Roseanne
Butcher: You know what I did this morning?
Me: *deep sigh*
Butcher: I decorated my toaster strudel.
Me: Fascinating. I'm riveted.
Me: Also, toaster strudel? Isn't that meant for hormonal teenagers who need significant quantities of processed sugar to function in the AM? I thought you were a grown-ass woman.
Butcher: A woman who appreciates mass-produced flaky pastry and icing that can be used to spell "WINNER" in vanilla-ish frosting.
Me: I'm 100% positive that I hate you.
Butcher: And I'm 100% positive you'll love me one day!
It's been six months.
Six months since I last saw her. Six months of daily messages. Six months of Lisa telling me about how she's celebrating her win. Six months of memes and jokes and texts and sometimes calls, just to say hello. And every day, I look forward to it. Every day, it warms me up, lighting places that have always been dark.
And every night when I close my eyes, I still picture her in that sliver of moonlight on the driveway in West Virginia, bent on one knee, like she was about to swear an oath. A knight cloaked in silver and shadow.
'I think you were going to watch her and then your plan was to kill her,' she'd said. Francis begged for mercy in the grip of Lisa's hand. And whatever Lisa said next was just a whisper, but those words unleashed the demon at the heart of her. There was nothing between her and the rage that burned her from the inside. No mask left to hide behind.
"She really beat the shit out of him," I say to Hyeri as I glance one final time at our latest text exchange before setting my phone aside. I place a bowl of popcorn between us and pick up Winston to plop the perpetually disgruntled feline on my lap. It's been six months since I've seen Hyeri, too. In her typical fashion, she was offered a last-minute opportunity to tour with an indie band and seized it, and has been bouncing around from one small town and hipster city venue to the next. And she looks happy for it. Glowing.
"Was it hot?" she asks as she piles her hair into a haphazard bun at the top of her head. Somehow, it always comes out perfectly messy. "Kinda sounds hot."
"Pretty hot, yeah. Had me worried for a minute, though. I'm used to... controlled. And this was raw. Definitely the antithesis of control." My gaze falls to the crocheted throw beneath my legs, one that Hyeri's aunt made for me the year we left Ashborne Collegiate Institute, when Hyeri's family took me in and repaid a debt they never owed. I stick my fingers in the little holes between the looped yarn, and when I look up again Hyeri is watching me, her eyes fixed to the contours of my face. "I nearly left her there."
Hyeri's head tilts. "And you feel bad about that?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"I don't think she would have left me if the situation was reversed."
"But you didn't leave."
I shake my head.
"Why not?"
My chest aches. It does every time I remember the way she called my name like a broken prayer. The defeated slump of her shoulders is a vivid image in my mind, even now. "She seemed so vulnerable, despite what she'd just done. I couldn't leave her like that."
