Rule #17

A visit from her love goes terribly awry.

Rule #17

She was leaving.
 She wants to leave me.
 Carson’s stomach was turning as Anne’s words sank in.
 “Why do you want to go?” she croaked. “Is something wrong with Dani?”
 Anne was silent as she cradled Carson’s head against her chest. Anne’s thin, tan legs were mottled in the moonlight that streamed through the broken blinds.
 “Why. Do you want. To leave.” She bit off the words angrily.
 “Iwannagopartyinalannawithsims.”
 Carson hoped she had misheard, because what she thought she heard didn’t make any logical sense.
 “What?” she whispered.
 Carson felt Anne swallow under her ear. “I want…to go party with Sims in Atlanta.”
 She hadn’t been mistaken. Her stomach, her heart, and her eyes clinched tight as the world suddenly seemed to close in and spin around her. She wanted to throw up, but there was a lump in her throat. The tears that spilled might have been from anger or sadness; she couldn’t say. The sob that escaped was mostly a laugh of disbelief.
 Anne still held her close, combing her fingers through Carson’s long, dark hair.
 When anger had cleared everything else away, Carson jerked away and rolled to the other side of the bed.
 “Stop!” she hissed. Anne’s hand withdrew from her shoulder. It didn’t add up. “When did you last see him?” She was surprised when her voice didn’t crack, when it came out solid and formidably frigid.
 “Baby, don’t—”
 “When did you last see him?”
 “Friday before I got in the taxi to the airport.” Her voice was so quiet, but Carson heard it clearly over the rapid thud of her own heart.
 “When did you last see me?”
 “I don’t—January.”
 “So it’s been a while.”
 “Baby, please don’t be like this!”
 “Be like what! You’re asking me if I want to let you leave! NO! Why the hell would I want you to leave after waiting months to see you?”
 She had never felt like this before. Her hands trembled violently—she had read about being so angry that you shook, but it had never happened. She clasped them around her knees and scrunched herself up. The metal ohm on her left ring finger she spun around with her thumb, hoping it would give her peace and clarity. It didn’t. She would have screamed if she hadn’t been afraid of waking up her roommate. Deep breaths in through her nose, out through her mouth. In. Out. Scream. Shout.
 “When do you plan on leaving?”
 “Nothing’s set now. But I would hang out with him Thursday and Friday; I’d leave Wednesday.”
 It was either Saturday night or early Sunday morning. They would lose three days together. Two nights. As if the week wasn’t already short enough. She had one more question to determine whether or not she needed her running shoes.
 “You know that you’re going to have to pay to cancel your ticket and buy another one?”
 “Yeah.” Still a whisper, Carson knew she was afraid. She wasn’t going to do anything to make her feel better.
 “You’re willing to pay upwards of $200 to leave me.” The shaking started again.
 “Yes.”
 “Alright.” Carson nodded, more to herself. She bit her lip but the tears kept coming. She jumped up from her bed and went to the closet. She put on shorts and a sports bra and dug out her shoes. She didn’t bother with socks.
 “Where are you going?” Anne’s voice was louder with her alarm.
 “Out. For a walk or a run. You can come with me if you want, but I need out.”
 Anne didn’t follow her out the door. Down the sloped driveway to the street. “I feel like I’m miles from here in other towns with lesser names,” said her earplugs in the style of Anberlin as her feet sought her old summer half-mile loop. I wish I were miles from here, she thought. So does she, a snide voice in her head commented.
“You are the patron saint of lost causes.” Are we a lost cause? Her calves limbered and her thighs were warming up in the cool night. She sped up.
“Patron Saint, are we all lost like you?” We aren’t lost yet. She hasn’t decided… But Carson knew just as well that the point was very likely already decided in Anne’s mind. And that just made her run faster. The cool night air whipped away the sweat on her back before it could bead and trickle down to the band of her shorts.
 By the end of the loop, she was sprinting up the last hill. Her lungs screamed at her for trying to cry and run at the same time. So she stopped breathing. She held her breath until she hit the stop sign. 
Stop.
There were still four minutes of her song to go, so she used them to walk back to her cul-de-sac and catch her breath. Her throat was sore.
She had to let Anne go.
She had a poster that had the rules to a happy life. Number seventeen said true love is when your love for each other exceeds your need for each other. She squeezed her ring again. That damn butterfly. Love it enough to let it free. If it wants to, it’ll come back. What use is a damn butterfly anyway?
 She was ashamed. Until now, she had been so certain she wanted to marry this woman. If she wanted to justify herself and her feelings, she had to do it. Had to be strong enough to. I’m not all talk, so if I really love her….
This was going to take another couple laps. Smaller ones, though. After a couple laps around the little cul-de-sac, Carson hung over and reached for her toes. She breathed. And breathed. Then she straightened up and went inside.
Anne was laying down, her face away from the door. Carson brushed her soft shoulder to no avail and climbed in bed. Curled away from Anne instead of snuggled up to her, Carson realised the anger was gone.
 And in its place came the hurt.
#
 “I’m gonna go check out flights, call Sims, and go to sleep, ‘kay, babe? Night, Keith.”
 Carson looked at Anne and fought to keep her lip from curling. She couldn’t say anything. She didn’t even want to help, but she knew Anne would need it. She had never booked plane tickets by herself before and it scared her. The more Carson realised she was doing “for love,” the more she questioned this exalted state of being. Anne bent down to kiss her goodnight and Carson’s jaw was stiff, her lips barely puckered when she reciprocated.
 “So she’s leaving you early?” Keith asked when Anne had vanished into Carson’s bedroom with her laptop. “How do you feel about that?” He had come over to meet the woman who had replaced him in Carson’s affections. Until the other day, Carson had been excited for the meeting.
 She sneered even as she fought to swallow down tears. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
 “Alright, alright. Fair enough. You sure you wouldn’t have been better off with me?”
 Glares to daggers and Keith would have been a dead man. Very dead. And left to rot.
 “Keith, you strung me along like a puppy and played me with another girl.” Four years and it still rankled. Then she started dating girls.
 “Hey, I apologised. We got past that, didn’t we?”
Far enough past it to stay this close. “Whatever.”
 “I really am sorry, Car. Hey, don’t cry—come here.” The pads of his thumbs were rough against her cheeks as he brushed the trickles away. But he didn’t move his hands when her face was dry. “What does she know about us?”
 “Everything. Even what happened before senior year.” Carson could feel the spiders crawling up her back. They left trails of wrongness. She leaned into his hand.
 “I thought we agreed to keep that secret.”
 “You asked me if I could keep a secret. That was your question. And I wasn’t dating her then.”
 “You’ve always got to find a loophole, don’t you?”
 “Your hands, please?” She started to pry them from her face.
 The kiss was so sudden that Keith’s lips hit her teeth before they met her lips. The spiders crawled faster. But she wanted to lean into him. Wanted to push against him, to see if she could match him. Someone to oppose. Someone who could take her flailing fists. So she pushed.
 She felt him strain to sit up under her force before he gave in and lay back onto the couch. Anne’s chin was never this rough. But she couldn’t grow a goatee. Her shoulders were never this hard. Carson liked the softness of her arms. Her ring caught on Keith’s shirt as she trailed her hand up his side. Ohm...y God. Shitshitshitshitshit.
 “Stop.”
 Barely a rasp, he had to lean closer to hear her. She shook her head and crawled off him, off of the couch. She was just shaking her head clear when—
 “Carson?” Anne’s voice rose rapidly through the scales.
 F**k. Carson looked to Keith, who took the cue. Just a nod and he let himself out. Tail between his legs. But Carson didn’t really want him there anyway. No interference, no one watching the show.
 “Are you f*****g kidding me?!”
 “Annie—”
 “Don’t f*****g ‘Annie’ me, Carson! What the hell was that?” Carson was glad her roommate had flown out that morning for her spring break party and wouldn’t be upset by Anne’s yelling. Glad, too, that they had kept their apartment sparsely furnished. Nothing to throw.
 “Don’t cut me off! I don’t know what it was, okay?”
 “No, not f*****g okay! What were you guys doing, Carson? Was that f*****g okay?”
 The one time she had done the right thing, she got screwed anyway. What did I do wrong in my past lives? They ringed around the living room like stalking lions.
 “You know what I was doing?” Carson’s hands were trembling again and matching angry tears leaked from brown and almost hazel eyes. Carson remembered when she had first found the green in Anne’s eyes, when the sunlight had smacked her in the face just right...so long ago. But there was no sun and the light bulbs didn’t have the same effect. Wet brown and almost brown eyes, crinkled in rage. “I was with a friend who understands that it’s not okay to leave your girlfriend to party with someone else when you don’t know when you’ll see each other again!”
 “That’s not even the same f*****g thing!”
 “No, it’s not, but damn it, Annie! Come on!” Carson stopped walking and tangled her fists in her hair. Anne liked it long. Maybe she would cut it. “You’re really leaving me. You just saw this guy a couple days ago!” She hated how whiny her voice sounded, like she was begging. But she wanted to fall to her knees. Her tears weren’t angry anymore. “I would have told you.”
 “That’s not the point. You shouldn’t have done it anyway.” Anne’s voice was again tolerable to the ear. There was an edge to it, though, that Carson wasn’t used to hearing. Anne stopped in front of her.
 “You shouldn’t be leaving. If you weren’t leaving, it wouldn’t have happened.”
 “F*****g lame excuse.”
 “Not an excuse, sweetheart. I didn’t mean—.” The truth sounded so phony. I just couldn’t stop it until it was obviously too late.
Carson felt awkward with her arms folded. It couldn’t have been proper decorum for her to touch Anne, to want to hold her, but it came more naturally. When she tried, when she went in with both arms, the taller woman collapsed, sobbing, onto her shoulder. Carson could feel the tears soaking through her t-shirt to her shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Annie,” she whispered, and she kissed her head through her puff of curly hair. “Please, trust me.”
Annie lifted her head and stared at her. For once, Carson had no idea what Anne was thinking.
 Their kiss was not a happy one, but even so, it made Carson feel whole. Her chin was smooth; her arms rested on Carson’s shoulders; her smell was fruity and feminine; she tasted—
 “You taste like him.” Her venom stung Carson’s eyes and stopped her heart.
 Even with the windows closed and the covers up, the night was frigid.
#
 “I can’t change the ticket now. It was too late a couple days ago when—” Anne didn’t finish.
 “Would you change it even if you could?” Carson’s smile wasn’t really a smile, just a crooked, half-baked thing. Not even enough effort to turn it into a smirk. When Anne didn’t answer again, another sob crept up. The effort to hold it in turned her anti-smile into a rictus of pain before she could control herself.
 Anne’s eyes were dry.
 They had been the entire ride. Only Carson’s were flooded over and over again. She could barely see well enough to drive. Lines blurred. Signs blurred. Speeding cars blurred. It seemed like Tegan and Sara only sung one song the whole drive. “Right now, I feel so empty...”
And so it was in the airport. Anne wheeled her suitcase while Carson slung the rest of the baggage over her shoulders. All civil smiles for the tickets and the baggage handlers, but when they were alone again and the goodbyes needed to be said—
“I love you, Anne.” She didn’t flinch away from Carson’s fingers. After more than a year, PDAs had finally ceased to faze her. Sunlight streamed through the window-walls. Her eyes were hazel again.
“Stop crying, baby.”
 “I c-can’t. I’m going to miss you, damn it.” “...It’s hard to believe that I’ll never see you again...”
 “I’m gonna miss you too.”
 “No, you aren’t. You’re going to go party with your friend.”
 Anne huffed through her nose and shifted her weight to her left hip.
 “Fine.” Carson didn’t feel like arguing in the airport. “I just...” She twisted the ring around her finger before pulling it off. “Here. When you never want to hear from me again, send it back, okay?” Carson gestured for Anne’s hand.
During the three seconds Anne hesitated, Carson could feel her face heating. But she was too dark to blush like Anne did. And then she held out her hand. The ohm had fit comfortably on Carson’s ring finger. It slid snugly on Anne’s middle. Such little fingers. “...You’ve changed me so much...”
“Go catch your plane, sweetheart.”
They clung to each other for a few more moments until Anne pushed Carson away and held her by the hips. She kissed Carson again. None of the anger, none of the venom. All of the resignation. “...But baby, it’s so hard leaving you...” 
Carson had brushed her teeth at least forty times since that night. Not counting after meals.
 “I love you, too, Car.” Her smooth, small fingers flicked away Carson’s newest tears, and then she was gone.
“...And maybe this was the only way.”
 Carson shoved her hands as deep into her back pockets as they would go as she dragged herself back to her car. After yesterday’s icy night, the sun had come. It was tolerable in two t-shirts and jeans. So bright. Too bright. But she had to let her go. Her hand felt naked. Embarrassingly so. Her left fingers curled in her pocket. Same damn song.
 “...’Cause some day, I’ll never see you again.”


 

Author's Note

Sorry for the spacing, working on fixing it. >.<