"Give me the first taste
Let it begin, heaven cannot wait forever
Darling, just start the chase
I'll let you win."

-First Taste, Fiona Apple

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Borrowed Time

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"Nora?"

It was her mother. She was home a day early. Nora glanced at the clock by her bedside. 9:57, it read.

"Craaap," Nora groaned, throwing her head back. "Are you serious?" She rubbed her hands over her face, the muscles there aching from having been contorted in pleasure for so long.

"She's coming up to check on you," said Patch matter-of-factly.

She practically shoved him off of her and towards her closet. "Hide!" she urged. "Hide, hide."

She pushed him in, a stunned yet amused look on his perfectly symmetrical face, tossing his clothes in after him. Shutting the doors, she leapt across the room and threw the comforter over herself, holding her breath as the door squeaked open. Her mother's face peaked in.

"You asleep, hun?"

Nora stayed silent and still. After a few seconds the door squeaked back into place, snapping as it shut.

She waited, then slowly endeavored to raise her head above the covers. The closet door whooshed open to reveal Patch. His shirt was pulled back over his head and he was wrestling with the armholes.

Nora felt herself fill to the brim with sadness. He was leaving. She should have expected that. Things couldn't be that good forever.

Don't be sad, Angel.

"Then don't leave."

His eyes were dark and matte as rocks. He watched the floor, then glanced up towards her again. "You know I have to."

"No, not really. I might know if you would ever tell me what the heck's going on with you," she pressed. "Why are you doing this?"

"Nora." His voice was full of warning, but underneath that he sounded tired. Drained. Fed up? Probably with her, she figured.

He shook his head like he was reading her thoughts. He probably was. He headed for the window. She so badly wished that he wouldn't go.

"Are you going to her?" Her words sounded like the whisper of a leaf being blown across pavement. When they left her mouth, they suddenly didn't make sense to her. Like those five words should never have been strung together in that way. Maybe she had meant that to be a thought. It didn't matter; he would have heard it either way.

"Do you want to hear the answer to that question?"

No, her brain told her.

"Yes," she told Patch.

He had a smile on his face. It was an expression that didn't reach his eyes. His face was a jagged, ugly, beautiful thing; an uneven mixture of happiness and horror. She hoped that he hated himself. She screamed it at him in her head, all the while knowing that she would eat him up the moment he came back.

His unhappy smile told her everything she needed to know.

Burning like a brand, he took flight from the window.

!

"Oh em gee," said Vee, sounding unamused. "He was totally gonna go down on you and then your mom came home?"

Nora sighed long and hard. "Yep."

"And then he just…left?"

"…Yep."

"Did he say where he was going?"

To Marcie's.

"Nope."

Vee grumbled into the phone. "No sign of Scotty the Naughty?"

Nora laughed. "Scotty the Naughty. I might like that if it didn't sound so tame compared to what he really is. Which is a lunatic."

"Loose-Screw Scotty," Vee quipped, sounding proud of herself.

"Oo, good one."

"So, what did your mom say about that shiner?"

"She hasn't seen it yet," Nora told Vee. She looked in the mirror. What was purple and swollen the day before was now yellow-ish and nothing more than a cut. "Besides, it's pretty much gone. Maybe I'll just put some makeup over it or something."

"Are you gonna come with me to that show tonight? You know you totally have to. Maybe some of that luck you have will rub off on me and I'll have a couple of guys brawling."

"Luck. Right. You can have all of it."

"Is that a yes?"

Vee was going, so that meant that Rixon would be there. Rixon being there meant that Patch would probably be there. And, of course, Marcie diligently followed Patch around.

Nora was a glutton for punishment, she knew and accepted that. But there was no way Vee was going to let her off the hook without giving her hell about it. So she would have to use this chance to its full advantage. She wanted to look nice. Like, make-Marcie-glare-daggers, make-Patch-ditch-Marcie nice.

"Um, duh."

"See you at six, then, hooker."

!

"When I called you a hooker, I totally didn't mean I wanted you to really dress like one," Vee told her.

Nora gaped. "Do you think it's too much?"

She had put on a plum colored dress, a black belt at her waist, black stockings and black heels. The dress would come down to just above the knees of any normal person, but her legs were so long that the dress was begging to touch her mid-thigh. Just like someone else would be. She had her tumbleweed hair lion-maned and curly—just like he liked it.

"You are such a bitch for looking that good and not telling me that we were dressing up!"

Vee had on an off-white sweater dress that definitely accentuated certain D-sized features. She had on tight black pants and some knee-high boots. Nora had thought that she was already dressed up. She dreaded seeing just how much more 'dressed up' Vee could get.

"You look great!" Nora laughed.

"Get in the car hooker bitch," she joked.

"That'll be fifty bucks," Nora joked back.

Their heels tapped in unison against the pavement as they walked into the venue. Vee immediately found Rixon waiting for her. She fell into his arms while Nora stood a bit awkwardly in the background.

And then there they were: Patch and Marcie. She was practically clinging to him. To Nora's surprise, instead of indulging, he looked a bit stricken.

Be careful. Scott's lurking.

She nodded infinitesimally.

"Ew," spat Marcie to her. "What are you wearing?"

Nora glanced down at the piece of cloth on Marcie that could barely pass for a dress. "They're called clothes. Maybe you've heard of them? Probably not."

Jealousy and spite spurred Nora, but she really just felt like melting into the wall. Scott was here, somewhere. Maybe he would drag her away and torture her in the foggy woods. Then she wouldn't have to look at the tops of Marcie's barely-existent thighs, because Lord knew everyone there could see that and more.

"Nasty skank," Marcie uttered.

"Simmer down, Queen of Hypocrites." Nora rolled her eyes at the strawberry-blonde.

"Well," mused Vee, "this is…slightly less heated than normal?"

She totally wasn't into it right now. Yeah, she hated Marcie. What a rancid, rotten witch. However, being the fifth wheel was worse than being the third wheel, and now she just wanted to be left alone to mope over in a corner.

"Whatever. Thirsty. Getting a drink now," she called over the heightening music.

To tell you the truth, Nora was a little tired of being jerked back and forth. And now she felt that this was probably a mistake. She wanted to be back on the couch, hiding from the world and watching a gory movie.

She sat at the bar with no drink. She didn't really want one. The people swayed with the first twanging chords of deafening music. The whole thing left a bad taste in her mouth.

Then she caught a glimpse of the back of Marcie's head.

Pressed flush against Patch's face.

The bodies swayed again, strobe lights working to Nora's advantage. She saw them against the wall. She saw Marcie's skeletal hand breaching the top of his pants.

And there it was. There was the ugly, ugly truth.

Like lightning, she fell into the pit of people and shoved all of them out of her way until she was face-first with the back of Marcie's pale head.

Patch, unlike Marcie, had seen her coming. She must have looked like a terrible, vengeful thing to him because his colorless eyes were wide, expectant and only for her.

Nora didn't pull Marcie's hair. Oh, no. That was something that weak white-trash girls did when they were mad that some girl had said 'hi' to their boyfriend. No, no. Marcie had her spider's-legs hand creeping down his pants. Nora, like a woman possessed, felt her fist wind out and crack Marcie's right eyebrow.

The blood spurted, leveling a deep satisfaction within her. That was for that night at Battle of the Bands.

Marcie was dumbstruck for a second, then reached for Nora with spindly, sharp-nailed fingers. She pushed the bleeding girl away. Marcie wasn't the one she wanted.

Nora leveled her gaze at Patch, arresting him with a shaking pointer finger.

She imagined the things he might tell her. That he was just about to stop Marcie, to push her away and tell her that he didn't want that with her. Or maybe that it didn't matter because he couldn't feel it. He knew what it meant, though. He knew what it meant to Nora, most of all.

Instead, he was silent inside and out. He almost surely already knew what she expected from him, so why repeat it?

Her mind was a chaotic jumble of angry thoughts and feelings. Do not even, was the only coherent sentence she could manage for a second. How dare you, she thought. How dare he kiss her and tell her that he cared about her and let her believe it when the last couple of months had been a big, stupid lie? How dare he take off her clothes and then let Marcie, Marcie for God's sake, under his own clothes?

And then she was gone. She was done.

Her body drifted away from silent Patch and stunned Marcie and the rest of the wobbling crowd. She was outside in the cool air and it was raining. She was walking down the road with no idea where Vee was, or if she was looking for her, or if she didn't even care because she was with wonderful, truthful Rixon.

She was crossing a bridge, thinking of how badly she wanted Patch to just follow her and apologize, when there was a hand on her shoulder.

"I didn't mean to hit her," she blurted as she turned. "I'm sorry."

There was a sharp pain in her belly, a heavy hand on her elbow bracing her. She didn't understand until she touched her stomach and felt the wetness, the blade embedded beneath her burning ribcage.

Even then, she couldn't look at the person a few inches away, the person that was killing her, that had planned on throwing her body into the river below the bridge after she bled out. She could only focus on Patch standing ten feet behind the two of them.

Nora wanted to think a lot of things at him. Tell him that she was angry, that she was dizzy or dying, that she loved him. To please, please save her this one last time and maybe love her, or else let her die and he could be with Marcie peacefully. She wanted him to relay a message for Vee and her mother, but words were slipping away.

She wondered whether she had been thrown into the river already, or if this was just what death felt like: cold and shaky and too much like sleep.

Don't let go, Nora. Hold on. She thought it could have been Patch urging her, but then it sounded too much like her father.

!

Okay, so this is what's up. I work for a chocolatier. We make truffles. Myself and the three other people I work with have to make 8,000 (Yes, 8,000) of said truffles by MONDAY for the reopening of a place that flooded last year. So I may be out of commission for the next couple of days. But I will update by Sunday at the latest.

THAT IS, if I have 23 reviews by Sunday. Seriously people? I have 600 views, 10 favorites and alerts. And…..13 reviews? We can do better!

I WANT 8,000 REVIEWS BY MONDAY.

GO.

(Can you do the dirty with a stab wound? Because I think Nora wants to.)