#and I put my favourite perfume on this past Thursday evening | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

alienhazy · 7 months

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Jude 1:6

When I was born, I suffered two strokes while being held by the doctor.

My mom tells me that that was what caused my paralysis; two strokes, back-to-back, resulting in permanent damage to my brain and body. I can't talk, can't use the bathroom by myself, can't move any part of my body besides my fucking eyelids. When you're trapped in your own body, while everyone around you treats you as if you've never had an intelligent thought in your life, you start to harbor some resentment to the very people trying to help you, even if you can't do anything about it.

As a kid, I was very alone. I was the only child, and my mom had had me out of wedlock, which meant that I didn't have a dad, either. You'd think that as a result of this I would be close to my mom, would love and trust her, and yeah, maybe back then that was true. She never talked down to me, never treated me like I was some brain dead vegetable, cared for me…

For a while.

I'm sitting in my room watching the sun come up after another sleepless night of beeping machines, blinking lights, and the hissing of my CPAP that I wasn't wearing, since Mom had gone to bed drunk for the third night this week and hadn't put it on me. I wasn't sleeping, so it wasn't like it mattered, but that didn't mean that I wasn't extremely mad about it—I could literally die, and had I gone to sleep I probably would've. Maybe that was what she wanted.

Had it been any other day besides Thursday, the sound of the key in the lock of the front door would've scared me a bit, since my mom didn't have any friends and I certainly didn't, either; however, I knew who it was, and as if on cue, my nurse Tonya could be heard making her way down the hallway towards my room, her keys jingling and hard-soled shoes tapping against the (once pretty) hardwood floors. She said something before she entered the room, but I couldn't make out what it was, squeaking of the door hinges announcing her arrival in time with her sweet, cheery voice greeting, "Good morning, Billie Willie!"

I wanted to be mad that she called me that, but I could never be mad at her. She was the nicest person I knew and took really good care of me, even if my mom gave her problems by insisting we didn't even need a nurse. Bitch. "Oh, you're up already! And looks like your mom took care of your CPAP, too. Ready for your bath?"

Although I could move my eyes, I didn't and continued to stare out the window, that aching, horrible, unending sadness that always came around during the night sitting like a weight in my chest, the only thing I could feel on that part of my body; from my right, Tonya came into view and blocked the window as she began unhooking me from my machines, her dark skin flawless as always, the pretty emerald of her makeup matching the scrubs she was wearing, along with the necklace that dangled in front of my face as she checked my intubator. I've always thought she was the most beautiful person I'd ever seen, and was secretly glad when her transfer to a different patient was canceled after they died—you didn't hear that from me, though. "How do you like my new perfume? Blink for me," She requested, and I did so, blinking twice to tell her that it smelled good, because it did. Tonya smiled and gave my nose a boop, which, if it'd been anyone besides her, I would be pissed, but I know she did it because that was just how she was. "Good, I'll put some on you after your bath."

Off we went to the bathroom, Tonya pushing me in my wheelchair out of the doorway and down the hall, past my mom's room, which had the door cracked open; inside, briefly, I could see her passed out on her bed, holding her stuffed dog with a bottle of coconut rum (her favourite) on the floor, the lid gone and half the contents of the bottle spilled out everywhere. Had I been able to, I would've sneered, but instead I returned my eyes to the wall, the pictures hanging there beginning to collect dust; I'd seen them a million times before, but no matter how often they whiz by on my way to the bathroom, I still can't recognize any of the people in them.

Tonya used my foot in my stirrup to push the halfway ajar door to the bathroom open, her voice edging on sad when she saw the state of it; it was still exactly the same as she'd left it when she was here two days ago, my mom not even bothering to clean it or take care of the dirty laundry, the towel that was dropped on the floor soaking wet and starting to smell like mold. "Jesus Christ—oop, I mean, dang," She said in a hushed tone, coming around from the back of me to start picking everything up. "Gimme one second, Billie, I'm just gonna get this stuff put away." She lifted the wet towel between two fingers with a disgusted face, her perfectly manicured nails serving as tongs to hold it so she wouldn't have to actually touch it.

I hated how dirty the house was. I liked for things to be neat and orderly, everything in its place and organized for ease of access, but my mom was the exact opposite of that; she used to clean, I remember, singing along to music playing on the TV and giving me a little concert as she vacuumed. That was years ago now. I couldn't have been older than 12, and now, at the ripe old age of 20, my mom wasn't even a ghost of her former self.

I'd probably only been sitting alone in the bathroom for about ten minutes when Tonya came back with a clean towel, the front of her scrubs dampened around her pudgy stomach and normally bright face full of worry. However, she wiped that look away and gave me a smile, beginning to undress me so I could have my first bath since the last time she was here. "Off come the pants!" She announced as she always did, pulling them off of me with more ease than I expected, no matter how many times she'd done this; next was my underwear, then my shirt and bra, and before I knew it I was naked and being put into my bathing harness, the whirr of the motor lowering me into the tub the only sound in the quiet space around us. "Oh, forgot to fill the tub! Sorry if it's cold on your butt, Billie," She apologized, letting the machine finish its business as she plugged up the drain and started the water—lukewarm, how I preferred it. She had actually asked me when she'd done this for the first time, unlike my mom, who just used whatever came out of the faucet, even if it was ice cold.

She was right about the tub being cold on my butt and back, and there was some kind of pain, too, on my legs, which only got worse as the water reached me and began pooling around my body. I looked over to her and blinked as fast as I could, which wasn't very, a vain attempt to get her attention; she was busy with getting my shower stuff out from under the sink, though, and didn't turn around to look at me until the water was at my stomach, turning it off with a swiftness. The click of the top of the soap being opened, the splash of the water from her filling a cup, and then my body was being cascaded with water so temperate I could barely feel it, Tonya beginning to wash me with a soft, natural sponge—it'd been a gift from her. She said that it would help keep my skin soft, and although I wouldn't know if it worked, I did enjoy the way it felt when she washed me, making bath time that much more enjoyable. "Alright, I'm gonna roll you over, brace yourself."

I laughed internally at her joke, and she laughed aloud, a little chuckle escaping her always smiling face as she turned me slightly on my side, just enough to access my back and butt.

A pause. The energy in the room grew cold, Tonya's hands on my upper back stopping in their motions and in their tracks—what was she looking at? I got the chance to ask her, because she turned me back around and looked at me with complete seriousness, though there was that signature concern she seemed to always get whenever something was out of place. I blinked a couple times, and she held my hand, looking me in the eyes. "Billie, I need you to be honest with me, okay? Has your mom been taking care of you? You…" A beat, then she continued, "You have a few bed sores on your back, small ones, all the way down to your thighs. Blink once if she isn't."

Bed sores, huh? Well it was about time that something like that happened; usually, Mom would shift me around every couple hours, even if it was just rolling me to one side on my bed, but ever since Tonya had been here the last time, she hadn't done anything. I was surprised she even fed me.

I blinked once.

Tonya sighed, her head dropping and shoulders going with it into a slump. Nothing was said besides a whispered, "Okay," and then she continued in washing me, silence filling the room even as the water lapped against the side of the tub.

After my bath, Tonya finished up my basic needs like changing my bedpan, making sure I had all my medicine, along with a number of other things I didn't get to see due to where she'd put me in my room; my bed sores needed special treatment, but thankfully she'd already brought some stuff needed for it beforehand, like the mattress overlay to take pressure off the wounds and dressing to clean and cover them. I was kind of excited to get to lay in my bed, for once, as normally being confined there with only the lilac walls as entertainment was enough to bring me to tears, but I'd been in my wheelchair for a couple days now, and was really starting to get tired—it wasn't exactly the most comfortable thing in the world. For longer than a few hours, anyway.

Cleaning wasn't exactly a part of Tonya's job description; given the state of our house, however, it made sense that she'd want to get at least some done—that's what she told me, anyway, before leaving me there on my bed. From outside my window, I heard the sound of kids laughing and feet running on concrete, causing a pang of sadness to bite at my insides. Yeah, I've never known what it's like to walk, to talk, to do anything besides sit there and stare, but even just those small sounds, those of happy children with friends and working legs, was enough to make my eyes slide shut, my entirety wallowing in that melancholy ocean, slipping further and further beneath the waves, sinking like a stone.

I'd been fed, medicated, bathed, and now that my clothes were clean and my bed was made, I was quickly falling asleep, the sound of Tonya doing the dishes and the feeling of tears running down my cheeks the last sensations I experienced before I drifted off.

It was late when I woke, but not terribly; my eyes flickered open to the sight of the sun shining through my window at a slight angle, indicating it was probably somewhere around 3PM, which meant that Tonya had been gone for a while now. If I'd been able to sigh, I would've.

A blanket of eerie silence had covered the whole house, not even the low murmur of the TV in the living room breaking it—was Mom still in bed? It wasn't unusual for her to sleep late, but even at her worst, she still made sure to get up and check on me before heading back to sleep. Part of me wondered if she'd finally died, the alcohol and abuse of my pain medicine creating that fatal concoction that took her in her sleep, but even as I had that thought, I knew it wasn't true. I could hear the creaking of her bed, the quick dragging shuffle of her slippered feet to the bathroom, the retching into the toilet as she puked up last night's dinner of liquor and pills.

She never used to be like this. My mom had always been sad, the result of a boyfriend that ghosted her the second he found out she was pregnant, a mom who died only days after I was born, her siblings taking all her mom's money and leaving her nothing with which to care for her now disabled daughter. I'd watched her fight for even a crumb from the state, watched her grow and change just as she did me, but instead of her becoming stronger, she only deteriorated. It was sort of like we were mirror images of each other, my body physically reflecting the state of her mind—trapped and broken, hurting, angry. I used to feel bad, when I was younger, that I was requiring so much of my mother in order to live, and as a result forcing her to sacrifice her entirety. I remember when she used to read to me, not any books from the library, but stories she'd written just to entertain and please me. We would go on walks, hang out together, regardless of the fact that I could say and do nothing.

Yeah, I used to love my mom. But that was before she stopped loving me.

The faucet in the bathroom was turned on, and I heard Mom brushing her teeth and spitting into the sink, then heard the flick of the light switch, followed by her drag-shuffle back down the hall; however, she didn't go to her room. Instead, she stopped in front of mine, pausing as though deciding whether or not to check on the vegetable—me. Must've felt guilty, because she did, opening my door and entering very silently, no longer dragging her feet, but instead she walked as though she was trying not to make any noise. From the corner of my eye, I could see her stop beside me, her raggedy pajama shirt only barely showing off the shorts she'd been wearing since I was a baby. Her eyes were sunken, the bags under them puffy and dark; to be honest, she looked like she'd been crying, and had it not been a nightly occurrence, I would've felt bad (I still did, somewhere inside me, but it'd long since frozen over). "You're in bed," She said, her voice hoarse. "I guess it is Thursday."

Silence. She didn't move and neither did I, only looking at her out of the corner of my eyes as I stared up at the ceiling, making shapes out of the popcorn drywall. After a few seconds, she sat beside me, then gently pushed me aside, enough to give her room to lay down. Been a while since she did this.

More silence. It was at this point, when I could bare it no longer and finally decided to look at her, that I noticed she was holding a syringe. The fluid inside was clear, there was no label, nor was there a needle—it was just the syringe. I had absolutely no idea what it was, but it gave me a bad, bad feeling, a pit beginning to eat its way through my stomach. "When I was pregnant with you, I had all these ideas about what you'd be like," Her dark hair, the same shade as mine, hanged halfway in her face, the rest splayed over my pillow to become one with mine, indistinguishable as the expression that clouded her face. "I wondered what you'd sound like, how you'd cry, what songs you'd sing to. I thought, 'Will she be a happy baby? Fussy?' I thought maybe you'd be like me, always hungry and always smiling."

She rolled slightly over to set the syringe on my nightstand, then turned back to face me entirely; there was an emptiness there, in her hazel eyes, a countenance I couldn't even begin to decipher. What was she talking about? "Sometimes I wonder if what happened to you was my punishment. Then I think that maybe it was a gift, or fate, or the universe giving me someone to help ease my fucking agony."

I stared at her, but she wasn't looking at me anymore—her eyes were pointed down at her hands, which were entangled in her shirt. "You were never supposed to happen. I never wanted kids, but Simon, he… He wanted them bad enough that he was willing to force me. So he did."

Forced..?

It was starting to make sense, what she was talking about, but I didn't even get a chance to process it, because as soon as she'd finished her sentence, she sat up on one arm to stare down at me, her other arm coming around to rest on my chest, her hand flat to my sternum. My mom had always been thin, but with her addiction issues, she'd only waned that much more; it was obvious in how the veins of her hands stood out like ridges and valleys over the top—had I been able to, I would've sneered. "And then he left me. He gave me the burdening debt of a child, one that he wanted so badly, and left me."

She was starting to cry, but that only lasted for about thirty seconds, forcing her face to be neutral once more. "I wanted to be strong for you. I wanted to be the mother you deserved, but there's something wrong with me that I've dealt with for a long time, and I… I can't deal with it anymore." She cradled my face in her hands, and I could feel them shivering. In her eyes, there was… something, which I had never seen before, swimming in the amalgamation of colours that her irises were comprised of. A weakness—no, it wasn't weakness. It was defeat. Like she'd given up.

Everything was clicking together now; this whole time, when I thought she'd hated me, was drinking and abusing my painkillers to get away from me, but she'd really just been running from herself. Wait, the syringe; I wanted to look over at it, I wanted to tell her no, please don't do it, but all I could do was watch her, and wait.

She raised her hand, reached, and took up the syringe with ginger movements, holding it between us so that we could both see it. "Your morphine," She said, her trembling fingers only causing it to wobble even more, but still didn't spill a drop. By this point, she was no longer crying, but instead, almost seemed to be completely numb; there were still tear stains running down her cheeks, still snot running in a thin line down from her nostrils, but her eyes held no tears. I wanted to scream, but I couldn't. I wanted to hold her, like she'd hold me when the reality of the world set in at night, to cradle her head on my lap and sing to her just as she'd done with me—she needed to know that I loved her. I had been so hard on her, and the knowledge of this ate at my insides, even if she had no inkling of an idea as to what I truly thought. But perhaps she didn't need to. Guilt is a funny thing like that.

I could only lie there as my mom got up from the bed and headed over to the closet that held all my medical equipment, taking out a needle and tourniquet, fastening the needle to the syringe before setting it down and tying the tourniquet around her right arm, just above her elbow.

She may not have been crying anymore, but I was, I could feel it; big, fat tears ran down the sides of my face, my entire body coming alive with phantom trembles of anguish that were so strong, so potent, that I could almost see myself getting up from the bed and breaking that syringe before wrapping her in a hug and apologizing over and over. I'm sorry you lost yourself because of me. I'm sorry you didn't get to have the life you wanted. I'm sorry for being disabled. I'm sorry Mom. Please don't leave me alone.

Of course, she couldn't hear me, but then I didn't expect her to. She wasn't looking at me, and it was almost ironic—even now, when she's about to leave the waking world forever, she still couldn't find it in herself to do it.

Mom injected the morphine. She didn't say goodbye, in fact she didn't speak to me again after she did it; instead, she sat down on the floor next to my bed, rested her head back against it, and closed her eyes.

There was an anger inside me that grew ever stronger as time ticked by, eating away at the rest of my soul with every shuddered breath that escaped her now almost completely limp body. I may have never known a normal life since I was born, but I had been happy with the life we had lived—it was familiar, comfortable, perfectly fine. Mental illness is a monster, I know, I have to deal with it all on my own since I can't talk, but my mom had every opportunity to deal with this. She could walk for Christ's sake, but instead she chose to neglect me, neglect herself, and now, was essentially committing a murder-suicide since I had absolutely no one that was going to check on me for another two days. What the hell was she thinking?

God, I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry and scream and pound on the walls, I wanted to beat my mom to a pulp and demand to know why the fuck she was doing this to me. Wasn't my situation bad enough? Hadn't you stopped to think about what would happen to me? How could you be so selfish?

I watched a documentary about white torture a couple months ago.

It's considered one of the worst forms of torture, since it completely deprives your mind and body of all stimuli, essentially making you go insane. Sometimes I feel that that's what it's like to be completely paralyzed; you're trapped in the white room of your mind, with nowhere to run from the thoughts that haunt you. I wonder though, how a normal person would feel if they were placed in my body. Would they go crazy? What makes me so different from those subjected to white torture outside of their own free will?

Perhaps I was the crazy one all along. Or maybe I just got used to the monotonous shape that my daily life had formed into, both disgusted and comforted by the fact that I truly had nothing to look forward to; that wasn't always 100% true, but having no expectations afforded me the ability to be excited about something every once in a while. And now my mother has taken that from me, just like the way she took it when I was born, how everyone took it all from me, leaving me with the blood in my hands and the blame weighing heavy on my head.

Everyone else gets to take—except me. I have to give and give and give forever. When is it going to be my turn?

There were so many things I wanted to do, yeah, but I couldn't do any of them. I could do nothing but lie there with my eyes rolling back up to stare at the popcorn ceiling, with my mom's dead body beside me; I shouldn't fall asleep, I knew that, especially when I didn't have my CPAP in, but it wasn't like I could exactly keep myself from doing it. What else did I have to live for, truly? The burning in my chest ached with sharper teeth at that thought, milking more tears from my eyes and anger from the back of my mind. Fuck, I wish Tonya was here.

But she wasn't. I was alone, like always, and just as I had been born, I was going to die that way. Nobody to give a fuck. Nobody to comfort me.

The light faded from the corners of my vision, then disappeared.

#short story #my works

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caffeineivore · 4 years

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The Taylor Swift Concert Hijinks

This is dedicated to the lovely @mygeekycorner and @minakosaino and follows the last thing I posted. M/K and a Taylor Swift Concert. Please don’t kill me, Swifties! Rated PG/PG13. Romance/humour.

The corporate office of Ainsley-Hart Holdings, LLC is not exactly her favourite hang-out spot, ever, but Romina Catherine Ainsley-Hart, “Mina” to everyone but her parents, still breezes in as though she has nowhere better to be at half-past four on a Thursday afternoon, carrying a cup-holder from Starbucks bearing no less than four drinks in one hand, a stylish oversized Gucci handbag in buttery red leather in the other. She plops the first one down at the desk of Janet, the formidable office receptionist, with a winning smile. “Grande soy flat white?”

“Your father is off-site until five.” Wise to Mina’s wiles, Janet accepts the drink, but looks askance at the tray. “I was under the impression that you had a prior engagement-- drinks with some of your sorority sisters this evening? Shouldn’t you be uptown by now if you want to make it on time?”

“Well, Una has the flu, and Cassie bailed on me at the last minute because she has a hot date with Miguel Rivera-- you know, the buff Pro soccer player she hooked up with the last time she went to Cabo for vacation. He looked her up because he’s in town. So no drinks for me, no ma’am, so here I am! I’m just going to go on back, but I promise not to bother anyone or break anything!”

Janet humphs as though she doesn’t quite trust Mina’s word, and Mina pouts for a moment even as she sails off towards the elevator in the back. She’d jammed the copy machine one time, all of ten years ago, and the old battle axe still held a grudge! But no matter. She had more important fish to fry, so to speak. Her father’s office is empty, as per Janet’s report, but she sets down the espresso macchiato in the middle of the desk, with a post-it note scribbled “Mina was here!” with a smiley face tacked on as an afterthought. The four drinks now down to two remaining ones, she makes her way down the hall to the last door on the right. It’s open only a sliver, bearing a plain placard with the name “Kenneth Knightley, CFO” engraved on it. The quiet sounds of keyboard tapping alerted that her target is indeed inside, though from the looks of it, has his back turned to the door as he crunched numbers in a spreadsheet on the computer. Mina raps her knuckles on the door frame for a split second before she invites herself in.

“Hey, Kenneth! I brought you coffee.” Kenneth, never Kenny or Ken, had been working for her father since her college days, though they rarely exchanged more than the usual pleasantries. Smart, driven, serious and good-looking in the unapproachable chiseled-jaw alpha-male way, Mina had always been quite certain that he had exactly zero use for the likes of her. That she knew bits and pieces about him that he’d never exactly told her himself-- his coffee order, for example (Grande Triple Americano, one non-dairy creamer, no sugar)-- was beside the point. But there was the not-small matter of the Taylor Swift concert tickets currently burning a hole in the bottom of her handbag, which had been discreetly dropped in there at some point after the gala masquerade. Exactly in the way that her infuriating older brother, Zander, had prophesied. And if he’d been right about that, then…

Kenneth’s shoulders snap straight, and he takes a moment to turn around, but by the time that he does, he’s schooled his face into polite neutrality. “Good afternoon, Mina.”

She’d insisted on their first meeting that she would not answer to ‘Miss Ainsley-Hart’ and only her mother called her ‘Romina’, and generally when she was not behaving herself. It had still taken him a good six months before he’d started calling her ‘Mina’, and she wasn’t above feeling a thrill of gratification whenever her name was spoken in those grave, collected tones. “You busy? I can just sit here and drink my own coffee until you finish. I got a caramel frappuccino with extra whipped cream and cinnamon dolce sprinkles on top. It is delicious.”

“I will take your word for it.” He saves whatever spreadsheet he’d been working on, then closes out of it, courteously. “What brings you here today?”

“Well, I thought I’d say hi, and you know Janet almost didn’t let me back here because I think she hates me, but you’re free tomorrow night, right? For the concert? Because you are so going with me since those are your tickets and I am so thankful that you thought to give them to me but it would be wrong if you didn’t come with, seeing as to how you paid for them. So I came to set up the plans so we can go there tomorrow and have a great time and I am so going to treat you to drinks beforehand so you can be good and tipsy before dealing with legions of screaming fans, which I’m sure is completely not your scene. So, yes. Do you want to meet at my place, or yours? Five o’clock?”

“I…” Kenneth blinks, apparently caught off-guard. “You don’t have any friends who you’d want to go with you to that concert?” He doesn’t try to deny the fact that he had, indeed, bought expensive-ass Taylor Swift tickets and dropped them into her purse. But then again, she’d never known for him to be less than scrupulously honest about anything.

“That’s not the point!” Mina has a tendency to talk with her hands, and this time she has the wherewithal to set her sugary coffee concoction on his desk first before launching into her schpiel. “You do not have to give me concert tickets just to be nice! And while it’s a sweet gesture on your part, I could at least also get to enjoy your company while at this concert, you know? I insist. You’re going or I will give these tickets away to someone else. And then I would be sad, because they’re TAYLOR SWIFT TICKETS. So, where do you want to meet? We’ll have an hour before the concert begins and we can get drinks before then. My treat, of course. You do drink in moderation on social occasions, right? Oh of course you do. Glenfiddich and soda, if I remember correctly. From the last company Christmas party.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him carefully pull a Kleenex out of the box on the desk and place it, coaster-style, underneath her frappuccino cup, and curses herself for not thinking of it, but soldiers on nonetheless. “So yes. I think we can meet at my place. It’s a bit closer. And there’s a great little bar called Dazzle right by the venue which certainly has your Glenfiddich as well as a nice wine selection, since I’m pretty sure Scotch would put me out on my ass, and you don’t need me embarrassing you on top of everything else. Please don’t stand me up? I know this is probably not your idea of a fun time, but…”

Perhaps the faintest note of uncertainty makes it into her voice, because Kenneth finally cracks the tiniest of smiles, and faint though it is, it transforms his whole face. “I wouldn’t do that.”

Well, maybe it was a good thing he didn’t smile often, because there was no point in being turned into a babbling incoherent mess just by the random side observation that his eyelashes were a few shades darker than his hair, curly and surprisingly long, and that his eyes softened from the colour of the sky before a thunderstorm to a pleasant cashmere-charcoal. Mina meets that faint smile with a blinding megawatt one of her own and picks up her half-melted frappuccino. “So, five o’clock it is. I’ll let you get back to work and see you tomorrow, then. I’m so excited!!”

True to his word, Kenneth does not stand her up, and the doorman of her building calls her at 4:59 on the dot to tell her that she has a visitor. Mina spritzes on perfume and gives her hair one final once-over in the mirror before opening the door for him, and really, it’s not fair. She knows, intellectually, that he’s tall and built in such a way that no stodgy numbers-crunching finance guy has any right to be, but it’s easy to forget when he’s usually hunched over a computer at the office. Here, standing in front of her in pressed gray slacks and a white button-down, he towers over her even in her sparkly Jimmy Choos.

“Good evening, Mina. You look… nice.” If he’s a bit disconcerted by how glittery her dress is, he doesn’t say it. He does hold out her coat for her to slip into, and offer her his arm. It’s not a date, not exactly, but that doesn’t mean that Mina’s not about to make the most of it. She may or may not be vibrating with excitement, but keeps up a steady stream of conversation as they spend an hour at the bar over his Glenfiddich and her Riesling. Kenneth doesn’t talk too much about himself, seeming content to inquire, in his grave, polite way, what she’d been up to the last week.

“Well, there was wrapping up the stuff with the fundraiser, of course. Una bought the Dior dress, and it looks beautiful on her, and Matthew is going to swallow his tongue when he sees her in it. And I saw Zander off to the airport. He was a bit distracted after the party, which bears further investigation, but he’s in Vancouver now, so it’s hard to get all up in his business while he’s so far away. I’ll still call him later, because at least it’s Canada and not like, Madagascar or something, right?” Zander had also been the one to clue her into Kenneth’s possible intentions, and that has her staring into the pale golden surface of her wine, uncomfortably aware that she’s blushing. “Anyway, there’s the tax forms for the fundraiser to get filed, but I’m pretty sure they just got slapped on your desk by my mom the morning after. In which case, I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I sort of get paid to handle stuff like that.”

“You’re paid to handle the real estate company’s finances, not this nonsense, and don’t try to pass it off as no big deal, because I did minor in econ at NYU, and non-profit is a whole new breed of pain in the ass to deal with from an accounting point of view. But thanks for handling it.” Mina plays with the slim stem of her wine glass, then glances up at him through her eyelashes. “The first time I met Dr. Miller, before the fundraiser, she cut the meeting short to Face-time her hospital in San Jose to talk to one of her patients. I sort of hung around. He’s a six-year-old boy who wants to be Captain America when he grows up, which… is a one in a hundred chance. She talked Avengers with him for ten minutes, and I’m pretty sure that’s not her type of movie. I almost cried.”

“She does important work, and so do you, for helping those like her get their funding.”

Mina beams, and when the bartender moseys on over, cheerfully orders both of them a refill before asking for the check. “I’m so glad you think so. So many people think that only ditzy rich girls work on fundraisers, and don’t have any idea how hard it can be. Do people think that Dior exclusives commissioned for A-listers just fall out of the sky or something? Anyway, we have time for another drink before we should get going. Figure I should let you get as tipsy as possible before Tay-Tay. Which… what type of music do you like, anyway?”

She had never seen him at a loss before this very moment, but this is most certainly the most deer-in-headlights look which had possibly ever crossed Kenneth Knightley’s face in the history of ever. He takes a long swallow of the Scotch and soda that has just been set down in front of him, then clears his throat. “I’m not much of a music guy.”

“Oh, surely you listen to something? It’s okay if it’s embarrassing. Opera? Trance techno? Death metal? I won’t judge, even if nothing trumps Tay-Tay.”

“No, nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?” Mina blinks, her wineglass halfway to her mouth as she stares at him with not a little confusion. “Surely you listen to something. In the shower, or on the subway. Everyone does. No one actually talks to people on the subway.”

“Umm. Usually NPR, though I follow a few podcasts as well.”

He looks so glum and embarrassed at this admission, as though not being a music guy would disappoint her on a personal level, and though her mind sort of boggles at the idea of anyone who would listen to NPR while showering, she grins at him over the surprise and gives his arm a quick squeeze, noting at random that the bicep underneath her fingertips is solid and firm as a softball.

“Well, you’re in for a real treat, then. Tay-Tay is the GOAT. Just you wait and see.”

An hour and a half later finds Mina with a brand new sparkly white-and-gold Taylor Swift concert tee thrown over her equally sparkly dress, jamming and singing along with “I Knew You Were Trouble When You Walked In” next to a petite dark-haired girl with a nose-ring who, in typical concert fashion, was now her new best friend. Kenneth’s face looks much like that of someone in the waiting room of the dentist’s office right before a scheduled root canal. As there is a seven-foot-tall linebacker-sized man in a top hat and a legit Taylor Swift onesie dancing with at least equal enthusiasm to Mina and her new friend on his other side, she supposed that she couldn’t blame his discomfiture too much.

The pop star goes on to something slower a few songs later-- All Too Well, a ballad about lost love, and the dark haired girl lets out a few hiccuping sobs at Mina’s side, so Mina wraps both arms around her and they hug it out for the duration of the song. Like magic, the melancholy mood vanishes when the next song comes on, and they’re belting along with “Shake It Off” and dancing around Kenneth in a way likely designed to give him whiplash. But for all this behaviour is undoubtedly outlandish and completely incomprehensible to him, Kenneth looks as though he could be persuaded to crack a smile if he’d only let himself relax a little more, so Mina redoubles her efforts, likely yelling out “Haters Gonna Hate Hate Hate Hate Hate” loud enough to annoy everyone around them. But it does bring a tiny smile to his mouth for a second, and she finds, to her surprise, that she’s okay with him finding amusement at her ridiculousness. That had never, ever happened before with another guy.

“Are you having fun?!” She shouts at him over the applause and cheers as the song comes to a close. “Isn’t Taylor the best ever?!”

“It’s… catchy, I suppose. The music, that is.” It seems as though he had to think hard to find the correct word, but Mina forgives him even as she links her arm through his.

“I’m glad you’re having fun, because we still have the backstage passes and we get to MEET HER IN PERSON! I am having the best time EVER!”

Much to his credit, Kenneth doesn’t say anything, though the sigh that he lets out says it all for him.

They hit up a 24 hour diner after the concert, and this time, he insists on paying for her greasy hash browns and slightly burnt coffee, and though she knows quite well that he has likely been up for close to twenty-four hours at this point, he is a consummate gentleman and doesn’t mention that fact, and lets her excitedly run through a blow-by-blow of the concert that they’d just attended as he nurses his own coffee.

“And she is so nice isn’t she? And so so pretty! I wish I was that tall. Legs for days. Then I wouldn’t have to jog to keep up with tall people, or they wouldn’t have to slow down their stride like you’ve been doing all night, don’t think I haven’t noticed.” Mina nibbles on a hash brown and gulps coffee adulterated with a good half-cup of sugar and cream. “Did you have some fun, though? At least a little? I hope I haven’t irritated you too much.”

“No, you didn’t irritate me, and you’re fine just as you are. You don’t need to be any taller.” It’s not exactly the most poetic or flowery of compliments, and yet Mina feels the stilted words warm her from within. Now, post-adrenaline-rush, a bit tired and content, somewhat cold from gallivanting about in a tiny dress all night and letting second-rate greasy food warm her back up, she absolutely can’t think of a better way to spend her Friday night. Undoubtedly, her usual crew is out at some place a great deal fancier, and having a blast, and yet… she takes a second hash brown and smiles up at Kenneth.

“So, should I get you a Taylor Swift album for your next birthday? I love her new one, but the old ones are where it’s really at.”

“You don’t have to get me anything for my birthday. But I should get you home, yeah? It’s getting late, and you’re probably cold. That coat’s still bound to be drafty with that dress, and you’ve been wearing it unbuttoned half the time.” Almost as though on impulse, he buttons it up all the way, then jerks his hands back like he hadn’t meant to take such a liberty.

The traffic is reasonable by New York City standards when they share a cab to her place, and he walks her all the way to her door, gentleman-like. Mina turns to him with a smile, and-- is he leaning towards her just a little?

He is, one hand held out towards her, and she launches herself at him, wrapping both arms around a broad back firm with muscle underneath his black pea-coat, but he freezes, stiff as a board, and belatedly she realizes that he probably meant to shake her hand rather than give her a hug, and she’s quite certain that the heat of her cheeks is warm enough to start a fire in the hallway. But there’s nothing to do but roll with it, and she stands on tiptoe, leaving a whisper of Tom Ford Lavish against his jaw as she air-kisses him.

“Well, good night. And have a good weekend. I’ll see you around. Probably.” Uncomfortably aware that she’s babbling, like she has been all night long, really, she unlocks her door while managing to avoid his eyes, and all but jogs in, heels and all. She leans against the door after it’s locked back up behind her, and lets out a windy sigh as she pulls up Spotify on her phone.

Lovelorn ballads by Taylor seemed to be in order, possibly played on repeat, the neighbours be damned.

Mina takes four days to talk herself into visiting the office again, and even then, makes a point to shuffle her own schedule for the day, getting up at an ungodly hour of the morning to sweet-talk a contact in Milan to donate couture evening-wear for a charity fashion show-- proceeds to benefit victims of domestic violence. That phone call, which was originally slotted in for early afternoon, freed up the rest of the morning to visit the salon after a shopping trip to Bergdorf Goodman-- it was never too late, after all, to get her parents the present for their upcoming anniversary, and she went with the traditional 35th anniversary gemstone of emerald for both-- finding matching platinum-and-emerald cufflinks for her dad and earrings for her mother. She has both presents wrapped and sent off to her place, and then leaves herself at the tender mercies of her stylist, Adrianna, whose surgeon-steady hands snip off the split ends of her golden hair and refreshes the layers without taking off so much as a centimeter more than necessary. In the very least, she knows, she will be facing Kenneth looking her absolute best. Not that he was the shallow type like that, but still.

“That’s a boy-related frown, and boy-related frowns cause wrinkles.” Adrianna’s voice floats, matter-of-fact, above her head. “I’m double-booked like a mother-trucker this whole week because of the ills of holiday over-indulgence which apparently I’m supposed to wave my magic wand and handle, and don’t have time to deal with wrinkles today, sweetie, so you’re either just going to have to jump him or get over him.”

“I don’t know if jumping him is in the cards, and there’s no getting over someone who never exactly-- well. It’s weird, is all.” Mina starts to pick at her nails, a bad habit from her middle school days, but a stern look reflected in the mirror stops the fidgety movement in its tracks. “Am I so obvious?”

“Sweetie, I’m pretty sure I’ve not seen a boy-related frown on your face since I did your updo and makeup for senior prom, and had to bite my tongue so I wouldn’t tell you that any boy who told people to call him ‘Ace’ with a straight-ass face is clearly on next-level rom-com antagonist levels of douchebag. But all I can do is make you look gorgeous, not that you’re not already, and wish you luck. Please tell me he at least has a normal name.”

“His name is Kenneth, and he has an MBA from Columbia, and he works for my dad, and he has absolutely no use for me whatsoever.”

“Oh, nonsense. If he found some use for you, he’d probably have lobbied for you to be on daddy dearest’s payroll, and then where would we be? Wearing some ugly blazer and god-awful follicle-destroying chignon. My suggestion is to get a stupidly large box of chocolates, of course. The damned things are already getting put up in stores in preparation for Valentine’s Day, of course. Either the boy is not interested, and then you can self-medicate with chocolate endorphins, or he is interested, and you can share the chocolates, in bed.”

The deliberately crass suggestion brings Mina out of her funk, as it is intended to do, and she laughs helplessly even as Adrianna finishes blowing out her hair, fussing with it until it gleams like sunlit silk. Mina thanks the stylist and leaves a generous tip, and then stops at a boutique bakery en route to the office. She does buy the stupidly large box of chocolates, but also a fancy box of assorted macarons in numerous pastel shades.

This time, when she arrives at the desk of the formidable Janet, she doesn’t do much more than hold out the delicate cookies as a peace offering. “I’m just going to go on back.”

“Good for you. I’m too busy to chit-chat anyway. Take your cookies and be off. Close the door behind you when you have it out with him, will you?” Janet doesn’t even look up from the computer screen, the phone receiver cradled between her shoulder and jaw as she clacks away at the keyboard. Mina looks at the solidly-built brunette with a little bit of consternation, but Janet simply waves an irritable hand in dismissal. Put squarely in her place, she makes her silent way to the elevators, and makes a beeline towards Kenneth’s office.

It’s almost deja vu when she gets there. Door slightly ajar. The man seated at his desk, typing away at some spreadsheet. She knocks, then lets herself in. “Hi.” To her annoyance, her voice seems to have gone all breathy and low.

Kenneth still takes his time to turn around, but this time, when he does, his expression is almost soft. As with the last time, he closes the Excel spreadsheet and gives her his full attention. “Mina. What brings you here today?”

“I… cookies? That is, do you want cookies? I thought I’d come and say hi. Hopefully you’re recovered from being surrounded by Swifties. Are you busy?” Belatedly, she remembers Janet’s injunction that she close the door, and gives it a hasty shove. The slam sounds overly loud in this quiet hallway, and she blushes. “I know my dad usually schedules his meetings in the mornings, so I figured this would be a better time.”

“Yeah, he’s off-site. A late business lunch with some guy from an architectural firm. And you didn’t need to come and make sure I’m all right. I… I had a good time that evening. Really.”

“I should’ve brought you something for lunch rather than cookies, probably, but they looked so good. Not practical, though.” She, too, wasn’t the practical type. Taylor Swift and sparkly dresses as opposed to NPR and spreadsheets. What was she doing, really? Without anyone here to stop her, she sets down both cookies and candy box on his desk and picks at her cuticles. “Anyway. Glad you didn’t hate it. I should probably go. I’m sorry if I bothered you.”

For such a big man, he moves with incredible speed as he stands up and comes around the desk, blocking her way to the door before she’d registered that he’d moved. “Mina. Are you all right? You seem out of sorts, and in the… six years, seven months, two days and�� an hour and a half?... that I’ve known you, you’ve never been like this.”

She blinks up at him, then crosses her arms. “Six years, seven months, two days, and three hours and fifteen minutes. I know exactly when I met you.”

“No, your dad introduced you to me before taking you out for lunch that day at eleven o’clock. It’s twelve twenty-six right now.”

Mina, if she closes her eyes, can see that day as clear as if it were yesterday, down to the navy blue tie knotted just a little too tight on the man standing across from her. He’d filled out a bit since that internship when he’d started working at the firm, and his ties were both more expensive and more expertly tied nowadays, but… She raises her chin stubbornly. “Yeah, that’s when my dad introduced us. But I actually met you before that, when I was running to make the elevator and you held it open for me, remember? I said hi, you said hi back. I remember thinking, when my dad introduced us, oh, it was nice to have a name to go with the hot guy I’d run into on the elevator. But you sort of didn’t have any use for me, and you still don’t, not really, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy each other’s company, right? Maybe not at another Taylor Swift concert, if that’s truly not your thing, but I…”

“You remember that?” She’s not quite sure how he got so close, but he’s standing right in front of her now, and when she looks up, she’s eye-level to his chin. She tilts her head up, and the expression in his face is something she’s never seen before, and it gives her enough courage to finish.

“I remember a lot of things about you, Kenneth! You just don’t know, because you don’t pay much attention to me, which I guess we don’t have too much in common, not really, but just because we don’t talk that much doesn’t mean that I don’t know, just like you must have known how much I wanted to go to that concert, and being there with you was the best time I’ve had in forever, though you can’t tell Una that, because she’ll be sad and look like a kitten left out in the rain, and I was just trying to work up the nerve to see if you wanted to spend some more time together and…”

She’s cut off mid-sentence by a pair of strong arms, bare to the elbows with the sleeves rolled up, hauling her up just a little off her feet and pulling her close. She has one breathless moment to register that he smells really, really good before she’s being kissed, and there’s nothing placid about it at all as one hand fists in the glossy hair that Adrianna had just so painstakingly blown out and the other lands at the small of her back, hot and wide through the thin material of her dress. She can do nothing but clutch at his wide shoulders and hang on for dear life, but a moment later, she gives as good as she gets, lips parting under his and soothing the tiny nip that she inflicts on his lower lip with a flick of her tongue. A moan breaks the silence of the office, and she belatedly realizes that it escaped from her lips as his mouth shifts to the sensitive skin of her jaw, giving both of them the chance to catch their breaths.

Mina slides her fingers through the silky hair at the nape of his neck and leans her head against the crook of his shoulder, where it seems to fit perfectly. “Don’t you dare start to regret kissing me.” The words come out forcefully, but with a bit of a tremble nonetheless which she tries to hide by muffling it against his neck. He’d have lipstick on his collar, but it couldn’t be helped.

A faint, slightly breathless chuckle escapes him, rumbling through his chest underneath her ear. “No. I regret not kissing you that night, though.” That statement is delivered in a shockingly frank, matter-of-fact way even as he tilts her face back up. Her fingers, of their own volition, link together at the back of his neck, and she’s sure that her smile is both goofy and excessive. It was quite likely that she would not be eating that box of chocolate in its entirety in boy-inflicted angst, after all.

“Well, I can invite you to dinner tonight, and we can make up for lost time afterwards. Unless you’re busy. If you’re busy, we can resche--”

His mouth stamps over hers, cutting her off mid-sentence, but the kiss is sweet and gentle this time, and she’s sighing with the romance of it all by the time he pulls back. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

“Okay.”

The giddy thrill of it is not unlike something that would be touched upon in a Taylor Swift song, she decides, but she keeps that thought to herself for the moment. Maybe in another six years, seven months, two days and however many hours, she’d bring that up again. Surely by then, she could teach him to enjoy the finer things in life, such as jamming to pop music in the shower.

#m/k #senshi/shitennou #sailor moon #fanfiction #fanfic #mygeekycorner #minakosaino

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