The Conditions of Will

by Jessa Hastings

For all my fellow adjectives… keep modifying those nouns.

Is there a good way to find out bad news? I guess, probably yes? Just…regular, I suppose—nothing scarring or dramatic.

Even by the pure function of what a noun is as opposed to what an adjective is, she likes nouns more, I know she does… A noun is specific.

Conscious feelings are present on the surface, and you make decisions around them, but subconscious feelings exist under the surface, and they dictate your decisions too, arguably even more so, but often you only realize that in retrospect.

Because—honestly—neither party is great these days, and when you personalize something to the extent many people do in politics, any time anyone questions something the party does, it can feel like they’re questioning you, and that’s just plain unhealthy.

Death is confronting for sheltered people because it fractures realities.

the same way parents are supposed to want their kids, kids have a genetic predisposition to want to be wanted by them.

I like the safety net of being able to drive away if I need to. And I suspect I will need to.

It’s a funny part of growing up, actually… Accepting that things that are better for you, healthier—they can still be painful. That the worst, most shameful day of my life to date would in turn become the most defining.

and if I think about him and how his face looks, I’ll feel sad, and I don’t want to feel sad, because sadness is a loose cannon, and what I need right now is control.

Sometimes it’s easier to play the characters we’ve been assigned.

You know how there’s an invisible threshold you cross when you like someone where you go from just friends to something else?

every Mumford & Sons song that you’ve sung to look for a hint of a confession that you believe in him.”

It took me a long time to realize that something doesn’t have to always feel wrong to be wrong.

On the day that’s been designated to mourn a man I don’t feel like I even really knew?

“Because she prostituted her fourteen-year-old sister for popularity.”

You survive whatever you need to, however you can.

“Would it be so fucked up if I kissed you right now?” I drop my chin a little and gnaw on my bottom lip. “No,”

Sam Penny’s brows lower. “How many times did it happen?” I give him a tight smile and a small shrug. “I stopped counting after ten.”

“Are you going to take it back?” “No.” He sniffs a laugh and takes me by the waist. “I’m going to do it again.”

But he kissed me the same way he did on the driveway—not with this mad, unbridled teeth-knocking passion, but with this sure steadiness where I could feel his chest rising and falling against mine, and it was so magnificently consistent that my whole self became a puddle.

“I was heartbroken, Ol.” I nod. “Completely. But I’m not anymore, because I stared it down. That’s the secret—” I give him a tight smile. “I’m not afraid of pain.”

“People don’t develop substance dependencies by dealing with their problems; they develop them to numb them.”

“Are you up for a bit of a drive?” “With you?” He blinks a couple of times, then smiles. “Yeah, I’ll take the long road.”

“Isn’t it the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?” I stare up at the big arch, which is my favorite part, I think. “Even though it’s broken?” “Yep,” he says quietly, and he’s looking just at me.

“Answer the question.” He nods his chin at me. “Ask it better.” I square my shoulders and look him straight in the eye. “Sam Penny, do you have romantic feelings for me?”

“I wanna be here for you now too, though.”

“You’re going to have to make the first move,” I tell him quietly, but Sam shakes his head. “Please?” I press. He nudges my cheek with his nose, then kisses my cheek. “You can do this.” He pulls back a little so our eyes meet. “You’re in control.”

Sam sees the world through this peculiar and raw lens of knowing there’s bad out there. He knows it, can see it, recognizes it—he might even acknowledge it, but it doesn’t seem to affect him. He just breathes deep and constant until the good he knows is coming comes.

His kisses are commas.

“So be selfish!” he yells as he shakes his head again, wildly now. AU1—he’s nervous, or afraid. “Please! Please, be selfish. For me.”

“Georgia—you and me together—” He gives me a look. “This is—it’s not normal. I’m not going to find this again.”

But it doesn’t work; he just watches me—stares, really—as he bunches up my tank top before he slips it over my head. Is he—he’s…dressing me?

When I go to pay for my things, Sam has already bought them. I tell him that he didn’t have to do that and he says, “Get used to it.”

He’s confused Sam’s here. But why would the presence of Sam be confusing to him at all?

And this room—there’s something about this room that’s throwing me.

But as I barely make it down the stairs and into the front yard of my father’s lover,

“Alexis Beauchêne and Dad were having an affair.” I look back at Oliver as I point to our father’s lover on the porch. “And that man is Alexis Beauchêne.”

“Besides Oliver, I don’t have a reference for intimacy or closeness or sense of security with a man that isn’t sexual. How the fuck would I?”

I think sins are weighed by their intent and their destruction.

I know you’ve spent your whole life shouldering other people’s pain and their secrets, usually at a massive cost to yourself, and now I’m here, and I’ll help you

And I think to myself, wouldn’t it be so lovely if we viewed ourselves through the same lens as the people who love us?