A Tub of Cold Water

Halfway down her block, I listened to her screams and muffled cries. Halfway down her block, I could picture the bruises blackening her porcelain skin. Halfway down her block, I thought about charging back to her house and kicking the door in. But, halfway down her block is where my feet stayed planted to the concrete of the sidewalk. My eyes locked onto the white toes of my Converse, scrawled black with meaningless words of hate and designs.

I stood down the block, the frigid winds pushing me around as I closed my eyes to the soon-to-be-familiar sound of her cries for forty minutes before all went silent. Silence was a loud thing at two in the morning, mocking and screaming and growling without making a single noise.

Something in me charged like cables on a car because my feet spun around on their own accord and off I walked back to her house. I was a silent thing, like the night, like two in the morning as I sloshed my way through the freshly cut grass of her front lawn.

I could hear her pull herself from the ground and I could hear her father throw her into the door of her bedroom. I could hear her slip down the stairs and I could hear her skid to a stop at the foot of the stairs. And then, well—then, I could hear nothing again, like the night, like two in the morning, like me.

I made my way to her bedroom window and pushed it up with little difficulty just before I slid in and landed with a bounce on my feet. I saw her lying against the last two steps of the staircase. It was easy for me to see the broken rib under her shirt and the blood of her cheekbone slipping down her face and into the light grey sweatshirt. Her body was painted black and blue and red and white, I mentally titled her The Broken Starlight.

From where I stood, I was hidden by the shadow clouding her bedroom, but I could see her father walk and stop at the threshold of her bedroom. Most of my body begged for the man to stay at the top of the stairs, but there was a large sum of my subconscious that begged me to make a noise so he’d come down to investigate. And when he came down to investigate, I’d kill him. He didn’t deserve jail time, he didn’t deserve a life sentence. Death was his best friend, and it’d be the friend that dragged him under water with little to no difficulty.

But, to my dismay, my disappointment, my rage, and my pride, he slammed the door hard and locked it. His retreating footsteps didn’t belong to the night, didn’t belong to the two in the morning silence, didn’t belong to the shadows, didn’t belong to the stars. They belonged to flames of red under the earth, they belonged to child molesters and grueling men of great consequences.

I tore my eyes away from the door when the Broken Starlight twitched her head to the left and released a muffled cry of nothing short of agony. I moved toward her slowly, so my footsteps stayed hidden to the night. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her, how frail and broken she was in her rigid stance against the stairs and how painful that must be for her bruised and broken ribs.

Bending down on my knees, I swooped my arms under her and lifted her slowly, like a helicopter airlifts a frozen body. I rewarded her with a smile she couldn’t see when, instead of screaming in a screech of pain, she lulled her head into my chest and relented a whisper.

“Skye,” her voice faded and a frown replaced the smile, “I didn’t—lean the kitchen.”

I wanted to shake my head, tilt her head up, and make her look into my eyes. I wanted her to know that it wasn’t pretty boy Skye who came to her white-knight rescue. It was the shadow of the night Sawyer who swooped in through the window and carried you to bed. It was my scent you buried your face in, my arms you curled into, my chest you used as a pillow. Skye was a mythological character of the daytime. There was no room in all of the hours of the night for good ole’ Skye to birth into.

But I didn’t. I let her think whatever she would at this time, let me be whatever she wanted at this time. So, I whispered, “I know, baby, I know.”

Like a magician, I floated my way down into a lying position where I could sit my back against the head post and lie her head down just above my heart, listen to its thump-thump if it’d make her sleep easier. I finally got to roll my fingers through her hair, finally got to inhale her scent, finally got to feel the smooth, flawless skin of her hand and her arms and her cheeks like I’d always wanted to.

I remembered the first time I saw her. She was watching me from the other side of the cafeteria, her eyes roaming over me from my toes to my nose before they fell down to my scars. I remembered thinking that she was another tally mark to add to my fan club, and how disappointed I was that she would reduce herself to such dribble.

I remembered how I didn’t care if she was or wasn’t a part of this little club, I just wanted to hear those plumpish lips speak my name—speak anything, truly. When she would ask for me to get the measurements up at the preparation table, I could feel my icy heart melting just a smidge. She was an angel of the night, her eyes mimicked it, her skin mimicked it, and her voice was like a nightly breeze on a summer’s night. She was like the moon, with her starlight complexion and small, almost invisible freckles that danced up her arms and the dark birthmark on her neck, they were like stars.

I remembered the word that I used to explain how she affected me—mystifying. I remembered how it rolled off my tongue and hung airborne between me and my bedroom walls. And, I also remembered what made me put the offsetting, overly considerable distance between me and her:

One moment I was smiling at her, picturing her beneath the stars and the moon, just to watch her glow like an angel of the evening. And the next, I was slammed into the inside wall of the bathroom I was close to before. My head crashed off the thick concrete outlined bricks and I closed my eyes until I felt that my vision was back to normal.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, friend?” A dark-haired, dark-eyed, taller and much more buff than me boy said to me through clenched teeth and a growl in his undertone.

“What I was doing doesn’t concern you in the least, I assure you, friend. Now, run along and let me the fuck go.” I retorted, my voice thick and wheezy from when his arm crashed across my throat.

I could see his eyes darken before he growled, “Anything you do that concerns her, always concerns me. Get that now, or I’ll off you.”

“She’s not a piece of property. She has her own mind, you fuck.” I reasoned in a half voice, since the better half of my voice was being choked from my throat.

“Just don’t get too comfortable, you depressed shit. Look at yourself, look at your arms. Her life is already getting more and more upstaged without the help of you and all of your baggage. Leave her alone, or I’ll make you. Get it now, I mean it.”
Once done and emphasized, he shoved me deep into the wall and left me to stay held up by way of the concrete brick.

I never saw her walk down the hall without him; always attached to his arm like a prize piece he’d won at the gallery opening. It sickened me. I later found out that his name was Skye Maverick Johnson and that he lived a fairytale life, where mine was nothing but Cinderella with no hope of Prince Charming. Only because my Prince Charming—if you could even call her that—had found royalty elsewhere.

As I lay with her, pretending to be her fairytale love, her bruised hands grab fistfuls of my shirt and her breathing picks up into double time, quick and shallow. And from the shallow pits of her voice, I heard two words. Sawyer and please.

I stared at her; my eyes locked to the crown of her head that glistens in the moonlight, like she’s the fallen star, the lost princess. She’s so fragile and meek and yet she had the power to say Goliath’s name like it was a prayer on her lips, like it was a sonnet of love, like it was a dying wish.

“Yes?” I whispered against her ear after carefully leaning down to do so.

She rubbed her head into my chest like her whole body wasn’t aching and her ribs weren’t cracked, like she wasn’t beaten into a forced sleep. “Smile.”

It was that simple of a command, that gentle of a plea, that sweet bid of an innocent want. She wanted me to smile, pleaded and commanded the act from me, but even if I did, she wouldn’t see me do it. Still, my lips pulled into a smile at her demand only to wish that she was still awake to see it.

I don’t know how long I sat there smiling up at the ceiling, my hand rolling through her hair and gracing the nape of her neck before starting over again. I don’t know how long I listened to the rhythm of her breathing, it must have been ages, but it felt like minutes. It was a slow agonizing assault on my brain, sweet and building until a small tap broke everything.

I looked down and saw Skye slipping onto his feet, his body moving cautiously, blending into the shadows even though he didn’t belong to them. When he finally reached the bed, I could see his eyes widen with dark delight in mine. He was breathing harsh and loud as his hands balled into tight, threatening fists.

“Quiet now, you’ll wake her.” I scolded through my smirk.

His eyes widened further, if at all possible, before he growled so low and huskily, he could have been a dog sputtering. “What are you doing here, you little shit?”

“That’s none of your business. It’s between Aubrey and me; you place no part in our little engagement.” I said as I started to ease her from my body, but little Aubrey had something else in mind by the way she clung to me like life itself.

Skye rolled his eyes and scoffed rather loudly, or loud enough to enforce a groan from her. Still, I eased my way from beneath her and snuck a kiss against her forehead. When she was flat against her bed, a rigid inhale climbed through her lips and she curled into a loose ball.

Skye’s eyes locked onto little Starlight in all her dormant glory as I hovered over her, my eyes flickering between the two of them. Skye’s voice broke the nightly silence, though, with his buoyant sunlit voice, “How long have you been here?”

I pulled out my phone that sat deep and asleep in my pocket and flashed the time before I buried it once more in cloth and denim. A shrug hit my shoulders indifferently, “About an hour or so. Though, you do know that isn’t any of your business.”

His eyes crinkled a little in anger and truth before he sighed through a shaking head. “I knew this day would come. I really did.” He groused.

I shrugged without acknowledgement, my eyes locked down on the shining, battered star lying limply beneath a blanket while clutching her pillow into her like I was still beneath her. It was complementing in a way that words never truly could. I scoffed through unmoving lips, “No you didn’t.”

“No, I did.” Skye’s tone hardened to a point that was supposed to sound threatening and short-lived. He wasn’t threatening and I wasn’t fazed by his quick temper.

My eyes jerked to his like it was the last thing on this god given earth that I wanted to do, and trust me—it wasn’t far off from the truth. “No, Skye, you didn’t. You thought the two of you would have this bond that could never be broken and she’d love you and have your kids and you’d treat her like she was the only thing in this world. You thought that somewhere down the line that whatever this little crush she has on me would dwindle and die and become nothing more than a sad little memory and soon she’d look at you and smile before saying, ‘Sawyer Who?’.”

He stared at me with a hard line where a sunshiny smile would reside, a flashy grin that reflected all of the light on this earth and blinded you. “It’ll still happen. You can’t stay up to par in this lifestyle, in this daylight.”

“She doesn’t belong to you.” I breathed while my back straightened in a primitive instinct to show that I was well more than man enough to throw him into the hardwood. “So, stop beating your fists off your chest like she does.”

With that, I brushed past him and pushed the window up. Just as I was about to climb out and back into the night, Skye’s voice echoed through the small space between us like he was screaming at a short distance. “Sawyer, live in your fantasy all you want, but she’ll never love you. She’ll never have it in her to love all of you in your fucked-up, scar-bearing, life-shattering depression. Understand that now.”

Nodding, I gritted my teeth and climbed from the room before closing the window as softly as I could. I moved my way with white-knuckled fists at my sides through the grass until my feet found the middle of the street. Just as my feelings became overwhelmingly real, rain started to boom and crash from the sky, shattering and cluttering over all of the stars.

The starlight was gone. The moon-like spotlight had dwindled behind all of the clouds and Skye’s words had magically become real, even if I didn’t believe them. Just for a moment, I got to feel her skin, taste it between my lips, smell her hair, and hear her name say my name like it was Heaven Above instead of hellfire below.

Just for a moment, she was mine. Now, the moment has passed as I make my way back to the place I’m supposed to call home.