Trashed and Scattered

When Peyton got home, she got straight to work fixing herself up. Hunching for six-some hours really took a toll on the back, and on the makeup arrangement. She headed straight for the bathroom, wiping at the smudges and applying a fresh coat to her lashes.
As she’d made a break for the exit once most of the guys were properly inebriated, Jimmy had cornered her at the front door.
“Give me an hour,” he’d told her with a sly grin.
She had nodded awkwardly, the full force of her coincidental run-in still not quite setting in. What had processed, though, had sent her flying home. Without giving the surge of excitement much extra thought, she fed into it with enthusiasm.
She’d wondered sometimes what Wiley might have grown up to look like…but he was not what she’d pictured. Not even close. The perfect crookedness of his smile made her weak in the knees, a developed trait she was quickly learning to reign in. She’d made it the whole evening without swooning…too many times.
The whole group of them were noticeably attractive; they were each intriguing and entertaining by their own merit. But no one had caught her attention quite like her Wiley…He demanded to be seen.
As the sands of time slipped slowly passed her fingers, she climbed through the splintered window that had once marked her freedom. She was disappointed to look up and find Wiley’s bedroom completely encompassed in darkness. She considered turning around and hopping back into the house, but the evening air was warm and the sky was littered with stars. You’d never see a sky like that back in New York.
So, she stretched her legs out and laid back on her elbows, drawing her attention to the universe above. For a while she tried to count the stars twinkling in her eyes, but soon grew frustrated with the task. She reserved herself to surveying the crevices of the hollowed moon, surprised to find it the same as the blackened moon back home. It felt worlds apart.
A clanking followed immediately by distinct cussing broke Peyton from her star daze. Her eyes fell to the window across the way and, to her glee, out climbed a coyote.
“Hey there!” Peyton called from her side of the tree.
He smiled, dusting himself off from the climb, “That was easier when I wasn’t an old man.”
Peyton made a move to get up but Jimmy held up a hand.
“Just stay there,” he told her. “I’m coming across!”
“But this isn’t the old spot,” she argued with a subtle smirk.
He laughed sharply, “Splitting hairs, Lex.”
She watched with amusement as Jimmy stepped out onto the strong limb of the tree and made his way across with one hand, his other holding a brand new bottle of whiskey and something foreign wrapped in a pink towel. Peyton narrowed her eyes to see but was met only by the furry fibers of a decidedly Sullivan towel. Jimmy grunted and struggled as he made his way around the grooves in the bark.
Once he’d finally made it across, he heaved a sigh of relief as he collapsed down next to Peyton.
“That was way fucking easier when I was eleven,” he cackled, glancing over to her for validation.
She laughed happily, “You did it well.”
“Thank you,” he grinned. “So?”
“So?” she mimicked. “You brought refreshments I see.”
He nodded, stretching his long legs out before him and cracking open the bottle of hooch, “I figured we weren’t ten anymore.”
“No,” she smirked, snatching the bottle from his hands and taking a big gulp, “we are not.”
He found himself admiring her. She’d grown up to be a remarkably striking version of her shackled and tormented younger self. As the light from the open window reflected itself in her jade eyes, he caught a glimpse of a white scar carved into the space above her eyebrow. It was like staring directly into a kaleidoscope made entirely of your past. All in a fury, Peyton’s skin rejuvenated and softened before cracking and bleeding and bruising to hell. Jimmy flinched away, unnerved.
“What’s wrong?” she asked confusedly, glancing around for whatever had him worked up.
Her face immediately soothed itself back into normalcy. The wounds faded back into scars, or disappeared altogether. His heart hurt for her; this being that used to be his closest friend.
“Nothing,” he smiled to reassure her. “I was just thinking about the last time I saw you.”
Peyton blushed against her will, regaling in her very first kiss for just a second.
“Can you believe it’s been thirteen years?” she sighed, searching his face for something familiar.
She still couldn’t believe how much his face had matured. As he shook his head, she stepped outside herself and reached out to touch his face. He let her.
She clipped the silver piercing jutting out from below his lip gently with her thumb, glancing up to meet his crystal gaze, “Missed your nose by a bit.”
“What?” he laughed nervously as she pulled her hand back.
“You said you’d get your nose pierced,” she smirked. “But it seems you’ve put a stud through your lip instead.”
“So have you,” he noted, mimicking her awkward gesture and running a single finger over the silver hoop that hung from the left side of her plump lip.
Her spine tingled at the touch.
“I guess things really do change,” he thought aloud, disappointed in the revelation.
She shrugged to herself, taking another long drink from the bottle.
“You still do art though,” he added. “So…maybe not everything.”
She smiled at him, “You always said I was good at it.”
“Speaking of which,” he declared loudly, stealing a quick sip of whiskey before rotating to his right and pulling the towel from behind his hip.
He uncovered it with desperately sloth speed; Peyton’s nerves slowly came unbound.
When he finally pulled the secret from its cloth, Peyton’s heart glimmered with affection. Jimmy smiled to himself before passing his old friend her aging tin full of dulled pencils. Her eyes filled with salty thank yous as she happily snatched it from his hands.
“You kept these?” she gasped quietly, ripping the lid off and running her fingers over the wooden tools.
He smirked, “Of course I kept them. You asked me to.”
She dared to look up at him; afraid of just how perfect he looked beneath the moonlight. As Jimmy realized he’d shown his true colours, he immediately backed away from himself.
“So, I guess you can thank me for who you’ve become,” he told her proudly.
Her face flattened, “What was that?”
“Yeah!” he nodded excitedly. “I bought you your first set of drawing pencils…so…I’m basically responsible for all of your talent.”
“Oh,” she snickered. “That’s right; that’s totally how it works.”
She rolled her eyes playfully, tucking the pencils back into their metal bed.
“You’d be nothing without me,” he continued with a devious grin.
As the words fell from his lips, he hadn’t realized just how very pointed they were. But Peyton caught them; and she reveled in their truth.
She nodded grimly, turning her eyes back out to the night sky, “Yeah…”
A silence fell between them as they both muddled through the turmoil that had been set out for them so many years before.
Jimmy was the first to break it, as he often was.
“Where did you go anyway?” he asked quietly.
She sighed, “Connecticut.”
“Jesus,” he laughed quietly under his breath. “I guess they don’t have phones in Connecticut, huh?”
She frowned, meeting his stare, “Is this why you wanted to meet? So you could berate me about the decisions I made when I was eleven?”
A grin spread slowly across his face. It irritated Peyton beyond belief.
“What’s funny?”
“You,” he replied. “You’re doing that thing.”
She furrowed her brows, “What thing?”
“Where someone says something you don’t like so you get all defensive and agitated. I can’t believe you still do that!”
“I don’t do that,” Peyton mumbled.
Jimmy laughed, “But no; that isn’t why I wanted to see you.”
Peyton was entirely unconvinced. While she’d anticipated a bit of turbulence, given the way she’d left things all those years ago, she’d naively fallen into the guise of rekindled friendship. The way he’d watched her all day long…she thought maybe he could move passed their abrupt end and look forward to a calmer future.
But the snide comments would flare up now and again and would set her back ten paces. She stood at an impasse and wasn’t sure which way to turn.
“I’m sorry,” she decided was the best course of action.
He narrowed one, sole blue eye.
“For the record,” she continued with a heavy sigh. “I wrote you once…”
“I know,” he nodded sharply. “I got it.”
Something about the unknown fate her one-off letter brought wholesome comfort to that void in her chest. She’d never been sure if he’d received her thoughts, or what had become of them at all…but she took solace in the fact that it had, in fact, reached him.
“And I wrote you for a few years after…”
His brows fell into disbelief.
“I didn’t send them,” she almost laughed. “But I did write them…”
His voice fell into a slumber, “Why didn’t you send them?”
She leaned back onto her elbow, taking a long and needy drink from the bottle of confidence. What had seemed so simplistic at the time had caused her a storm of disillusion. She’d spent years convincing herself that cutting contact with the only soul she’d ever truly known was the right move to make…But Jimmy’s unrelenting offence was a good indicator of her poor judgement.
“Because,” she breathed into the sky. “I thought it would be easier for us both if I just…slipped away. I wanted to start over. I wanted to…I wanted to be Peyton again.”
He frowned, “You were always Peyton.”
“I didn’t want to be that Peyton,” she insisted. “That Peyton was broken and scared and…timid.”
“But Lexi wasn’t,” he offered.
She nearly smiled, stealing a quick glance at her thoughtful old friend, “I needed to be both. I didn’t know how to do that while I was still trying to be…who I was. I know this doesn’t make any sense.”
“It makes a little sense,” he assured her lightly.
“I just want you to know that it wasn’t easy,” she told him seriously. “Letting you go…”
She let her mind float back, pushing passed the nights of tears and the fits of rage.
“A while ago,” she reminisced, “I woke up really early…I like to sleep until noon. That’s who I am as a person.”
Jimmy laughed in agreement.
“But for whatever reason, I was…awake. And I couldn’t get back to sleep…so, I shuffled my stupid feet out to my dumb couch and thought maybe I could fall back asleep to some good old Saturday cartoons…And do you know what was playing when I clicked on the tv?”
He shrugged.
“The god damn Road Runner Show,” she laughed quietly.
He smirked in response.
“I watched as this ridiculous coyote ran around, focused so hard on his goals that he was wildly unaware of his own…ridiculousness,” she remembered fondly. “And his fur was all unkempt and he was disastrously crafty…And all I could think of was you.”
Jimmy wanted to tell her that he’d thought of nothing but her for years…For most of his life. He’d wondered where she’d gone and what had happened to her. He wondered if she’d persevered and recovered from the trauma that was her life…He wondered why he wasn’t enough for her. Why he couldn’t have her.
But, instead, he let himself stay quiet. An eminence that she alone could present in him.
“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” she confessed then, pulling back her strained heart and securing it into place. “So, I let it be what it was. I let you go…And I let whatever we had go.”
He didn’t.
“I guess I just thought I was important,” he said quietly. “It was…weird…to learn that I wasn’t.”
Her entire soul flinched. It caved and it cracked.
“Not important?” she scoffed under her breath.
In one fell swoop, she let her black sweater fall from her shoulders and pulled her long-sleeve up over her head, exposing the grey tank she sported underneath.
Jimmy’s eyes grew, a playful grin stapled to his face, “A little forward.”
“Shut up,” she mumbled, tossing her clothes aside.
Jimmy was astounded by the sheer amount of colour this woman had kept under wraps. He’d assumed she’d owned a couple of tattoos, given her career choice. But something about her skin being permanently carved into unfamiliarity caused a sensation through his body that left him adjusting himself subtly.
As she turned, pulling her long hair to one side, Jimmy’s heart leaped.
“Not important,” she repeated sternly as Jimmy’s eyes fell upon his namesake.
There he was, in his brown and furry glory; a Wile E Coyote permanently painted onto her back. He couldn’t help the smugness that flew through him, escaping from his fingertips as he reached out to touch it; as if that would somehow make it real.
“Well now I feel bad,” he joked lightly. “You brought a knife to a gun fight.”
She pulled from his touch, spinning back around to face him, “You’ve always been important.”
He fell back into that same strange silence he’d recently adopted.
“At some point, you’re going to have to forgive me,” she pleaded with him softly.
He considered this, “It isn’t really you I have to forgive, is it. I don’t know you well enough to forgive you.”
She’d missed that intellect; that witty depth of consciousness. She’d searched for it in other people all her life but had always come up lacking. There it was, laid out for her in its unrelenting unkindness. And yet, somehow, it was reassuring.
“I’d like you to know me,” she said quietly. “But I understand if you don’t want to…If it’s too weird…or whatever.”
“Lexi,” he sighed. “I’d want to know you in any life.”
She smiled as his body relaxed and his muscles challenged their binds.
“Maleficent, huh,” he noted with a smirk, pointing to the arm folded in her lap. “What a shocking choice.”
She laughed with a nod, “I still love that bitch.”
“What about Metallica?” he asked excitedly. “Do you still love them?”
“Of course I do!”
He grinned, “What else? What’s your favourite thing to listen to right now?”
Her face fell into humiliation. She hummed and hawed about a suitable answer, but took entirely too long to respond.
“Oh my god,” Jimmy gawked. “How bad is it?”
“Shut up,” she grumbled playfully.
He bounced subtly in his place, “Tell me it’s something ridiculous. Is it Britney Spears? Tell me it’s Britney Spears.”
“I listen to everything!” she groaned with her best cop out.
He cackled, “Go get your iPod, Lexi! I need to survey the damage!”
“No,” she defended immediately. “No way am I opening up myself to that kind of ridicule. I’ll never hear the end of it!”
“What are you listening to?” he pressed. “Your favourite band of the moment; who is it? If it’s Madonna, I’m leaving.”
“It’s not Madonna,” she laughed gently, trying to hide her shame. “It’s…Coldplay.”
His eyes nearly burst from his skull, “Coldplay? Jesus, Lexi. See what happens when I let you out of my sight? You turn into uncultured swine!”
She surprised herself with a laugh, muttering under her breath, “Fuck you!”
“You know what you need to listen to?” he asked her seriously, his eyes beating into hers.
“What?”
He was genuinely surprised that she even had to ask. He’d assumed she’d know immediately what he was getting at. He paused to give her a minute to catch onto the obvious, but the opportunity passed her by.
“What?” she insisted.
He studied her skeptically, “Avenged Sevenfold.”
“What the fuck is that?” she asked with a chuckle.
He threw a hand to his forehead dramatically as he fell quickly to his back.
She erupted into giggles, “What? Why are you dead?”
He wouldn’t admit it, but he loved that she knew exactly what he was up to. It was a skill she hadn’t abandoned during their lost years—maybe she was the same person, after all.
“That’s my band!” he groaned, rubbing his face with both hands to wipe away the shame she’d inflicted on him.
“Your band?” she asked confusedly. “How would I know that?”
He glanced at her from between two fingers, “We’re kind of a big deal, Lexi.”
“Oh, okay, Mr. Big Shot,” she teased happily. “I apologize for not bowing down at the mere sight of you.”
He sat up, snatching the booze from her hands, “You seriously don’t know who I am?”
With a cocked eyebrow, she tried, “James Sullivan?”
“The Reverend Tholomew Plague,” he corrected whimsically.
“The Reverend what?”
He laughed loudly, “It doesn’t even matter. I’m going to pretend I’m not offended.”
“I don’t know you, The Reverend whatever, whatever…” she smirked, amused by his genuine horror.
“Uncultured swine,” he reiterated.
“Oh, please,” she scoffed.
He smirked, “I’ll have to get you up to speed. It’s officially my lot in life now to get you cultured, Peyton Winchester. You’re an embarrassment to the human race.”
“Subtle!” she gasped dramatically, snatching the bottle back.
He shrugged without apology, “You brought this on yourself.”
“What do you do in this band?” she asked him skeptically. “Do you still drum? Are you a drummer?”
He nodded enthusiastically.
“Oh!” she grinned from ear to ear. “So what you’re saying is that you owe me a thank you?”
He narrowed his eyes at her, “How’s that now?”
“All of those hours spent away from me; basically ditching me for drum practice…I donated those hours to you, sir. So…basically…everything you are today is really because of me.”
He loved the way her words shaped and slipped from her perfect lips. And while he’d missed the depth of his own sentiment, hers was not lost on him. As the moonlight gleamed against the bottle in her hands, he felt a twinge in his chest that he hadn’t felt in over a decade.
“Basically,” he smirked.
As Peyton proceeded to bombard him with questions about his band and his music, and he promptly pulled out his phone to show her what he was all about, the two friends fell back into their old ways. It was almost as if no time had passed, but they’d simply moved forward with a blink.
They stayed out on that rooftop all night, talking and laughing and rediscovering all of the love the world had once offered. Neither noticed as they slowly grew closer, intertwining innocently as they watched the stars burn out overhead.
The moon moved itself from one side of the world to the other, exchanging its secrets with the light of day. As the sun rose, Peyton breathed lifelessly atop Jimmy’s chest. Jimmy glanced down at the perfect creature resting peacefully atop his arm, neglecting the deadened limb he’d exchanged for her comfort. As he brushed her hair from her cheek, he found himself enamored with this girl he once knew. The woman he was getting to know.
He rest his head against hers, admiring the sky as it painted itself with brilliant yellows and reds, and he thanked whatever god was out there for bringing her back to him.
He knew then that he was in trouble.

Notes

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