It was late at night, the sky almost seeming to press against the windows, the darkness complete. Craig looked at Ashley leaning against the kitchen counter. They were at her house because no one else was home. Her eyes such a funny jewel blue, sometimes the color of smoke, the color of the sky. She was looking down.
"Craig…"
Uncomfortable silence spinning out, broken only by the small T.V. voices from the living room, the laugh tracks on the sitcoms so old that most of the people laughing were dead. He'd read that somewhere.
"I know, Ashley, look…" No way to finish any sentence they were starting. She looked at him, his wild curls framing his face, his large hazel eyes never quite resting on her. She licked her lips and wanted to taste his. But first things first.
"Craig, look, do you feel that way or not? About me? Do you love me?"
She said it so point blank, like being shot with a gun. His eyes went wide. It wasn't the same for him. Love meant hurt and loss. He couldn't admit to it so easily.
"It's hard for me, Ash,"
"I know,"
For a minute he thought she might know, but how could she? Her parents had always been there. He knew. Divorced but they were still friends, they in fact still loved each other in that creepy platonic gay/straight way. His parents? Divorced, but not before his father beat his mother so severely that he thought he'd never hear the screams stop. That was what love could come to. He knew.
She didn't know any of it. She didn't know that his father said he had to hit him with that belt because he loved him. She didn't know that the mornings after every beating his father said he loved him. Love was pain. Love was jumping at shadows and raised voices and getting strapped and getting kicked and getting thrown to the floor.
What did she know? Love was watching his mother get sicker and sicker and then she was gone, love was a gravestone with her name and the dates, love was wanting to talk to her one more time so badly that he thought he wouldn't survive it.
He shook his head. She couldn't know and he couldn't explain it to her. He couldn't explain why he couldn't say it even though he could feel it. He wanted to see her and talk to her. He only felt alive when she was near him.
She narrowed her eyes at him, he was looking at the floor, at his sneakers. She had an idea of the problem. She knew he was traumatized, that his parents were dead, that something had happened with him and his dad so that he couldn't stay there. He was troubled. She knew. She liked that about him, thought she could help him. She didn't understand why it wasn't happening fast enough.
Muted yellow light in the kitchen, the darkness looking cold outside the windows. Ashley could notice everything about him. The blue veins under his pale skin, the corkscrew curl of each strand of hair, the sudden violent bob of his adam's apple when he swallowed. She loved him and she could say it. She didn't understand why he couldn't.
He was mad as he looked at her, the curve of her back, the flip of her hair. Mad about his fucked up childhood and early adolescence. Mad that his past was ruining his present. It wasn't fair that he was afraid, it wasn't fair that he equated love with beatings and death. Wasn't fair that she wouldn't give him the time he needed.