2019-03-20 - This Is How The Monsters Win

It was another cool, wet, rainy day in Gray Harbor. Today, the rain falls like sheets and leaves deep puddles in their wake; if it lasts, the sewers on Elm will start backing up and the whole street will stink for a week. But that is not a Spruce-street problem, or even a Grizzly Den Diner problem, though the rain keeps some of the breakfast crowd hogging up tables long after the bill has been paid. If Logan timed his entrance right (and he stood outside underneath his umbrella for a good fifteen minutes, consistently checking his watch), he enters the diner just as the breakfast shift was ending. Just as Emily's shift should be ending. Not that he was planning on that. Nope, not at all.

He dumps his umbrella in the bucket and hangs up his slicker to drip on the rubber mats, leaving him in a charcoal gray sweater and a pair of dark denim blue jeans. The hostess knows him - and knows that Logan doesn't often stray this far out into public - so there's a bit of wide-eyes and startled looks as she leads him to a table. A table distinctly not in Emily's section. He lumbers into the booth and puts a small book onto the table, then leans out of the booth again to take a look around him. To the hostess, his request is simple: "If Emily's done working, tell her to come over?"

Emily's whole situation - not to mention her distinct lack of a bubbly personality - means most of the staff here are just as pleased to keep her at arm's length as she is to be kept there. But Logan's mere presence is going to set the wheels of gossip in motion, and then the request to actually have her come over? Oh god, they'll talk about it incessantly all day long, finally supplanting the 'Violet Whitehouse had a DATE' chatter.

So Emily's eyes follow that hostess, and her lips press into a quietly perturbed line when she watches her already huddling up with one of the other waitresses, whisper whispering away. All before Emily herself even makes it to the booth, pulling her hair out of the kinda-sorta cute ponytail (enh, it gets a few extra tips) and shaking it out, never-minding the unpretty rubber-band ripples; she slumps into the seat across from Logan, failing to provide anything like coffee or water or even a menu. Of course, she looks at the book. It makes the look that she lifts to Logan afterward into a curious one. Like, yeees?

Logan was well aware the kind of commotion he was creating, but the level of 'give a fuck' that he had for the gossip-mongers was strong. Let them talk, he'd be over here, idly scrubbing at a water spot in the knife at his table and then rearranging the salt and pepper shakers which were slightly out of place. This place has clearly gone downhill since he stopped working here (or since he got fired, whatever you want to call it). It was somewhere in the midst of this fussing that Emily slumps into the booth, Logan glancing away from the shakers and up to her rubber-band rippled hair, before he follows her look to the book. He nudges it towards her with the tips of his fingers.

"I know you've moved on to Vonnegut now," he keeps his voice level, quiet. For them and them alone. It's not a question, it's not a reason, it's just a statement. "But maybe you can go back to Hemmingway. I imagine he feels abandoned." There's a subtle twitch of his lips as he looks up to her, no avoidance in the settle of his eyes onto her own. "Have you had anything to eat?"

Yeah, you lose one alcoholic/opiate-addict and suddenly the whole place is just falling apart. The waitresses aren't friendly any more, the silverware is all spotted up, it's just a fucking mess around here.

Emily doesn't seem to immediately know what to do with the book coming her way, just stops it moving with a light lay of her index finger on the edge nearest herself, like - no, you stay there, book, you haven't been invited over yet. "I like this book," not this book, a book that's not here right now. "Galapagos?" The one she started yesterday, will finish today. "It's about what would happen if the last bastion of humanity wound up crashed on a tiny island. And Vonnegut, he has this really jarring, fourth-wall-breaking device. Where he puts an asterisk by a character's name if they're going to die before sunset that day." She looks up from Hemingway (whose asterisk has come and gone) to Logan (whose asterisk she just won't think about ATM), and that's where the whole story of Vonnegut ends, with no proper denouement. "No, I don't eat here, I'm afraid they might poison me." That's probably not true. "And I like the food at your house better." She even test-drives a smile across the table at him.

Logan can see well enough where this book is going, stalled in its path to her. So his own hands retreat, and return to the spotted silverware that really shouldn't be on this table. Maybe they need to use some kind of rinse aid on the silverware. He idly rubs at the knife with his napkin, ignoring the gift and trying his best to maintain his focus on the girl as she goes on about asterisks denoting death. "What if they die after sunset?" he asks, a brow lifting with the question, and then falling into a slumped furrow when she talks about not eating here, even if the comment on his own food - or the smile - should give him a much needed ego boost. "I didn't make lunch today," he says evenly, scraping his teeth against his bottom lip. "But I guess I could make sandwiches. Since you don't eat here."

As to the book? His gaze lowers to Hemingway, and he explains in a mumble, "I saw it at the antique store. I was going to buy it. Except that I didn't." There's a small pause as he pushes out the memory of why he didn't buy it. On account of that artificially heightened sensation which had scared the shit out of him. "But it came anyway. You don't have to read it."

"They're not real people. They die whenever Vonnegut kills them." Imaginary people talking about real authors killing off imaginary people. This is some profound shit. "But it builds suspense. And you have to sort of cope with the knowledge that they have no free will, that they only exist on paper. Vonnegut told you they're going to die, so they're going to die." Anyway, before she goes full lit-teacher on Logan...

Emily registers the lack of lunch with a flash of dismay, like this one change in routine is going to throw off her whole LIFE. "Do you want me to get you some food? The cook is fine, he doesn't have scabs or anything. It's just - " Worthy of a shrug and not much more. "I think you cook better." Carefully, she walks her fingers across the cover of the book, laying her palm across it and draaaaagging it toward her side of the table, as far as the paper place-mat, which curls and makes her own spotted silverware clink quietly. Okay, first "Why didn't you buy it?" The next question is almost definitely going to be 'how did it get here then,' just as a heads-up.

The talk of the book - Vonnegut's, not the one right in front of them - makes him shift around in his bench seat uncomfortably. "That sounds depressing as fuck, Em," it wasn't criticism, it was just the truth. "What's the point of the story? That everything's .. pre-determined and somebody's deciding whether or not you get an asterisk on your name today? No thanks," it was not the book for him, grumble-grumble.

And the grumbling continues as she offers to get him food, a heavy huff of a sigh expelling from his lungs. "I didn't come all the way down here for you to wait on me. Your shift is over," and he even pointedly checks his watch again. Yep, breakfast was well and truly done, Emily, that means you're not a waitress any longer. But he doesn't explain further. Instead? It is Hemingway he opts to lie about: "I don't know. I didn't think you'd like it. You know, nevermind," he reaches forward to smack his palm overtop of the book and tug it back towards his paper place-mat. "I'll return it."

"The point of the story," Mister Miller, "is whether or not evolution is all it's cracked up to be." She shrugs and tacks on, "There's also a ghost that won't leave." Emily, with the brow-lift. "He's trapped in this shipwreck for one million years, because he refused to go into the light when he had the chance."

No, he cannot have the book back. It is not going anywhere, despite that she's only barely holding it by the edge with her index finger on the corner nearest herself. "Thank you for the book," she says firmly, and holds him with a challenging look; does he wanna FIGHT over it?! In the diner?!

"What the fuck does evolution even have to do with free will? That doesn't even make any sense," and thus is why Logan never got his doctorate in literature. He doesn't touch the part about the ghost that doesn't leave. That just hits too damn close to home.

So instead? He tries to tug the book back, even if it stays glued to the table. He smacks his other hand onto it and pulls, the muscles in his biceps flexing and his knuckles turning white. "God dammit, Emily," he snaps, and huffs as he yanks his hands away. They fall back to his paper place-mat with a thunk and a clutter of spotty stainless steel silverware. He raises his eyes to her own, and just glares. "Just let me take it back. You don't want it, you're into Vonnegut now. Just let me take it back." This was probably not about Vonnegut.

Yes, he tries to tug the book back, and Emily absolutely does not let him do that. Her index finger holds it firmly in place while he struggles, and it's a good thing no one looks over here at that exact moment, because that'd be hard to explain. "Thank you for the book, Logan," she repeats, slowly lifting her finger off of it once he stops trying to use his muscles against her brains. She breathes carefully, her finger still poised like she'll tamp it back down on that cover if he starts getting any ideas, and - on the exhale, "There's a six-word story that's often attributed to Hemingway. It goes," she taps out each word on her place-mat with that index finger, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

She's such a fucking bundle of cheer.

He makes no gesture to grab for the book again when she lifts her finger off of it. He could just as easily rip it in half right there on the table and fuck her over completely; in fact, there's a dangerous look to Hemingway as though he were considering just that. But she starts to tap out words upon the place-mat and he's distracted by the what comes out of her mouth. "Jesus, Emily," the words are hissed as he raises his eyes up from her tapping fingers to her eyes. His fingers remain clenched, knuckles white, the frustration leaving marks in the heels of his palms from where his fingers are pressing. "That's fucking dark." He shifts to the edge of his bench, one leg angled out like he was going to get to his feet. "I have a six-word story that you can attribute to me," he mentions with a tensed jaw, picking up the water stained knife so that he can clink it against the place-mat with each word.

"Lunch isn't happening." A pause. Then three more clinks: "What's the point?" He throws down the knife after, letting it clatter to the table, and starts to rise.

Emily quirks one side of her mouth into a smile when he writes his own Hemingway-esque prose right there on the fly, that's hot, but not hot enough to get her to stop him from standing up. He's all the way on his feet, and - considering how long the pause lapses before she says anything - could well be extricated from the booth entirely, while she looks at him, dragging her index finger back and forth along the bottom edge of the book. And then she taps out her own six beats, silent since it's just her finger on the book, "Your dead wife wants me to - " Oops, that's all six. Guess it's a cliff-hanger.

People start to look this way. So they can fuel gossip with half-truths, and then Logan stormed out in a huff and ran straight into the path of an oncoming truck!

Logan is, in fact, all the way up on his feet by the time she taps out her own six beats, his gaze hardened, fingers clenched up in fists so tight, his knuckles might burst through the skin. They do not though, because that would be horrifying. Almost as horrifying as the words that spill from her lips while he stands there, staring at her with eyes that grow progressively wider with each beat. And progressively darker, too.

But there's no rage that builds from those words. And there's no fight left in him either; there will be no shouting, no more words at all. There's just a look of real pain, flinching in his eyes and settling in the deep lines of his forehead. And as he turns his back to her to storm out, the book's spine seems to crack under the pressure of her single finger, seams unraveling and seeping torn pages out from the binds across the table. There's a split down the title page now, but the inscription is still easily read, scrawled in fresh blue ink across the yellowed page: 'Em-hard to say it and you know I'm no wordsmith. But I'm glad you're back. Welcome home. I don't want you to' and there's the tear, leaving the last part of that sentence on it's own. 'leave. ~Logan.' Hey, it was like a phrase in and of itself!

The diner door slams shut. He leaves his umbrella and his slicker. But as poetic as it would be, he has no asterisk upon his name this afternoon. He'll make it back to the house alive.

So much to gossip about. And then Logan Miller stormed out, and he didn't get hit by a truck (thankfully, because he's so good-looking and everyone loves a project-guy, you know?!), but Emily Harris just sat there for like an hour afterward, with this pile of old dirty paper or something. Those two are both so fucking strange. Anyway, eventually she got up and took her trash with her and left with his umbrella but his coat's still at the diner. Till the manager throws it in the lost-and-found, but don't ever take anything out of that box, it stinks bad.

That's where the rumor mill ends. In actuality... who knows what Emily does when she's not at work and she's not at Logan's. She doesn't come home all day. Technically, she makes it back to Logan's house before she can be accused of leaving, in the half-hour before midnight, letting herself in quietly, on tiptoes. She looks for him in the kitchen first, specifically in the pantry, more specifically - expecting to find him at the bottom of a bottle.

Emily did not come home, but Logan did, and he did what he always did when he was so very angry and so very hurt. He broke everything he could find in the house to fix it up again, though he'll never admit that he broke it in the first place. This house was just falling apart, see? And it needed someone to fix it, because he couldn't fix himself and he couldn't fix Lucy and now he can't fix Emily, but he can fix this. So there was evidence of him having been here even if he wasn't in the pantry thirty minutes before midnight when she went to look. There were tools scattered across the kitchen, a can of paint sitting on the front stoop. A bottle of bourbon taken out and put on the table next to his phone, but not opened and still full. Speaking of his phone, the backlight was still on, the screen saver hadn't kicked back on yet; it was open to Emily's contact card, to their (very very minimal) text conversations. There's a text typed but unsent - 'where are you? just come home.'

But there was no Logan. At least not in the pantry drinking his life away. And not in the bathroom, slitting his throat over the sink. And not even in the bed, furiously masturbating to thoughts of her. Instead he was outside on the back porch, on the swing that no longer creaks because he fixed that shit, and he wasn't even drunk but his cheeks were wet and shiny. "I fucking hate this," he says aloud to nobody, staring at his hands, his head slightly tilted as though he were focusing on something. Or someone. But there was no one else out here. "You're not even really here, are you? She wasn't even really here, either."

Emily looks at the phone. Like, if he's just gonna leave that shit sitting there, of course she's gonna look at it. She turns that phone off for him. To save batteries. She also uses it to weight down the ruined book, so none of the pieces she kept track of all damn day wind up getting lost. From there, she can see enough out the kitchen window to know where he is, and she drifts toward the back door in time to hear him talking to thin air.

She leans in the open doorway, quiet, but it's not exactly eavesdropping. Sure, she wants to just listen, to know WTF he and his goddamn dead wife talk about when no one's around, but it seems like the kind of wrong that even she can't justify. So she gives his repaired swing what's meant to be just a little nudge, just to put it in motion for him and betray her presence there in the doorway, but apparently that one got away from her a little. She might have some repressed rage or something, 'cause that swing gets a pretty sizable SHOVE, hope Logan's holding on to something?

Really, it's too bad she didn't stop to listen, because things were just about to get good. "I'm fucking sorry, okay?" he slumps forward, exasperated, as he turns his head all the way to that invisible figure and then rolls his eyes when (of course) there's nothing there. But sorry for what? Emily will never know, because she chose that precise moment in time to be a bitch ad move the swing. Not with a sway, but with a sizable SHOVE, and of course he wasn't holding onto anything.

Which means that the swing's sudden motion propels him off of it, and in the process of falling, he bangs his face right on the railing in front of him. THUNK! "FUCK!" he falls into a heap, hands up to shield his face a moment too late. It got him right under the eye. He was gonna have a shiner now because of her.

Yeah, but it feels wrong, y'know? Not like... fucking your brother-in-law in the basement wrong, but still. Wrong.

Emily realizes a half-second too late just how hard that shove was, a half-second too late to be able to pull her punch, and she's falling out of the door right about the time Logan loses purchase, and she echoes that ever so eloquent, "Fuck!" Not quite so vociferously, but she's not the one with the shiner. Because it was an accident, the apology tumbles out of her immediately, not some hard-fought battle to tear the words from her lips. "Ohmygod, I'm so sorry, Logan," while she hurries right over there, and howcome none of their psychic powers include a flashlight? 'Cause trying to see how bad it is in the dark? Sucks. She doesn't think twice about snagging his chin with her hands to peer at him, though.

Logan knew it was her before she echoes his sentiments, if only because there was no wind tonight and the swing he built with his own two hands would never betray him like that. But it didn't matter, because he was on the floor having just smashed his face on the railing, and she was tumbling apologies at him as a whole mess of emotion surges through. It was probably a good thing neither of them was one of those mental transmitters, 'cuz there was a whooole lotta feel in the moment. "What the fuck is wrong with you?!" he demands, the words hissing through his teeth as she takes his chin up into her hands - and yes, there's very much a part of him that sinks into the touch, while the rest of him was boiling over. "Where the FUCK have you been?!" Because that's what was important, not the fact that he bashed his head and it had opened up a nice little cut from which blood was currently weeping out.

Like she's got any right to be mad about this, Emily claps back immediately, "A lotta things," are wrong with her, "but that was a fucking accident, so just calm yourself down!" At least she's not squeamish - it's hard to be after your sister smashes her head on the living room floor and then you spend a year with monsters eating you - so, while she sucks in a sharp breath when the blood starts, she doesn't dissolve into hysterics about it. Just pulls the sleeve of her sweater over her hand and wipes some of that blood away. "Here, get up." Or she'll wind up pulling his head off with the way she drags on his chin. "I'll get the doctor." Who is sleeping happily through their antics, as he does~.

She forgets to answer where she's been. 'Cause his face is bleeding and she feels bad about it. 🙁

"I am fucking calm," Logan sneers, his tone in direct contrast to his words. And he helpfully adds with a sharp edge to his tongue: "So you fucking calm yourself down." Because only good things can come from telling a woman to calm down <3 Still, he tips his head into the soft sleeve of her sweater, flinching and sucking another breath through his teeth from the tenderness of the skin around the cut. "I don't need a fucking doctor, don't bother the goddamn doctor. I just need some ice," he reaches to grab the railing so that he can properly hoist himself to his feet, staying there for half a second to make sure the world doesn't spin uncontrollably and knock him back onto his ass again. Then he and his swollen ass cheek follow her through the door and into the kitchen.

"Where'd you fucking go?" Because he hadn't forgotten that she'd forgotten to answer where she's been.

"I said," and Emily flips on the lights in the kitchen the old-fashioned way, "that it was an accident!" The number of exclamation points in the last couple poses really speaks to the lack of calm on both parts here, which is why she insists, "So quit fucking shouting at me, or the whole house is going to be bothered." While she rattles around, pulling off paper towels, making all the noise possible in the process of collecting ice cubes. The light really isn't kind to either of them right now, she should've left it off, and she turns back with this quick ice-pack to point that out to him: "This looks pretty bad. You're definitely going to get a black eye."

Where'd she fucking go? Dully, a total lie, "I spent all day shooting heroin under the boardwalk, Logan."

"Ahh, fuck," Logan groans as the lights are flipped on, the sudden glow burning his eyes and making him flinch, which only hurts his cheek in the process. Some more blood oozes out of his wound, but he wasn't paying any attention to that - not after his eyes adjust to the light, and he can stare at her rattling around in his kitchen. "I'm not fucking shouting at you," and to prove his point, he drops his voice low enough that those words hiss out of him instead of scream. "And it's not a fucking accident when you do it with your brain, Emily," he cocks his forefinger to his temple to emphasize, before his hand slaps back down to his side. "Give me the ice," he says as he slumps into the nearest chair, extending his hand out, palm up.

She was shooting heroin under the boardwalk, eh? Great, he fucked her without a condom the other night. Hopefully that's not a trend for her. "No you didn't," is his equally dull response. And then, because he's already spent the day going over the numerous different scenarios and coming back time and time again to one single conclusion: "Who were you fucking?" He even manages to say it without getting choked up, though he wasn't careful enough to make it sound like he didn't care.

Okay, granted. Emily does look like she's spent the day doing unsavory things with unsavory people. Probably not heroin - though, with the bloodstain on the corner of her sleeve, the hair that's been rained on and tangled by the wind, the pale face, and the eyes that get impossibly large at that accusation... enh, she could probably pass for someone that's been shooting up for a day or two. Or fucking someone. All other arguments are over now. She drops the ice into his hand, and she wipes her cold fingers on the front of her sweater, then walks over, takes his paperweight-phone off Hemingway, puts the book in front of him, and says, "Fix this." She pokes it with her finger. "Now." She will just take a step back, arms crossed, and wait, staring at him downright hatefully.

Her lack of an answer spoke lengths, at least to him. It wasn't a real far place for his brain to wander considering the current state of her, and the current state of him. And the fact that he spent the entire day breaking and fixing and re-breaking things while torturing himself with thoughts of all the positions she was likely putting herself in, and all the men she was probably putting herself in those positions for. So he just snorts back a breath of air and presses the ice against his cut cheek, while his gaze follows the jerk of her finger to the torn up Hemingway. Fix this, she says. Now, she demands.

But he knows what lies just underneath the cover, the words scrawled over the title page, and it makes his heart ache and his cheek hurt, but he slowly walks his fingers up to the ruined book. The tips of his fingers brush a feathery caress along the cracked spine, and the binding sews itself back together again, pulling the pages in along with it. In the next moment, the book looks exactly like it had when he presented it to her at the diner, whole and together. Fixed. And though he knew what the book looked like even before then and could have turned back the time further? The inscription remains on the title page, now whole.

His fingers flex, pushing the book back across the table and away from him, before he slumps into the chair. He isn't looking at her now; his eyes are turned down and his focus on a dent in the table that he'd fix when she wasn't around, with his scraper and his tools rather than with his brain.

Emily waits. Nothing she could say right now could possibly improve this situation, and all the things she thinks about saying fall well short of how horrible she wants them to be, so she just says nothing. The mended book gets pushed away, so she picks it up, and she holds it against her stomach for a second with both hands - and fuck Violet Whitehouse for giving them this book in the first place, she's a horrible human! - and looks at Logan while he looks at the table, with his black eye and his cut face.

Then she walks the fuck out. She takes her keys off the place where they live, her coat off the place it lives, and she walks right out the front door. It doesn't slam behind her, but only out of courtesy to the innocent people who are sleeping there and don't deserve to deal with these two and their fucking drama.

And he should just let her go. He should just sit here on the chair, at the table with the dent in the wood, and let her walk right out the door. Really, he could rationalize it easily enough - she's been wanting to go since she got here. Maybe she only fucked him in the basement to give herself a reason to leave. Maybe..

The front door wasn't even fully shut before he was out it, too, no jacket for the rain since she left it in the diner. It was just him in his UW Seattle sweatshirt (which is, apparently, for poor people) and the ice pack still held to his cheek as he steps out onto the front porch and reaches out into the abyss with every intention of grasping her by the wrist if he's gotten there in time. He has no ability to hold her there, to stop her, at least not with his mind. So he'll try his words, as weak as they are against the everlasting patter of rain upon concrete. "Please. Don't fucking do this. Don't fucking go."

First off, sweatshirts are for HOMELESS people, get it right.

Second off, it's not like Emily sprinted, so don't panic. She's catchable. Though catching just means Logan gets an intentional shove this time, one with all the force that five-foot-six has in her right now, both hands right into the meaty parts of his chest. "Go away. Go back inside. Go talk to your fucking ghost. You." One more solid shove. "Don't get to talk to me like that. Fuck you and fuck your house and fuck Lucy and fuck you," did she say that already? whatever, "I didn't fuck anyone so fuck you." This could go on a while, with the fucking of all the things except she didn't fuck anyone, ad infinitum.

It was a good thing she didn't sprint, else panic would have set in and the doctor would've had to fireman carry him back in the house! But she didn't, so Logan could breathe. Mostly.

The shove to his chest isn't enough to send him flying to crack the other side of his face on something sharp, but it's startling enough to send him back a few inches and drop the ice on the sidewalk. But he lets her push him. He lets her shove him once and then once again, lets her rail at him until the third round of 'fuck you I didn't fuck anyone so fuck you,' when he uses his newly freed hand to grab either of her wrists and still her. "I don't want to go back into the goddamn house! All I wanted was fucking lunch and you couldn't even give me that, you couldn't give me a goddamn normal moment of your time, am I not even fucking worth that?" In the house next door, a bedroom light flickers to life. Logan holds onto her wrists tighter. "If you wanna leave, go. You've been trying to leave since you fucking got here. But I'm not gonna be your goddamn reason to go, when I wanna be the fucking reason for you to stay!"

"I was trying to be normal!" Emily insists this at the same time the bedroom light in that upstairs room goes off. It can be assumed she can guesstimate where the light switch is in that room and flip it right back off, and the person in that house is going to have a creepy fucking moment, which makes her happy, because fuck that neighbor, too. "I was trying," to wriggle her wrists free, without dropping Hemingway onto the wet ground, he's been through enough today, "to tell you about the book I was reading, because it's a funny fucking book. And I was trying to get you some lunch and - if you don't go of me, I swear to god, I am going to break every window in your fucking house and murder you with the shards."

One roll works for two actions, right? 'Cause she starts with the glass over the porch-light, any random rock from the flowerbed smashes right into it. It makes a very satisfying crack-and-tinkle noise when it breaks and slices of glass hit the ground.

"All I wanted to do was have fucking lunch. With you. In fucking public instead of holed up in this goddamn house torturing each other. But you were all about dead babies and asterisks, that was you being fucking normal? Did you even look at the goddamn book, Emily, did you even see what I fucking wrote in it?" Later, much later, Logan would reflect upon this afternoon and deeply regret the choices that got things to this point. Much, much later, he may even find the humor in Vonnegut's novel that questions evolution. But he was not there yet. Right now, he was digging his fingers into her wrists and feeling the bone and straining his muscles to keep her here. With him. "What about the part about my dead wife, Emily? Was that a fucking joke too?" he sneers.

Then the light behind him shatters, showering shiny slivers at his feet. His eyes flare open, and then wince shut.. and he throws her hands back, releasing his hold on her. He doesn't try to fix the porchlight. He doesn't do anything except stand there, between her and the house, his arms falling to his sides and his fingers unconsciously tapping out the next six words into his palm. "Go. You don't want to stay." He kept it at six words even though he had so much more to say. It was another Hemingway short, just for her.

That was Emily being normal? "Yes! Yes, I was talking about a brilliant fucking terrible story, and about this literary device that's hysterical and awful, because those things are just on paper. They're awful but they can't hurt us and I love them and the part about your dead wife wasn't a joke because it's real and it's not just on paper, leave over and over, just leave, and you're sitting in your goddamn backyard having a conversation - " Even she can hear the hysteria now, that rising and rising note in her voice and his little six-word story has her biting it back, pulling her wrists away, hugging them to her chest in the light that's now a little harsh without the glass cover around it.

"I don't want to be without you." Sorry, Hemingway. Sometimes, six words just don't cut it.

Didn't she see that it had taken everything out of him to say those six words instead of all the other ones he wanted to say? Couldn't she see that the fight had gone out, that he was certain now that the light he saw had gone out, and all that was left now was that short prose and the distance that grows between them as he takes one small step back. He was already in pain, he was already half dead, but she had to make sure the knife went deep with her next words, and he puts his own arms around himself, squeezing them to his chest. "You don't want to be here," he utters, his voice cracking with effort. "You don't want to be here. And here is where I am. And here is where I'll be." And he was bathed by the ugly yellow of the porch light but all he saw was a void of darkness, and he clenches his arms around himself further, tighter. "Go." He says it again, and there's nothing firm in the words, but it's repetitive. "You don't want to stay."

Emily takes a backward step. "Please come with me." And another. "Please, Logan. I don't want to stay here. But I don't want to leave you." And another. She looks down for a second, to see where her feet land, and she looks up for a second, in case he's coming with her. Ultimately, she swallows, and she nods, and she steps backward off the porch, scratching her forearm with the nails of her empty hand, scratching the cover of the book with the nails of her full hand. "Okay." When it's anything but. "I guess. Tell her she was right. And." This is how the monsters win. "I'll see you on the other side, Logan."

go go go

"I love you, okay?" She nods one more time.

She takes one backward step and another, and so does he, though his own footwork is stumbling, as though an invisible hand as reaching through the gaping doorway to grasp onto his shoulder and tug him back. He didn't have to tell her that he wasn't going with her. That he couldn't go with her. He just watches her feet as she takes another step backward.

go go go

but you, you, stay stay stay.

He had a hundred other things to say, hundreds of other words that fit this moment. But only six that made it out, before he disappears into the house.

"I love you, too. Now go."

Well, at least there's laughter inside that house, something that's always happy to see him, something to talk to that doesn't constantly have one foot out the door. As for Emily... well, she can always go upstate and keep Alice company. They'll probably have a lot to talk about.

PLUS, now Alex won't have to be all confused about Logan's wife. That was some baffling shit for someone not all up on the local lore.