cyanideparty

The real question on her mind was, for how long had he been thinking about the two of them like this? Days? Weeks? Months? When had the language in his mind moved from “her and him” onto “her with him”? The first time he’d taken her fingers in his own and placed his lips against the back of her hand, had he been imagining what it would feel like to place them against her mouth instead? His eyes had certainly left the possibility behind for her to pick up and take home with her that night. A gift that had seemed to be very intentional.

Or perhaps these ruminations had started the day he began to let those kisses linger against her skin just a second too long to be considered typical, to be considered normal. To be considered appropriate. The day he began to permanently dismantle the already impure innocence of their friendship, slowly and carefully, piece by piece by piece. As piece after piece was kicked away and left to fall between the cracks of the floorboards, forever lost, leaving their innocence without a way to ever be rebuilt.

That had seemed to be very intentional too.

There had been something abnormal in Eva’s response to those flowers, the ones that Adolf had given as a request that they simply let bygones be bygones, that he had given as a proposal for a much desired and long overdue reconciliation, that he had given in response to her second attempt at death: a strange hesitancy in accepting them, a sudden anxiety in being around them, an almost outwardly and bizarre aversion toward the sight of them, as though she were looking at death all over again.

And what an odd thing to see in such a universal representation of life, he’d thought–in what is now for them a bittersweet symbol of rebirth; but he hadn’t asked about it and he doesn’t want to ask about it; because intuition says it will lead back to him and neither of them want to talk about that because they are fine now, everything is back in place, everything is how it should be, everything is how she’d wanted for it to be and how he’d meant for it to be, they are fine now.

That stupid cat-and-mouse game of jealousy, of entitlement, of rejection, of fear, of desertion, doubt and denial that had suddenly become their relationship and had quickly gotten out of hand and then unexpectedly deadly, that is over and they are fine now; she can and should enjoy the sight of those flowers now; he just wants her to be how she used to be whenever she was around him now….