These Days

i

CIARA MCADAMS HATES FUNERALS. No - she despises them. She thinks that they are the absolute worst thing in the entirety of this fucked up world.

All of this, of course, she concludes from the one, single funeral that she has ever attended in her life.

Ciara sighs, crinkling up the corner of her black skater skirt, leaning back into the desk chair and taking herself back (quite painfully) a few hours.

The church was cold. Even now, Ciara cannot decide if the blame for the shivers can be put on the temperature or not - perhaps they should be blamed more on the fact that Hope Waterman, her (ex, she supposes, cringing as she mentally adds the prefix to her labels for Hope) best friend and on-off girlfriend spent the whole service lying in a coffin segregated away from the rest of them. The physical line between the living and the dead.

Dead. The word echoes through Ciara's head like a gunshot, ricocheting off the numb walls of her skull. She can't quite believe it - still, two weeks later, she struggles to comprehend that she will never see Hope again.

She stares down at the creases in her calloused hands. She remembers when Hope used to hold them - tentatively at first, as though she were scared that there were spies with their cameras everywhere, that one small slip and the news of their dyke of a daughter would get back to those perfect parents of hers.

But then she stopped caring. She lost her inhibitions and began grabbing Ciara's hands wherever the hell their setting.

They were an experiment, she used to say with a huge grin on her face. Ciara remembers wincing a little the first time that she said that, but Hope would then wave her hands about enthusiastically, explaining to Ciara that yes, they were an experiment, but they were a beautiful one, an evolution of nature, an explosive test tube outside of a test tube.

Ciara would always smile back and ignore the little red scars on the back of Hope's right knuckle that became even more evident at times like this.

Ciara bites her lip as a tear scuttles down her pock marked cheek. She hates crying - she thinks that it makes her weak and if there is one thing that Ciara McAdams is not, it is weak - but she figures that it's almost, sort of allowed given the dreary circumstances.

She closes her eyes again and forces herself to remember.

The first time that she met Hope, Ciara remembers likening them to fire and ice. But four years on, Ciara still has no idea who is who. Perhaps she is the fire - after all, she is rather good at burning people away and after all, Hope Waterman is now buried six feet under where she can only be as cold as ice.

Ciara snorts under her breath.

Before she and Hope ever became she and Hope, they were best friends. Sometimes, Ciara misses the solidarity of all of that. They weren't swaying here and there. They were predictable.

Ciara remembers her first time kissing Hope - how she tasted like her namesake and how she fizzled like fireworks just starting out. It was full of half thought out promises that neither of them were ever going to be able to keep, promises that were broken by the cold shoulder and confusion in the morning. Ciara would give anything to go back and have that awkward first kiss all over again. She doesn't like to admit it, but deep down, she knows that she lost her heart that day and only now is it sinking in that she will never, ever get it back.

It's buried in the church yard alongside the love of her life.

Ciara laughs bitterly, imagining what Mr Waterman would say if he heard his daughter described like that by a girl. He'd probably ban her from the Waterman household once and for all (not that there's anything there any more that actually makes Ciara want to go back anyway) - God knows he's been wanting to do it for long enough.