May 9: Tai/Shauna, Moments

[kinetic_elaboration]

More Tai/Shauna and I swear I’m going somewhere with this. ~600 words, 23 minutes

*

She’s lying next to Shauna in bed, face to face, like they’re at a slumber party, sharing secrets—

Shoulder to shoulder in the attic of the cabin, staring up at the rafters lined heavy with dust. She knows that Shauna’s pregnant and she’s the only one who knows, and if Shauna has that baby out here in the wilderness, they’ll both die. She knows that, too, cold and slick and hard in her gut. That’s why she tries to leave, because she’s mad, gnawing, trying to FIX this—

In her childhood bedroom, draped over the unmade bed, getting chip crumbs in her sheets. Shauna’s head in her lap, and she’s trying not to think about the softness of her hair. Shows about high school on the TV, so that she idly wonders if for her that era never ended or maybe never really happened because it seems so unfinished and so distant all at once. With the window slightly open, she can hear birds but also cars passing by on the street—

E

In Shauna’s bed in her bedroom in the house she bought with her husband, except that husband is Jackie’s boyfriend and it’s all just playing house, all of it. She wants to go back to school. She knew herself there, was building up herself like a resume, or like a story. Or like a myth. Oh, if at least she could say there was another person in her head still, and blame everything on her. If at least she could cordon all the damage off on someone else. Shauna’s hair loose and spread out over the pillows, nose tucked down, forehead against Tai’s shoulder—

Someday far in the future, in Shauna’s daughter’s bed, face to face like they’re at a slumber party, sharing secrets, almost giggling—do you ever think about what you would have been—

But that’s a foggy, distant place. Like everything behind and everything ahead. The only clarity at all is the right now and the here. A persistent ache at the back of her neck and across her shoulders from holding herself too stiff for far too long. A set grinding down of her jaw. Shauna doesn’t ask her how law school is, maybe doesn’t care. She’s got the radio on and it’s playing Christmas music, and the sky outside is deeply overcast with heavy clouds that could mean snow, near-dark and it’s mid-afternoon, and the season is heavy, heavy, heavy.

She’s in Shauna’s bedroom again. When she touches her, she’s careful, like she’s touching a delicate thing. Delicate as in breakable, even, not just as in explosive. She’s seen those parts of Shauna longer and deeper now than anyone else living and it’s why she can’t pull away, can’t ever fully pull herself away.

Shauna sits down heavily next to her at the edge of the bed. She pushes a strand of hair, loose from her pony tail, back behind her ear. She’s wearing small blue earrings, and two layers of oversized shirts, and no shoes. “Tai,” she says, no preamble and only a certain fatigue there in her voice. Like she’s numb again, which brings up some weird flash of memory, about a time when she wasn’t numb at all. When everything was so sharp and yellow, both smudged soft and grating, desperate and terrifying and dangerous and alive—

Tai glances over at her.

“You know I’m pregnant,” she says.

How was she supposed to know that?

She just blinks. “Am I supposed to say congratulations this time?” she asks, because it seems nicer than I thought you weren’t going to do it, and yet still easier to say than every irrational, fleeting, strange thought in her head. If we stay, she’ll die floats up again. And beneath it, again, that instinct to run.

.