These Numbers Have Hearts
Jessica’s so used to the familiar. Structure and order make her feel at ease. Life isn’t simpler that way; it’s just the only thing she knows. Her brain isn’t hardwired the same way as everyone else’s, which makes her a little bit unique. Though she never liked standing out of the crowd. Normal and ordinary would have been just fine for her. She tried it for awhile but it still perpetuated into a kind of strangeness that warded people off so she gave it up in the end.
To say the least, people are problematic for her. She says things at the wrong times and it’s hard for her to know when to talk or just when to keep her mouth shut. It ends up getting so confusing and awkward that more often than not, she chooses not to speak.
So she lacked social competence; a self sufficient life could have been perfectly fine. But the Gods cursed her with knowing what loneliness was and how it felt.
Then she met Tiffany. Wait, more like Tiffany chased her; for what reason, Jessica had no idea.
She fell hard all the same.
But Jessica’s intuitive as she is aloof of the things that Tiffany thinks seem to matter. She feels - knows that Tiffany’s slipping away and there’s nothing she can do.
Jessica just can’t fix what’s messed up in her head.
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Her anxiety and fears translate into how tightly she grips her fingers onto Tiffany’s as they walk into the crowded room. A friend of Tiffany’s is throwing a cocktail party and through an effortful amount of persuasion and incentives she manages to bring her along just for this one night.
Tiffany places her hand to her back, gently smoothing out her jitters and reassures her with soft whispers.
It’s somewhat comforting, her touch, her warmth but it’s not enough to stop her from wanting to jump ship.
Tiffany gets pulled into a round conversation by someone she knows and Jessica gets yanked in along with her.
She keeps her mouth shut. Her head spins when she tries to follow the constant chatter so she focuses her attention on just Tiffany, her kind of familiar.
Someone interrupts, “Tiffany, whose this you’ve brought with you? Surely it’s not Jessica is it?”
Tiffany confirms everyone’s speculations. Perhaps for the wrong reasons, she’s been waiting for this one night to show Jessica to the world.
“We’ve heard so much about your Jessica, where have you been all this time?”
Jessica politely smiles, it’s something she’s practiced and rehearsed, Tiffany wouldn’t want her to tell them what she’s really thinking. Due to her lack of response, Tiffany’s friends soon change topics pushing Jessica completely out of the conversation. She’s used to being left out, so Jessica just stands on the side, sipping at her drink.
Tiffany laughs as she lightly touches on her friend’s arm. Jessica raises an eyebrow, she hasn’t drawn that out of Tiffany in awhile and she can’t figure out why. People leave and soon it ends up being a two way conversation between three people; Tiffany, her male friend and Jessica. He whispers in Tiffany’s ear and Jessica feels a spike of rage. Jessica may have trouble telling emotions apart, but she’s not thick enough to miss blatant flirting when she sees it.
Without a second thought, she pushes his shoulder and warns him to back off. He barely moves, only slightly swishing his drink.
Tiffany gasps and immediately apologizes, completely embarrassed when she realizes that everyone in the room sees Jessica marching out the door after her small encounter.
“Weird, frigid bitch isn’t she?” her friend slurs.
Her eyes narrow.
“Watch what you say about my girlfriend,” she hisses, abandoning their previously amicable conversation to chase after Jessica.
Tiffany catches up to Jessica, her heart pounding from a mixture of annoyance and guilt. However, when she sees Jessica standing under the light looking as righteous as a person of her rapport could, something snaps, and she pushes her down to the ground. An unforseen anger bellows from within which she doesn’t have time to fully comprehend so she follows her ugly instinct.
“Why did you just have to embarrass me in front of everyone just then?” Tiffany shouts to her face.
“I try to be nice and understanding but you make that so difficult. Don’t you ever understand that I have feelings too? Stop using your disability as some kind of reason to be selfish.”
She sees the terror overcome Jessica, tears welling in her eyes. Every unrelenting word that she spits out is all the more reason to stop. Her face flushes and burns, as it’s all so wrong because it really isn’t her fault and yet somehow it just unfurls uncontrollably from the pits of her stomach.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you,” she snarls, holding Jessica’s face to hers so that their noses touch, her own breath smelling faintly of alcohol.
Jessica does nothing, not a single fucking thing. Her eyes flicker away at what, Tiffany hasn’t a clue. She’s so helpless, like a pathetic wounded animal, Tiffany feels disgusted and it’s not just with herself.
In that instant, Tiffany strikes her hand cleanly across Jessica’s delicate cheek. When Tiffany feels and hears the sting of her face to her palm she sees all too clearly the wrong she’s committed; her pained expression, the reddened finger marks maiming her soft, white skin.
She backs off, several feet away from Jessica, holding her hand out, palm turned to the night sky in absolute disbelief.
Jessica whimpers, “I pushed him because I was angry and scared. He was taking the thing that I’m losing,” looking directly at her for the first time since Tiffany can remember.
Tiffany breaks. Her head feels light and ends up hurling over the curb. The sick lingers in her mouth and her throat burns. She’s out of her depth and she can’t crawl her way back out.
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A week of silence and Tiffany manages to regain her trust again. She hugs her, strokes her by the hair, whispering sweet nothings into her ear.
Jessica takes her by surprise by kissing her on the mouth almost desperately. Usually it’s always Tiffany who pleases her first, followed by Tiffany guiding her, telling her how and what makes her feel good.
Tonight she has none of it.
Jessica’s not a child; she has a mind of her own. She wants to prove to her that she has control over what she does and that she’s more than the retard who was responsible for Tiffany’s outbreak.
Ravishing Tiffany’s body, she wills her to moan and scream her name and Tiffany obliges for more reasons than one.
Jessica kisses her brim and hears a short sharp gasp, pausing to look up at Tiffany, whose fingers clench painfully at her the sides of her skull.
Her face is unreadable.
She’s beginning to lose the ability to differentiate a smile and a frown on Tiffany’s face. That smile she once likened to a perfect symmetry has unwounded into something that’s hideously unrecognisable and it kills her to bits.
The only reassurance is to know that Tiffany still thinks of her as she cries her name aloud when they’re making love.
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Ever since that night, Tiffany’s found something new to be discontent with. She craved Jessica’s assertiveness in bed and everything in general, but once life returned to normal, as normal could possibly be; it seemed as if it had never existed.
Old habits die hard, especially for Jessica.
Jessica slumps to her side of the bed once Tiffany’s done. She momentarily forgets about her, lying flat on her back blankly staring up at the ceiling. Sweat glistens and shines from her neck down, her tangled hair sprawled on her pillow and all Tiffany can do is wait, wait…and wait with the throbbing ache growing ever so imminently between her legs. She doesn’t say a word as she hopes that Jessica will return the favour to her own accord.
Jessica doesn’t and Tiffany’s doesn’t think she can take it any longer. She’s so sick with the same disappointments and frustrations. No matter what she does and doesn’t do, Jessica won’t ever understand her. Her actions never correspond with her words and Tiffany’s grown weary of being the martyr.
A teardrop rolls off her cheek because she’s taken all that Jessica’s given and it’s just not enough.
“Let’s break up,” Tiffany whispers out of nowhere, hand on Jessica’s.
“What?”
She repeats herself, voice breaking the second time around.
“I can change. Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it,” Jessica says, her hands holding Tiffany’s face, thumbs running along her lips, hoping to God that it’s all just a sick joke.
Tiffany winces thinking it’s the exact reason for their detriment.
“I love you ok?” Jessica sobs, “You can’t leave me now that I know what it feels like.”
She hushes her with one last kiss, wet tears and all.
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That poor girl.
She tries so very hard to forget. But she’s at a loss when everything about her is etched in the back of her mind; those eyes, the way they turn when she smiles, that nose and how it twitches, the lips that curl.
Shakespeare’s a fool. Love is hardly ever blind, at least not for Jessica.
In fact she was content with being blind; unknowing, not seeing. That was until Tiffany came along and gave her the gift of sight so that she could experience the world with all its vivacious, vivid colours and wonderful, shapely contours. But Tiffany had enough, cruelly taking it away with her.
Now Jessica’s blind again, and she wishes she never had a glimpse of what beauty really was.
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When Jessica tries to forget, Tiffany learns.
Looking into a mirror, Tiffany pulls a face and wonders what Jessica saw in her; so plain, so ordinary. A frown, a pout, and then a smile. She creases her brow and stares a little harder, slightly fogging the reflection. She raises a finger and draws a smiley on the surface.
It suddenly hits her.
“Why are you smiling?”
Was it really necessary to point out the obvious?
“Just because.”
“Because what?”
“I’m smiling because you gave me flowers. People like receiving things from people they like.”
“So you like me then?”
Tiffany blushed, Jessica was being so forward.
“Yes, I do.”
Jessica smoothed her fingers over Tiffany’s lip, “Don’t stop. I like the way it looks and the way it feels when I see it.”
Tiffany mistook her gesture as something with more meaning, and truthfully there was without Jessica fully comprehending it and she kissed her.
“You’re still smiling, why?”
“Because of you.”
Jessica returns a smile of her own.
She’s the only person that can elicit any tact from Jessica. Now remembering all the subtle comments, those nagging questions about how she feels, the way her eyes light up when she’s done something right to make her happy.
Because Jessica tries, harder at love than she probably ever will.
Every word she says, every gesture she makes isn’t covered with fake sentiments for Jessica never pretends.
Jessica didn’t pretend to understand the practicality of flowers and she still bought them for her. She hated it when Tiffany touched her at the wrong spots and she’d still bear with it, even if irritability was written all over her face, because she knew it’s what Tiffany liked. The times where she’d open her mouth only to bite down on her tongue again; beautifully unspoken words that Tiffany will probably never hear of because she was worried they’d come out wrong.
Her breath hitches and Tiffany wipes the condensation away. She hates being responsible for everything.
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“Don’t hurt me again.”
“I can’t promise that.”
“Then don’t leave me. It’ll break me.”
“I’ll try so that it won’t come to that.”
“Love me as much as I always will.”
Tiffany doesn’t give an answer.
It’s almost comical to Tiffany; it could have been mistaken for playful banter between two grown women but the actuality of it is more like a mother talking to her child as patronising as it may seem.
They make up so easily because Jessica doesn’t like a life without Tiffany.
The logic is quite straightforward in Jessica’s mind, because she can’t really see it any other way. Even if she’s discontent with the way she’s treated, even if she goes by everyday second guessing whether she’ll leave her for good, Jessica’s insular world doesn’t make much sense unless Tiffany’s part of the equation and it breaks Tiffany’s heart to know this.
Because Tiffany won’t ever be sure that she’ll love Jessica for eternity. As of now, she does completely and wholly enough to sicken her to the stomach that she’s willing to give the relationship another try. People will judge her for playing at Jessica like a puppet but Tiffany’s not a selfish bitch; she’s just not Mother Teresa. They will honestly never know how fucking hard it is to be selfless and just how tempting it is to call everything off.
So Tiffany keeps herself from making empty promises and simply kisses the side of Jessica’s temple as some kind of consolation.
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“I don’t like your dress; the pattern gives me a headache.”
Tiffany feels like crying when Jessica callously walks away to her computer. She should be getting used to it by now, but it still hurts when Jessica can just say whatever that comes to her mind.
She decides to go to sleep, forgive and forget; Jessica doesn’t know any better.
In the middle of the night she feels Jessica’s wet kisses along her neck and she’s in no mood to reciprocate.
“Jessi, please stop.”
Jessica ignores her the first time and slides her hand under Tiffany’s shirt.
“Jessica! Jesus Christ, did you not hear me?”
She pauses and rolls back onto her back.
“Sorry.”
Reluctantly, Tiffany accepts her apology.
“Is everything ok?”
“No.”
“What did I do wrong?”
“You tell me.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
Tiffany hates spelling everything out to her.
“When someone asks you how they look, they’re asking to be complimented. Don’t just say what’s on you’re mind, people have feelings too remember? ”
Jessica mentally takes a note but interrupts, “Then what’s honesty in a relationship when I have to lie?”
“Just do it ok?”
“Fine but I don’t see why it’s such a big deal, you’re perfect to me anyway even if you’re wearing a shitty dress,” Jessica carelessly adds.
Tiffany casts a glare which she misses not without an unwanted smile which not so secretly creeps onto her lips.
“You’re smiling; I’ve done something right haven’t I?”
“No, go to sleep.”
Jessica places a hand over Tiffany’s unmoving one, tickling her palm with a finger. Tiffany lies still until she hears her breathing settling slowly into light steady palpitations. She shifts her head ever so discreetly, looking over at the sleeping girl, and gently threads her fingers through hers.
At least for tonight, she doesn’t plan on letting go.
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note: Jessica has Asperger's syndrome, a form of Autism.
Thanks to my beta reader ishfeeny .
Wrote this awhile ago. I largely drew what I perceived as Asperger traits from this site: http://life-with-aspergers.blogspot.com/. If there are any inaccuracies on Jessica's part, it wasn't intended and I'll be glad to fix it up if you give me shout.
The writer doesn't know me but if anyone wants to read a really good one-shot which deals with a similar issue (Jeti) where Jessica has Selective Mutism here.
Merry Christmas!
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