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Aiden looks up, propping his chin on his fists. “You’re my big brother, man, you’re Sean Bell. I wanted to party like Sean Bell, work like Sean Bell, be like Sean Bell. Telling you this would make me…not Sean Bell.” “It makes you Aiden Bell,” I say, giving him a light punch to the thigh. “Which is even better.”
Aww babies
“This isn’t about the Keegan deal. This is about your commitment to this company.”
Fuck this man
You should come back. That was the thing Dr. Iverson said to my parents, and now that I’m old and tired, I can see what he meant by it. He meant this community is here for you as I am here for you. He meant please don’t suffer alone. He meant let me help comfort you.
Omg
“Sean, darling,” Northcutt greets me, flopping down next to me on the vinyl sofa. He takes a look around the room, as if realizing where he is for the first time, and wrinkles his nose. “How can you stand it here?” And then he takes a good look at me, with scruff that’s definitely graduated to a full-on beard and my wrinkled clothes. “Never mind. I guess you fit.” I don’t answer him. There’s no point. “Anyway, you’re fired.” He cheerfully hands me a folder that I don’t bother to open. I know what it will be. The usual HR bullshit. A description of stock options and retirement funds held within
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What.the.fuck
No one will be there to keep watch with him through the night. Which raises the uncomfortable, lonely question: Will anyone be there to keep watch with me? When it’s my time?
Hit hard... Same question ive had
Sisterless, jobless, Zenny-less, and about to be motherless. Satisfaction is as far away from me as the North Star.
God this one is sad
I turn back to Mom, I don’t know why, but I just need to see her right now, reassure myself that she’s still here. And she’s holding up her whiteboard. It says, mountain dew?
That broke me ccompletely
They take out her NG tube, which is met with applause from everyone in the room, myself included, and then Mom wheezes something to the nurse who did it, and the nurse smiles and nods. Disappears and reappears with her purse. And with the respiratory tech’s help, they take off the mask for a few minutes at a time and put makeup on my mom’s face. Concealer and brow pencil. Dabs of blush and red lipstick. And after they knot a fresh silk scarf around her head, with the loose ends draping prettily over her shoulders, it’s almost the real Carolyn Bell again. Fierce and friendly and ready to laugh.
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I dont know if i can do this
And that I can see this, just this once, the woman I love hugging my mother like she’s family—I’m speechless with it. It’s a gift I never expected to have. It’s a miracle. Thank you.
Fuck
When I look back to my mother, she’s looking up at Zenny and me holding each other close. My mother lays her head back and smiles, as if this were more than she could have asked for, as if her work as a mother is done. And then she wheeze-asks for the Mountain Dew, and at long last, she gets to drink it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Fuck mn
I stand in the storm for what feels like hours, letting the rain sluice over my bare chest and back, letting it dance over my closed eyelids and against my parted lips. I let it fill up the hole inside me, I let it find every ridge and valley and vault of my body and my heart. I hope Mom is dancing between the raindrops now. I hope she’s somewhere laughing and dancing with God. And it comes to me like a clap of thunder that Zenny is under the same rain now, that somewhere this very same lightning-light is touching her face, and I can almost imagine it’s me touching her face. I can almost
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Omg
I wish I could be there. I wish I could hold your hand during it. You deserve that, and I’m sorry if I ever made you feel like you didn’t. You deserve a girl who will give you everything.
Shut up girl
If I don’t get what I’ve been working so hard for, hurting for, and sweating for—then what will all those sacrifices have been worth? It would feel cowardly, and I’m no coward. I started this with you to find out what I’d be missing, and I did find out. It’s you. I’ll be missing you. I hope my saying that counts for something. Somehow. In the end.
It doesnt
My heart freezes. “I still think I have to do this,” she whispers. “Just…for the right reasons now.”
Dude... Sierra makes me hate people
“Oh,” she says. She’s been infected with that word too. “Yes, oh,” I tease, trying to make light of it, make light of a very sad and aching cock. A sad and aching heart. “It would be better if you moved, darling.” She doesn’t move. Instead she sits on my lap, regarding me, her breathing moving fast and hard and pushing her perfect tits against her Jesus wedding dress.
Maam fuck off
“Maybe…we could…just one last time?”
Get the fuck off you greedy slut
it’s going to hurt us both even more. I should be the older one and the wiser one and put her down. I don’t want to put her down. I don’t want to stop. If this is my last taste of her, I’ll take it, weeping all the while.
Stupid man
“You weren’t feeling good, were you?” I murmur, rubbing thoughtfully at her clit. “Put your leg over my shoulder, sweetheart. Sean’s going to make you feel all better now.”
Does she realize shes NEVER going to have this again?? Also shes selfish playing this poor man???
“Did you like that?” I ask, leaning in close and circling the tip of my nose around hers. “Did you like having that poor pussy taken care of?”
Now go get married to god
“You make me come apart,” she says against my mouth. “You make me more like myself.”
I might hate her more than poppy
“I needed to be full—fuck yes God—you make me so full.”
Hate. Her.
Her mouth opens once more, a silent cry, and she’s a writhing angel in my arms, falling from heaven and touching ecstasy all at once, and she sobs out a broken I love you as her body flings itself right into the mouth of hell, shuddering with illicit sin in the arms of a sinner, right in the very dress she wore to meet God. Did I say I was reformed earlier? I lied.
Im so angry
I help her clean up with some Kleenex, and I help her rearrange her panties, her dress, her hair, until the only evidence of what just happened is the barely perceptible blush on her cheeks and chest and the spill of me inside her, invisible to everyone except God.
Go do your vows while he drips out of you slut
A tear spills over, followed by another and another. “I haven’t been good to you, have I?”
NO YOU HAVENT
Wordlessly, I let my phone drop to my side and stare. “Don’t lose your joy,” Zenny says, coming to a stop in front of me. “What?” I ask, totally at a loss. “It’s what your mom said to me before she died.” Zenny takes a deep breath, stepping forward. “She said we made joy in one another, that she could tell just from the way you’d talked about me.” “Zenny—”
Ok.... Win me back girl
“You give me joy, Sean. You give me the space to be strong and to be safe and loved and please say it isn’t too late, please say I’m not too late for us—” But I’m already gathering her into my chest, I’m already kissing her. I take her by her upper arms and hold her apart from me after a moment, trembling. “You’re not taking your vows? Truly?”
OK! You win over poppy!!!
“Are you trying to murder your husband?” “No,” Zenny says briskly, her hands dropping to my zipper and exposing me with hurried movements. “I need his dick too much for that.”
SCREAM
Because I also didn’t imagine myself married, and now I’m married to the smartest, sweetest, bravest, and most beautiful woman I know. And because I also didn’t ever imagine myself a father, and yet here’s Zenny perched in my lap with a naughty glint in her eye and a swollen belly pushing at her tank top.
Ahhhhh babhyyyyyy
