Warrior Blue

by Kelsey Kingsley

she was the type of pretty you didn’t find yourself facing every day, and while I’d never say I was attracted to her, I couldn’t argue that she was irrefutably gorgeous.

I thought about that tattoo throughout the rest of my workday. I wondered about her sister, how she had died, and what brought Audrey in, years later, to have the butterfly done for herself. I regretted not asking her in the hours she'd spent in my chair. I'd been too self-absorbed in my own shame for jumping to conclusions based solely on her physical appearance. I hated so much when people did that to me, so why did I think it was okay to treat her in that manner?

That fucking tattoo ... My eyes flicked back to the sharp black lines, teasing me from beneath her collar. The cross hung above them, playing in multiple contrasts. Darkness and light. Hell and Heaven. Evil and good. Standing there, I then felt the analogy applied to us as well. Her, in pink and denim. Me, in black and nothing but. Her, wearing the symbol of Christ. Me, wearing the anger of the damned. What was a woman like her doing with the brand of the devil on her chest, disguising itself as art?

"It’s life and death,” she explained frankly, never allowing her smile to wilt. “Or, as you put it, a butterfly, but in reverse.”

I should've done something, anything, to express a hint of acknowledgment, yet I couldn't. I was stunned and startled, in complete awe over her ability to write something so profound about skin of all things. And then there was the mention of—I'm assuming here—me, and that shook my heart so much, I looked beyond the mention of God. She had written something about me. Was it possible that I'd haunted her as much as she'd inadvertently haunted me?

"You're yellow," he stated, his tone flat and unmoving, before turning his attention onto his food. He focused on eating and watching the movie, and I left the room. Back at home, I went to my room and grabbed the book I kept about aura colors. I flipped through the pages in search of yellow, and when I found it, I read through the different shades and their meanings. Jake would never be specific. He would never discern if my color was dark or light. But it didn't matter as my eyes fixated on one word. Hope.

purposely keeping my gaze from settling on the short, blonde woman beside me. To look at her would've been to grant myself the permission to settle deeper under her spell. I couldn't have any of that. My mind would be liable to think further into signs and the possibility of Fate—fuck you for planting that seed, Dr. Travetti.

He clapped his hands as he laughed, and I laid a hand on his shoulder to settle him down. My eyes shifted toward Audrey, not wanting her to judge or scrutinize, as unholy as that would've been for a good, cross-wearing girl like her. Not that it’d ever stopped Christians from passing unfair judgment before. Yet, when I looked at her, I saw nothing but affection and acceptance in her pale blue eyes. That simple piece of twine I held onto thickened and pulled me in closer, further into her energy and radiating light.

"Blake," he said, gripping my shoulder and shaking me with urgency. "Blake." "What's up, buddy?" I asked, passing Mindy my debit card. "I like her color. She's yellow. Pretty yellow. Like flowers. She's like a flower, Blake." I stilled at the innocent analogy. There was beautiful simplicity in the comparison. She really was a flower, beautiful and seemingly untouched by the ugliness this world could offer.

Audrey said, "Not only is he unburdened by the harsh reality of the world around him, but he has the gift of honest intuition and a brother who obviously adores him. That is the very definition of lucky, Blake, and it breaks my heart that you could actually look at him and say something like that." Her statement felt like a slap in the face, and I was instantly ashamed. "I guess that's one way to look at it," I said thoughtfully.

Audrey looked up to smile into my eyes. "Messy can still be beautiful."

You are so beautiful. You're so talented and gifted and your words are ..." She shook her head, planting her hand against her chest again and again. "Your words are your heart, and it's broken, but it's not ugly. You're not ugly."

She shrugged. Her finger ran a circuit around the glass's rim. Round and round and round ... I was in high school again, talking to a girl I liked, who maybe liked me, and dammit if it wasn't making my innards turn into a mess of warm putty. Dammit if I was too lost in gin and tonics to focus on anything but how awful this was and how she needed to stop this now before I couldn't.

So, I turned back to Audrey, and against my better judgment, agreed to her walk. Because I needed time to sober up. Because truthfully, I didn't want to go home just yet. But mostly because I so desperately wanted to believe that I could be worthy of someone like her.

my hands were on either side of her face and my lips were on hers in the most impromptu first kiss. It wasn't magical and it certainly wasn't sweet. It was an urgent display of my desire in the middle of my kitchen, in a house she thought was cute. I walked her backward until she hit the wall, never breaking the lock my mouth had on hers. To feel her hands in my hair was deliciously deviant. Her fingers wrapped within the strands in coordination with her lips, opening to accept my tongue, and I obliged with a needy and guttural groan. Every bit of warning was silenced by the sounds of our mouths, moving together in a dance of tongues and the crash of teeth, and every want I'd ever had aimed directly at her was spread blatantly across every one of my fingertips. They clasped at her face, thrust into her hair, and moved around to press firmly against the small of her back, to prove just how badly I wanted her.

I’m, uh, kinda the reason my family is so fucked up,” and I realized she didn’t know my family. She didn’t know our tense and messy dynamic. “Do you still feel that way?” “No,” I replied honestly. “Good,” she whispered softly, touching my shoulder with her lips. She laid her arm across my waist, pressing her cheek to my chest, before breathing a sigh against my heart. And my heart sighed back.

"Anyway, um ... my mom's a nice person. She means well." Most of the time. Audrey smiled as she smoothed her hair out. "Well, for what it's worth, I think we would make beautiful kids." I snorted, taken aback by the blunt statement. "Oh, you think so, huh?" "Oh, yeah," she insisted, pulling her hair back into a bouncy ponytail. "I mean, your coloring and my eyes? They'd have to be gorgeous." I looked to her eyes at the mention and even though I wouldn't say it—I could never say it—I knew she was right.

"Blake is my brother. We look the same because we’re twins." "Twins are so special, aren't they?" She grinned sweetly. With their exchange happening before me, I felt like an intruder. But I couldn't look away. I watched them interact in a way I'd only seen my brother behave with me, and I sat there, stunned. At her ability to treat him like an equal, like there wasn’t a damn thing wrong with him. And I continued to stare,

After the two episodes had been watched, Audrey glanced at her watch and announced she needed to get going. She gave Jake a kiss on the cheek as he wrapped her in a suffocating hug, leaving me with only a smile and jealousy. Where was my kiss? Where was my hug? I watched her back as she walked toward the door with a big, stupid grin on my face, because I couldn’t remember another moment in my life in which I’d been jealous of my brother.

couldn’t get those words out of my head for the rest of the day. Nothing holding you back, except you.

wrapping Audrey in a tight embrace. “I hope I see you again, pretty lady.” It was strange, witnessing Celia’s purple dreadlocks blend against Audrey’s platinum blonde hair. It should’ve been unnatural, just like my attraction to her. But somehow, it wasn’t. Somehow it was as natural as my need for darkness and autumn, and it was driving me crazy that I couldn’t make sense of it. So, I thought maybe it was time I stopped trying to and just accepted it for whatever it was.

“How have I not seen you before?” Snickering, she shook her head. “You probably wouldn’t have noticed me if you had.” I didn’t say it, but that was bullshit. To not notice her would’ve been to ignore the sun. It was impossible.

reaching up to press my palm to her cheek. “How can you feel so fucking good?” I hadn’t meant to ask the question. It just slipped out between my open lips and into her dark apartment as she worked against my body with lazy movements. But, now that it was out, I let it settle in my heart while she leaned forward and rested her lips once again on mine, to kiss me lazily while our hips moved in a perfect, slow rhythm. The answer was so obvious to me, and it glinted like the cross around her neck. Whether it was Fate, God, or simply serendipity, it was right. Nothing but right. Audrey and me. Us. We.

She offered me a small smile and slid her hand across my shoulders. When her temple touched my arm, I closed my eyes and asked nobody up above to let me keep this. For as long as I could,

“Part of taking care of someone, is making sure you take care of yourself, and that includes your own happiness. And I know this, because when I’m happy, Freddy is happy,” she explained quietly. “So, if you were happy, Jake would be happy, too.”

“What’s up, buddy?” He met my eyes with that knowing gaze of his. The one that never failed to irk me. “You’re blue.” “Blue?” I furrowed my brow and he nodded. “Blue. Like Grover,” he stated calmly. I’d never been given blue before. I’d been so many colors of the rainbow, mostly leaning on the negative side, but never blue. It left me unsettled until I got in the car with Jake and my parents and looked it up on my phone. Apparently, according to the internet, blue had many meanings, but what I repeatedly found was that blue was the color of intuition and support. The color of someone that others find help in. Someone very generous, in their time and otherwise.

I glanced at Jake, sitting beside me in the backseat. He was drawing, a blue crayon held between his fingers. He circled the outline of a black figure holding a sword and shield, pressing the crayon firmly against the page. I swallowed at my nerves, as I stared at his picture, and I asked, “Whatcha drawing, buddy?” “You,” he replied simply, not bothering to look at me. My snorted laugh was forced. “I don’t own a sword or shield. That’d be weird.” “You don’t need one,” he answered, his tone flat as he circled the figure over and over again in blue. “Don’t worry, Blake. You’ll make it better. You’re brave and you’re a warrior. You’ll make it better.” I smiled, reminding myself that my parents hadn’t filled out the paperwork yet, because of me. And even though my color of choice was typically black, blue didn’t seem like such a bad color to wear either.

Audrey, walking a few paces ahead of us. She had taken it upon herself to supervise as Jake and Freddy went to each door, making sure they were polite, and I found it both endearing and somehow incredibly attractive that she had asserted herself like that with my brother. Our mother acted out in anger so often, while our father looked at him as a stranger, but Audrey wasn’t like them. Hell, she wasn’t like most people, was she?

I wanted to tell him I didn’t believe in soulmates. I wanted to tell him I didn’t believe in souls, period. But every time I resisted, a little voice would speak up somewhere in my head. Or, was it my heart? Wherever it was, that little voice said that there was so much about this world I didn’t know. I sure didn’t know why a thousand accidents had aligned so perfectly to bring me here, to this exact moment. I didn’t know how Audrey could be so different from me, yet somehow balanced me out so well. I didn’t know what allowed Jake to see a person’s color radiating around them, to reveal their innermost secrets. And if I was willing to admit all of those things, I could also admit that I didn’t know if there were soulmates, tethered to each other. Maybe even through a thousand accidents, all aligned so perfectly just to bring them together.

“You barely even know me, Audrey. There is no reason whatsoever for you to waste any of your time caring about m—" “Please shut up,” she said, and so I did. “I don’t know my mailman at all, Blake, and I wish him a merry Christmas and a happy birthday, because every life, every day, should be celebrated. It’s all precious and sacred.”

“You don’t have to condone the actions of your children to maintain that unconditional love.”

Blake. I do know you. And I know that you aren’t the crap you say.” My defenses eased as I relented with a sag of my shoulders. “Yeah? And how the hell do you know that?” “Because while you think you stole everything from your brother, he gave you a heart. And I can see how good and beautiful it is. It’s in your art, and in your devotion to him. And those are the most honest things about you.” My lips curled between my teeth, battling the urgency to grab one of the liquor bottles on the shelf within reach. “Even Jeffrey Dahmer had a heart,” I pushed out through a startling clot of emotion. “Yeah,” she replied with a somber nod, “but it wasn’t Jake’s, and there isn’t anything impure about that.” And that was a point I couldn’t argue.

“Because there are certain things in our lives—certain people—that are just supposed to be there. We don’t choose them, or what they’ll mean to us; they’re just a part of who we are.”

“And what is it you think I am to you?” I asked instead, surprised to find my voice so hushed, I could barely hear it myself. And without hesitation, she answered, “You’re the man I’m meant to love.”

“Jake told me to tell you that you put the colors on me,” I confessed. “What colors are those?” “Blue,” I told her, and with a deep breath, added, “and pink.” Audrey’s recognition hit her in small doses. First, with the lift of her chin, and then, the parting of her lips. She nodded slowly and whispered, “That’s the color of love.” I nodded, knowing nothing else needed to be said, but needing to say it anyway. “For the first time in my life, I made the decision to feel hurt and angry with someone else and not alone. You make me so fucking vulnerable, Audrey, and I hate it so much. I fucking hate that I don’t have a choice in any of this shit, and that nothing makes sense anymore. But I love you, and I guess that’s all that really needs to make sense.” Her smile wobbled as her emotional control slipped away with tears that flooded her eyes and slipped over her cheeks.

“The way Audrey looked at you, I knew you were exactly what she needed. She was broken for a long time after losing Sabrina. We all were, but she took it the hardest. She hid it well—she had to, to be what Freddy needed—but deep down, she was battling something dark. You put the light back in her soul.” I could only nod, absorbing her words and knowing there was truth in that for me as well. Audrey had glimpsed the darkness in my chest and lit a match. She’d started a fire and given me the reason to believe I could, in fact, have a soul. Something bound only to flesh in this life, something with the capability to move from this world into another.

God doesn’t always package the best ones in what we’d expect. That’s what makes them harder to find. And more worth the wait.”

“You fight hard and love even harder, and that’s what I want. I want you.”

In the beginning, we are born in our purest form. We then become ourselves during the stage between caterpillar to butterfly, so colorful and full of beautiful possibility, and we believe, with the blindest of hope, that we’ll be perfect forever. That time is endless. That there is a multitude of chances, of opportunities. Until one day, the reality of mortality settles in deep and dark, and we suddenly become aware of how limited we are. It is all so black and white. There is no grey. We live and we die, and there’s nothing more to it than that.

Oh! And one more thing: The no-questions-asked compassion from this guy was so unlikely, considering his tough-as-nails exterior, and all I could think was, he’d be so freakin’ perfect for Audrey.”

It’s because you let it happen. You got tired of standing still, of living in the past with all your guilt and anger, and you decided to start moving. You did that. I was just there, hoping to come along for the ride.” “Well, it was a bumpy road,” I laughed bitterly. While clutching the book in her hands, she leaned in, kissed my lips, and whispered, “The ones worth taking usually are.”