Edie Britt hates Susan Mayer.
No, seriously, she does. She despises her. She sees her walking out to get the paper in the morning or sitting on someone's porch with her little friends, drinking coffee and gossiping, and Edie just hates her. She hates her brown eyes, hates her painter's hands, hates the way she crosses her tanned legs. What isn't there to hate?
It's that deer-in-the-headlights look, too, that she hates. She hates how transparent Susan is, how every cutting remark is a knife wound to the chest. She hates her selfishness and her rationalizations, how she has no armor, no defenses against the world. Whenever Susan brushes up against something, she bleeds.
And damn if Edie doesn't want to protect her. If she doesn't want to be that armor protecting her, the healer of every stab wound. She wants to pick Mayer up and tuck her away somewhere safe, she wants to be the lion or dragon or sphinx guarding the mouth of the cave where Susan lives. She wants to kill Mike Delfino every time she sees that look of pained loss on her face.
Because he didn't deserve her. He didn't deserve her, Karl didn't deserve her, that idiot Ian certainly didn't deserve her, and Jackson shouldn't even be mentioned. They couldn't see what Edie sees, how Susan needs warmth and encouragement, how she needs to see the beauty in the world even when it's crashing down around her.
But Edie knows that she can't give that to Susan. Susan's world is filled with beauty, with flowers and pools of water like glass and magic hanging in the air like stars in the sky. Edie's world is a bitter one, a black one, it's filled with broken glass and spilled bourbon and the million hateful things a drunk mother can scream.
So Edie stays away, and she hates Susan, because that's all she can do. She can't love her. She can't help her, or protect her, or soothe away the hurt left by the men who destroyed her. She'll stand on her end of the street and watch jealously as the little gossip brigade assembles, even though it's not the friendship she envies. She'll flirt with Mike and wink at Carlos and everyone, she knows, will think What to do about that bitch Edie and she'll go on with her life.
And she'll pray that maybe when she's finished her trek through the broken glass she'll arrive, with her bloodied feet and her bruised body, in a land of magic and lakes and glowing flowers and there will be someone with brown eyes waiting for her. Someone transparent and breakable with a laugh like a warm breeze and a smile like a burst of flame.
Edie Britt hates Susan Mayer, but only because she loves her too much.