Questions of Bond Pt. 1

It was early morning on a Saturday. Mykel had to leave proceeding breakfast that morning to go sign the papers in order to gain the space with which to open his new tattoo shop.

Liz was up with the sun, already having a pot of coffee brewing when Mykel and I dragged our half-dead carcasses down the stairs.

Liz is and always has been a regular early riser, much to the opposite effect of her younger, though much bigger brother.

We enjoyed a jovial breakfast together that Liz had been preparing, being the early bird she is when we came downstairs that morning.

Things had been...I'm not quite sure really...restive and the unquiet anxiety that was building between Mykel and me was becoming insurmountable. While he laughed during breakfast, I saw the small glances he kept sending me. The pained look in his eyes.

The kiss we had shared several days before had...taken me for a ride. The way his lips felt, the way his hands felt when he held onto my hips...my heart still flutters at the thought...

But there was still so much he didn't know about me. So much I was too afraid to tell him. I couldn't stand seeing the look of disgust disfigure the beauty of his face. To see those honey-wheat colored eyes darken with enmity and virulence. After he and I went to bed that night, I lay awake for hours, feeling the peace of his arms around me. Wondering if this was what love really felt like.

I inhaled him, breathing in his pheromones, making me dizzy with infatuation and something a bit more, before every single feeling of peace and safety plunged, shattering in the darkened hole of my soul.

Do you really think you deserve this? Are you actually beginning to believe that you're worthy of love? That someone could love a disgusting little scab like you?

The voice was my mother's, hard and cold and unfeeling. Whispering in my ear as she had done so many times before.

You're nothing. Less than nothing. You amount to less than maggots on dog shit. Didn't I teach you anything? You'll never be more than a pathetic little whore.

Tears began to leak slowly from my eyes. I knew the words to be true. My own parents couldn't find love for me...not a single shred of human decency...neither had anyone else. The men...I was nothing but a paid-for hole to fuck...sometimes just a hole to take...

I was nothing. At least that's what I thought. What I had been taught to think. I still battle, even now, in keeping that in the past tense. I was never nothing and not...I am nothing...Mykel is teaching me, but I still have yet to master that particular skill. Sometimes that voice comes hauntingly back, from the depths of my memory bank like a krakin waiting for a hapless victim. Every time it dissolves me into a blubbering mess. During those moments Mykel comes and gently sweeps up my broken pieces and glues them back together again.

What I have never told him is that sometimes I'm afraid one day there will not be any whole pieces left to put me back together again, simply fragments with too many holes to keep stable.

He did not wake to my cries that night as I began to mourn what I thought could never be.

Liz noticed the strain between us, the tension in my body at his presence, but kept silent, waiting patiently for the right moment to bring it up. That moment was that morning after Mykel left.

He stood from the breakfast table, his eyes sliding to me before quickly looking away again. I closed my eyes in a failed attempt to not catch the confusion, rejection, and sorrow that had been hovering around him the last few days. I didn't have to see it to feel it.

After setting his plate in the sink he turned and smiled at Liz, though the smile was not as bright as usual. She smiled back, worry etched across her features as she glanced between us.

"I'll be back later tonight. If all goes well I'll have a lot of things to cover today. I'll text you and let you know what's going on."

Liz nodded and pulled him into a hug. "Be safe. Good luck. Mykel," she called to him as he reached the front door.

Nothing more was said, but they shared an unspoken conversation at the end of which, Mykel looked almost resigned. He left with a sad glance in my direction and the smallest upturn of his lips.

After he had left Liz studied me for a long, arduous moment before she turned, pouring more coffee into the mugs we had used during breakfast. She went to the living room coming back a moment later with a wooden box with a small brass latch at the front.

"Come sit with me. Let's watch the sun finish rising." Her voice was gentle but I could tell the difference between a gentle demand and a request.

I grabbed my coffee, thinking as I did so that I was going to need a much more sufficient supply of the favored caffeinated beverage, and followed her outside. We sat on the swing, our legs slightly touching, our arms lighting brushing together as we moved. I sat silently as she opened her box and pulled out a cigar that had been gutted of its original contents and rerolled with marijuana that exuded a strong aroma.

She lit it, closing her eyes as she inhaled the substance into her lungs, holding it a moment before exhaling a cloud of smoke. The wind blew, whipping the smoke around our heads before it dissipated completely. She hit it again before passing it to me.

We were silent, slightly swinging, the movement controlled unconsciously by our feet before she spoke, smoothly and without malice. "What's going on between you and Mykel?"

I looked at her. "Nothing," I answered simply. That word felt like a stab in the chest.

She studied me for a moment. "Is that the problem?"

"What problem?" I asked, feigning ignorance.

"Come on, Mattie. Don't play stupid with me. Both of you have been mopping around for the last few days like someone drowned your puppy."

The thought of drowning made my throat close and I took a deep drag to keep myself under control. I smiled at the gained knowledge that Mykel had not told her about what my parents had done to me.

"I'm not trying to hurt him," I said, my voice already becoming thick with unshed emotion.

"What are you trying to do then?" She glanced at me then, smoke sliding from her nostrils like a dragon's.

I shook my head and looked away, feeling my weakness building. "I don't want to hurt him, Liz. But...I don't want to be hurt, either. That's all I've known...hurt. And I'm...I'm so fucking scared." I took a hit then to calm my shaking nerves. I ignored the tears as they made their descent down my face. "I'm scared to fall in love with him, Liz." I laughed without any hint of humor and so much heartbreak Liz took my hand, lacing it with hers. "And I could so easily. I...there's still so much you two don't know about me. And...what if...what if you find-find out and...it changes your view of me? I'm broken and dirty and so beaten in...don't you see, Liz?" I looked at her with despairing desperation. "The two of you, working at the cafe...are the only good things I have in my life. What if you find out what I am...where I've been...and you hate me?"

She looked at me, her eyes softening, and drew her arm around my shoulders. "Mattie, what you've been through...whatever you had to do to survive...whatever your past holds...is not going to influence how we feel for you now."

I shook my head in denial at her words. Words that both began to heal my tattered soul and broke my heart. Liz took the coffee mug from my hands and along with hers placed it on the deck at our feet.

She moved over to me so that our bodies were touching to our ankles. Her fingers found my hair and began playing with the surrounding curls. "Do you really think so lowly of us, Mattie?" she asked me. Her voice was low and saddened, and I hated myself even more to be the cause. "Of me?" she added. She wasn't looking at me. She was looking beyond the yard, tracing the mountain ridges with her eyes.

"No," I whispered. "I hold you in the highest regards. I think that lowly of myself." I paused and took a deep breath.

Liz took that moment to relight the blunt that had died as we were talking. She hit it and handed it to me. As I inhaled I felt the herb course through my bloodstream. My heart slowed. The shaking of my hands soothed, my nerves calmed.

I exhaled.

"The last three years have been the best of my life, Liz. And it's because of you. You gave me a job. My first real job. You helped me when no one else would.

"I can never adequately express to you what you've done for me. Nor can I ever repay you." I took another hit. "I never had a reason to smile before, Liz. I've never had a friend, I've never had...love, Liz. Not before you. And I'm scared. And...a whole lot of other things and the thought of losing it, losing you...I don't want to be who I was before...and I may not be doing very well at getting better, but I couldn't handle going back to the life I lived before."

I choked. I could not say more. Liz did not press me.

"Mattie," she said after a while, "listen to me, and listen carefully..." She linked our hands together once again and kissed the back of my hand. "I love you, sweetheart. How could I have turned you away when you came in my door?" She smiled, almost sadly, as now she has the slightest bit more understanding of my state at that point. "Soaking wet, no jacket, no umbrella, freezing cold. You looked like a wet baby duck with poofed-out feathers." We both laughed softly. She gently wiped my face, the action igniting such a reaction inside me that I felt like I would burst.

"I had to take you in. You seemed so lost that day," she said in hindsight, her voice low and analyzing. She didn't have enough of the pieces of my jigsaw puzzle to complete the picture just yet. I still could not tell her yet.

"I am lost, Liz. I'm no less lost now than I was then...the only difference is I don't get rained on at night, and my shoes don't have holes in them.

"Everything is still new. Except for pain and loss and self-loathing. And I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop."

I squeezed her hand then, despondency filling my every pore, so afraid that she would run from me forever toward the mountains in the distance if I did not keep a firm enough grip.

"I don't want to lose you. Or Mykel, for that matter. But I'm so fucking scared, Liz, that it's all gonna fall out from under me." I swiped at my eyes and sighed, dropping my hand heavily into my lap.