“Record. With my parents, me, you...whoever. I want to call Elizabeth Cantwell and perform in front of however many people she can get to come. I want to live with you and never stop kissing you. I just want to go.” As I talk, Bo’s smile widens with his eyes. He squeezes my hand.
“November Harris, are you asking me to run away and play the guitar with you?”
“Maybe.” I shrug.
“What happened to Ms. “I’m-not-that-kind-of-girl” and “I don’t fly by the seat of my pants,” he teases me about the first in-depth conversation we ever had in my apartment months ago.
“You happened. You reminded me that I’ve been that kind of girl all along.”
Bo leans forward, sweeping my hair aside, and resting his hand on the back of my neck. His soft lips brush against mine, teasing me for a second before I lean in to meet him. He grants my tongue access to his hot mouth, and we sit, kissing, for several minutes as the sun sets in front of us.
“It would be a big move,” I tell the Pacific.
Bo pulls me into his embrace. “It would.”
“Do you like yurts?” I chuckle, nervous that I’ve dumped too much on him at once.
His finger lifts my chin. “I’d follow you to the beginning of time, to the end of time, and back, November. Just say when.”
I grab his face and kiss him softly before pulling away.
“When.”
Coming April 2013… In the Stillness
A new work of contemporary fiction by Andrea Randall
Chapter 1
I exist, right?
The blood rolling haphazardly down my left forearm says I do. The blade in my right hand agrees. Sheryl Crow is so full of shit. The first cut most certainly is not the deepest. If you started with the deepest, where would you go from there?
I never thought I’d cut again, until I found myself thinking about it. I mean, I’ve thought about it a lot in the time that’s gone by since the last time I did—the time I thought, damn this is dumb. Yeah, I often thought a lot about how crazy that all was. Until I no longer had a choice. Until I found myself rifling through my bathroom cabinets trying to find a clean, sharp blade.
Eric’s been in the lab so much these days, that I feel trapped in a hell decorated with playdates and PBS. The release is euphoric. It’s just like the first time; only a little scarier since I know where this road can lead. I don’t think too far down that road as I deliberately carve three lines into my soft, shiny skin. It hurts at first. Like hell. But a second later it’s gone—just gone—and I’m left with a visual reminder for the rest of the day that I’m in control of my pain, anxiety, and fear.
Do I even fucking exist?
Ryker doesn’t exist anymore. I mean, he didn’t come home in a body bag like Lucas did, but he may as well have. They took his soul over there, fuckers,and left me with the breathing carcass. Then I left him. He’s married now, supposedly happy.
So am I. Married, that is.
I don’t think about him much anymore—that’s not what this is about. He’s just the first person I ever saw not exist while they were still walking the Earth.
Bang! Bang! Bang! The bathroom door rattles under the force of four-year-old fists.
“Mommy! Ollie pulled my hair!”
They’re always around.
I sigh, turn on the sink, and address the situation from behind the closed door. “Max, don’t tattle. Oliver, leave your brotheralone!”
God, is it too much to ask for it to be Kindergarten already?
My blood forms a candy cane pattern in the white porcelain sink. I stare at the cat as I wash my arm.
I never wanted to be a mother. My twenty-three-year-old graduate student self happily reminds me of that whenever I’m cleaning yogurt from the boys’ backs. Seriously, their backs. She had enough of my shit and left. Just packed right up and vacated the part of my spirit that mattered—that made me...me. That’s when my twenty-year old self started whispering that I could buy twelve razors for something like three dollars at Wal Mart. She’s a crazy bitch, but she’s right.
You buy them, bring them home, and break off the little line of safety plastic that prevents you from cutting the hell out of your legs. It really was no different than the last time I bought a bag of generic razors—except this time I had four-year-old twins in the cart.
I still can’t decide if that made the purchase easier or harder, seeing their faces, but here we are anyway, washing blood down the sink.
A few hours later I’m washing dinner dishes in our dishwasher-less kitchen, when Eric comes home.
“Hey, Baby, where are the boys?” his eyes scan our Amity Street apartment as he tosses his messenger bag carelessly on the couch.
I sigh, “Sleeping, Eric. It’s after seven. How was your day?”
“It was great, actually . . .” Eric launches into a series of events I should care about.