the best fanfiction you've ever read was written by a woman in her 40s before she made dinner for her kids. it was written by a teenager after school when they should've been studying for a history test. and a barista came up with the idea while they cleaned the espresso machine and busser fact-checked it on their break and the post-doc edited between writing grant proposals and the nurse apologized for typos in the notes after a long shift and behind every drabble and one-shot and multi-chapter fic there is a person with a wonderful and interesting and chaotic life and it is such a privilege that we get to be apart of it because they decided to do this thing we all share, for fun.
Harry Potter is trending at #1 on tumblr so I thought I’d take the opportunity to say fuck JKR, fuck transphobes, fuck her stupid books, her theme park, her endless landfill fodder merch slop, and her fucking castle on a hill. Read another book yall!! Read another book!!!!!!!
Hey it's a snowy (or maybe not) day out there, why not take the time to call your reps?
Tips:
Find your reps on house.gov and senate.gov. Save their DC and local numbers in your phone. I have them in mine as FirstNameLastname STATE Position, so STATE is the start of their 'last name' in my phone (ex. Joe Smith NY Senator). Which means I can quickly get to them, they're all in a row in my contacts, and I can call them when I'm motivated. I also save what committees they're on in the notes on the contact info.
Most reps' phones don't ring -- instead you get a menu, like when you call the cable company, and some of the options are leave a message or talk to a staffer. So if you are nervous about talking to a human, you don't have to! You can leave a message.
Write a script before you call. Below are some good ones I found today about ICE. My call was not so well scripted but I am who I am.
Scripts:
For ICE right now, from Ben Sheehan on Instagram -- this post has all of the steps you need and suggestions for specific policy things to talk about from the current bill and the recent ones, as well as a script. You could call on speaker and flip through the slides while you leave your message.
Basic, useful anytime -- Hi my name is NAME, I live in ZIP CODE. My phone number/email address is ###. I am calling about [insert topic here]. I am concerned/I care because [insert why]. I want (to urge the senator to vote X/to support the NAME OF ACT/to ask the senator speak out publicly about XYZ/to see the senator in the news talking about X/to know the senator's plans for Y). I would like a a call back/email with more info/etc. Thank you.
Indivisible has scripts for calling and emailing.
5calls.org has helpful scripts and tools for doing the same as well.
Also I do believe in bystander training but just know the danger right now is so much higher. Be informed. Right to Be is still doing free trainings.
Went on a nice long hike through the woods today. Saw a banana slug eating a mushroom. Thought about Joel Miller, all the miles of forest he walked across after the outbreak, and what he would think of a banana slug eating a mushroom.
a/n: JFC I haven't updated this since February. I am so sorry. Thank you to anyone still out there reading it, and an extra special thank you to @imaswellkid for the most reassurance a gal could ask for ❤️ thank you also to @dead-mistress for the gorgeous header! Enjoy!!
--
“I think I might go crazy if I have to rest anymore.”
“Well, you need to.”
He rolls his eyes, yet grins.
Two cycles on the mend, and your mothering's been sweet. You’re practiced at it, but it’s less of a delicate sweet looking after and more of a blunt, wry statement tossed back at him when he pushes the limits of what you’ve deemed acceptable for him to do. He likes it better, he thinks. Still, with the fighting need for survival suspended for the moment, he doesn’t know what to do. He was never good at being bored.
“Why don’t you read a book or something?” you suggest, fiddling with a circuit board. Colored wires cross hatch in a messy nest, your deft touch forcing them into order. Your brow furrows, and he admires it. Night has descended outside, the pod windows shifting from pale grey to black.
“I’ve read them all.”
“Not to me you haven’t.”
He smiles, a new distraction being presented to him.
“You know,” he says, “I would be much more amenable to this idea if you were to lay next to me. With me, on the cot.” He shifts over to make room for you, and you finally look up, giving him a pointed look.
He grins. “Am I that transparent?”
You reply bluntly. “Yes.” He holds your gaze, sussing you out until a smile edges at the corner of your mouth. “But that’s okay. I like it.”
“Is that all you like?”
You give him another pointed look, and he laughs.
You’ve done as much as he can do while injured, and it’s endearing how much you’re still shy about it. Two cycles, six days, half a dozen orgasms between the both of you. Careful not to disturb the stitches along his stomach, he’s only used his fingers on you so far, and though he aches for more, he wants you to ask for it. For the first time on this planet, he doesn’t want to take more than what someone is willing to give.
You’ve spent the days doing other things: an afternoon exhausted listening to your music, a morning pouring over the maps your father left behind, endless hours spent discussing strategy and paths and plans for the Queen’s Lair. But the nights – the nights are spent dancing along the fine edges of his restraint while you take what you’re ready to. He’s memorized the inside of your cunt with his touch, but he longs to memorize it with other things. He wants to taste it from the source, wants to feel himself sink into it until his hips are bracketed by your thighs.
“Come on,” he coaxes, stretching out, patting the spot next to him. “Come over here.”
You narrow your eyes and he narrows his right back. A stand off, though you both already know who is going to win. Setting your tools to the side, you start to crawl over to him. “I was working on something, you know. Something that would get us out of here sooner rather than later.”
“Are you so eager to be free of me?” he asks, watching as you stretch out next to him. “I thought you liked this small space we share.” His voice drops lower, his lips skimming the skin below your ear. “And the things I do to you in it.”
“Not eager to get rid of you,” you reply softly, a heavy exhale leaving your lips, your eyes fluttering shut as he kisses a tender line down the length of your neck. “Not that, it’s just –”, his mouth molds around your collarbone, and you squirm next to him, distracted. “Just off this planet.”
He looks up, and you dip your chin to meet your mouth with his.
A reward for his patience, you’ve been more blatant in your wanting. Your once furtive glances have shifted into something more bold, as much as you try to hide it. He finds it humorous, sweet – and maddeningly arousing, with how innocent you still are about it. Always asking him casual questions, as you lose the battle against your gaze dipping south. Always trying to keep your voice steady, while he can see filth replaying in your mind. You want just as much as he does, and the second he coaxes you into his orbit, you give in. He should feel guilty about it, but with pleasure so hard to come by and a partner so willing, he can’t.
“Read?” he asks, breaking his kiss. His tongue drags across his lush bottom lip, and he watches you track its movement. “Or this?”
His hooded eyes observe the open arousal etched on your features, his cock thickening in interest. The heat of your body leeches through your thermals to blend with his, and he pushes a hand beneath the hem of your shirt to caress your skin. His calloused touch splays wide across your stomach, leaving a path of weighty warmth as it slides to the curve of your hip. For a moment, he is seemingly transfixed with the softness of your skin, imagining kissing a path from one side to the other.
You take the opportunity to pull free from the depths of his seduction in the name of reason. “Ez.”
He ignores you, and you repeat yourself.
“Ezra.”
He lazily lifts his gaze to yours, his eyebrows raised above eyes that are pitch black with need.
“You really do need to rest,” you gently chide.
He lets his head drop forward with a groan.
“If you insist.”
Shifting onto his back, he cranes his neck to look at the shelf above his bed while you settle in, fitting yourself along his body. Your cheek on his shoulder, he grabs the nearest book from a pile, every one of them broken at the spine and dog-eared. You study the cover together.
The Alchemist
“Oh now this one? Oh Birdie, this one is good.” He cracks the cover, and the musk of dusty pages wafts out. Bringing the book to his face, he inhales.
“Must be, from the look of it. It’s falling apart,” you note. “How many times have you read this?”
“Material is hard to come by out here. Most mercs don’t spend their nights reading.” He thumbs through the yellowed pages. “Most probably aren’t even gifted with the knowledge of how,” he mumbles to himself.
You huff a laugh, and he smiles down at you. “You’ll like it,” he says. “It’s a story of a –”
“Don’t tell me,” you scold, slinging your arm around his torso high enough to avoid his wound. “Just read.”
He gives you a glance in surprise at your demanding tone, pausing so long that you look up at him and lightly pinch the skin on his ribs in a wordless prompt.
“Okay, okay,” he relents with a chuckle. “Let’s see.” Turning to the first page, he begins.
“The alchemist picked up a book that someone in the caravan had brought. Leafing through the pages, he found a story about Narcissus.
The alchemist knew the legend of Narcissus, a youth who knelt daily beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself, that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned. At the spot where he fell, a flower was born, which was called the narcissus.
But this is not how the author of the book ended the story.
He said that when Narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears.
“Why do you weep?” the goddesses asked.
“I weep for Narcissus,” the lake replied.
“Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus,” they said, “for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand.”
“But….was Narcissus beautiful?” the lake asked.
“Who better than you to know that?” the goddesses said in wonder. “After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!”
The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said:
“I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.”
Your eyes are closed with your fingers clutching his thermal, and he relishes the soft press of your body against his. Not able to remember the last time he laid like this with someone, he wonders why he didn’t think about reading to you before. Too busy satisfying his other, more baser needs, he supposes.
His earlier restlessness now long gone, his hand cups the crown of your head and reads until the motion lights in the pod turn off, and the ambient lighting along the sides lights your profile just enough for him to see.
Then, he sets the book down in a splay on the floor, and reads your face instead.
His hand traces the curve of your cheek, trailing along your jaw. The pads of his fingers caress the fine hair at the nape of your neck, his touch slipping down to your shoulder with a squeeze. You look so achingly young that he’s transfixed by it, his mind turning over the image in front of him with the memory of you in the field. Fighting off a harvester with a rage-filled kick to his chest; the sweet softness of your small hand in his.
Both of those images, overtaken by your face pleading with unfiltered want.
You are such a multi-faceted, remarkable creature, one who has consistently surprised him since the moment he met you. Always up for the task, always ready for more. Always so eager for what he’s willing to show you.
Still, of all the people who fate brought to this godforsaken place, why did it have to be you? A girl? Such a rarity, such a commodity. Not for the last time, he curses your father for bringing you here. How you’ve gone unnoticed for this long is only due to the fact that he’s killed everyone who’s laid eyes on you, but even he knows there are limits to his hard-won luck.
The longer you stay and the more attention you bring to yourselves, it’s only a matter of time before they find you. The people he’s been trying to avoid ever since he made a desperate promise he never intended to keep, though he knew they intended to collect. Even though everyone knows there is no honor in words out here. No honor in anything, least of all in what he’s doing with you.
You stir lightly in his hold, and his gaze drops to your mouth. So lush, so sweet. Lips that perfectly fit with his own. The words slip out before he even realizes he’s speaking, used to his own company.
“You are a remarkable creature, Birdie. A fighter, like myself.”
His touch lingers on the underside of your chin, his thumb coaxing your lips into a sleepy purse. In the dark, his words wash over you as he muses.
“So capable, so smart, so beautiful.”
In your sleep, your fingers tighten in their hold on his shirt, and he bends to press a kiss to your temple. Another at your hairline, another along the delicate bridge of your nose.
“You don’t belong here,” he whispers. The words are woeful, resigned, though his eyes are saturated with awe.
He gets to your lips, and presses his mouth to yours.
–
You’re wet.
So turned on it hurts, flush with a heat that feels like you’re bathed in humidity…and maybe you are, actually.
A waterfall pounds behind you, spray from the water misting your skin. The sound drowns out everything, and you perch on a rock to slide into the cool water, only the rock is heated from the light of the sun and it hits your cunt just right through your bottoms and you can feel a line of warmth licking up between your legs.
Like the rock is liquid heat, spreading through your hips and down.
Tipping your head back, you let your feet dangle in the cool water, closing your eyes.
Your core throbs to the point of distraction.
You shift on the hard surface, and a soft, breathless moan catches at the base of your throat when a shiver, originating in your cunt, licks up the base of your spine. A steady, hot pressure pools in the cradle of your hips. You roll them, tentatively, unashamed, too turned on to care anyway. There is no one around – just you, the waterfall, and the pounding rush of water.
You need more. Your teeth worry at your bottom lip, your hips squirming.
Your hand drifts down to press against the bottomless ache, only to meet a crown of hair.
Ezra.
Your eyes open, and he’s there. His tanned back is sluiced with water, like he just crawled out of the lake just to taste between your legs. And maybe he did, because he’s doing it now with steady, firm laps of his tongue, his giving mouth devouring your cunt whole with messy open mouthed kisses and wide, savoring licks.
“It hurts,” you moan, though it doesn’t really. What hurts is the weight of the ache you feel low in your belly, between your hips where it throbs.
He hums into you, his hands curling around the top of your thighs to spread you wider.
“Let me take care of it, Birdie,” he promises. “Let me help.”
His grip tightens, his fingers digging into your plush skin. He tugs your hips closer, and everything pulls up in a clench, your jaw tensing with need – and then you plunge into the water with him.
It’s warm, like a bath.
His body envelops yours under the surface. His arms wrap tight around your torso, your legs wind around his waist. His mouth finds yours as he pulls you deeper, dragging your body down with him. He eats at your mouth, devouring it, and you taste the low hum that slides from his throat. He slips down, positioning you into place until he’s back between your legs, his muscled shoulders spreading your thighs wide.
He goes back to eating your cunt.
Suspended in the water, you can see light catching on the surface, glittering above you. Your body floats, weightless and silent. You exist as sensation alone– the liquid path of his tongue, the bristle of his whiskers along your thighs, the piercing need that’s blooming from deep within you, reaching to break through the surface.
Your fingers stretch outwards, reaching, reaching.
Sharp need trembles through your belly, your core pulsing with the beat of your heart. Everything is too much and not enough, both hands reaching for Ezra, your back arching, your thighs clamping tight.
“Help me,” you beg, choking on your want, your voice straining. “Ezra, help.”
He growls, the sound a rumble buried inside you and your hips rock forward, his grip possessive and firm as a throaty moan breaks free from your parted lips, and –
Your eyes blink open.
The heavy ache between your thighs takes your immediate attention. It’s spread like molasses through your limbs, weighing them down with arousal. The type that hurts it’s so strong. Your panties are soaked, clinging wetly against the curve of your cunt. Even thinking about their state saturates them even more, and in a haze, you automatically reach to soothe the throb.
Ezra catches your hand, mid-air. “Do you need something?”
His face hovers above yours, smug, his dark eyes hooded and knowing. He’s taken off his shirt, which explains the humid warmth of your dream. His body radiates heat, and your hips involuntarily jerk towards him. It’s then that you’re entwined, your leg draped over his, his firm thigh tucked tight between yours. You should be more disoriented having just woken up, but you’re too desperate.
In a haze, you don’t even think before you nod, shifting onto your back and grabbing his hand to guide it down. Down over the downy soft curve of your belly, shoving it underneath the band of your underwear.
“Please,” you nod, begging, your eyes closing tight. “Please.”
Your hand forces his to cup you wholly between your legs, the sheer size of it covering you in a firm, sure grip. Instead of sating the ache, the heavy weight of its warmth builds it higher and a filthy groan of relief pours out of the both of you as his pointer and middle finger part your slick seam to tuck themselves deep with a slide. Your hips roll on their own accord, your hold wrapped around his wrist as you fuck yourself on the thick digits and he nips and sucks on the delicate skin of your throat, tasting the sweet salt of your skin, drinking in your desperation. His tongue flattens wide, laving over your flesh as he forces his fingers deeper, curling them, massaging the tight, slick space as your thighs fall open wider in encouragement.
“What were you dreaming about?” he pants. “What’s got you this wet, hmm?”
No wherewithal to hesitate, his fingers force the truth out. “You.”
Anything to come. Anything to feel the relief of a release. Sensations and images of the previous days fuel you: the weight of his cock on your tongue, pushing the limits of your throat. The musky, salt tang flavor of his skin, the depth of his low voice. Praise, so much praise, every word he’s ever said to you taken out of context to fuel your filthy daydreams.
“You’re so good at this.”
“Think she’s gonna open for me?”
“Hold it nice and tight.”
“I knew somebody oughta give her a go.”
Your back arching, you can feel his eyes devouring your desperate, pleading expression. Twisting your body closer to his, your fingers sink into his dark curls with a fierce tug as a means to anchor yourself. He keeps his eyes on your face, his wrist flexing between your thighs, his fingers pumping harder, faster. He adds his thumb to your clit with a deft swirl and already halfway there from your dream and with your mouth inches from his, you come.
Victory lights his eyes as a breathless moan slides from your throat into the humid air between your lips. Your whole body pulses with it, your cunt sucking his fingers deeper and just like in the dream, you’re suspended in a bright burst of release, your body staying taut as waves of pleasure roll through you.
His hungry eyes devour every second of it.
You want to hide, want to bury your face into his shoulder to hide the open vulnerability on your face, but he won’t let you – he never lets you. Instead, he demands more of it, stroking, stroking, stroking.
“What else? What else do you want?”
Another release already building between your thighs, his fingers wring out your confession. “Your mouth.”
The words like a damn breaking, he’s on you in a second.
“Careful – careful, Ez –”
Already kneeling on the floor on the side of the cot, he tears your leggings down your legs, parting your thighs with a low growl. His hands grip your hips with a sharp tug towards him, and before you can stop him, he’s bending to devour your cunt.
“Fuck.”
You’ve never heard your voice in that register, never heard it sound like that before. His mouth feels unlike anything you’ve ever felt: so eager, so messy, so all consuming. He eats at you as though he’s starved for your taste, pressing forward until his mouth is buried. Looking down, the sight of his dark curls between your thighs is one of the most arousing images you’ve ever seen and though it’s hard to keep your eyes on it, you do. His fingers grip your thighs with a bruising force, white knuckled in their hold as he licks through the mess you’ve made for him.
“Wait, I’ve – I’ve never –” A moan breaks through your pleading, and he groans into the core of you, his eyes clenched shut in savor.
“Never what?” he asks breathlessly, pulling away to glide the tip of his tongue over your clit. “Tell me.”
Your back arches, the single point of sensation rapidly pooling heavy in the cradle of your hips. “I’ve never –” your jaw drops open with a moan, all coherent thoughts being pulled from you by his mouth. “No one’s ever –”
He stops, looking up from between your thighs. You let out a soft whine, your hips shifting restlessly against the cot.
“No one’s ever eaten this cunt before?” he asks, incredulous.
Embarrassment at your lack of experience flares bright, and he shifts the look on his face to one of disbelief.
When you don’t answer, he keeps his eyes on yours while his tongue drags through the mess between your legs. The sight is so blatantly sinful, so filthy it makes your breath hitch. His tongue swirls in a tight circle, and you swallow hard, unable to look away.
“But she’s so sweet, Birdie. You’re telling me I’m the first to have a taste?”
You nod, desperate for him to keep going.
“You never asked another for it before?”
You shake your head. Every other has been a fumble in the dark, a quick, disappointing thing that was over before it even began. If you thought about it for longer, a different kind of embarrassment would flood through you at how you’ve allowed yourself to be treated.
But you didn’t know this was out in the universe.
He smiles, something akin to victory.
“Well then,” he muses, more to your cunt than to you, “I’ll have to endeavor to do my very best.”
Going slower this time, his thumbs part you, and he starts at your entrance to glide his tongue wide and wet up your seam. Your hips jerk, your body warring with wanting more of the touch of his tongue while fighting the urge to close your legs. Inherent shame tries to take over, but he isn’t having it. He tuts, his hands splaying over the soft skin of your inner thighs, forcing you to stay open. He bends to lick again, firmer this time.
His tongue sweeps through everything, collecting every drop of slick in its path, and he keeps going until your thighs relax, until your hips start chasing his mouth with little circles. He hums, dragging the tip of his tongue up to play with your clit and then gives everything an open mouthed kiss, an action that has your body bowing off the cot.
“Please,” you plead, curling your fingers around the edge of the metal frame.
His groans inside of you pull you apart at the seams, his hold sliding up the back of your thigh to push your knee towards your chest, opening you wider. The scrape of his stubble, the lush slide of his lips, the wet curl of his tongue. The force of it all makes you bloom around him, building your release as effortlessly as he did in your dream and you shift your hold to the crown of his hair, pressing him close. He growls and goes back to your clit with a suck, his cheeks hollowing with the motion, and an involuntary sob pours from your throat.
Your hips tighten with your release, the strength of it stealing the air from your lungs. On the edge of it, he sucks harder on your clit and nudges two thick fingers inside you. The volume of your moan sounds loud in the small space, and as he strokes, you swear you feel the stretch of his cheeks with a smile. He rubs, and sucks, and you tip right over the edge.
Suspended for a brief moment of sheer ecstasy, your body exists on the sensation between your thighs alone. Coming in his open, eager mouth, you don’t think, you just move: your hips rolling to ride it out on his tongue, cunt pulsing with flares of aftershocks that spark bright up your spine. The peaks of your breasts tingle with the force of it, and you cup the weight of them in your hands with a soothing squeeze.
He groans in approval, and you can’t even open your eyes.
“You want another one?”
You would laugh, but instead you shake your head, truly not knowing if you could take another one. Wrung out, you feel him come back up, pressing thick, damp, ravenous kisses along the slope of your body. Hungry things that devour the taste of your sweat, his lips press just beneath your ear, and need thrums beneath your skin at the warmth of his breath.
Still trembling and with your heart pounding in your chest, you watch in a post-release haze as he kneels to tug himself free of his briefs with glistening fingers. A slight pinch of pain gathers between his brows, paired with a tight inhale as his stomach twitches, but he ignores it all, wrapping his hold around his cock. His strokes are fast and firm, the sight so blatantly erotic – even more with how audible his slick hand makes it.
Just like last night and the night before, he’s unashamedly loud.
His cock thick and stiff in his hands, he works himself, his jaw tensing, his head tipping back. He slips his fingers into his mouth and sucks off your remaining taste while he does it, a lewd action from a man who has never been one to hide the baser parts of himself. Your eyes devour the veins in his neck that strain with his labored breathing, the flush that creeps along his sternum, the breadth of his shoulders. When you can tell he’s close, you drop your eyes to watch the fat, rounded tip of his cock, remembering the taste of it on your tongue.
Reaching your hand out, you cradle the delicate, heavy weight of his balls, and he drops forward to brace himself above you, coming with a guttural groan along the inside of your thigh.
The sound of it makes you want to press your thighs together to quell the sharp ache that pierces through you, but he stops you, forcing you to stay open. Covered in his broad shadow, you watch as his hand slides up over his mess, smearing it across your skin. You inhale sharply, a soft whine escaping your throat and the urge to force his fingers back inside of you flares bright.
Looking at him, you can see he’s thinking the same. His eyes fixed on your cunt, his fingers leave possessive, weighted indents in their path upwards along the curve of your thigh, smearing his spend across your skin. When the mess is sufficient for him, he kneads the plump flesh, letting out a deep hum of content.
The small space between you is intimate, heavy with sated relief.
You break the silence.
“I need you to get better.”
Still braced above you, he laughs, the action making him wince slightly in pain. Looking lighter than he did moments ago, he shifts to lay alongside you, crooking his arm under his head. He closes his eyes, and you watch his pulse beating hard under the skin of his throat. “Maker, you’re telling me.”
—
now go back up and look at the gif and tell me you see him asking her about getting her p*ssy ate. amirite?! 💀
I would love to see Cherry telling her parents about her and Joel getting married
pairing: joel miller x former f!sex worker!reader
wc: 2.4k.
part of the cherry verse - cherry masterlist
warnings: age gap (30s/60s), anxiety, bad relationship with a parent, disappointment, self deprecation
a/n: oh how I missed cherry. other (smuttier) cherry fics/drabbles are in the drafts but I hope you enjoy this for now <3
The ring feels heavy on your hand.
You twist the metal around your finger as you sit in your car in your parents’ driveway, the engine popping as it cools, heat blooming in poisonous flowers around you.
The stone winks in the sun, draws your eye down to the anxious thread of your hands. You wonder if you should take it off, if it might make things easier.
But you haven’t taken it off since Joel kneeled down and slid it into place on your hand. You don’t want to take it off, maybe ever.
And, it's the reason you’re here, sweating in your car in your parents’ driveway where you stopped on your way home from work. When you asked Joel how you should handle it, if you should bother to tell them at all, he’d suggested it might be a fruitless effort, but he’d never tell you not to.
You suck in a lungful of warm air and finally open the door. You can be brave; you can hope for better from the people who raised you, it’s not wrong, it’s not expecting too much.
Dry grass crunches beneath your feet as you cross the yard, wavering, simmering heat sitting thickly in the air. The porch steps creak and whine beneath your feet and your mother appears at the screen door before you’ve even made it to the top step, bright evening sun making her squint.
“Hey,” she greets. “What’re you doing all the way out here? Your dad isn’t here.”
She hugs you and it feels like a vice. “It’s on my way home from work,” you say, already feeling defensive and on edge.
She doesn’t invite you in but gestures to the familiar chairs of many summertime childhood evenings on the porch.
The cushions are weathered but clean, like the rest of the place. She sits next to you and lights a cigarette from the pack on the little side table between you.
“Sure.” She answers, blowing smoke toward the ceiling as she glances over at you. “But you never visit. Must be somethin’ you want or need.”
“Mama, I—”
The words jam in your throat. You haven’t called her that in years.
Why is it so hard to ask your mother to come to your wedding? Why is it so hard to just tell her Joel proposed? That the love of your life wants to marry you? It should be a terribly happy moment, but all you feel is dread in anticipation of her reaction.
“I’m getting married,” you say and smile, willing her face to mirror your own, for her to gasp and reach out to take your hand when you extend it.
But her eyes feather down to the ring and her expression doesn’t change. It’s beautiful and expensive and you in a way you never thought possible. You never thought that kind of money would exist in your life, even tangentially, though you have more than enough of your own now. Certainly you never thought anyone would ever know you well enough to pick out a perfect ring, to offer it to you.
You have hope, for one wonderful moment, that your mother is looking down at the engagement ring on your finger and seeing that too, that happiness for her daughter will manifest at any moment.
“To who?”
The hope flees, scattered like birds startled out of a tree. “Joel,” you answer and drop your hand to your lap, disappointed and then angry, a white hot flash that makes you sit up straighter. “You know to who. We’ve been together for—Who else would I be engaged to?”
She shrugs and eyes your hand but doesn’t hold out her own, doesn’t try to look closer, doesn’t say anything.
“I want you to come to the wedding.”
“Why?”
“Becuase you’re my mother,” you say, feeling childish and small. “You’re my mom.”
She sits forward then, and lies her hand on your knee. “Don’t go taking this the wrong way—”
“Mom—”
“But I don’t see any point in going to a wedding where the marriage ain’t gonna last.”
Your breath feels caught, a stumbling block in your throat. You feel like a child again, lost and reaching in the dark, seeking approval that you will never gain, no matter what you do.
Though you haven’t lived with her since you were eighteen, the weight of her dismissal crushes you.
“You need money? Is that why you’re going through with it?”
You blink. “What? No. I—”
“I’d at least make sure you get some money out of it,” she says over your protest.
“I don’t need his money,” you burst out. “I made something of myself. And I love him. That’s what—That’s why.”
She nods, placating. “Okay.”
“I’ve been with him for ten years,” you continue fruitlessly, searching for a reason that will be good enough for her. “If this doesn’t last, nothing will.”
She drops your hand and scoffs. “Took him ten years to propose, you mean,” she mutters. “You can do better. He’s older than I am. Besides, marriage changes men. He won’t want you anymore.”
It stings more than it should.
“No, mom, listen, he loves me.” You feel stupid saying it, like its a lie he spun and you’re desperately parroting. “He treats me well. He takes care of me. Shouldn’t that be all that matters?” The anger unspools in your voice, catches around your canines.
“It isn’t everything.”
“Then what is?” You press, like digging fingers into a bloody wound. Some part of you will always want approval from her that will never come. You feel like a child at the feet of an uncaring, perpetually unimpressed god. “What would be good enough? What more could I want? What more could you want for me?” You don’t just mean Joel, and you think she knows that, too.
Again, she shrugs. “Sounds like you’re convinced.”
Something inside you fractures just a little. “Is he not good enough, or is it me?”
She huffs. “Jesus, you’re dramatic.”
“What is it?” You push again, anger like red hot coals stinging in your lungs. It feels hard to breathe. “Your only child is getting married and you don’t want to—”
“I just thought you’d turn out different.” She says, casually, blowing smoke at the ceiling. “But you always had to do things the hard way.”
A once familiar ache slips into the back of your throat. “What is that supposed to mean?” Your voice is small and cracks.
She scoffs. “You always thought you was better than this,” she gestures broadly at the house and the yard that you still love, would visit, if not for the venom you know lurks beneath the surface, in your mother’s voice and eyes. “But don’t think I don’t know how you ended up with him. And you’ll always be that to him.”
That shocks you into silence. “That’s what I mean, sweetheart. It won’t last because it isn’t real. He gave you a ring to shut you up, but he’s never gonna see you as a wife.” Her eyes flick over you. “Not with the way you started up with him. You’ll see what I mean.”
She lifts her brows and settles back in her chair, taking another long drag from her cigarette, content in her surety, her survey, her sage reckoning. “It’s not that I don’t like him,” she says. “But he’s still a man.”
You let the words linger in the air, breathe in the soft scent of summer thick on the air, smoke and bluebells and old wood. Your heart feels tangled in your vocal chords, both aching and raw from strain. “Okay,” you say and stand, brushing the back of your legs. “I should go. I’ll call Dad later, since he’s not here.”
“Leavin’ already?”
You bite your lip to stop yourself from screaming, the pain anchors you inside your skin. “Yeah.”
“I have lemonade.”
“I have to get home. Joel’s probably worried.”
She stands and follows you to the edge of the porch. You’re halfway across the yard, taking deep, even breaths, touching the pads of your thumbs to each finger in a loop to keep yourself rooted inside your body when she calls out.
“It’s a pretty ring.”
You turn. She’s leaning against the railing, staring down into her azaleas that rim the porch. “It is.”
She nods and waves a hand at you. “Go on. I’ll tell your dad to call when he gets home.”
You yank open the door and slide into the driver’s seat. At first, you think you might be okay, that her last moment acknowledgement of your ring and the promise to tell your father might be enough, but then the disappointment that you will never be enough for the person who birthed you settles in your stomach like a lead weight and the tears churning behind your eyes make it impossible to see the road.
You pull over in a cloud of dust and spewed gravel on the side of a forgotten dirt lane, the front tires half landed in the thicket of weeds that fan between swaying oaks.
Joel answers your call on the first ring, his voice soft, your name like cotton candy on his tongue. You can tell he’s worried by the cut of his voice, because you aren’t home on time and you hadn’t told him you’d be late. “Hey, Cher. Stuck in traffic or somethin’?”
“No.” Your voice is fluttery and razed with long put away anxiety.
“You safe?”
“Yes.”
His tone evens. “What’s wrong, darlin’? Where are you?”
“It’s stupid.”
He grunts as he stands, and you hear the click of a cup being set down. “Well, I can guarantee it ain’t that.”
It gets you to laugh, just a little. “Joel.”
“Tell me, Cherry.”
“I told my mom,” you sniffle, picking at a loose thread on your seat. “About the engagement. She said there’s no point in her coming to the wedding.” You mean to leave it at that, but the rest spills out, too, unbidden, unwanted. “She said she knows how we got together and that you’ll leave me. She said she thought I would turn out better. But she said the ring is pretty. That’s enough, isn’t it?” You scoff, a sob caught in your throat. “Right?”
Keys jangle on the other end of the line. “Where are you?”
“Joel, don’t,” you murmur softly. “I’m okay—”
“You ain’t drivin’ home like that.”
“I’m not driving.”
“Funny. Where are you?”
“You don’t have to,” you say softly, despite wanting him to, despite feeling better already with the knowledge that he would always find you.
“Uh-huh,” he grunts as a car door slams shut and the engine turns over, “Where are you?”
“Just down the road from my parents’ place.”
“Stay put.”
“Don’t hang up.”
~
Twenty minutes later, you’re yanking the passenger side door open before his truck has even rolled to a stop. There are no words for a long moment, just the comforting push of his arms around your body when you scoot across the bench seat, the scent of wood shavings and leather and the ghost of your perfume on his collar from the kiss you’d pressed there that morning. The memory of his skin against yours in bed, the warmth of his arms around you, is enough to ground you, remind you of what the truth is.
Warm summer air drifts through the cracked windows, the cab relatively cool in the shade of the hulking oaks on the side of the deserted road. He doesn’t cut the engine and an old country song unspools slowly from the radio.
He strokes your spine slowly. “You okay?”
You pull back to meet his eyes, look into his familiar face, a little more lined, a little more gray, than when you first met, still Joel, with affection and love and the tracery of worry.
“Why do I still care? Why am I still waiting for her to be proud of me? Or happy for me? I’m in my fucking thirties and I’m still waiting like a kid.”
He shakes his head. “Just the way of things, I reckon. It never goes away.”
“Maybe I didn’t do everything right,” you say, hating doubt that creeps into your voice. “But I’m smart and capable, and I have a PhD and a good job and you. Why isn’t any of that good enough? Why can’t she be happy for me?”
Joel rubs the inside of your wrist, slides his palm from your hand to your elbow and back again, and shakes his head. “It ain’t you. It’s her. You did what you had to.”
The words are a balm, an ache dunked in ice. He reaches around you and holds out a bottle of coke. Not cherry, not this time, because the pair of you are behind on grocery shopping. You and your fiance, who knows you and loves you and is proud of you and doesn’t think the things your mother does. “I know. You didn’t have to come.”
“I’ll always come.” He stokes your cheek. “Didn’t answer me, Cher. You okay?”
“I’m okay. Are you going to divorce me?”
He chuckles, brows jumping up his forehead. “We ain’t married yet.”
“Are you?”
“No.” His thumb passes beneath your eye and you latch your fingers around his wrist. Joel shifts and twists his things through yours, palm to palm. “Not in this lifetime.”
“Maybe the next one, though?”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “Well, maybe just to shake things up.”
“Ugh,” you push his chest and are rewarded with deep laughter against your palm. “I’ll divorce you before you have the chance.”
He pulls you back into his chest, the bottle of coke wedged between you, digging into your ribs. “Don’t doubt it, Cher.”
“Will you be able to see me as a wife?”
His hand pauses midway down your back. “Think I got that covered already. How else am I supposed to see you?”
“I think my mom was on about a Madonna-whore complex.”
“Jesus,” he shakes his head. “Nothin’ is gonna change. I got you.”
But of course; it's as simple as that for him. You’re already everything you can be to him, better sometimes than you really are, in his eyes. “I love you,” you murmur against his throat. “Have I ever said?”
“Everyday.”
The radio’s staticked tune continues, the warmth of a fading sun wraps you up tightly, and Joel murmurs the words back to you, fingers fidgeting with the ring only he could slide into place. When you climb into his lap and kiss him, hand against the back of his neck, feathering through his hair, he laughs and tilts up to meet you, determined to show you as you are him.
