He called her his best friend. They fucked and they hung out and they laughed. Somehow they managed to entangle themselves in each other's lives so deeply that the walls of their souls were steeped with the aftermath of color of their time together. But they were never really ever together.
But she asked. She tried, and she could see that despite him blowing it off to her face that day on his couch that everything was changing. Who they were to one another was changing.
They were kindred spirits in a world full of familiar strangers.
They were alike when different was all they knew, but then she was probably wrong about that. How else would you explain the way that Eddie's words broke her? She wasn't strong like Lip. She wasn't enough to love or hold on to for her father.
Or maybe she was too much.
Karen didn't know anymore. All she knew anymore was that she had broken Lip in the same way Eddie had broken her and that scared the shit out of her. Loving was hard, but being loved wasn't any easier.
With a flick of her cigarette, she vaulted off the bed, off the sheets and the mattress they had fucked…made love…screwed…done it on. Whatever. She began to pace, the fresh black tattoo mocking her on her forearm, the word 'whore' seeming to demean her with every step. Made her remember why both Eddie and Lip hated her…because she ultimately wasn't worth it. Or at least that's how it felt.
Nobody but her mother ever loved her for long, and Sheila was half-crazy, half-neurotic on her good days. Totally bat shit on her worst.
And somewhere in Karen's head, she realized as she paced the floor, chain smoking and freaking out about decisions that she made, she knows. She knows that the only reason that she hurt her dad and she hurt Lip was because they were the ones she loved the most. They were the ones she counted on.
