"I lost it."
"When?"
"Does it matter?"
"A'ight then."
She watches him. How his jawline works over his unexpected musing. How he takes his time until he tilts back the shot of reposado. And she doesn't exactly know what propels her to say the next words. Maybe she does. It's the surprising notes of blues in his actions. The lack of regret in hers. She's tired. Of her lying. Of this pressure-cooker atmosphere that has worn both of them thin.
"So what comes next?"
"Nothing good."
I'll do it myself.
While his words dance in her mind, Beth waves her empty shot glass at the bartender. Since she crooned her hail mary, Beth knew it wasn't a question of if but when. She could blurt out another one right now. Get a lifeline extension by showing him her lil funny money crafting station. But what if doesn't bite? Sure doesn't look like he needs it, driving that fully loaded G-Class. And at what cost? It's hers. She sweated it. She made it. He will take it. Eventually. Not if but when.
"Well then." She raises the glass to him and shoots it down. The liquor might as well have been water, it doesn't even scratch the itch on the back of her throat. Which is good. The croak makes it easier to fire his own words back at him, "Let's get this over with."
She doesn't wait for a reply just scoots out of the stool. "Oh!" She turns back to the bartender, "Can I please have a fifth of Maker's for the road trip? My baby daddy's got it covered. Right, honey?"
The bartender looks at Rio, whom in return is dissecting her. One of the unruly eyebrows arched in modest annoyance. The smoky gaze betrays nothing. The soft line of his lips twisting into something inscrutable as he hums.
Something in her chest catches fire. Kindling in a way that she knows, even in this dim room, is going to betray her. She hates it. Hates that the booze doesn't wipe the hold that he has on her. Hates that those bird of prey eyes can detect it from far away. Hates the way he claws at the bottle like it could be her neck. Hates the way he stoops into her personal space. Hates that she ditched the heels for a pair of sneakers and that she has to crane her neck to hold his stare. Hates that the bravado doesn't conceal her fear. Hates that it exudes out of her like a scent. Hates that he can smell it like blood in the water. Hates that she's as good as dead.
"Get in the car, Elizabeth."
The drive is silent, unlike the one to the clinic where he'd small talked her into a bundle of nerves. This time she has the Maker's Mark, a chill pill from which she sips throughout the ride, except it doesn't make the tiniest difference. When she gets out of the car her legs are putty, not in the good kind of way.
Beth takes one last sip from the bottle's waxed mouth, places it over the warm car's hood and walks towards the docks' limit. She couldn't think of a better place than Pier Park on the Lake St Claire's shore for this remarkable night.
The parking lot is deserted except for the looming presence of her executioner. The water flickers silver under the cloud-shadowed moon. The nights' chill hints the tip of her nose and the moored boats slouch in the waving breeze. It brings whiffs of musty decaying oak, wintergreen, algae and the promise of rain. It's the smell of her childhood's better days.
She closes her eyes, taking all those things in. A wistful nod to memories. A message. A hush. A pulse hushing. Hers. It's time.
"So this is it, huh?" She asks even when she knows the answer. "How are you going to do it?" She asks even when she's not expecting a reply. "Shoot me in the head? We don't want another miracle now, do we? Will you leave my body to cool here? Take my wallet and pretend this was a robbery gone wrong? Maybe you'll make it disappear? Like I never existed? You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
She turns to face him. He's leaning against the car's bullbar, supervising her with eyes that had churned into tar. His hands are crossed at his groin, the glint of metal under them.
"No?" she mocks, walking towards him. "No... You thought about this for months. You like your revenges. An eye for an eye, right? Will you shoot me three times? Dump me in the lake? I'll choke on the water like you choked on your blood?"
She's close now. Close but adequately faraway.
"I think about it often. I replay it, over and over in my mind. Me shooting you. Wonder if I'd take it back. If I'd spare the shoulder... the spleen, had I the chance to think instead of just react. Funny how I always reach the same conclusion… I wouldn't even have spared your lung. I'm not sorry. I refused to be your puppet then and I refuse to be your puppet now."
Beth slowly reaches for the gun's barrel. The metal not as cool as she'd have expected. It's tepid. Exactly the same way he's staring at her right now. She brings the muzzle to the left of her sternum, right above her heart, and closes her eyes to escape that emotionless study of his.
The gun digs intently into her skin, even through the layer of cotton. She swallows hard. Trembles. Her fists ball at her sides. She wishes she could have mastered that same detachment towards him. Maybe they wouldn't be here now.
"Nah. You don't get to have it that easy. Open your goddamn eyes, Elizabeth."
Each word slices through the mask of coolness and Beth wishes for indifference now. Wishes for his wolfish askew grin, even if it's full of blades. She wishes for anything but this. Anything but that pain. The one that she caused.
A second. An hour. An eternity it might have been until he lowers the gun, concealing it at his back. Her throat generates a soft noise that's halfway towards being relief. The other half she doesn't want to ponder what is.
He walks the arms-length distance towards her without that usual panther-footed grace of his. It's almost like he swishes instead. He grows taller, trimmer, meaner. The eagle tattoo flaps blackly at her from his neck tendons. His eyes of tar become hardened, dark little slits of prideful hatred.
She doesn't know what her face conveys as she stares at him. Her heart is swelling in that same strange way when she first saw her name written on that envelope containing the keys to the kingdom.
The tip of his tongue moistens his lips like a lick of dread down her spine. The air becomes suddenly fecund, somehow he gets closer, the humidity embraces them, and she has to crane her neck to look at him. It is as if she's staring at light through the shivering leaves of a tree instead of the presaging darkness that the moonlight casts over his razor-edge cheekbones.
He stuffs his hand into the jacket's pocket. She holds her breath. A knife? Shanked to death? It's that her fate?
No.
The beanie slides down her head, rallying her bangs atop of her eyes as he adjusts it over her ears. Butterflies hatch in her gut and flap their wings furiously up to her chest as he pushes the tufts away.
His cool leathery palms reach for her face, yanking her towards his mouth. His lips are contrastingly soft. Their pressure as light as a feather. So exquisitely delicate that she's hesitant to cage his bottom lip between hers. He deepens the kiss, raking a faraway moan from the depths of his chest.
Inside her, lust curls and uncurls its fists. She leans into him, hands clasping his chunky wrists as if she will never let go. It's all teeth and tongue and the pillowy boundaries of their mouths. They kiss so deeply and for so long that for all she knew the sun could've risen and set and risen again. It feels like a beginning and yet tastes like the end.
When their lips part at last, her eyes are all swimmy, she loosens her grip and reels back to her soles, keeping them closed.
His thumb caresses her cupid bow, dragging down her lower lip until he's lightly pinching her chin. His breath wovens her skin once he speaks again.
"Go home, Elizabeth."
She doesn't let the dam break until the G-wagon it's well on its way.
It's raining. The stream washes her tears away.
Who knew... a kiss could kill.