Found Missing

We lie; wrapped in the heat of his bed sheets, the taste of each other on our own tongues and the dim set of the dying day on our skin. I stare at him from where I'm raveled in his arms, wondering if the perk of his nose has always been so perfect and if his lashes have always been so black. The heavy rise and fall of his chest has almost sent me to sleep before he says, offhand, "You're my favorite."
"Favorite what?" I ask, confused and drowsy all at once.

"Well, honey," He smiles, smug, turning on his side to face me. "You're my favorite everything. Fill in the blank; I left it at favorite for a reason."

I bite my lip. I try not to think about how Martha was once his favorite, perhaps favorite everything, as well. Instead I think about how I've never before noticed how small and precious his teeth are behind that crooked grin he wears so well.

"You're my favorite, too." I whisper.

I close my eyes, only for a second, I think, but when I open them the room is dark and Gerard's clock reads midnight. I remember that, knowing him, the clock is probably broken, but nevertheless it's still late. Too late to leave the house - via Anne's warnings anyway. I squint at the mess of raven hair next to me, listening as gentle snores sound gruff from the person beneath it. I feel a familiar surge of heat through my stomach; one that I should be far used to feeling around this person by now. It's real, so real and funnily enough I can't make sense of it.

I shift, feeling the heat spread to my cheeks, suddenly longing to breathe fresh air. I pull my socks on along with my sweat-shirt and leave him searching aimlessly for me through his sleep. I don't look back until I'm half way through his neighborhood, knowing that it could never be too belated to slip back into the sickly sweet of his bed, knowing that beneath all this, seemingly faultless pretense, there is every reason to find sin.

I ignore the warnings Anne has left for me in the back of my mind. There is nothing dangerous about this lousy town; I think it's only dangerous if you're stupid and naive and, perhaps I'm becoming too head strong, I no longer feel so candid. I find myself at Martha's grave; standing before her with clenched fists and rapid breath.

"Why the fuck did you have to go?" I hiss, knowing that of course only the night time air will be able to listen. "Why have you fucked everything up?" I carry on, still, until I'm screaming into nothing.

"What do you want from me?" I cry, fingernails digging half moons into my palms. Can she not see how she has set everything off balance? Everything is not alright, nothing makes sense, and the consequences of her actions are breaking my heart in too many ways. "What do you want?"

I gasp, deflated and rigid in one. A man walks his dog across the silhouette path, I feel his stare burn even through the starless night. "What?" I shout at him over the cemetery. He ducks his head, scurrying away and I feel guilty at once.

I'm becoming more tainted by the day; it's as if I were born to be wrong. Gerard can't save me. He can't, I know this. I know this better than anyone does, I know this better than he does even when he had been the one to say it.

"I can't save you." He'd said to me; brutal words and a silk touch that reinforced what I already know too well. I don't want to be saved; I told him this. I'm not his baffled blonde bombshell; I'm not his damsel in distress - my hair is black and my knees are scraped up and I'm cynical and bitter. He's far from my knight in shining armor, still, he's the only being who has ever had the capability to boil me down to the vulnerable girl I thought I'd buried ten years ago - perhaps I'm not so deadpan after all.

These are the thoughts that paint me into the late morning with grey sky windows and my own bed for a rare change. I pull what was once many years ago the spare bedroom duvet around my shoulders and glare longingly at the note Gerard has left on my pin board from when his minus of keys left him with nowhere but here to sleep.

'It's seven a.m and I'm still drunk and all I can smell is your strawberry shampoo.' It reads, scrawled writing barely eligible, 'I'm going home before that smell becomes my hungover smell, I don't want that, strawberry girl.'

He doesn't like to be here anymore, I can't say I blame him in the slightest. Martha's room is just across the landing space; still perfectly decorated with Winnie the Pooh wallpaper. If that wasn't enough there's Anne's inquisitive stares to brunt. She's standing in my door way now; arms crossed, head tilted, tea in one hand and those eyes that bore into my moral sense like razor lights.

'You and my daughters boyfriend.' They sigh. 'You're falling for him, aren't you.' They say, "Traitorous."

I can't bring myself to look at her when she does this, so I don't. Soon enough she purses her lips and she leaves me alone with my haywire love letters and the remnants from yesterday on his mothers sofa and without a clue as to what I am expected to do.