Junk Love.

four.

Carter won't say he doesn't like sex with a woman -- his conflict is with a more personal intimacy. Mel is different. She's like the quiet promise of blossoming flowers during Spring. Not just a breath of fresh air but a breath of life.

They wake at an underpass. Twin sleeping statues erected beneath a bridge then postured together in a tangle of arms and legs. Inebriated by liquor, they hadn't stumbled further than a couple of blocks from the yard. The silver tolling of nearby church bells wakes Carter first. It was the kind of sleep that would have been restlessly uncomfortable if alcohol hadn't knocked him comatose.

Hues of sunrise contour Mel while she sleeps. Her head rests on his lap and her legs are tucked in tightly. Purple hair kissed by the dawn transforms her into a subtle wonder. She stirs. The shifting of her body against his, although slight, causes him to shiver.

It's the clearest he's ever been -- especially while the serpent anacondas around his organs laboring to dry out from a cocktail of various substances. Cold sweats and shakes ravage Carter's body. He's used to those. What he isn't used to is an absence of formidable rage that entitles his habits to evolve into vicious little sirens who coax him into madness.

Throughout his life, Carter has realized he isn't manufactured like the rest. He's savage and broken down by auditory hallucinations. Some of the voices are soothing cryptics like the eerie calm of a bubbling spring. Others are clawed beasts, eyes that glow red, while their forked tongues slur maliciously.

Mel stirs again. This time her eyebrows pinch against the bridge of her nose. His breath suspends. Nestled with her under that bridge, Carter experiences an alien stillness. Mel wakes by fully stretching toward the dawn.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Mel's tilted smile is foggy with sleep.

"You're stunning." It's merely the word Carter feels in his heart. But she jolts upright at it, lurching from his embrace like his limbs have morphed into electric eels.

"I can't do this." He notices everything Mel does, and is, even the chipped aquamarine nail polish and the slight gap between her teeth. She presses her palm to her forehead, stressed.

One of the forked tongued voices laps at his brain, taunting him at the prospect, he may lose her before he's properly had her. All his tracks crave for more but, surprisingly, he is not angry. He takes a small piece of candy from his jacket pocket, pops it into his mouth, and smiles slyly.

A candy heart rests on the tip of Carter's tongue. Be Mine. She's stunned, her doe eyes going round, but he doesn't give her a chance to second-guess him. Carter cups his palm under her chin to hold her in place firmly but not roughly.

His brown eyes are daggers, dazzling in intensity, -- melted chocolate adorned by razor blades. For a second, Mel's breath rattles in the back of her throat like she's been seized by the Grim Reaper.

Kissing Mel is like kissing galaxies. Stars blaze behind his eyes while supernovas erupt in his chest. She is weightless, using Carter as her center of gravity, and his lips reel her further into his orbit. They're spiraling through the cosmos together. A low moan draws from her throat as his tongue explores her mouth long enough to trade the candy heart onto her taste-buds.

His kiss was so elemental the air outside his space is too thick. Breathless, Mel's heart races until she can feel it pulsing through every artery. She is throbbing.

☯

The rest of the day progresses as Mel normally would. Getting high in smoggy alleyways between playing guitar on her carefully mapped corners. She's been doing this -- the streets -- since she was sixteen but she never imagined she'd share it with someone.

At first she was uncomfortable, knowing she could stay on the same corner for an hour or longer, and not wanting him to bore of her. But, once she plays, Carter starts a similar beat by clapping his hands or hitting his knee. On the way to their second stop, he finds a plastic spoon and uses it to drum the side of the curb eventually rapping a verse with her.

"You ever feel pined down?" asks Carter suddenly.

"Pined?" Mel still plays, the acoustic soft in the background, and glances at him curiously.

"You know, like, stuck."

"I know what pined means." Mel rolls her eyes, teasing. "Like how though? The nine to five grind? College loans? What we talking here?"

She'd meant for him to laugh. He doesn't. Instead he kicks the gravel under his heavy boot, refusing to look at her. All of a sudden she doesn't know how to reach him. She's never seen someone so dejected that they radiate nervous energy like a toxin.

"I just don't know what you mean." Mel coaxes tenderly.

Slowly, Carter looks up to match her gaze. She bites her bottom lip, endearing, and her forest green eyes glimmer with genuine curiosity.

He chuckles shyly. "I don't know what I'm trying to say either."

Endearing, Mel stops playing then rests her chin against the base of her guitar to look at him directly. "Maybe it's like... I don't know... feeling like all you ever wanted to be was a certain way. A guitar player. A doctor. Or a retail salesman at Walmart."

"No one wants to be a retail salesman, babe."

"OK, yeah, whatever. The point is you have all these things you can be. But once you get them you kind of forget why you wanted it in the first place. That kind of stuck?"

"So why be anyone right?"

"Right." Despite agreeing wholly the shallow feeling knotting her insides doesn't subside. She's never met anyone who could understand her. The misunderstood are always dead before they understand.

Mel resumes playing. Carter tells her she's a mouthpiece for angels. She can see the conviction of his statement, enraptured on his expression, every time she sings. He makes her feel like she's being listened to for the first time.

Change and dollar bills are dropped into her guitar case but it isn't the usual scramble to survive. It's a little like coming home after a long day. For now, she's a part of Carter's mystical orbit and nothing is quite as dire as it used to be.

☯