Play a Game of Fate

The rain streaked down past the wide window that peered crookedly out into the real world, the world that spun somewhere beyond her sheltered little existence. She watched disinterestedly as faceless people—a mass of unknowns—flurried from place to place, never wasting a glance on the crooked window of the dingy coffee shop, even as the white residue from once well-painted borders dripped onto shielding umbrellas and expensive coats.

He glanced up at her, through thick lashes, eyes heavy with contempt, weighing her down in her old moldy chair, pressing her into the unevenly plush, once red fabric with surprising ferocity. He pushed a piece randomly across the board and she watched the contrast of colors, more for lack of anything better to do. Or maybe so she didn’t have to face him. She didn’t move her gaze even as he uttered, almost idle chit-chat, direct and pointless and in that “oh, look at the weather” tone that he always used as he cut her down, picked at her flaws and revealed his ‘truisms’, “You know, my love, that hearts are not like cards, in pairs of clubs and spades.”

A pause. He looked up from the game board pointedly, and she continued to avoid his piercing, ice blue eyes, deep as the winter lakes that existed somewhere beyond the crooked window of the coffee shop. He waited, as if amused, for her return move. Her parry. She wanted to make a crack about wrong point of reference but instead sat back and waited contemplating her movement.

“This is no game we play,” he continued as if carrying on a conversation with himself. She again didn’t respond. Wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. He always searched for some sort of reaction, thrived on it almost to the point that most of the statements he made—she hoped, at least—were merely to gain her reaction. So she learned to control them, staying silent instead of voicing those feelings that he so carefully looked for, so carelessly sought. Caring. Love.

Hate.

She fingered a game piece, tried to give the appearance of indifference as she moved it a space over, and he laughed cruelly at her, seeing through her as he always did. His own hand instantly grabbed next piece, and he ran his fingers along the ridges, looking up at her with a deadly smile, black as the figure he held. “Check mate,” he murmured, almost a whisper, as he lay the piece down, knocking it gently into hers. She rolled her eyes at his flair for the dramatic that he always insisted on infusing everything with and leaned forward to reset the board.

“Do you ever think about,” he began, watching curiously as her hands jerked across the small squares, her entire body taut with forced control, “the way we move,” a flick of his cigarette, and still he watched her, stared, amused, “orbiting around each other in a constant cycle? Almost as if we can’t get away.”

“What do you mean?” she questioned, though she knew. She generally did, but it was so easier to claim naivety, to hope that he didn’t mean what she assumed.

He gestured between them. “I mean us.” What else? His tone questioned, as if speaking to a five year-old. She hated it. “We continue around in circles. Constantly. We hate each other. Yet still we find ourselves here—he gestured around---then we’re back to our old ways. You love me—admit it— and for some reason, I just can’t get away from you. Just keep circling continuously. The same idea. The same thought. The same cycle. That cycle that you just can’t escape.” He put particular emphasis on the last, knowing how much it would get to her, how it would eat away at her skin until her soul itself was bared before him. Not that it wasn’t normally; she wore her heart on her sleeve, just the way he liked it—he enjoyed using it as his yo-yo.

“Inescapable.”

“It’s unavoidable,” Shawn assured her, with a grin that somewhat scared her. She wasn’t quite sure of its meaning, but knew it wasn’t good. “You have to deal with him. I know it’s Taegon, and I know how fucking annoying he is, but be the big girl I know you can be.”

She scowled teasingly at him, knowing he was just messing with her. “He’s just so…” she grumbled, trying to find a word that was best for the other. She knew a few, and none of them polite for standing behind a desk at work. “Frustrating,” she finished, for lack of anything better to say. He patted her shoulder consolingly. “I know, and I know he’s always five times harder on you than any of the rest of us. There’s a reason for that sweetie—the rest of us ignore him, or tell him to shut the Hell up and get out of our faces. He does it to you because you take it.”

“So stop taking it, is that what you’re telling me?” she asked, raising a brow.

He threw his hands up in the air. “God no, you never heard me say that. It means he’ll have nothing to do, and move back in on one of us. Just…take it better. Put up with him like you do the rest of us. He does this bull shit to you because you treat him differently. He thinks he matters to you.”

She nodded her head in agreement. It wasn’t like she had planned on it anyway; she wasn’t good at pushing people away. Or too good at it, in all actuality, and she couldn’t stand that with him. Even as he bothered her and got under her skin like no one else was able to, she couldn’t help but seek him out, wanted to be around him more than she wanted to breathe sometimes.

“You’ll be fine.” He glanced at the clock on the register, surprised by the time reported there. “Shit, it’s late. You’d better go.” He grinned at her, and she heard the teasing coming, as it always did, “I’m sure your cute little puppy—I’m sorry, boyfriend—is here waiting obediently.”

She laughed, somewhat hollowly, and untied her apron from her waist. “Yeah, you’re right. I’d better get going. Have a good night.”

“You too, just remember what I said about him. I know how you are.” He said the last strictly, and she imagined that if he wore glasses, he’d be peering over them at her, like a school teacher chastising a rowdy child.

“I know, I know. He just gets to me so easily.” She groaned, knowing it was true and hated admitting it.

A voice called to him from behind the swinging door of the kitchen, and he scowled. “The babies are crying, I’d better go see to them,” he rolled his eyes irritably, and she laughed.

“I wonder what Tonya and Joe screwed up this time?” she questioned rhetorically, and they both flinched as there came a loud groan, followed by another call, more anxious this time, from the two servers. He cursed under his breath, and she grinned out him. “It sounds like they need supervision. Have fun.”

A mock frown from him. “Yeah, rub it in that you’re leaving.” He hit her lightly on the shoulder, then turned serious. “You too, Kaede. Have a good night.” Shawn patted her once more on the shoulder before he disappeared into the back. “Buck up, you can take it.”

“You’re a big girl,” Taegon told her as he tossed the ball back and forth between hands, watching her carefully.

“Yes, I know. That doesn’t mean I have to put up with you.”

He raised a brow at her. His lips twitched, the thick pink lines going upward into a half smile, the most real smile she’d ever seen on him. “No, it just means that you’d like to.”

She stared at him, bewildered. Not knowing what to say. “No I wouldn’t,” she bickered back, childishly, instantly on the defensive. You read me too well. I can’t be around you, because you see through every wall I’ve put in place.

“You’re lying, Kaede. I know you are. I can read you like an open book, my dear. And I know that you don’t give a damn about him,” he nodded out the door to the blue truck that waited not far away. Always on the edge of everything, not intruding, not interfering, just…there. And she hated it, that he still wasn’t a part of anything.

Kaede shrugged her shoulders, but it was too practiced, too careful, to come off as uncaring. Instead, she looked stiff and uncomfortable. “I do. He’s…perfect, he’s everything I could want. I’m happy.” But she sounded uncertain, her words too recited, too hollow to have any true meaning behind them. He knew it.

And so he just continued to watch her, a twisted smile finding its way on to his chubby face.

She hated the way he sat there, just staring at her.

“Joe said you were quitting school,” she voiced, uncertainly, folding her hands over her chest protectively.

A flick of the cigarette. “Yeah,” a deep inhalation, and heavy exhale as smoke, dark and pungent, emitted from him. “I’m moving. As soon as I can get away from here.” He glanced away out the window, away from her, into the dark night and empty streets.

He carelessly plucked a piece off the perfectly set chess board on the scarred table in front of him. The pawn, ivory, he flipped through his fingers, looking straight at her with his dancing blue eyes, mocking her, as if saying, “This is you. Look at how easily I toy with you?”

She pushed back her long dark waves uncertainly, her hands catching on the strands and tangling them with the gesture, and she flinched every time the piece clicked on his nails. “Do you,” she pulled her hand away, grabbing her other wrist nervously, “Do you want to play a quick game?” She gestured to the pawn, ivory, that flipped through his fingers.

“I already am,” he responded with another mocking look, that smile that she just wanted to knock off his face. “Besides,” he continued, as if his words meant nothing—they generally never did, just babble to fill the silence in his head—“your ride is here.” He gestured out the window to the old blue truck that had pulled up several stores away. “Why does he wait for you, so far away? Is he embarrassed to be seen with you? Or is it that he just can’t take that you aren’t her?” He looked out the crooked window and into the rusting sky blue truck, as if trying to see the other man—boy, really, they were the both of them still boys, despite their age—, into his soul and read the answer to her questions there.

Kaede hated it. Hated him for asking the questions that were on constant playback in her own head. Hated that he brought those reservations back to her. So she escaped. Out the heavy door that closed them off from the rest of the world, careful not to pass too close in front of the window, in front of his judging eyes that would see through her as they always did, and slipped into the blue truck that was always in the distance—just like the man-boy sitting in the truck, always distant—and tried to block out thoughts of Taegon.

She hated thinking about him. It frustrated her, gave her headaches as she wondered what he would say to her about something, anything. Yet she couldn’t help it. Couldn’t help thinking, talking about him. Constantly.

It wasn’t like she actually liked him. There was nothing about him that was actually likeable. He was too cocky, too sure of himself. Too insightful and quick.

But still, there was something about him. As much as she hated the way he so surely psychoanalyzed her, bared her soul for his own perusal, as if she was a novel solely for his own entertainment—a novel he knew by heart, it seemed, for he always knew all the words—, the way he picked at her and bothered her and ate away at her until there was nothing left to do but cave into him, she still couldn’t help her reaction to him. The way she listened, unintentionally, for the sound of his footsteps (heavier and dragging and rhythmic, almost, so different from everyone else’s), the scent of him (that heady, thick, spicy, almost earthy smell that she could never place but fit him so perfectly as it clung to him) that she could smell lingering in the air, even after he’d left, as if he was still there.

And even more than hating any thoughts she had of him, Kaede hated that she didn’t think of Matt like that. Hated that even as she pulled open the door to his truck, rust sticking to her hand from the frigid handle, and he greeted her so caringly, that her thoughts still lingered on the boy in the building and that quirking, bitter, smile that told of sorrows and some reality that didn’t quite exist to her yet (maybe not anyone to him) and his cold blue eyes that pierced her soul. It was so much better than this, which Kaede hated to admit, too. She hated the way his raised brow disappeared into his messy hair and even his quirking, awkward attempt at a smile vanished into his scraggly beard. Even as she settled into the warming carpet-like seats and took his hand, cool and rough, into her own, she felt the urge to rush back into the restaurant, to get away from this car and this realm of emotional void. At least Taegon’s feelings—even contempt, hatred, bitterness—didn’t disappear on her. At least he had emotions.

She couldn’t handle this empty space, where passion and feeling and even love and hate didn’t exist. Matt felt none of it, too crushed over her, that monster under his bed that he tried to bury beneath a tomb of dirty clothes and empty soda cans as if she didn’t exist. And as every day he played his little game of pretend, it sucked away at his soul until he was left a mere shell. That was how she liked him. Miserable. Meaningless.

“How was your day?” he questioned, interrupting her thoughts and her soul searching and most importantly, her silence. He hated it when she didn’t talk—despised the thought of having to reveal part of himself to her; there was so little of it left, he wanted to horde it all in. Maybe a keepsake, something else for her to shatter when she gave him the chance to break once more at her feet.

Still, Kaede gave him what he wanted. It was so hard to deny someone who had little else. She began to ramble, not knowing what to say, and ultimately, as usual, turned to Taegon—it was a conversation she was best at, and she was always so frustrated, so confused when she left him that it just bubbled out of her—and Matt sat there, nodding. As they stopped at a light, she, halfway through a rant about Taegon’s unjustified labels that he always seemed to tag her with, his crudeness and harshness and his bitterness towards life, glanced over to meet a face disinterested. Blank. The red light melted over him, revealing him to her as she’d never seen him before. Fake, as fake and empty as Taegon had ever accused her of being.

So she stopped talking, pressed her body against the door with such force that she was afraid of its opening, and when he glanced at her to see what was wrong, to see why she had relinquished her grip on his hand—on him—she glanced away, out past the street and into the dark windows of the cluttered antique shops, anything to avoid him, and pondered.

She could handle not mattering, she thought, and folded her hands neatly in her lap. “What’s wrong?” he questioned.

As long as she knew.

“Nothing.”

“Oh, come on, there’s something bothering you,” Taegon cajoled as he pulled off his apron and threw it down on the table, following it with his over shirt, and rolling his slowly thawing eyes at her as she folded them neatly up. “You know you don’t have to do that, right dear? It’s pointless.”

Kaede shrugged, holding the material to her chest tightly, as if protection. Protection from what, she wasn’t sure—him, herself, the outside world. It wasn’t clear. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

“But you’re okay with meaningless, aren’t you?” he questioned, peering in on her, closer, as if zeroing in on the problem from her reaction alone. “As long as you know.” He backed off momentarily to collapse on a mismatched chair, stretching his hands above his head and yawning. The lights were all out in the shop save one, and the glare of it from the hallway played with the shadows of his face, calming his normally sharp-angled and angry planes to something older, wiser, calmer. More aware, maybe. More kind.

“Do you want a quick game, before you leave?” Already he was setting up the board, readying it for her. As if he knew, despite it all, that she would play.

And despite everything they were, despite her hatred for the way he insisted on living, his drugs and his truths and his dissuaded realities, and despite his utter contempt for her naivety, her goody-two shoes view that stunted her outlook on the world, she sat. The ivory pieces glistened up at her, a shining white that pierced the darkness.

“We’ll play a trick on fate,” he decided, “a game, if you’ll have it.” He didn’t give her a chance to determine if she would have it or not and instead spun the board around, the pieces topping it shaking until the white rested before him and the black came to a stop gently in front of her. She watched, unsure, as he moved his first shining pawn. “Your move,” he told her with a gentler smile than she could ever expect from him. And she realized that, despite it all, he wasn’t pointless to her.

He mattered.

“It doesn’t matter,” she told them quietly, not knowing what else could be said. It didn’t matter, he wasn’t important enough to her to leave a lasting impression. There was no heartbreak, she didn’t care enough. She realized it was pointless to. Why get so hung up about something that wouldn’t change? Someone who didn’t care about her, only pretended to for his own selfish purposes, a stand-in as he waited for her.

“Does he drink?” Tonya, Joe, Shawn, or one of them asked. She wasn’t sure, didn’t understand the relevance of what they were asking. “No, diabetic,” she answered, uncaring. She remembered those first few moments after, when she’d wished he would go into a coma from an overdose on the ice cream she’d intentionally left in his freezer, knowing he’d eat it at some random point of the night. Now, it just didn’t matter. “Oh, that’s too bad,” one of them spoke again, she really didn’t care who. “I’m sure Joe would’ve loved the chance to catch him outside a bar one night.”

“I have a shot gun in the back of my car,” he reported. She smiled at him, and he rubbed his hands together gleefully.

“And it’s not like you aren’t there all the time, anyway,” she teased back.

“Where else would I be?” was his joking response, and she made to make another comment, but was interrupted. They all straightened and turned towards the door as the bell chimed and a customer shuffled in, their only one at this time of night. “Hello,” was their unanimous greeting in their overly cheerful voices, sunny and bright and so fake, as everything else. The customer muttered some form of simple nicety in response and perused a menu at the counter, and Kaede rolled her eyes as they all disappeared into the back to hide. Or plot.

The woman placed a quick order, didn’t bother to sit and sip her burning latte and instead made a break for the door, barely tossing a “thanks” over her shoulder as she went.

Kaede turned towards the kitchen, shaking her head, and jumped. Taegon was leaning against the counter, watching her. Had been the whole time, because she hadn’t heard the back door creak at all at his entrance. “Damn it, you almost gave me a heart attack,” she informed him, not really angry.

He shrugged, not sorry. “Should’ve been paying attention.”

She shook her head at him and continued on her intended path, reaching past him, her hand grazing his side as she did, and grabbed a rag from the water bucket. He caught her forearm as she passed, tightly, slipping his grip down until it was on her wrist. “You’re better off without him, anyway,” he told her, eyes piercing into her, and she wasn’t sure what to do with the situation. This wasn’t the Taegon she was used to. She was used to cynical, harsh, bitter. Not…consoling, almost, though it was a bit too forceful to be considered such. “He was a jerk.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, emotionlessly. Everyone told her the same, yet Kaede still wasn’t quite sure she thought he was a jerk. Or she did, it was just…hard to disassociate what she used to think Matt was, the picture her mind still brought up at the thought of him.

“Do you want me to give you a ride home tonight?” he offered. A jet black, uneven brow quirked up and he stared hard at her. Normally, she would’ve accepted the offer, knowing the implications that went along with it. Normally, she would’ve appreciated the distraction, anything to escape her thoughts and all the emotion building up that she didn’t know how to release. He always was her best release.

But not tonight. She couldn’t. It was still hitting too close to home.

“No thanks. My dad’s picking me up tonight.” She smiled slightly at the prospect, almost sadly.

“Ah,” he nodded his head sagely, even as she saw him flinch back at the rejection. His hand released her, and Kaede reached down to rub at her wrist. His voice turned biting, sarcastic. Cruel. “I forget, how close you are to them. You act as if you’re still their baby girl. It’s time to grow up; you’re no longer a child.” She ran away from him, back to the counter, wiping it down to distract herself from his words. As much as she secretly criticized his ‘truisms’ for his often-drugged state, him for being out of whack from the rest of the world, this one rang closer to home than most. This one was too deep for her, too real, and she wondered how he knew her so well to understand.

But he really didn’t. Just made snap judgments that stayed ingrained in his head, no matter what she said. No matter what she did. She wondered what his parents did to him, that he acted that way, that left him so judgmental and harsh and unbending. But her speculating didn’t hold up against his, and she couldn’t find a label that fit him so easily.

“Be a big girl,” he continued to her turned back, not penetrating her own thoughts, “stop living in this little delusional Neverland you’ve created to contain what remains of your childhood.”

Kaede wondered what his childhood was like. Wondered what made him like this, this horrible, jaded, untrusting cynic that had no faith in reality. Or perhaps she was best describing herself there. She never knew.

"Most dads took their little boys to the batting cages. My dad took the bat to me." There was no bitterness in his tone. He said it casually, as he said everything else. As if it didn't matter. Because to him, nothing did. She didn't, never had, and she knew it. And it was okay, she could accept that. Because at least he could admit it to her, at least he could tell at her, so honestly, that he didn't give a damn about her. He did it as matter-of-factly as he told her every other one of his stupid truths, those ridiculous self-imposed realities that he had. She wished everyone else would be so honest with her, instead of attempting to coddle her, worry about hurt feelings and injured pride. It was never something he cared about.

He took a drag of his cigarette, bringing fat, nicotine-blotted fingers to his face. His skin was grimy with coffee stains, dirt caked under his short nails from a long day at work, and she grimaced at the prospect, knowing that soon, those hands would be on her, touching her incessantly, not quite as gently as everyone else bothered with. He didn't worry that she would break. And in a few hours, she wouldn't worry about his dirty hands. Only that someone was touching her. She needed that contact. Those groping grasps were sometimes the only things that kept her attached to this awful reality.

"I'm sure you'd like a story like that. A dramatic, poetic, sob story to justify who you are. You always seem to get the unlucky end of everything, don't you, dear?" Taegon laughed, loudly, and she jumped at the sound. “You’re in reality the saddest story any of us have ever seen—this perfect little girl who lives in this perfect little world, blinded by your rose-tinted glasses. So naïve,” he tssked at her. “So foolish. So fake.”

She flinched at the last word, unsure of what to say in response. “I’m sorry.” It was her trademark answer to everything, and he hated it. Maybe that was why she said it as much as she did.

“No you aren’t. Or maybe you are. Sorry that I’m right, sorry that I can see past your so nicely sculpted defenses—or perhaps sorry that I’m the only one. But isn’t it you who says that being sorry for all the wrong reasons really doesn’t do anything? And anyway, in the end, it doesn’t matter how many desperate apologies you utter,” he exhaled, a large sigh of release, “you’ll still be the same, the same fake, desperate whore that you always have been.”

Kaede glanced away, face suffusing with color, not knowing where to look, but angry at his labels that she couldn’t seem to change. The tags he fit on her that only he saw. She didn’t understand it. Didn’t understand him.

“It’s who you are,” A pause, almost bitter, and he went on, “Just deal.”

“Just accept it,” he continued, ignoring her lack of reaction, and looked through her, past her, around her, anywhere but at her. Not that he ever did, unless it was to fit her with his harsh biting truths.

She smiled coyly at him, face peering up to meet his. “Then maybe we should break the cycle,” she determined, almost thoughtfully, as she moved the first piece, then brought her fingers up to her face, tapping against her chin.

He flicked eyes between her and the board.

Wasting a moment—just one—on uncertainty. She wasn’t sure if the uncertainty was over her, or over the game, because he normally never spared a thought for either. He could easily compact them both away, toss her aside with an easy label that he knew she’d never break, just as he could every figure of this game. Knight, queen, rook.

Pawn.

“You’ve already tried. How did it turn out?” he reminded her cruelly, and it was easy to detect the hint of pleasure he gained at the pain he knew that would cause. He just wanted to watch her flinch. Flinch away from the harsh realities his drug induced mind had no problem spouting.

She shook her head. Sighed. Reached for a piece, a pawn, ivory, then drew her hand back. She knew he had no such reservations, moving pawns and people around to suit his own wants.

“I want this to be over,” she whispered, pressing a white knight forward, wishing it would rescue her as fairytales always promised her they would.

“No, you don’t,” he countered, and out came his usual pawn. He glanced at her, peered harshly through thick black lashes, ice blue eyes pinning her to her crushed red velvet chair with the force of his contempt. “You’ll always want more. A last word, a last sentence. One last guiding thought, to decide your fate. An epilogue.” He plucked his cigarette from the ashtray and inhaled deeply.

“You’ll always want that justification,” he said, the words pouring out of his mouth with the smoke, and she wasn’t sure which was more toxic.

Another inhalation and he leaned back comfortably in his chair, tapping his fingers, watching her.

Always watching her.

She glanced away, hoping to avoid his harsh, drug induced truths, the smoke that emitted from his mouth, clouding over everything and covering the world, muddling her little reality as it was. Instead, she peered out through the crooked window at the cluttered street filled with unnamed people, stained with the white residue, and into the real world that existed beyond.