A/N: To the other chick who pushed me over the top, who had to be unruly and volunteer a bizarre string of nouns for me to choose from. Cameron Fry (aka deceptivecadence), this one's for you.
Blender
"Fuck!" Grace slammed her fists into her countertop as she screamed as loud as her upbringing would allow. The impact hurt more than she'd bargained for and she was glad. The sting in her bunched fingers was welcome. It gave her a momentary distraction from her predicament.
Her hideous, unfair predicament.
Tears stung her eyes as she slowly sank to her kitchen floor. She swiped at them with injured fingers and sniffed loudly, huddled against the cabinets.
Job or Wayne? Job or Wayne? Job or Wayne? Job or Wayne?
God, she was so sick of thinking about it. In one way or another, she'd been thinking about it for a year and a half, first as an amusing hypothetical, now as a conundrum that guaranteed to leave her miserable no matter what.
For so long, it had been easy to slip by unnoticed. Minelli gave Lisbon a long leash and asked relatively few questions. Lisbon, after some saber-rattling, gave them her unofficial blessing. Everybody was cool with it. So cool with it in fact that Grace had even imagined them as their own little Corleone Family, with their tight-knit understandings and personal favors. And Lisbon was Marlon Brando, tough but kind in her allowances.
All obliterated. Hightower had taken over the Family.
Grace sniffed again.
"I'm hungry," she muttered to her empty apartment. That's right, she thought. Get up and do something fucking useful.
She stood up and marched to her fridge, yanking open the bottom drawer and pulling out every piece of fruit she could find. Juggling them all in one arm, she slammed the door harder than she meant to.
She tossed it all on the counter and grabbed a banana from it's little hammock and threw it on the pile. As she began to chop madly, her busy hands made her feel a little better. Inertia under normal circumstances irked her. Under high stress, clawing out her own hair was preferable to doing nothing at all.
So the banana was sliced. The apple was chopped. The kiwi was skinned. The peach pitted. The orange was wedged and the raisins were…well, nothing. She piled their little body parts high and grabbed her blender.
Backhanding her tears again, she began to throw them in violently.
The apple pieces first. These are me, she thought savagely, chucking them hard and making them collide against the sides.
The banana slices. Wayne. Baby, I love you so much that I ache. In you go.
The kiwi next. My job. My life goal and my center. My purpose.
The peach. Hightower. So far from a peach that I'd laugh if I wasn't crying.
The orange slices. The choice. You tart, pulpy little bastard.
The raisins. You're just raisins. Get in and shut up!
She tossed in some yoghurt, slapped on the top and angrily smashed the Pulverize button. Her underutilized sadist watched with glee as her dinner and the metaphorical pieces of her life disintegrated into mushy beige goop.
Apple. Banana. Kiwi. Peach. Orange. Raisins.
Once unique and defined, now hopelessly fused together. There was no separating them, the smoothie was made and the damage was done. She hit Stop.
"Join the club," she taunted the smoothie in the blender. "Think you've got problems? Think getting liquefied in a blender makes yours the saddest story in the house?"
She resisted the urge to choke the glass pitcher attached to the base. That stupid smoothie had no idea what pain was. Hell, its troubles were over. As she pulled a glass roughly from the drying rack and popped the blender top she swore again at the contents.
"You have no fucking idea!" she shrieked as she poured her concoction into her glass. "It doesn't matter that I can't take out the fucking peach in you! Or the fucking orange!"
But it mattered with her. If only, oh if only the peach and the orange could be removed from her own goopy situation. If only she could somehow reach into the blender of her life and extract Hightower and The Choice before the blades starting whizzing. She would have happily replaced them with Strawberry Lisbon and Grapefruit Unofficial Permission.
She took a swig of her smoothie and coughed. Her anger was causing her throat to constrict.
Or maybe it was just the taste of peach and orange.