aching /curt + pietro (solstice)

It's not supposed to feel like a balm when Curt speaks but it does. I hear the low rumble-tone of his voice through the flame and that sore feeling between my shoulder blades eases. That makes me feel bad, sort of guilty, like I've done something I wasn't meant to.

But I'm always doing things I shouldn't be, it never really matters until it comes to him.

I can't look Curt in the eye when he comes around the bonfire so I don't. I busy myself with the white-heart of the flame, eating the wood slowly, turning it to ash in its maw until it all comes crumbling apart. My hand shakes a little but it's just the cold running over the back of it, making me unsteady.

"There's always another fire," he said. I guess so. White hot rage, eating up everything its path, my skin a battlefield after the fact. I've only ever been a campfire, never anyone's hearth.

"That makes me sad," I say but my tone is empty, no energy left in me to back my words up. Maybe it doesn't but I just know that it should. "You alone?" I ask.

No twins, no Kody reaching out for me, no Blue to make smile with a silly face. That's probably a good thing, it's really cold out. I'm sat in front of the fire but I feel like I can't hold in the warmth.

It also means no Charlie. I loosen a little further. The woman hates me but won't say it. Maybe that's why Curt's couch is my favourite, I love the look on her face in the morning when she realizes I'm still there.

I blow smoke in the opposite direction of Curt and the wind takes it away. He's still just standing there, awkward, looming, handsome Curt. "Didn't think you'd still be here," he says, tone built to cut, and I smile again.

He thought of me.

"Solstice night is my favourite," I tell him. I move over slightly on the sand, as if I have to make room for him when there's open beach all around, and pat the spot beside me. "I guess I don't want it to be over." It's the warmest place I could hope to be, beats the alley I slept in last night by a mile.

Part of me is scared that Curt won't sit, that he'll turn away and leave me here alone. I don't know why that's a problem, I thought I was alone before he came around the fire anyway. I try to think of what I can give him to make him stay but all I have is the spliff pinched between my fingers so I hold it up in silent offering.

I know it's sad, the way I unravel a little bit faster when Curt is around. It's not supposed to be this way, I'm allowed to love and be loved by so many things but not by him. I know that.

But when he sits beside me in the sand the joy of him being there is almost too much to bear and another tear rolls slowly down my cheek. He appeared right when I wanted him most. It's like I've dreamed him up and for a moment I'm not entirely certain that isn't what happened. My hold on reality is often fragile at best.

After a moment I decide not to worry about that, here in actuality or not, I'll always take him as he is.

Curt asks me if I wonder what my life would be if I could be someone else before quickly retracting his question. I turn away from him, using the pretence of taking a drag on the joint as my alibi. I just don't want him to see my face and see it on me, the way I carry sadness like a shield and the longing behind it.

Always.

I learned already a long time ago though that people like me, we better not think about those things. I'm going to die young, whether it's from exposure or the drugs I don't really know, but I'm counting on it. I don't know how to explain that to Curt, though I bet he's already guessed. When I showed up in the neighborhood, I came with my scars all already grown pink.

He tries to change the subject and I let him. I don't press people, if I do they become cold to me and that's pain. But that puts me between a rock and a hard place because when people start asking me questions I get antsy. One day someone's gonna look at me and know how to ask about the hard things and then that's when I'll really break.

"Guess it's kinda like Christmas for me," I say, joint still between my lips. I play with the sand, scoop it up and then let the wind take it from my open palm. "Warm all night and you're here, maybe." Except maybe he's not and I just want him to be so he is. Not going to worry about it.

I'm quiet for a moment, trying to work my mouth into a smile because I'm supposed to be happy. It's easier with weed in my system but winter is hard and part of me always wants to just let Curt see the pieces of me no one else gets. Can't really do that though, there's not much left there.

"Who would you be?" I smile and pass the joint back, "You gotta tell me, it's Christmas."

I let him have his time to think because he always gives me mine. My face is all hot from the fire, that shiny kind of hot where you know you're probably singing all the hair of your skin but you don't want to pull away. I can't remember the last time I was this warm. I think I'd climb into the woodpile and make a home there if knew that it wouldn't burn me alive.

There's nothing to fiddle with while Curt has the joint and I'm all done with the sand. I could think, I guess, but it's not something I normally like to do. There's too many things waiting for me in the back of my mind.

So the quiet makes me antsy. I ball the hand that he can't see up into a fist and let it go again, over and over, waiting for the feeling to settle. How can my body be this empty and this full all at the same time? It's near painful, it's fireflies under my skin, sparking out the minute I try to catch them.

I feel like this a lot around Curt, it's kind of a high all in itself but it scares me a little. I want it to end but I want it to never stop and sometimes I forget how addicted to agony I am.

It just feels so much like being alive. I think it's all I've ever been chasing.

"I'd still pick this." It's not until he says it that I realize all this time I've been holding my breath.

And he's still speaking but his words are getting lost in the crackling of the logs burning alive in the fire and the sound of waves hitting the beach. I press my palm hard against my chest, waiting for my lungs to start working again so that I can draw in air, so that the pain can end.

I'm so stupid.

I dig my palm in deeper against the thin fabric of my costume and though I can feel the pressure on my bones it's not enough to keep my heart pumping. It feels sharp, heavy, like I've fallen off a tightrope and all the air has been knocked out of my lungs.

Of course he'd pick his pretty little house and his pretty little family over anything else and it's almost funny how much I want to laugh about it.

Another tear rolls down my cheek, and then another follows after it, trying too hard to keep up. I wipe them away while he's not looking then finally breathe in, this long, shuddering thing and I forgot that's what crying's like sometimes. I used to be a lot better at quiet tears, once upon a time when my hands were smaller and I had a christmas tree.

But I guess Curt saw the shudder and mistook it for something else because a moment later his sweater is over my shoulders. I didn't know my back was cold until the wool, warm from his body is laying across it. I raise a hand and pull the sweater tighter around my neck, pushing myself back into its warmth and the scent of dried sea salt and Curt's cologne.

It's not fair that he does these kinds of things for me, he makes me want to stick around the neighbourhood too much and this sweet kindness is addicting too.

Time ticks and I'm waiting for a shoe to drop, the moment when Curt will stand up and tell me that he has to get home to his family and I'll smile and wave him off. He'll take his sweater and I'll be here, trapped until the temperature rises and longest night ends.

"What about you," he asks me.

I don't really know about me.

Except I do, I knew it the moment he asked. It's just something I don't think I can convey without having to tell him more about me than I can. The problem with all of this, with me and my silly stupid heart, is i want him to love me in a way i don’t even know how to be loved.

And it aches so good, this useless longing, I want to hold onto it for forever.

I reach over and take the blunt back. It's become short between his fingers but I don't mind the sting of the end. And I won't tell him my answer, about how sometimes when I'm sitting on his living room couch in the middle of the night I pretend that I belong there.

"It's not about the money," I tell him, smiling again. "I just like making them happy, you know?"

I think that he does.

And it's a little about the money, a little about the medicine cabinets in the houses of the parties I clown at.

The wind picks up, the fire flickers in it, snapping back and forth like an untethered sail. I shiver, this time for real.

"You have to go soon, don't you?" I ask.

And I wish I was better at keeping the sorrow out of my voice.