Our Bruised Bodies | Bradley Bradshaw

ACT TWO - PART FOUR

Cheers to me!

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3 years later

The thing about dislike was that sometimes it felt like having a crush. In a bar filled with dancing and sweaty people, practised eyes easily fall right on the person that was on mind for either reason. Plaguing the consciousness every wake moment. Just the emotion that finding that very person in the crowd caused is very different.

Love is fickle. A short temptation. Like a tender little flame which threatens to collapse if there is even the slightest breeze. It is difficult and demanding. The act of keeping it alive is tiring, exhausting even. Maybe at the beginning, it seems worth it. It seems worthwhile.

Watching the flame grow in awe. Wonder in their eyes upon having created something this pure, something this unique and wonderful, but then it shows its true nature. The hours it needs tending to grow longer. That bitchy little thing, withering away, despite all effort. No care of cherishing seemed to wake up what had already fallen asleep. Not way of bringing it back from the dead. What once is dead has no business coming back to life.

It never is, desirable. Not truly, not really.

Love is undeceive. It's jumpy and weakening. Love punishes you if you don't pay enough attention to it. Love is vindictive and insidious. Love, is rotting away. Decaying.

Hate on the other side, dislike and detest. Now, that is something else. Something that can be channelled and repurposed. Hate is the knife in your hand, it's the pen to your papers, it's the motivation to your doing.

Love disarms you, makes you soft and weak, a gentle soul. Hate arms you, hands you shield and sword. Gives you a voice to use. It holds onto you, forms you, makes you grow and change. It forms you just as it allows you to form it.

Love wears you out, hate empowers you with a purpose, with a will. With a drive to go forward through every storm. One step after the other, the hate keeping you warm, keeping you on course like a compass.

Sculptured. Wielded. It's sharp or soft. Hard or liquid, however it is needed. However, it's purposed. Hate cradles you like a mother cradles their baby. Love humiliates you like your first crush's ejection.

Hate is an old friend, while love is a corky stranger that offers you sweets in front of his white van.

While love uses you, hate is something you can use.

It fuels.

Jesus, she had no business being this drunk that early in the night.

Resting her chin slightly titled on her fist, she drummed her fingers on the table to the music. Not rhythmically, she would lose against any toddler if they were task to clap a rhythm after some stupid song. More just to make a sound that would keep her grounded, to prove to herself that she was excising too. That she wasn't just a footnote in someone else's story. It was her own free will to be in this bar with some of her flight school classmates, sitting at the table on her own, while she waited for them to return from whatever quest they've gone on.

In Nat's case, the bathroom. Jake went off to bother some girl at the bar, Bradshaw was off with this girl he had just met, and Javy was trying to gain the barkeepers attention, so he could bring back another round for them. Grace's big quest was to sit, and make sure they wouldn't lose their table. A hero in the making she could feel it.

Actually, it was hers and Jake's task, but he had buggered off. Bothering a woman, they all knew he wouldn't take home.

She couldn't wait to finally leave this shit place they called flight school. Annapolis be damned. Grace needed some fresh air and not just right now.