It Lights Up the Night [Birdie/Leland]

Leland Durrow

And it all comes down to you

Well, you know that it does, well

Lightning strikes maybe once, maybe twice

Oh and it lights up the night

I like the way her body is so easy to hold in my hands. There’s comfort in the curve of her hip, one hand at her back, me tilted forward and crashing into her like surf over sand. We shift across the old couch and it squeaks, two of us raw and exposed. Vulnerable. A twenty-year itch that still goes on, directionless but somehow finding its way back once again. And I can’t help but turn myself over to the pull of her, of the way Birdie could feel so strongly.

Because it’s not just about whether or not she loved me. It’s the little pieces of her that always made it worthwhile, that she could be passionate about all the little things that they were important, too. Maybe she didn’t think that I noticed, or that I didn’t tell her. But I loved the way that she would get so worked up over all the things that I couldn’t do – is that insane?

To want someone to want me so badly that they’re willing to scream themselves raw, because I think it means that they care about me. That she wants me to be a better person so much that she’s willing to get red in the face, slam the door, to carry on in front of all the people we don’t know in the street or the supermarket, because that means that at least she gives a shit. No one in my life ever gave so much as a shit about me, not like she has.

And it makes me want to hold her, to tell her that we’re just – messed up, we don’t know who we are and that’s okay, too. That we’re not the way we’re meant to be and that point that we were looking for all those years ago never existed in the first place. That when we were kids, sitting next to her on the couch or her watching me play guitar in that shitty band, when we used to talk about the future it wasn’t one on a map that either of us had. We got dealt a shit hand and we’re lucky to still be here and to have something to hold onto.

God, I wish I could tell her how much I missed her.

I wish I could tell her that I’d give anything to not have to think about what we’ve been through.

So I press against her lips, soft, and drink in the girl that I knew. The one that’s willing to throw the rest of the world out and let me in, shifting her body warm against mine, to show me that there’s still something there. That there’s less empty space between us than we cared to admit. That she’s still mine, and I’m hers, for better or fucking worse, the two of us drifting together.

She pulls the beanie off my head and I bury myself in her neck. I forget that someday I’ll regret this. I welcome the gentle space underneath her ear, and push back her hair.

‘Leland I – I’m tired. I’m so fucking tired.’ Her hands send a tingle down my spine when she brushes back my hair.

“Yeah?” I whisper back, and move my hands to wrap around her.

‘Just tell me you love me. Please. I don’t care if you mean it or not. I just— I want to hear it.’

“Birdie, I,” It’s like ice water down my back, I have to pause to catch my breath. “I, you know I care about you, I,” but the word doesn’t come, just breathlessness. Silence in the middle of her living room, save for the pitter patter of rain on the windows.

It’s the same old story, it’s the same old fucking story, Leland. It’s, you’re going to sit here and want to be with her because you’re lonely, because you know how she makes you feel, because you’ve only ever had each other for twenty fucking years. And you can look at her and tell her that she’s beautiful and you can have sex with her on this couch and in her bathroom shower, and then maybe on her bed in the morning but you know, you know god damn well that the two of you are one match short of a five alarm five.

You know she doesn’t deserve someone like you, that you’ll wake up tomorrow and she’ll be there in the light of the morning with messy hair across her pillow and breathing so soft and you’ll think to yourself, what the fuck am I doing here.

What the fuck am I doing here?

And you’ll leave her. Alone.

Not because you have anything better. You don’t’ have a damn thing in your life, not a single thing, that compares to her. But you know that you can’t do it. Not now, not if you couldn’t do it when you had Damaris. You can’t make up for the mistakes and you haven’t changed, you’re playing pretend. You were always good at pretend, weren’t you? Yeah, the honest one, blunt with his feelings and gross. Someone that didn’t give a shit about what other people thought or if you hurt their feelings because you were being honest.

Is that you, Leland?

“Birdie,” I whisper. It’s hard to breathe, and I kiss her neck again. “I…”

You can’t fucking help yourself.

“I love you. I love you so fucking much. Don't you know that?”

Fleetwood Mac