Trashed and Scattered

Peyton had given up on productivity for the night. It was nearing eleven when she finally relinquished all control over the renovations and moved to something extracurricular. She settled down at the kitchen table with her sketchbook and her pencils. Not her typical weapons, but the ancient tools that had been kept guarded by a coyote for the past decade. After giving each weight a sharpen, she busied her racing mind with therapy.
Time had a way of escaping Peyton’s grip once she got into her world of artistic endeavor. She’d once spent an entire Sunday slaving over an acrylic painting that she’d gifted to Joanna’s sister for her birthday. Her nature to procrastinate was partly to blame, and wild fascination with her own hands was the other culprit. Sometimes she’d take a step back and find it within herself to marvel in her own creations. Mostly, though, she was shackled by self criticism and endless creative loathing. She breathed for the times when she could simply create for the sake of chaos.
As the pencil slid down a perfectly arched nose, she found herself looming in another little triumph. The last time she’d spent real time inside this house, she could never have dreamed of sitting at the kitchen table with her mind on a page. Now she was freely using every crevice in the space to do her bidding. She was feeling particularly smug as she tilted the graphite and gave depth to the demon lingering just over her character’s shoulder. With each stroke, her past slipped further and further away.
A loud banging at the back door nearly scared Peyton to death. She pulled both feet from her premature grave and sauntered to the heavy door, peering cautiously through the window. She laughed quietly to herself as she unbolted the door and pulled it open.
“Hey,” Peyton greeted Jimmy with serious reservation.
“I’m not late,” Jimmy informed her as he slipped passed her small frame and planted himself inside the kitchen.
She narrowed her eyes at him, pushing the door closed and latching it tightly to ease her mind.
“Late for what?” Peyton asked, twirling around in time to find Jimmy shaking the empty coffee pot vaguely in her direction.
He shrugged with his hands, “What the fuck?”
“What the fuck what?” Peyton laughed, snatching the pot from his flailing hands and stuffing it back atop the dormant burner.
“It’s midnight coffee time,” Jimmy frowned. “It’s midnight...but there’s no coffee.”
Peyton smiled sympathetically, “I thought you were joking.”
“Why would I joke about that?” Jimmy retorted seriously.
Peyton pursed her lips, “Well, given the way you bolted from breakfast this morning...I wasn’t sure where you were at.”
Jimmy sighed, instantly reigned back into his own conflict. He thought Peyton might bring up his quick departure but he’d hoped that she wouldn’t. He’d spent most of the evening trying to work out the perfect way to explain himself, but quickly realized there were no words to properly explain all that was James Sullivan. So, he’d trashed the whole idea and hoped to rest on his laurels: charm.
“I hit a wall, Lex,” he told her with a sly grin. “If I didn’t sleep, I’d die.”
She rolled her eyes, “I’m making the coffee.”
If he wasn’t interested in offering a proper explanation, she wasn’t interested in prying. They’d had enough awkward encounters over the past few days that Peyton thought better than to purposely invoke another. There were many things Peyton would have liked to have conjured between them, but animosity was not one.
She filled the pot with water, dumping it into the back of the machine before reaching into the cupboard for the coffee grounds. Even on the tips of her toes, she struggled to reach the can. To her elated surprise, a colourful arm appeared from the woodwork and snatched the metal tin from the elevated shelf.
“You’re short,” Jimmy smirked as Peyton grabbed the coffee from his tattooed hands. “Why the shit do you keep the coffee up there?”
Peyton laughed, “I’m not that short...and that’s where I found it. I...haven’t moved it down yet, I guess.”
She hadn’t considered how strange that was in its nature. After a quick second of thought, she assumed it was because this wasn’t her house. This wasn’t her home. Despite the intentions laced into her homecoming, she’d done everything she could to leave everything as it was when she’d found it. It was a subconscious impulse but an impulse nonetheless. She wondered to herself if that would change now that she’d become aware of it.
Jimmy seemed to accept that response. He felt the tingle of ominous familiarity every time he stepped foot inside that haunted house; as if at any second a ghoul might appear and shock him back into his youth. He, too, would have put the coffee back onto it’s home shelf.
Peyton dumped the grounds into a white filter, hitting the red button as she spun around. Jimmy had meandered over to the table and was running his blue eyes over the visuals that had stemmed from Peyton’s brilliant mind.
Peyton felt an unnatural nervousness as she watched Jimmy inspect her work. She knew it was silly; she’d tattooed him for Christ’s sake. And yet, she was anxious for his approval. When it came to the tall man she’d known as a boy, she wanted to be ever cast in an ethereal glow.
“Is this me?” he asked with a smile.
She was a little taken aback by the question, surprised by its bare bones. She planted her feet next to his, looking down at her work through clear eyes. And there were Jimmy’s, staring back at her from the void of her sketchbook.
“I guess so,” Peyton laughed nervously.
Jimmy grinned, “Aw.”
“Don’t get all smug,” she smirked up at him. “It wasn’t intentional.”
Jimmy was touched.
“I think that makes it cuter,” he laughed, wiggling his brows down at her.
She groaned, flipping the hard cover book closed with a distinct thud.
“Viewing party over,” she grumbled.
Jimmy frowned, “Did I embarrass you?”
She shook her head, skulking back to the coffee pot to watch as it brewed.
“You’re crazy talented,” he told her awkwardly. “It’s different to see it on paper. I’m glad to be your muse.”
Peyton groaned, “You’re not my muse, Jimmy.”
“Apparently I am,” he grinned.
“Now you’re embarrassing me,” Peyton laughed dryly.
Jimmy’s very presence was enough to have Peyton reeling from the shame. The urges that had awoken within her were enough to have her engaged in a mental war. The slightest touch of his gaze had her skin crawling with wonder. It was as if all the time in the universe had past while she’d simultaneously stood still.
Jimmy was frozen in time; his core unchanged. She recognized him over and over again, eternally that boy she’d known all those years ago. But then he’d talk and he’d slip back into a stranger.
Jimmy skipped from the awkward conversation, pulling each cupboard open with ease. Peyton watched with amusement as Jimmy worked his way around the kitchen.
“You have no food in here,” Jimmy told her with an exasperated pout.
Peyton smirked, “Couldn’t you eat at your own house?”
He nodded, “Sure I could have. But then I wouldn’t have known that it’s a third world fuckin country over here. You need food!”
“I’m not hungry,” she giggled, rolling her eyes.
The coffee maker sounded with a loud buzz. Peyton pulled two mugs from the cupboard and slid them atop the counter.
“Stop that!” Jimmy screeched as Peyton made an effort to fill each cup.
She furrowed her brows, glancing at him from the corners of her eyes, “I thought it was midnight coffee time.”
“No, Peyton. Now it’s grocery time; keep up, would ya?”
Peyton groaned loudly, sliding the coffee pot back onto the burner for the thousandth time.
“Get your shit,” he instructed her.
She shook her head, “It’s midnight! I don’t want to go run errands.”
“Not errands,” Jimmy corrected, his sweet little lisp hanging off the word for dramatic effect. “Errand.”
She frowned.
“Get your shit,” he said again with a laugh. “Meet me out front in two.”
Before she could fully object, he had bounded out of the kitchen and out the front door. Her theory confirmed by the distinct slamming brought on only by a Sullivan. She glanced at the coffee, wasted and disappointed in its own existence. How had she been sideswiped into midnight grocery runs when she was supposed to be sideswiped by midnight coffee? Now there was coffee but no Jimmy to share it with.
She quickly weighed the options: midnight coffee alone or any time anything with Jimmy.
Without a second thought, she flicked off the kitchen lights and followed Jimmy’s steps out through the front, grabbing her keys as she passed. Just as she’d turned the key inside the lock, Jimmy excitedly called from the house next door.
“Like twins!” he cackled, locking up the big white house.
Peyton let herself laugh, stuffing the keys into her denim pocket. She met Jimmy on the sidewalk, in the same spot where they’d meet and separate every day of their childhood. It felt eerily the same.
“I’m driving this time,” Peyton told him sternly. “Last time you drove, I ended up walking all over town.”
He laughed, “Fair enough.”
“Midnight groceries,” Peyton grumbled just loud enough to let Jimmy know he was ridiculous.
He grinned, “Midnight groceries!”
She sighed, leading him to her rental. As he loomed like a mountain over the roof of the car, Peyton found herself reeling again. After all the time that had slipped by, she still found herself unable to resist his impulses. She was still blindly following his chains—unable, maybe unwilling, to unlatch herself. Wherever Wiley was, Peyton knew she could find sanctuary. She hoped the same was true of Jimmy; and there was only one way to find out.
In true Lexi nature, Peyton gave in to the whim with a plucky attitude. They climbed into the car and set out on Jimmy’s latest ditched effort to bring ease to Lexi’s life—and Peyton’s too.
If he couldn’t love her like she deserved, he figured the least he could do was feed her.
He towed the chains set out for him, rediscovering a love he’d forgotten. He sought after it from a distance, admiring it from afar.
“What?” Peyton laughed, catching Jimmy staring down into her soul.
He smiled, “Nothing.”
“Whatever, weirdo,” she smirked. “Avert your eyes or we’ll crash and die. Your staring is distracting.”
He laughed, moving his glance from Peyton to the road, “At least I’d die happy.”
Peyton found herself smiling. Probably because the sentiment was entirely reciprocated. It had been the sentiment of her entire childhood; the one thing she hadn’t considered after she’d said goodbye to him. She’d always sworn that if she could see Wiley one last time, she could die a happy woman.
Basking in the warmth of Jimmy’s soul, she hoped they’d live forever in that moment; perfectly content doing nothing and everything all at once. Outside the interior of the rented Hyundai with a nickel-sized dent in the hood, the world faded away.
Peyton felt for a fleeting moment that there could never be anything more perfectly timed than Jimmy. Than Wiley. Than the lives they’d led together and apart.
But Natalie came quickly trickling back into her thoughts and the world outside sprouted up once more.
Maybe timing was imperfect. She longed to believe it wasn’t. They’d been perfect once. She knew it, he knew it, destiny knew it.
But this time around?
This time it was all imperfect. And there was nothing to be lost inside of but the crushing defeat of imperfection. There could be beauty within flaws, Peyton assured herself.
But Jimmy wasn’t her flaw to marvel at the wonder of. He wasn’t hers to fix. Which, she figured, meant she wasn’t his to fix, either.
Quickly slipping into a saddened vortex of recurring dreams realized, Peyton pushed passed the sensible. There was no harm in admiring from a good, safe distance. Peyton was good at distance.
And this time, the distance—and the distance alone—was perfect.

Notes

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