Every time Janice adds a detail, throws out something that forces Dawn to change the trajectory of her story, she waits inwardly for it all to come crashing down, for her friend to expose her lies, for everything to be for naught. She puts her life in her friend's hands and isn't everything, but it's enough.
It's not like she's never put her life on the line before.
Every time she gives Janice a new item and those knowing eyes graze over her face and linger on her lips, she expects it all to go up in smoke, all her secrets to fall to the floor in a crash.
Did the monks write her wrong? Was she always this way? This grasping, needing, wanting, desperate thing?
She thinks, maybe, if she keeps stealing and lying and covering up the beat of her heart with something else, then no one will ever guess at the truth.
"Why don't you ever take what you really want?" Janice asks her once, leaning against a wall and smoking a cigarette from the pack Dawn just lifted off a woman in line at a grocery store.
Dawn thinks of all the things she wants, her teeth on Janice's lips and her fingers slipping under Janice's shirt and the taste of Janice's skin on her tongue. She looks up and Janice is looking at her with an expression that says, I know what you want under all those lies and words and stories.
But knowing and wanting aren't the same.
So Dawn plucks the cigarette from Janice's hand and puts it to her lips and her heart plummets, because this will be as close as she'll ever get to that skin that haunts her dreams, and says with a laugh, "What else could I possibly want?"
You see me, she thinks. And that's enough. That makes it real enough to bear.
It's not like she's never put her life on the line before.
Every time she gives Janice a new item and those knowing eyes graze over her face and linger on her lips, she expects it all to go up in smoke, all her secrets to fall to the floor in a crash.
Did the monks write her wrong? Was she always this way? This grasping, needing, wanting, desperate thing?
She thinks, maybe, if she keeps stealing and lying and covering up the beat of her heart with something else, then no one will ever guess at the truth.
"Why don't you ever take what you really want?" Janice asks her once, leaning against a wall and smoking a cigarette from the pack Dawn just lifted off a woman in line at a grocery store.
Dawn thinks of all the things she wants, her teeth on Janice's lips and her fingers slipping under Janice's shirt and the taste of Janice's skin on her tongue. She looks up and Janice is looking at her with an expression that says, I know what you want under all those lies and words and stories.
But knowing and wanting aren't the same.
So Dawn plucks the cigarette from Janice's hand and puts it to her lips and her heart plummets, because this will be as close as she'll ever get to that skin that haunts her dreams, and says with a laugh, "What else could I possibly want?"
You see me, she thinks. And that's enough. That makes it real enough to bear.
Reply
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment