#abelthomas

[monikahalston]

📍 at the vinyl frontier with @abel-thomas.

          So little had changed in thirteen years. Monika came to a standstill inside the front door of The Vinyl Frontier, the very record shop she and Abel had spent a generous amount of time in as lovesick teenagers, browsing the vast bank of alphabetized sleeves in search of something new to play on his late father’s old player. The storefront had suffered its share of woes over the years ⏤ she recalled a campaign to keep its doors open a few years ago amid the growing trend of digital music ⏤ but it had very much retained its character, much to her delight. And fear.

          Her visit wasn’t just a casual return to an old haunt, it was a sudden gut-punch reminder of the sticky summer days and cold winter nights spent making googly eyes at her first boyfriend over the partition separating the aisle as they picked out records for each other. Her nostalgic smile deepened as she glanced about the place, clocking the yellowed posters of Queen, Madonna and David Bowie still hanging over the cash register before settling on the very ex-boyfriend she was supposed to meet. Why had Abel chosen this place, of all places? It wasn’t a date. They’d been clear in establishing that they were just friends, and for the most part things had been okay. But as the days turned to weeks, the weeks to months, Monika wondered if what she felt for him ⏤ a potent mixture of attraction, sentimentality and heart-wrenching longing for the simplicity of the love they’d shared as kids ⏤ was worth acting on, worth ruining the friendship for. 

          Worth inevitably breaking her heart all over again?

          Walking the well-worn flooring through the store to the classic rock section, where Abel was reading the back of an Outfield record, she found her place across the partition from him. “Poor Josie,” she said, fingers tracing over the selection of vinyl in front of her, "on vacation far away. No idea what her man’s up to.” The reference wasn’t completely obscure, but one that had a different meaning to them. “Your Love” was one of a few songs that Abel kept on heavy rotation and even featured on one of the mixtapes he made her, despite her joking questions about the lyrical allusions to unfaithfulness. “Finding anything good?”

[monikahalston]

⏤ @abel-thomas.

UNEVENTFUL ⏤ that was the New Year’s Eve that Monika had resolved to hosting for herself, and the night had not disappointed. Reclined on the couch, Arthur curled up on her chest as Phoebe chased a feathered toy about the rug in front of the television, it was the closest she had come to feeling peace after the raucous events of this year’s Christmas Eve dinner, hosted by her mothers in her childhood home. Her grandfather had returned to his home the next morning, and Monika had harbored guilt over her outburst at the dinner table. It was easy to place her anger with him when it had been her choice to keep Abel and his mother in the dark about everything that had transpired after he’d left San Francisco.

It had been six days since she’d last spoken to Abel, and four since she’d called Debra to offer a heartfelt apology. With his mother’s encouragement, she'd tried to get in contact with him. But no matter how many text messages or voicemails she left, repeating the same apology and offering the same words of support, that she was only a phone call away if he wanted to talk and that there were no questions she was unwilling to answer ( and really, she wasn’t in a position to withhold information from him anymore ), he never responded, never picked up. She feared for the worst, remembering how impulsive he could be as as teenager, and her concerns had been validated when a TMZ link had appeared in her inbox, an article featuring photos of Abel in a heated argument with a bouncer outside of a bar downtown, the headline speculating about an imminent fall from grace. 

The television was flashing with a new advertisement for a car company as Monika drained the rest of her glass of champagne, unable to wait until midnight to pop the cork. Truthfully, she was unsure if she was even going to make it as she sat up, moving Arthur to the cushion next to her as she climbed out of her blanket cocoon to go to the kitchen for a refill. But she didn’t quite make it, because as she crossed the room, a knock sounded at the door, startling her. Who could it be at this hour? Her phone had been quiet for a while, everyone otherwise engaged at the party. Padding across to the door, she unfastened the locks and opened up, immediately freezing at the sight of Abel on the other side of the threshold, reeking of liquor, his hair in disarray. When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet, almost timid: “What are you doing here?”

[monikahalston]

💔😘💙💞

💔 = Has your muse ever been heartbroken? If so, explain what happened. 

Only every day of her life. Monika’s always breaking her own heart by falling in love with people and places and concepts that she can’t possibly keep. One of her greatest heartbreaks came at 18 when she sabotaged her own happiness and broke up with her boyfriend after he was offered a recording contract in Los Angeles. Fearing that she’d grow to hate herself for holding him back ( and that he might regret it if she let him stay for her ), she broached the subject of breaking up so that he could chase his dreams without any emotional attachments keeping him from doing what he wanted and needed to do. 

But her greatest heartbreak of all? It was placing the baby she gave birth to months after Abel left San Francisco with another family, knowing she couldn’t possibly give the child the future he deserved and wishing she could. Contacting Abel never seemed like an option; she knew his heart, knew that he’d throw away his burgeoning success and all of his ambitions to make a go at parenthood with her. And so she took the grief of losing the two boys she loved most in her life and absorbed it, determined not to drag Abel or anyone else down with her.

😘 = Does your muse like to flirt? Do they like to be flirted with? 

Monika often has great difficulty determining if someone is flirting with her or just being nice ( just as often as she’s guilty of sending confusing signals to other people, making them think she’s flirting when she’s just being nice or vice versa ). So if she can pick up some sort of social clue or indicator that the person she’s interacting with is open to flirtation, then she’s generally into it. But like most people she prefers it when someone else makes the first move because she’s been caught misreading situations one too many times before and is easily made nervous by having to do it.

💙 = Does your muse prefer a night out or a night in? 

A night in with good company! While she does love going out on an adventure with someone, she craves the intimacy that, in her opinion, public spaces don’t offer. She’s also a big proponent of comfort, so staying in and cooking dinner with/for someone, listening to music and dancing, playing board games, anything that allows for deep and meaningful conversation is her idea of a perfect night in.

💞 = Does your muse believe in soulmates? 

100%. Her mother Frances always used to joke when Monika was growing up that she fell in love ten times before breakfast. She loves love, believes in it and all its trappings completely, and always seems to find herself at its mercy. Her idealistic heart is always seeking it out, though it hasn’t come to her since her first heartbreak ⏤ at least, not completely, in the dizzying, world-stopping way she felt years ago. The concept of soulmates is something she firmly believes in, though with age she’s come to realize that a person can have more than one soulmate, and that they can manifest in different ways; it’s not just strictly about romantic love.

[monikahalston]

⏤ @abel-thomas.

THE SCHOOL AUDITORIUM WAS COMING ALONG, slowly but surely, with the addition of each white paper snowflake cut-out that Monika carefully pinned to the crimson stage curtains. Set up on a utility ladder loaned by the school custodian, she had a stack of snowflakes made by her first grade class balanced on the top rung next to a small container of safety pins. Junipero Elementary’s annual holiday concert was in two days, and there was still a lot to be done. Her students had been rehearsing the rendition of “Jingle Bell Rock” that they would be performing semi-regularly over the last three weeks, Monika slowly adding new elements like simple choreography and handmade props to the lyrics they were learning, so that they might retain everything it by the time the show rolled around. While she had voluntarily taken up the role of playing percussion for the performance ⏤ so that she would be on stage with the children, a familiar, comforting presence ⏤ Mr. Jensen, the fourth grade teacher at Junipero who had planned this year’s showcase, had promised to deliver a guitar player to join them, so that the audience would get something more than the standard instrumental version of the classic song playing on an old boombox. 

It was that very guitar player Monika was waiting on as she scaled the ladder, sorting through the creatively-cut snowflakes and attaching them one by one to the swath of dusty red fabric hanging in front of her. She was alone in the auditorium, and with that knowledge came the freedom to hum along to the Christmas tune that had been stuck in her head on loop for weeks. Humming quickly gave way to singing, and she was so focused on spacing the decorations evenly that she didn’t hear the approaching footfalls of the guest she’d been anticipating all along.