Shadowplay 2

Jack,

Although our moving reality prohibits the existence of declarative statements in some ways, knowing that all things are possible and therefore must be true (in the manner of "its five o'clock somewhere"), I feel the need to tell you...

Of the 12 members of Gray House available to you, you've not in recent memory fucked either Dean, John, Grady, or me.  Maybe one of that list in realities far-reaching and distant from this one.  Maybe in times and places waiting to be discovered.  But as for you and I...

Our relationships have been diverted by near-misses and close calls the stuff of cinema.

Because of you, I have formed the opinion that in the minds of most people, there is a divide between love and sex; simply put a point at which sex with someone is no longer possible, because of a mountain of expectation which becomes impossible to traverse.  It's always felt like if I wasn't your dream girl, then I was the unattainable and icy version of her she becomes when you finally ask her out.

But I think about it.  I think about it a lot.  I wonder what it is about me that makes you say you're in love with me and then slip silently at night into Rosie's room to let her make you cum, easy and uncomplicated.  It was due in large part to those actions that Rosie and I discovered these attitudes in ourselves - that her nature dictates she's a whore and mine dictates I'm the girl whose picture you keep in your wallet.  Fond memories, Jack?  First kisses?  Promises you can't really keep?

I might know more about your naked body than anyone else, for all the artistic study I've given it.  Maybe Rosie and Clyde and Nick and Brad all held it in their hands, but they didn't take the time I took to create it from nothing but your coy and sometimes jealous description.  I think Rosie would say your relationship is one of late night calls and confessions, and that's true.  But while you eventually hang up the phone and go to her house, we live in different towns, you and me.

The last time we touched was the 22nd of January, 2015.  You were asleep in the basement, but had asked me to come sleep with you, me and Rosie both.  Rosie was awake when I went down to the big bed at the bottom of Gray House, but you were not.  You were a boy.  I pushed my body against yours in the bed, the blankets warm around us in the cold winter.  Your arm covered my rib cage, lazy and heavy in your sleep.  I laid still and tried not to wake you, half because I wanted you to sleep and half because I was afraid of what to do if you woke.  I can remember the span of your shoulders and the sound of your breath.

I wrote you a letter the next morning, which I kept, and you didn't.

I kept the letter I wrote you after you said  you loved me, which I remember, and you don't.

Since then, the physical distance between has gotten not only wider, but colder, with more blame.

There was this one night, not long after that night in January, when you asked me to come to your room, and

the television was on.

You were laying in bed, your eyes widened by some muted car chase.  You were growing your hair out, and it was spread out on the pillow around your face.  I was nervous, but I saw you'd been listening to all the records I left in your room, and I felt like maybe something I said had made a difference to you - had mattered in some way.

I climbed onto your lap.  We fucked while the credits screen darkened your room, and then the movie switched to blue input.  You held onto me tight enough you left bruises along my thighs the next day.  I said I'd always hoped you were real.  You said it back.

The next morning, you told everyone nothing happened.  I went back to your room to get my panties off the floor when you were out.  Alright Jack, I guess nothing happened.  I was angry, I told you so.  I said you'd embarrassed me.  You were appropriately apologetic, said you were sorry for the mix-up, but that despite my protests, nothing happened.  Thankfully you left again soon after.

But you came back.  You always come back, missing your memory and the things for which it would make you responsible, like our hearts.  We haven't touched since, you and me.  Not one handshake, not one hug goodbye, not one flirtatious kiss on the cheek.

But I think about it.  I think about it a lot.

Because of the ways we've become enemies since, I know it's now my duty to tell you why I'm mentioning all this to you in the first place.  How it matters to you and why I'm not a waste of your time.

I'm telling you this because you can't know how stupid I feel trying to get you to love someone through a flourish of pen.  Someone especially whom I know you would never love, and why this smokescreen exists through which you feel you can't really see me.  Why I keep holding these people out to you and not myself.  Why if this happened to Adam, he won't or can't speak for himself, and so on. 

The set up and the delivery were always your choice.  That you ask me to tell you secrets because you think I know them.  That you want me for something like this, but you don't want me for a hundred other things.  And that this history of ours will always be hanging in the air between us, in the distance further than an arm's reach.  I want you to know what happened with Matthew, and so I'll describe the events to you in great detail while I know you're looking up my actual if not only my intellectual skirt.  Whether or not you want Matthew or me or none of this is something I've never really known for certain, but you come home, and you come home, and you come home in echoes.

And so all I have to tell you is while you were away, I fell in love again, and it wasn't with you.  I'm sorry I'm like this.  While you were away, I was me again, I got lost again, I became someone else again, I ran into a boy again, I got something I wanted again, it came with a price again.  I don't know what else to do but tell you who I am again, through this mist again, to make you feel at home again, and maybe love Matthew again, before you leave again. 

But if you want me, I'm here, Jack.  As always.

Evelyn