Nothing Will Change

Chapter 50

Tommy had called his horse Grace's Secret. When May asked and he answered, Rose shot him a funny look immediately. But he said no more, and May hardly understood the significance of the name. He had burned all her letters, and yet she played in their minds like a picture, begging for them to think of her. Rose didn't like thinking of her, like she didn't like to think about Campbell or Sabini, though she did anyway. And now there was a horse named after her, and Tommy didn't give her a good reason as to why.

He said it was signifying, that her secret was big enough it changed their lives, and so a horse of that name will bring change also. But Rose didn't understand, she didn't want to understand. It was like tattooing another woman's name on your arm, especially because her name never truly meant anything to him. He loved Rose. That was certain. But he kept the name Grace's Secret and told her not to think about it because it was a horse and a horse's name couldn't break them. There hadn't been any more letters, but had there been a call she wondered. All was going so nice again, she didn't want to speculate, because Grace was long gone.

Rose had borrowed a smoke from one of men who watched the house, because he didn't know that she didn't smoke. She kept it hidden in a draw in her room, for the occasion she finally broke and would need it. It wasn't expensive, at least she assumed because the man was a face she did not recognise. James said smoking was a single ticket to cancer, he turned up his nose to it, he wrote in his stories about it killing beautiful men. He was right of course, as Rose read, but that never stopped her intrigue and calm it gave her watching Tommy inhale.

Her windowsill allowed her to sit and stare out. It was not quite a comfortable seat, but taking a pillow from her bed she could observe the vague people passing the streets and the men who chatted as they guarded. She was like a princess in a tower with all those men. They didn't even make themselves hidden, they just stood their smoking and chatting like they were waiting for their children outside the gates. Retrieving the cigarette from her draw, she opened the window and sat close to it, so if she were to light it the smoke wouldn't stay on her and James wouldn't question.

She fiddled with it, spinning it in her fingers debating if she actually should put it to her lips. Most people wouldn't have as much trepidation as she did, though most people already had black lungs. Spying the men outside again, she held it in her fingers as if it was lit, pretending to smoke because she remembered she had no lighter. So instead of it being in her draw, it was found on her desk where she'd pretend to smoke it, and for the few days after she got back from Birmingham, it was multiple different shades of pink from her lipstick.

She had given up trying to drink like a lady, as she had become far too much like Tommy with whiskey. Not that she was dependent, that it did nothing until her eyes were heavy from it. So how long until she smoked like him too? How long until she swore and became stoic? The more she loved him the more she became him. She wondered if people hated that about her, or if it was arousing like it was to stare at him stone faced. If they were identical maybe they'd be the most alluring, and dangerous. She was falling into his costume, and yet she was always nice. And she'd rather be beautiful and charming and able to hold a drink like he can, than become boring.

Though she wished to consume his ability not to be affected by guns. Then maybe she'd be ultimately the strongest. She could then not just freeze seeing them and not have to turn to Alfie Solomons of all people for answers. Then maybe the drinking wouldn't be needed, and neither the cigarette. Rose wasn't sure what she'd become. Either she'd become like Tommy with drinking and smoking but always within her fears of the gun, or stop being afraid of the weapon and remain good with everything else.

But it was tempting, the whiskey and the cigarettes, they were so gorgeous and she could forever let herself fall for them. Maybe she'd even sacrifice no longer being scared of guns for them, or maybe she'd become Tommy in his entirety. It didn't matter, she had no control of it. She could crush the cigarette under her fist but she wouldn't, and the bottles would collect dust under her bed.

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Writers note:

A short chapter but I've finished writing season 2 so that's why my uploads are going like crazy