Fool for Love

Disclaimers: These characters were created entirely by me. Please do not use them or repost this story without permission. This story features dark themes, mildly naughty language and a loving and sexual relationship between women.

I hate happy people. Why do new lovers think it's acceptable to coo and make googly eyes at each other? I don’t shove my misery down their throats, so why should they force their joy down mine? I used to want to slap those insipid grins right off their faces. Lately, I'm afraid to look in the mirror. More often than not, I find that same silly, starry-eyed grin staring back at me. It's disgusting, I know, but it hurts to slap the hell out of myself --- so I live with it.

It's been nearly seven months since Faith and I met on that dark, lonely beach. She doesn't like me to say it, but she saved my miserable life that night. Tomorrow we will have been living together for one month exactly. I think we're starting to get used to each other, starting to find our rhythm. We don’t bump into each other every time we turn around anymore. Those first two weeks required some serious adjusting.

For two days, we were blissfully happy. Like a couple of lovestruck fools, we christened every room in the small, two-bedroom house that we were renting. Relax. We wiped the kitchen table down afterwards. Then on the morning of the third day, I decided that I was getting tired of living out of cardboard boxes. I started to unpack, and that was when the first signs of trouble appeared.

Everything I owned in this world fit into either a box or a suitcase. Faith and I had bought all of our bedroom furniture together, but everything else in the house belonged to her. I was happy with the arrangement since I didn't have any furniture to contribute anyway. Well, there was the worn, lumpy, bright orange beanbag chair that sat in the corner of my bedroom, but Faith said that if I brought that with me, the whole deal was off. I didn't mind. I never really liked the thing in the first place. Faith was doing all the decorating too. Again, that suited me perfectly. My idea of interior decorating revolves around throwing stuff into the air. Wherever it lands is where it stays.

That morning, I was in our bedroom, rearranging Faith's scary-looking porcelain clowns when she walked in. She stopped in the doorway and stared at me as if I had suddenly grown a second head.

"What are you doing?" She asked.

A bit confused by the question, I stared down at the maniacally grinning clown in my hand. I looked back up at Faith. She was impatiently tapping her fingernails against the doorframe, and the expression on her face told me that no matter what I said, it was going to be the wrong answer.

I set the clown back on the dresser and the damned thing immediately fell over with a loud thump. I winced and hoped that it wasn't broken. Faith's grandmother had given her most of those dolls, and I knew how much they meant to her. Personally, I had been scared to death of clowns ever since the day that my older brother took me to see 'Poltergeist', but I tried to keep my various neuroses to myself --- for Faith's sake.

"Kara?" She sounded like my mother just then. You know that voice that mothers get when you've done something really wrong? That was the way she was speaking to me. I half-expected her to break out with my full name at any second. 'Kara Marie Pavlovich, what exactly do you think you're doing?'

"Kara?" She asked again. I could tell she was getting irritated.

"What?" I asked, acting as if I had no idea she had been calling my name.

"What are you doing?" Faith repeated her question. "Why are you moving my clowns?"

Uh-oh. I recognized a dangerous question when I heard one. "What" questions are easy. You can usually get away with stating the obvious. It's those tricky "why" questions that get me into trouble every time.

"I'm just clearing a little space on the dresser." I flashed her my toothiest, most charming grin. She wasn't impressed.

"Space for what?"

I gestured towards the open box at my feet. Her gaze followed the wave of my hand until it fell upon the box and its contents. She let out a short, disbelieving laugh and looked up at me, incredulity written across her face.

"You've got to be kidding," she said.

I was baffled by her reaction. Before we moved in together, she had been in my apartment plenty of times, and she was well aware of my toy collection. No, not those kinds of toys. I'm not enough of an exhibitionist to display those in plain sight. This was my collection of six-inch action figures from various movies and TV shows. Faith had always seemed amused by them before. In fact, she fondly referred to me as her "Toys R Us kid." I guess my hobby was less endearing when it started encroaching upon hers.

Looking back now, I realize that we were experiencing normal growing pains. Moving in together was a big step, and we needed to be patient with each other and learn to compromise. Sure, I know that now. Back then it was a different story. It's funny how the stupidest little things can escalate into a full-scale war. I should have calmly and rationally discussed the issue with her until we reached some sort of middle ground. That would have been the mature, adult thing to do and it could have saved us a lot of grief. Instead, I did what I always do. I blurted out the first idiotic thing that popped into my head. Rarely a good move.

"That dresser is half mine, and I can put whatever I want on my half of it."

I must have felt like I wasn't in enough trouble yet, because I emphasized my point by dumping a handful of my toys on top of the dresser --- right in the middle of Faith's perfectly symmetrical arc of clowns. Action figures lay tangled with arms and legs askew while the giant, grinning dolls loomed over them evilly. It looked like a scene from a bad B-movie. 'Killer Klowns Invade the Earth,' or some nonsense like that. Faith just kept staring at me with that same, have-you-completely-lost-your-mind look. It wasn't the first time I had seen it, and it certainly would not be the last.

"I never said you couldn't, Kara." She spoke slowly, enunciating each syllable. It was as if she was talking to a small child. Or a mental patient. Either way, it irked me.

"Maybe not directly, but I know that's what you were thinking." If you ever want to make your girlfriend really mad during an argument, tell her you know what she's thinking. Trust me. Works every time.

Faith's gentle brown eyes darkened. "So now you can read my mind?"

"I don't have to be a mind-reader, Faith. Look at this place! Everything in it is yours! Are we sharing our lives, or am I just sharing your bed?"

I really don't know where all that came from. It was like some evil force had possessed me and forced me to say hurtful things that I didn't mean. Like I said, it's not like I even wanted to help with the decorating and stuff. I didn't. But I've always had this twisted need to destroy everything good in my life. I had hoped that it would be different this time.

I knew I had gone too far. I knew it as soon as the words had tumbled out of my treacherous mouth. Faith took a step backwards, as if I had hit her. Her eyes filled with tears. My heart sank. Stammering an incoherent apology, I reached out to her, but she shook her head and backed away from me again. Agonizing silence hung between us for several long seconds. Then Faith uttered the words that I had been dreading since the day we met.

"Maybe this was a mistake."

With those words, I felt the light draining out of me. I couldn't breathe. It was like a heavyweight boxer had driven a fist into my solar plexus and forced all the oxygen from my lungs. Deep down, I had always known that this moment would come. Every morning since the day we met, I woke up expecting to find that it had all been a dream. Good things just don't happen to me, and someone as beautiful and kind as Faith could not possibly love someone as dark and damaged as me. I wasn't worthy of her love, of anyone's love, and I had always known that it was only a matter of time before she saw me as I truly am. And once that happened, I knew she would run as far away from me as she could get.

My lips felt numb, and I had to force them to form a single word. "What?"

Faith wouldn't even look at me. She stared at the floor, at the wall behind my head, anywhere but at me. When she spoke, her voice trembled and I could barely hear her.

"Maybe this was a mistake," she said again, plunging the knife deeper into my heart. "Maybe we rushed this. Maybe we weren't ready."

Each word pierced my heart and left me bleeding inside. I screamed inside my head. 'Say something! Say anything, you fool!' I wanted to tell her that I was sorry, that I loved her, that she had saved me from a bottomless pit of loneliness and despair. I wanted her to know that no one had ever made me feel as safe or loved as she did. I wanted to get down on my knees and beg for the forgiveness that I didn't deserve, and then spend the rest of my life making it up to her. I wanted to say all those things. Instead, my tongue betrayed me.

"Maybe you're right." I scarcely recognized my own voice.

She nodded once. Without another word to me, she turned and walked out of the bedroom. I heard the harsh metallic jingle as she grabbed her keys from the kitchen table. Then I heard the front door open and close. I wanted to run after her, but like always, I held myself back. My knees buckled and I sank down to the floor. I was stunned. What had I done? She was the best thing that had ever happened to me, and still I was compelled to screw it all up. And now she was gone. Faith had left me.

I don't remember much else from that day. I know that once I could move, I made my way into the kitchen and found the big bottle of tequila in the cabinet. I didn't even bother with a glass. All I wanted was to be drunk out of my mind, and I achieved that goal rather quickly. I have a fuzzy memory of being violently sick in the bathroom sink and of crying myself to sleep. Alone.

The next morning, I woke up with the worst hangover of my life. Groaning, I burrowed deep beneath the covers, trying to escape from the cheerfully bright sunlight that was threatening to invade the cocoon of pain I had wrapped myself in. I didn't want to feel better. I didn't want to feel anything at all. Faith was gone, and my miserable life was over.

Then I heard it. Someone was moving around in the kitchen. I almost dared to hope as I dragged myself out of bed and staggered into the living room. Sometime during the night, Faith had come home and she was busily making a pot of coffee. I don't remember saying anything, but I must have made some kind of sound. She turned, and her eyes met mine. Just like that, my heart started beating again.

"Kara." Faith smiled at me and held her hand out.

I didn't trust myself to speak. Instead, I flung myself into her outstretched arms and nearly knocked her off her feet. We kissed and cried in each other's arms --- and kissed a bit more. I never asked her where she went when she left that night. It didn't matter. All that mattered was that we were both finally home.

I saw this saying on a greeting card once. It said, "If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it's yours to keep. If not, then it was never meant to be." At the time, I thought it was a stupid thing to put on a greeting card. Now, I understand it better. Faith came back to me. I guess that means I get to keep her.