Note: Heylo. Early update. Blame my writing splurge.

And thank you to Ekoaleko for the 100th review. You cheater, you know I love you anyway. XD

Also: I worked around some kind of suggestive ish stuff this chapter? Haven't really done that before, it's tasteful though. So no one should freak out, I think.

Chapter Fourteen:

Celia

I hadn't meant to visit Jack tonight. The thought had crossed my mind once or twice, but it was a dangerous one, and I pushed it away with all my dark intentions and lies. Life occupied me; Cassie needed looking after, I'd asked Marlin if he wouldn't mind walking the shoreline with me, and I needed something to distract my thoughts. If you'd told me six weeks ago that I'd be avoiding Jack on our very first wedding anniversary, I think I would have laughed in your face. Not thinking about my husband would be like not breathing: impossible. Yet this new path I'd paved for myself left no room for self-pity, and like a bone, I had to form a clean break if I were to heal at all. Even on Jack and I's first wedding anniversary.

After all, how could I give myself to Marlin, if my soul belonged to Jack?

Subconsciously, I'd wrapped my body in a soft yellow nightgown earlier, one that barely reached the top of my thigh. Some days, when the pain of his death is still fresh and vivid, I've slept with it sprawled across my pillow, drinking in all the scents that remind me of him and his touch. Exactly a year ago, I'd worn it for the first time, as new and fresh as my trembling body had been.

"I've never done this before," I'd whispered, shaking. Jack's arms rested about my shoulder, his wedding band winking in the candlelight, and he smiled at me with a warmth that melted me inside. I stared down at my pale, sunless legs, and wondered why it was I'd always covered them with my gowns if I were only going to embarrass myself with them tonight. "I…I'm probably not going to do this right."

He cupped my chin with his hand—rough and calloused—and murmured, "There's nothing to worry about. How could anything be wrong, when together everything's so right?" Then he'd pressed his lips against my own, his tongue wet and slowly wrapping itself about mine. I could vaguely remember the feel of my zipper sliding down my back, and the strange foreign feeling of his hands as he pressed them against my bare skin. The clothes fell into a puddle of yellow about my hips, and as his hands roamed, all my fear gave way to an anxiety and desire that consumed me completely.

"Just promise me," I gasped, his mouth released from my own. "Promise me you'll be gentle."

He said nothing, but nodded, and my eyes strayed to his belt. Looking to him for guidance, I undid it cautiously, letting it fall into my hands like an offering. He remained still, waiting for my lead, and then I worked at the buttons of his shirt and his pants until finally there was nothing between us but the beat of our hearts. He leaned into me, and I gasped once before fully giving myself to this man as he assured me, "I promise you."

Nights like tonight, I ache for him, and can feel my body begging for him with just as much force as every fiber of my will and heart. I lay in my bed, awake, and my hands stroke the expanse of my body, hoping to awaken some memory of his touch. I long for the overflowing love that had created the girl lying in that crib, for the trust that had accepted and engulfed me with passion. I want to feel the sticky sweat of his body against me as I lay curled in his arms, but all I have is a memory, and it's one I need to dull day by day.

If Marlin hadn't run there, I never would have had to face my husband. If I didn't run behind him, I never would have had to see Jack's name written in stone, glaring at me. "You forgot me," his grave demands. "You left me. You became someone I don't even know."

"I have good reason. I need him, for Cassie's sake."

"Did you only need me, then? Was that, too, a lie?"

"Never. How could the love we shared merely have been acted? No one can lie that well."

"I'd rather you didn't lie at all."

"That's not your decision. You're not here to decide."

I shudder in my bed, wrapped amidst numerous sheets and blankets, yet still cold as can be. The taste of Marlin's carrotoma is still fresh on my tongue—bitter—and I roll it from one cheek to the other, blocking memories of Jack's kiss from mind with this strange taste. Goddess, I want to let myself miss him. I want to cry.

I shove my first into my mouth, blocking all sobs, and steel myself against the pain and concentrate on the future. On the positive end achieved by these means. Cassandra needs this. She needs Marlin.

Does she, really? Or do you just need someone to shoulder half your fear?

"Happy anniversary," I choke, my hands falling to my pillow as my body wins over, and I pretend it's Cassie sobbing, not I.

"I don't want to talk to you."

Muffy's walking past me, her expression set, and her purse swings from side to side like a pendulum. "Why, what is it?" I ask, and she turns her green eyes towards me, aglow with fury.

"I think you know damn well what it is, and honey, I never told you to do what you're doing now. I told you to move on, but I never told you to do this." Her heels turn once more ahead and I reach for her shoulder. She stiffens at my touch and continues moving forward, scoffing, "Celia, I never thought you'd be like this. I never, not in my wildest dreams, thought you'd become one of them."

Them. She spits the word from her mouth like venom, and I want to approach her, but find that I cannot. "I…I don't understand."

"You never did, you know that? Never." She shakes her head, blonde curls flying everywhere, and she tightens her hands into fists. "Do you have any idea," Muffy hisses, "what's it's like to be the victim? To be the one swallowing all that delicious poison, only to learn that's all it is: poison?"

Of course I do. I'm a widow; I'm a single mother; I'm a child. What else could I be right now, but a victim? Yet I'm frightened by my best friend's glare, and remain silent.

"So many men," she laughs bitterly, "think that's merciful. Using someone for their own needs, as long as their victim doesn't know she's being run by a puppeteer. It's trickery. I've been the other woman, destroyed perfectly happy marriages, and I never knew. I was told I was loved, when all I was, Celia, was being used. I've been a rebound, a mistress, an accident, and by not knowing I was one, that's supposed to make the pain go away. The shame. The knowledge of being nothing but a battered second-best."

She eyes me steadily, and my knees buckle; suddenly Muffy seems so much older, so much stronger than I, and it's disconcerting. I've never felt so small under her gaze, and I murmur, "I'm sorry you had to go through that."

"You're not sorry," she states. She's stopped moving, and the wind has started to tease the folds of her red dress about her. Red as blood, I realize with a start. Red as suffering itself. "The funny thing is, it hurts more this way. Not knowing." She closes her eyes and laughs once more. "What hurts is the moment when your pedestal crashes, and the person you saw as your sun and moon is revealed to be nothing more than a petty liar, a traitor."

A liar. A traitor.

A fish jumps in the stream behind me, and I jump as well, startled by this sound. Since when have I started shaking, when did I start to lock my breath in the base of my throat?

"This professor I once dated," Muffy says, oblivious to my change of mood, "once told me that Dante said the deepest circle of hell was saved for the traitors of the world. I always had this fantasy after that; that all my exes would find themselves together there and they'd realize what bastards they were for ever hurting me." A pause. "I don't like seeing you in that dream, Celia."

Encouraged by the softening tone of her voice, I draw nearer only to be pushed away. "Marlin doesn't deserve this crap, Celia. Neither do you. And Cassie, I know, deserves much better than that, too. Stop this. End it while you can," she pleads. "Just look at his face, and I—I don't see how you could go through with this. How can you look him in the eye, and just…?"

"I have no choice," I interrupt quietly, and her gaze hardens.

"There's always a choice," Muffy replies coldly, and she stalks off to the Blue Bar, the shattered remains of our friendship left in her wake.

"Well, missy, it's only a week till your birthday, am I right?"

Vesta smiles at us over the tabletop, and Marlin simply nods ambiguously, not daring to look up. He's become silent after last night, and nothing I can say can draw him out of his shell. "Um, y-yes, one more week," I agree, picking at my salad. "I'll be nineteen."

"I reckon we should celebrate somehow," the woman suggests, and I can feel my heart sinking inside me like a weight. Cassie blinks at me from her baby chair, and grins a toothless smile my way that I can't help but return. Thank you, I want to say. Thank you, God, for leaving behind someone who can still make me smile.

Marlin swallows a large bite of tomato, then says between mouthfuls, "I think I'll be busy that day. Getting groceries."

"Groceries?" Vesta retorts, eyebrows raised. "Boy, since when have you ever looked at my lists?"

"Do you want me helping out or not?" he growls. He shoots a look my way, then turns back to his meal, and I am left frozen. It's not a look I'd received before; the kind that speaks of hurt, of love, or of pain. No, he'd stared at me like I was a specimen of sorts in a zoo, something strange and unrecognizable.

An animal.

"That's fine," I squeak, shakily lifting my glass of water to my lips. "We don't need to celebrate."

"Pfft. Celia, it ain't every day a girl turns nineteen! We'll find Muffy, and that girl would do backflips to get some activity in this slow little village—"

"No," I mumble. "No, let's just…not. Muffy's busy, anyway. I'm sure of it."

I excuse myself early, lifting Cassie into my arms and, as I stare into her innocent wide eyes, wish that I, too, had someone's arms protecting me.