By Myself With You Again

What if

What if

Oh, boy…

What if I just don't love you anyway

What if in another day

It will all be blown away

And all I'll have is memories

Of what we never really had

Would it be that bad

Or would the music drown my cries

You know I consider myself infinitely cool simply by virtue of listening to rock and roll. I know everyone's listening to it now, thinking they're somebody when really they're just copying the dude that sits next to them maybe once a Thursday in maths. Nobody seems legit anymore.

No, I think I'm cool because I listened to it when it wasn't cool to listen to it. See?

I's just thinking that, you know maybe, maybe that's what happened with Mai. When I couldn't have her she was this amazing culture shock bombshell, Lady Stardust, Marianne Faithful kinda of goddess that I knew I could never, ever even blithely consider thinking about touching. Yeah, I know the word blithe. Don't you? What I mean to say is… What if once she seemed like a person after all and someone that maybe I could reach out and touch… maybe she wasn't so great because having is never so pleasing a thing as wanting and all that crap you read in fortune cookies. Maybe.

Probably not.

People like Mai… well, there is no 'people like Mai', there's Mai and that's the total package. She is completely and totally herself and absolutely no suggestions will be at all heeded. She likes herself, or she likes to pretend that she does. I may be stupid, but I like to think maybe I see something in people that most people don't get; something that's kinda deep and meaningful, but that they didn't really mean for you to know about. Like Mai and her self-conscious need to be the best at everything; the best duelist, the best looking, the best. She thinks that somehow she can 'win' the game of life.

I hate to break it to her, but in life there ain't no winners. She opens up, she gets hurt. She decides maybe I'm worth letting a little go for and I throw it back in her face. Life sucks, love stinks and there's no way to change it.

.:;,.

They went back to the restaurant. The affectionately named nerd gang was still inside, probably trying to convince Tristan that he would eat again after they left. Joey figured, anyway.

Mai leaned against her sporty convertible, long legs crossed at the ankle, showing off her ridiculous high heels and the close cut of her shorts. Joey was staring at miles of milky pale flesh her clothing left uncovered, but his gaze was thoughtful and probing and so unsexual it boggled the mind. Mai was a notoriously beautiful woman, but his eyes were gentle and still off in dream world.

She was smoking a cigarette. A long slim tube of alabaster white resting scintillatingly between ruby red, painted lips, the end a tiny pin prick of glowing red ember in the near-darkness of the parking lot. Smoke curled over those lips in sharp, almost artistic contrast and billowed outward in strange coils that became nothing more than a haze mere centimeters from the place of their birth. Smoke escaped all over, surrounding her in her own personal atmosphere and cutting her off from the outside world that seemed incapable of anything except further pain anyway. What did she care, she observed as the smoke twirled out her delicate nose, what did she care if it all went wrong, she'd made a promise to herself a long time ago that she wouldn't let herself get hurt again.

"Why… do you think…" Joey's normally cocky, self-assured voice trailed away quietly into the mist of the cigarette that had slowly spread over to where he was standing, just barely touching the convertible with two outstretched fingers, fearing anything more might damage the paint and earn him a shiner.

Mai turned to look at him so slowly he thought her cigarette would burn her hand before her eyes met his. It didn't and she looked as cool and collected as ever, spun-blonde waves fluttering almost imperceptibly with the movement. "Why what?"

He stared at the ground beneath his feet, asphalt rough with years of abuse under Winabegos and six inch heels and cheap beer upsetting various stomachs, his tennis shoes stood out almost starkly white against the degradation. "Why do you think it's so much easier for people to respect Yugi as a duelist and a person." He didn't say 'easier than it is for them to respect me', he didn't need to say it; he didn't want to say it.

Mai sighed and shook her hair out as she stared up into the stars as if they had the answer. "It's not what you do or how good you are at it, Joey, you gotta figure that out. Yugi… he's only a little guy, he's gentle and nice even to people that are trying to hurt him and I'll never understand that, how he can keep on like that after everything… But he's got this presence. He's got this amazing sense of knowing what he's all about, where he stands with everybody in his life that matters to him and he's… he's just so Goddamn strong. You know what I mean; strong?" She took a drag.

"Yeah, yeah I know what you mean." Joey was looking up at the stars too. "You're right, he is…"

"So what?" Mai's lovely, bright eyes- resting on him, asking him what more he wanted, what more was there to say than that. Why the fuck did he ask in the first place.

He put his hands in his pockets. "So, you think that's all there is to it?"

She kept looking at him, but his eyes were fixed on the stars even as his foot scuffed the dirty pavement, even as his mouth twitched a little as if he knew she was watching him. She scowled at him, knowing he couldn't see it and feeling more comfortable about it, "No. It's not all there is."

Silence ensued for long uncounted minutes and both wondered where the understanding rapport they'd seemed to find while they were driving had gone to and what they could do to bring it back.

Joey kicked at the pavement again, "What else is there."

Mai stomped out her cigarette, "Yugi has loved and been loved, is loved, does love. Makes you powerful."

His brow furrowed as the smell of smoke drifted away and the fresher scent of the pine trees only a few feet away became noticeable again. Lights and voices and the sound of drunken laughter washed over them from the restaurant and it seemed a little too loud for something that was so distant. Joey rubbed his temples. "Who?"

Mai smiled, "Why so interested?" She examined her nails, smirking, "Who says I even meant that sort of love, anyway? You assume too much, Wheeler."

Joey stepped in closer to her and all of a sudden it was like they were alone in an endless sea of stars, nothing else again, no daydreams or distractions or friends back inside who were still eating, "I never assume nothin', Mai… Don't hurt so bad when you don't assume- does it?"

She wasn't comfortable with this, yet on a whole she was so damn relaxed she wasn't really sure anymore what she was comfortable with. "Joey… I think maybe I'm in danger of… liking you right now."

"But what are you assuming?"

She didn't miss his meaning and leapt seamlessly backward in the conversation- anything to prevent the discussion he seemed suddenly all-too eager to start. "Yugi is in love with the spirit, always has been, always will be no matter what he tells himself. It's okay because the spirit's in love with him, too. Imagine being with someone you care about that much in such a bizarrely intimate way all the time? They can't be separated or hide things from each other, it makes them really, really…strong."

He kissed her once, on the lips, making a great smear of ruby across her porcelain-fine cheek and catching her at her most off-guard, soft lips jammed briefly together and their moist imprint remaining long after he turned and ran away in a most uncharacteristic development. And she was left there standing with a crushed cigarette, a bright red smear, a head full of dizzying questions and eyes that remained stubbornly dry,

Even when she realized why she'd hated him so much.

Because she loved him.