Re: Sonrisa: Sam A & Cris M
If Cris could paint, if his soul expressed itself outward in oil thick and linseed thin, the taut cottona his canvases would be black, layer over layer over layer, pentimento—the only color flitting through the gasoline-glarea red if you chipped away enough, through all that empty, static black. But, that red, it would bleed over the sidesa frame, drown the floor. It'd be octane and acid, eating away at whatever it touched, and only then would it be fitting. Only then would it be real representation, huh? 'Cause if Cris had learned anything from the fog and all it unraveled like spool from loom, it was that he was destructive. It wasn't about him, the whole thing Sam went through in the gauzy white with her sister, and he got that, but his reaction to it, everything that followed, was ruin wrought by him. Lou talked 'bout Iris being bandaged and the guy could only hate himself for that, huh? For what he'd done to Sam's sister, even if it was by freak accident, some twistinga physics that would allow for splinters to shatter back. Because, whatever, however it happened, it was his fault, and, though the numbera times he wanted to punch somebody when they fucked with him, man, woman, and everybody else, was countless—though he'd had that awful desire, he'd never acted on it with a woman. Never. Not once. In his almost forty years. And maybe that was just called common decency, but for a guy who was worried he'd end up like his viejo, it was something, a differentiation, and now he couldn't even claim that.
Add in Sam, those mauve-and-yellow whorls shattering at her temples, the unfocused bluea her eyes as she worked—he felt like that was on him too. If he'd been calmer, if he kept himself in check, even with that poor fucking kid trying to sell to Sam, it wouldn'tna escalated like it had, and he coulda just gathered Sam up and gone. Instead, it all blew the fuck up, shrapnel burying deep anything and anybody present.—That was how he knew Elena was right, huh? Now, it was impossible to deny. The confirmationa that ached in his belly where white toes pressed to gray-green shirt. It gathered where his jaws hinged, the way saliva pooled when you felt like you were gonna puke.
Sam tightened at his touch and he felt bad, worse. His tongue on parched lips, he made himself breathe slow, arm coming up when she turned, discarding that brush. His eyes were those canvasesa his, the ones that would never exist—just black on black on black, and he took in her face, the girl he loved, all the stippling colors on her cheeks and forehead and everywhere like scabs from the day behind them. He looked at her sad and he wrapped his arms 'round her when she jammed herself up against him.
"Lo sé, nena." He kissed her, soft, soft, soft, wherever he could reach, lips drawing over the still-wet oils, painting something new on her skin. He swallowed hard, lump already in his throat, and he tucked his nose to her head. "Lo siento."
His tired, wrung-out brain couldn't come up with nothing better. He just breathed her in, chemicals, wet-paint, gold-blonde.