Something Good Enough
There were too many things wrong with the picture in her hands. So many issues, that she wasn't sure where to begin. She hated looking at it, that childhood photograph that lingered in her hands like some sort of crazy omen from the pits of hell. Setting it on fire would have probably been a better idea than looking at it.
A happy family? - A fucking lie.
Good and gracious God? – Impossible.
Friends to look after her? – Not a chance in hell.
All of it, was just too much. She sat there numb, after having given up once again. The only thing she could do was rattle her brain over when these supposedly good things were supposed to come to her. The things happy endings were made of?
She wasn't sure. Even the ceiling was white colored, empty, void of anything that made sense…try as she might to color it with smoke from her drugs, she couldn't change the of color that damn paint, chip it away, or make it crack.
Even it was far too sturdy to send it away into nothingness.
She rested there on the sofa, resting the day away. If she melted into a pile of goo, for the better. At least then, she wouldn't have to think. The summer day was just too hot, and her heart was just too cold.
"Nao…" Mai said, coming to sit at the young woman's side. "Are you awake?"
"Always…" The higher than a kite redhead grumbled.
Knowingly, Mai asked what even she herself perceived as a stupid question. "You've been smoking all day again, haven't you?"
Nao lifted the joint from her lips, and looked at it with a shrug. "Fuckin' looks like it, don' it?"
Mai sighed. It was going to be one of those days, and she licked her lips, pulling the joint from between Nao's fingers, putting it to her own lips. She wasn't much of an imbiber, but, the occasion called for it, so it seemed.
She let the smoke billow out of her nose a few moments later. A hint that this was not the first time she'd done that. She swung one leg over Nao, straddling the university dropout, and braced her palms on the edge of the sofa, careful to keep the joint from touching fabric.
She took in a breath, kissed along the side of Nao's jaw, and kept her voice soft. "No luck finding a job today?"
Nao gave her a bitter look. "Give me my god damned weed, Tokiha."
"Why, so you can bake yourself into a depression again?" Mai shook her head. "Not hardly." She took another long drag from Nao's pot before stifling the joint and pitting it off to the side. "You want something to keep you occupied, I'm right here."
"Not gonna fuck you." Nao murmured, too tired to even care. Sharp teeth bit into her ear. "Ow, Mai, Jesus…the hell?"
"Pay attention to me." Mai said quietly, her voice sultry and low. "I'm tired of coming home from work, seeing you laying there on the verge of your own suicide. It really worries me. Now, I know how you are, and I know you think you can slip by unnoticed, but I'm not blind, and I know that you're hurting."
That was all well and good to say, but to respond to that was a whole different kettle of fish. Nao knew that, and she stayed quiet.
Mai sat up, undoing the top of her uniform, casting the black vest and white shirt aside, leaving her clad only in a white cotton bra. She brought Nao's fingers up to the strap of that cotton, nodding encouragingly when that hand trailed to the clasp at the back.
"Mai, why are you with a dipshit like me?" Nao asked lazily when her thumb parted the metal.
Mai pushed back her carrot colored tresses, slouched her shoulders, and let her bra slip off. "I want to be." She said quietly as she leaned down to kiss Nao, melting into her touch as she began to work at the black cotton of the woman's shirt.
There was something about Nao, something dark, grungy…that allure dragging beyond the lopsided band T-shirt with a burn hole in it, and jeans with a rip in the knee. Something soft about those deep tresses of near blood red that extended over forest green eyes when they were shaggy and unkempt. Something that transcended that usual status quo, and avoided the usual pitfalls of romance.
After all, there was nothing romantic about the kiss they shared then and there, on the sofa that had a hole on the back, where Nao had stabbed it with a pocket knife by accident a few days back.
This was something entirely different, out of the ordinary.
But that was fine, Nao had decided, when she first slept with the woman years ago, drunk off her ass, and hung over the next day.
Mai had tolerated it then, for all of the shit Nao put her through.
Mai seemed to tolerate it now, too. Her lips dragging across Nao's neck, the scent of spice lingering there. The woman was already bra-less, and after her shirt met the back of the sofa, she stretched, arms reaching back to cradle her head.
"Killing my buzz, woman." Nao muttered, though she didn't dare tell Mai how her toes curled inside of her white socks as the infuriating woman's fingers toyed along her belly.
"Being a lazy-ass isn't sexy, Nao." Mai said, noticing the effect she had on the forest-eyed woman. Nao seemed to relax under her touch, and that was just fine, so long as the woman don't go reaching for her drugs again.
"I'm not drunk enough for this shit…"
Mai smiled. "You're not drunk at all Nao." She leaned down, again taking Nao's lips for her own. "You're high, baby, there's a difference."
Nao didn't want to admit it, but Mai had an effect on her. It wasn't a warm fuzzy feeling, and it wasn't something that made her happy. Whatever it was, Nao wasn't sure know. "Never would've guessed…" Still as she flipped Mai over, realizing that she was never going to get her own way unless she gave into Mai first, she began pulling down that all to small zipper on Mai's tiny pencil skirt.
What was between them wasn't love, but it was sure as hell good enough.
