slightly drunk and her hair disheveled? She remembers something about her 21st birthday and Troy and Abed fighting, Shirley so drunk Britta had to carry her lopsidedly back to her car where the two of them laughed and listened to Radiohead as Shirley said something like: You white girls listen to some crazy stuff. The two of them wander off together more out of a necessity, magnets left to drift together when no other external forces were there to pull them apart.
And so they were there, in front of his condo, a walking distance from the bar, and he rests a hand on her shoulder and says, “We’re one hell of a group, aren’t we? No one else is allowed to turn 21 again. It always ends in tragedy.”
She laughs before hiccuping. Then, she grins and says, “Right. Note to self: Now that I’m 21, I don’t have to pretend like I’m the girl on my fake ID.”
He laughs, turns his head so that it’s cocked and looking at her sideways. “Sure,” he says. “Sure. I was wondering why exactly you were speaking in a Texan accent. You were starting to creep me out: you started to sound like my Dad.”
And suddenly they both remember, remember the Father-Son/Daughter’s day that took place at Greendale months ago, where the group, unsurprisingly, had no fathers who attended. She remembers the way he laughed at it all but she wondered if she was the only one who saw his smile fade slowly and slowly from his face the way the sun crawls into the ground at the end of the time. The darkness etched around his eyes stirs something inside of her at that moment, the small bud inside of her turned tighter and tighter. She knows that darkness, she has seen it so many times before, with the long silences at her dinner tables, the Chanukahs that were full of only her mother’s chastised tears, the way her father’s touch was always too tight against the shoulder like he was always saying, don’t mess up again, Edison, not again, not again.
It’s there, in front of his silly little stuccoed condo, that she sees his life: a mother always pushing and pushing, and a father who comes for his birthday on the wrong day with a six pack and an Atari with a loud, whiskey-ed breath that bellows too loud and with too much gusto. She sees the two of them, small against the dark silhouette of their fathers' and suddenly she knows, she knows, she knows. She knows that they two, always trying to prove themselves, have had the same sort of life after all, as different as they want to make it. Her, just a kid, and him, kinda gross, they have sort of found somebody who knows what it feels like to be alone, really alone.
Maybe she’s a little drunk when she places her hand against his stubbled face. And he doesn’t pull back, but looks at her as if he’s saying, Are you sure? Are you really sure?
She smiles a bit and says, in her worst Texan accent, “Can I come inside?”
And when he laughs and she laughs and soon they are laughing, the next thing she knows his hands are placed firmly against the nape of her neck and his lips are firmly against hers, and his tongue is hot against the top of her mouth. They aren’t laughing anymore. Instead, that small bud bursts into bloom and she feels a warmth inside of her that comes when you return to a familiar space after a long time. She finds his arms against the small of her back and his voice in her ear saying, “I’m sorry but I can’t help it, I can’t help it, a part of me needs you, Annie. I’m sorry.”
She stops him, her hand against his mouth before she says, “Don’t. You’ve got to learn there’s no need for sorry. Because, I’m-- I didn’t plan for this but what can we do? We’re supposed to do this, I guess.”
She doesn’t say it then, but she knows when she presses herself against him that there is a word for them now, she’s not sure at first what it might be, but she thinks it might be the moment when she realizes that she’s coming home, that’s the word, home, home, home.
The Shape We Made | Peggy Sue
he may be brave / i’ll get him lying down / and you can break his ways / for i left but once / more times i stayed / you hold me stronger now / than all the while i remained
From a Highway | Lovers
your fucked-up family history / makes me wish i was a transparency / i'd move about your life unseen and make sure you were treated right / 'cause your eyes flash with kerosene / and your lips are horses running / oh, let me be the ground beneath / when we kiss, you can run away on me / 'cause my heart's been humming / and reaching for something / to keep it running when the drives are so long
We Are The Same | Samantha Crain
you are the what that i am as well / as far as i can tell / we are the makers and the breakers / i think they should know by now
Two Intangibles Can’t Be Had | Sarah Jaffe
i love you in all the dangerous ways / i keep my heart in shape / for your love / as it turns out / i'm a beggar for it / i will exchange for it / all this time you were serious / now it's obvious // i'm staring at your face / the things that brought you here / now want you more
Minnesota, WI | Bon Iver
i will let you grow, no need to know this / so carry on my dear, what is clear up in the daylight is we’re hung here / fall is coming soon, a new year for the moon
You Ain’t Alone | The Shakes
are you scared to tell somebody how you feel about somebody / are you scared of what somebody gonna think? / or are you scared of to wear your heart out on your sleeve? / are you scared of me? // we ain’t that different you and me / you ain’t alone / just let me be your ticket home
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