jessycap
She doesn't get art.
She doesn't get the way her boyfriend can spend an entire day in an art museum, talking about how certain works of art make him feel and break down his normally passive, almost indifferent attitude toward every other aspect of the world. He just has to stop and scribble down a few lines of lyrics that popped into his head after seeing a few scribbles on a canvas. She doesn't get any of it and it makes her feel stupid and inferior. Instead of bringing it up to him, she quietly excuses herself (not that he'd notice if she were there or not), sits alone at the cafe museum and eats an overpriced salad.
She coils around him when asleep in bed. At least, she's asleep. He stares up at the ceiling, counting all the parts of her that are constricting parts of him. One of her arms is thrown across his chest while the other is hooked around his elbow. One of her legs is stretches over his thighs and her foot hooks behind his knee. He wants to melt into her, to drift off to sleep in her embrace, but all he can think about is how he really needs to pee and can't move without waking her.
She always had a framework for how her life would pan out. She'd have fun for the first two years of college, meet "The One" junior or senior year, buckle down, get her degree and enter Real Life. With him, there's no framework, just coloring out of the lines, just him and his dreams and little idea of how to achieve them. Despite knowing this, she takes his hand and walks away with him, the universal sign for "fuck the framework."
Every day since she fell blindly, stupidly in love with him has been like willingly stepping out of a spaceship and freefalling into the airless unknown.
As the minutes tick by, the car takes them further and further away from the desert, closer and closer to the end of life as they know it. The Girl sits behind the wheel. The Guy in the passenger seat. Both are sweating profusely and staring straight forward. Dead in the eyes.
"I wish we could backtrack," he says. "I wish we could do it right. I wish I could do it better. Do us better. I could be better for you. For us."
"We can't."
He knows she's right, but would never acknowledge it. They drive on.
He has a severe case of the munchies. She can tell from the next room, wide awake in bed. He's usually quieter, more considerate, especially when he thinks she's asleep. Tonight, he carelessly slams cupboards and laughs at nothing and sings the songs from cereal commercials. It'd be cute, maybe, if she didn't have 10 a.m. class and an exam to take. Tonight, she's downright pissed.
Weathered faces lined in pain.
That's what she thinks when she looks at him sometimes, when he's in one of his moods, furiously scribbling in a Moleskine notebook and spitting beats beneath his breath, in an endless state of creation. He writes and raps about the things he won't speak of. Can't speak of. He writes and raps about everything his face shows, but his lips refuse to acknowledge.
She loves every crinkle in his forehead and the tortured tenor of his voice even if she doesn't understand it and doesn't think she ever will.
"You can't visit New York City and not try a dirty water dog."
The Guy deadpans from behind his Ray-Bans. "Babe, my body is a temple."
"Only crispy tofu salads, coconut chai tea, gelato and vapor are worthy of entry?" she asks.
He smiles. "And Chipotle. Burrito, white rice, black beans, carnitas--"
She shoves a pushcart hot dog into his face.
"Rude."
The one thing they have in common is that they both hate the wilderness. He's a magnet for creepy crawly creatures and she sunburns far too easily to be out for extended periods of time. Their annoyance only grows at the laughter and chatter of his family around them, preparing for a hike.
"Do you think Kanye hikes?" he asks.
"Hikes up Kardashian skirt." She pauses, can't believe she said that. "I think I'm having a heat stroke."
"Over it. Let's run away together. Go to Starbucks."
"A man after my own heart."
He once told her that her lips tasted like Big Red and desperation. She told him he tasted of tuna fish and delusions. Then they traded drunken smiles and kissed again.
(They never talk about that night, especially not with each other.)
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