fifteen ways to keep a secret [1/1]
Fandom: Original.
Characters: Emily Tarven, Chris Chapman.
Summary: Feel his calloused fingertips dance over the puckered skin above your hip as he asks about the scar. Tell him you got it sky-diving, or rock-climbing, or fighting dragons. Tell him a lie absurd enough to make him laugh. Kiss him while he's distracted and don't resurface for air until you know he won't ask again.
Notes: I saw a fic like this on tumblr this morning and the one-shot I'd been trying to write about Emily for a year finally formed itself in my mind.
1. Distract the nurse who stitches you up with a bright smile and conveniently timed compliments. Tell her that you're looking into nursing, too. That you've narrowed down your selections to a few schools. As she applies the gauze, ask her about her alma matter. Don't let your smile falter.
2. Prepare to tell anyone who asks that your parents divorced. Make up the elaborate lie that your mother is finding herself in Rome while your father picks up the pieces. When no one asks, tell them anyway.
3. Cut ties with your home town and run away to university. Get a private room and avoid the cafeteria. Bury yourself in textbooks and anatomy models. Mouth the names of every bone, muscle, and artery until you're mumbling them in your sleep. Reach the top of your class without anyone knowing your name.
4. Wait until the third missed call from a family friend to bother checking your messages. Drive under the speed limit on the way to the hospital even though your foot is itching to push the pedal through the floor of the car.
5. Move back home. Pretend that you're seven years old again, holding up a plastic stethoscope to your fathers chest and trying not to giggle as he played the patient to your Dougie Howser. Tell yourself that a degenerative heart disease is no different than the pretend sicknesses he used to make up. Commute to med school. When asked why you moved out of the city, lie.
6. Share a cigarette with the new hire at your father's bar. Tell yourself that you can't have him. That no one could possibly understand the things you have to hide, or why you have to hide them. Watch him cough when he inhales, and enjoy the way he blushes when you touch his chest to tell him where to breathe. Ignore your own advice.
7. Tell the sweet, beautiful boy in your bed that you need to keep your relationship quiet. Watch the confusion flicker over his face before his expression settles into a frown. Hold your breath until he nods. Realize that he thinks this is a temporary clause. Let him.
8. Be selfish. Keep him coming back for weeks, months, years. Tell yourself that it's okay to lie to him because it's easier than the truth. Pretend it's not cruel to give him hope that this will be different, some day. Let yourself have this silly boy with his kind smiles and naive adoration.
9. Tell him you just need a few more weeks. Keep telling him this until the hope in his eyes burns down from flame to ember, from ember to ash. Consider cutting the string and letting him go, and feel like it would be like amputating a limb. Ignore him when you pass him at the grocery store, and wonder if, maybe, he's just as screwed up as you.
10. Delete the rambling phone calls from your answering machine every Mother's Day like clockwork. Pretend that your mother died that night, and not just the part of you that could function.
11. Feel his calloused fingertips dance over the puckered skin above your hip as he asks about the scar. Tell him you got it sky-diving, or rock-climbing, or fighting dragons. Tell him a lie absurd enough to make him laugh. Kiss him while he's distracted and don't resurface for air until you know he won't ask again.
12. Call him at three in the morning because your father's ambulance is too far ahead and you can't see the road through your tears. Cry yourself out on the way to the hospital. When the doctor tells you there's not much he can do, thank him with a firm handshake and dry eyes.
13. Watch someone else put the hope back in his eyes. Hate her for it. Hate yourself more.
14. Look away when his voice cracks as he asks you a last time why you'd done this. Don't pretend that you're still entertaining the idea of telling him the truth someday. Wish that you could go back to that first cigarette, to stop yourself from shattering the innocence of a boy who'd never smoked or fucked or been broken until you pulled him into your life. Know that you wouldn't be able to go through with it anyway because you'd never give up the stolen kisses and his warm arms around you. Don't speak up as he gets into his car.
15. Let him leave.