The Deconstruction Of Falling Stars
It is a quaint home he bought for her; for this person now forever bound to him whether or not she wishes to be, their blood intermixing into skin and bone, flesh, into the two most beautiful children CJ believes she's ever laid her eyes on.
Layers of white paint cover bricks that together form this great space, with French doors and big windows that allow the light to violently stream into this house he's bound to live alone in. She touches the walls and they seem so familiar, and then he breaks down in front of her because he thought Andi really did want this -- want this life with him -- as a family.
CJ's hand leaves the wall to touch him, to feel his sadness sink into her until they are trapped in the strangest embrace, being sad together. "And maybe," she says, looking ridiculous, "sadness is not a necessary evil; maybe it's our legacy to absorb and pass on."
He chuckles because it's all so silly, and he's never wanted any of this in the first place, and now he's stuck in a place that defies him whenever he just sets a foot in it, and he only breaks down in front of her, no one else.
Toby can't remember when he'd commenced decaying into this person Andi doesn't love anymore -- this person she doesn't even seem to like very much. He analyzes himself into small particles of blood and words and pain, and she -- not Andi, CJ -- too much within him, etched on him and in him, and he can't trace the moment in which they became too lost in each other to ever function well with other human beings.
"Maybe it isn't a necessary evil," Toby says, finally, and she inhales his words and his breath into her lungs when they finally do kiss, and there's nothing left to say about anything.
She sinks into him and they laugh, laugh, and laugh, because they thought they were too old and too sad for this clichˇ of having sex on the floor with the windows open and not caring about it at all. The light plays in her hair and between her curves, in odd shadows; he thinks of how it's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, and they're streams and rivers together in the middle of Georgetown with his newborn children in the hospital and this damn chandelier above them, moving slightly as the air breezes through it.
They end up lying naked on the floor, staring at the ceiling. CJ feels cleansed, her eyes traveling over all that white, and she thinks she's never seen an emptier house before. His fingers trace circles over her stomach, breasts, neck; he caresses her cheek and her lips and she's fallen so long ago.
They're shapes and colors sloshed haphazardly over the hardness of the floor, and they haven't stopped laughing yet because they've lost all their tears to the light and things that actually do matter.