LOOK TO THE SUN .

the afternoon is overly warm, and river is stripped to nothing but a white undershirt. the heat has done something to his brain; he’s fully immersed in sorting a pack of skittles into rows by colour, so that they will run the spectrum from dark to light. he has no intention of eating them. he hates their cloying taste. the sour ones are better; everyone ought to know that. the sound of a world war two documentary wafts in from the other room, loud enough to hear, low enough that he can’t quite follow the plot. “wait,” he says, to the room at large. “i have air conditioning.” @absentsdream​

** 𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐄𝐃 ft @absentsdream​ !!!

THE ONE NIGHT nadia is out and about , and of course - who is she going to bump into but RINA ?  she internally groans , but swallows it down forcefully . clear liquid slops out of nadia’s cup , as she narrowly avoids bumping into anyone  - ESPECIALLY NOT RINA  . instead , it leaks all over nadia’s hand , and she pretends to pay it no mind .  lights bounce between the two , just like the inevitable tension does . nadia forces a smile out , raising her own glass to the girl as they stand before each other . it’s too late to pretend nadia didn’t see her , but it’s also somehow even simultaneously more awkward and tense saying a simple hello and pleasantry . the whole interaction is flickering ahead of nadia’s mind , painfully transparent . nadia and rina have not gotten along for these reasons precisely - they do not know how to interact with each other  ( two sides of a coin that looks the same , no matter which way you flip it ) . “ —  am i hallucinating , very drunk , or did i potentially see you SMILE a second ago , rina ? what graced you with such pleasure ? we’ll have to alert the media . “ nadia’s tone is light enough , but with enough inflection that they both know EXACTLY what she means . 

in their chest cavity scuba’s resident punk band reverberates out from the speakers and within their bones, a wasp nest buzzing violently, heart palpitating and eyes half-lidded. it’s oppressive tropics between the ebb and flow of bodies, sticky and hot, bare shoulders of others nearby glued to rina’s hands as they push their way through towards the bar. akin to the desperate moments before coming up for air at the deep end of the swimming pool, lungs strained, wanting more and more for that first new breath as they near the edge of the crowd. all at once there’s emptiness — most are toward the fair side now, the free space disorienting. already a few drinks down, rina stumbles towards the harried bartender a moth to the flame, eyes downcast to fiddle for a crumpled bank note in their jacket and they stumble, muscle memory sidestepping them out the way of another gingerly holding a glass. “shit- oh, yeah, sorry, shit, let me...” even in the dim, the sheen of a toppled drink is unmistakable. “want me to get another one? wait,” their eyes squint at the face, a moment needed to register nadia, “you seem like you’ll be fine.” they’ve half a mind to properly knock the drink out of nadia’s hand; a gutsier move than usual, but one tempting the most fun. “guess you did. don’t think you’re hallucinating this time.” a curious fingertip brushes away the icy liquid on her wrist. it’s brought up to rina’s blush-hot lips, lemony and bitter, vodka soda? they grin past their hand, relishing her discomfort, the palpable dread which seems present every time they come near. “adventurous of you. always thought you seemed like a beer girl. you know, small town tastes or whatever.”

𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐄𝐃 ft @absentsdream​ !!!

“ i’m beginning to wonder if you own any other clothes . “ ric says snidely , with a sniff . he’s just entered the diner , having finished his morning 10k run . usually , he ignores any familiar face he sees in any establishment , but he’s in need of a long black , and he’s in a particularly foul mood ( as opposed to his normal  ‘ charming  ‘ mood ) . disdain etches its way onto ricardo’s face as he takes his cup of coffee from the barista with no thank you , or acknowledgement , and instead eyes up juniper . the same tattered sweater covers them . it’s pitiful in a way that is familiar and makes ricardo’s stomach churn in pure hate  . “ here . “ he rummages in his wallet for a second , before extracting a crisp $50 note . “ for my sake and everyone else’s . that garbage bag you insist on wearing  is beginning to reek  . “

“not really.” juniper shrugs, murmuring into her coffee. it’s bitter and the sugar dispenser nearest is empty. not a grain left. too nervous to catch the server’s attention behind the counter, she’ll wince her way through the cup instead. at the next mouthful she swallows it wrong, bites back a loud cough, a patch of it that’s dribbled off her chin and onto the front of her sweater. it’ll make a home between the other stains and tears, cat-clawed and moth-eaten. she won’t reject the fifty but won’t squander it either, opts for the last few dollar bills of spare change from her own order left in a jean pocket to be tipped for the barista he’s so graciously ignored. “thank you.” it’s unclear who it’s for. “you could’ve bought us breakfast with that money instead. my clothes are fine,” she’s lying, they’re bordering on needing to be washed and leaves her resembling a cartoon character with such a pronounced lack of wardrobe choices, “maybe it’s sentimental. maybe i don’t want to throw it away.” after following his gaze that rakes her over she offers a lopsided grin. “or, maybe you’re endeared by it.” he’s a touch sweaty, she notices, glitters under the cast of morning sun, in the way stephanie meyer describes, breathlessness quieting his words. “you went running. are you hungry?”

          rocking  back  and  forth  on  her  heels,  there  were  about  five  different  paint  swatches  fanned  out  in  front  of  her,  most  of  which  seemingly  had  little  in  common.  as  if  she  wasn’t  busy  enough,  mel  had  decided  that  redecorating  the  guest  room  of  her  house  was  her  next  big  project.  and  before  she  could  decided  to  repaint  the  whole  house  in  one  go,  she  had  to  get  through  this  decision  first.     ❝  i  need  a  second  opinion,  ❞     she  started,  nose  scrunched  as  her  gaze  lifted  to  the  person  across  from  her.     ❝  i’m  trying  to  brighten  up  the  guest  room,  in  case  my  sister  decides  to  come  charging  in  at  any  given  moment,  and  i  don’t  know  which  color  i  like  best.  like,  is  this  one  too  peachy,  or  this  one  too  …  yellow  ?  i  know  i  don’t  have  to  really  look  at  it  much,  but  i  don’t  want  it  to  look  horrible.  ❞     /     @absentsdream​

Magda felt like a mother crab mercilessly consuming her young, snatching at another piece of bacon. Nothing had tempted her aside from that, so she’d ordered such a large platter on Rina’s stolen credit that the waitress raised an eyebrow. It was all charred so black it snapped with her next bite, just how she liked it. “You want some coffee with that, baby? Somethin’ to… I don’t know, wash it all down?“ Magda shook her head. Only when they were alone again did she suddenly turn back to Rina across the booth. “You know eels could technically be immortal, if they never migrate back to the Sargasso sea? That’s where they go through their last metamorphosis. They can die at five or sixty, it’s conditional. They only fuck in the last year of their life, that’s when they kick it. So, yeah. Whack, dude.” She didn’t tend to talk this much, usually, but she’d made do with a crushed up prescription with a torn off label, fetched from a stranger’s medicine cabinet – a stimulant, clearly, judging by the jitter in her knees, the fact she’d written a jaw dropping volume of code at Otis’ in a small window prior to arrival – and suddenly, eyes both awake and impossibly tired all at once, peeking beneath the brim of her dark green beanie hat, she couldn’t shut up. “And baby bats babble to imitate noises their parents make, like birds and humans – they’re the only species that do. Whack, again. Really makes you think. Don’t know what about, but. Definitely some thinking going on,” she shrugged, eyes flitting in time to catch a man gawking at her huge bacon platter across the diner – acting out of impulse, she pulled a grotesque face like she’d suffered an impromptu spasm, startling him so much that he abruptly set down his mug. Magda turned back to Rina without acknowledging the debacle, jabbing a piece of bacon at them like a finger. “Want some? Tastes like fossils. Distinct undertone of dead stegosaurus, or – uh, probably entelodonts, I guess, since they were the closest thing to pigs, genetically.” @absentsdream​

back flat along the diner booth seat, rina can feel points of bone warm painfully against the fissuring, never-been-cleaned sticky wood. a shoulder blade moves beneath them languidly and they put up with the discomfort, if only for the way it makes them delirious, another planet where the air is thick and viscous in their lungs, a slow-moving oxygen supply. the waitress doesn’t appear to like them much; perhaps for the heels of grotty tennis shoes resting against the wall, or the whites of their eyes as she’s watched going to magda with the brown glass coffee pot and a pitcher of cream, mouth agape and head teetering over the end of the bench and stock still otherwise. their knees bend the angle smaller once the waitress leaves, sliding the back of their skull along the seating. “it’s such a chore, too.” rina huffs. gently, minutely, they sat up properly to observe the heaping throne of bacon she wields between greasy fingertips. “like, fucking, after travelling all that way. guess you’d need to be dead to get a good night’s sleep after all that. or the disappointment’d kill you.” 

a monologue ⁠— about bodily autonomy in a hyperfocused patriarchy, how really, the eels could die if they truly longed for it, the societal norms to accept bad sex as a rite of passage that placates mediocre cishet men and the eternal disappointment it accompanies — is abandoned by a dried-down wad of ketchup glued to a tousle of rina’s hair, when fingers running through it find the treasure in disgust. “i’d rather die, too. this shit stinks so bad.” they’ll have to wash their hair later, begrudgingly, disturb the final licking of shampoo diluted with water in the bottle they’re too cheap to part with yet. “or i’ll leave it. chop it off, put it in a little box. a present for hubie, a bribe to skip my rent this month. a lock of hair’s got the romance.”

whether it’s real life or the grand finale of masterchef, not even the disgruntled man magda’s tormented enough to have dappled his khakis with spilled coffee can tell as rina extends to delicately pluck the bacon off the plate. between their teeth the bacon is acrid and salty, ashen crumbles at the corner of their mouth, thumbed away absentmindedly. “o-oh,” obnoxiously loud, the chef through the kitchen’s window glances over. “my god. my god!” a fist bangs the table, releases to shove another rasher in. “otherworldly. like black garlic, how the french lose their minds over burning it to oblivion but japan, they know what it’s worth. shit’s like gold, wolfe. tell me, where’d you acquire such exquisite taste? that’s real whack.”

          throwing herself the world’s saddest pity party, skylar just offered up a small smile before muttering “thank you”. she happily took the bud light and popped it open. “been a shitty night, you know?” sky mused, sipping on the beer. she’s always hated beer. she assumed the yeast is what made her stomach hurt when she drunk it. but, it was a kind gesture anyway; hey, it was free. finally breaking the trance her eyes had (fixated, really) on the fire, skylar looked over and gave a more genuine smile. “i’m sorry i’m such a buzzkill, but i’m sky.” she spoke, her voice cracking softly (from what she assumed was the yelling she did earlier). 

          “how did you turn out so selfish?” those words ringing through sky’s head as she walked out the door of the trailer she once shared with her brother and her mom. her brother still lives there and her mom only comes around when she needs something. this time? money and food. it’s not that sky didn’t have it – it’s the fact that she knew selina would be spending it on drugs and she’d rather not wake up in the morning to see selina on the news. but selina didn’t see it that way. selina would rather guilt and punish sky for not jumping when she said jump. sky couldn’t tell you why something so small would bother her so much. you’d think after growing up with a mom like hers, she’d be used to the disappointing storm that trailed behind selina everywhere she went. but, maybe it’s the fact that selina was still her mom…  god, sky needed a drink. getting into her car, she heads out into the dark of night, making her way down to vela pier – which was still alive with people enjoying the lights and beach bonfire happening just down the beach a little. skylar walks into the crowd, checking to see where she could grab a shot … or 4. drinking on an empty stomach isn’t something she did frequently – but it’s something she does tonight. after a round of shots she took with total strangers, she goes to sit by the bon fire – hoping she could forget her life for just a few moments. @irvingstarters​ 

Magda, wearing a pair of pilot goggles that made her look as if she was about to start melding, an oversized t-shirt with wolves on and seemingly no pants underneath, lazily held onto a leash attached to a snuffling hog in one hand and a dark green Nokia in the other. The hog, stoutest belly ever recorded, snorted it’s way through an unguarded flower bed, budging up every root with it’s snout. Magda did nothing to prevent it, clicking mindlessly through her game of Snake, until she caught eyes with someone passing. Expressionless, it was rare that Magda demonstrated a visible reaction to anything – even a plummeting plane or a spontaneous combustion. “You want to pet Chungus?” The hog’s name, apparently. Maybe not. She did like lying. He tore up another flower, sneezed, then gobbled at the stem. “Unless you’re homophobic. He’s LGBT.”

an off-day and juniper’s without direction, aimless in her early morning drives to circle the outskirts of irving until the sky’s imperial violet is a warming peach, turning lemon-pale with the arrival of the sun. her stomach rumbles. her eyes are sandpapery from nowhere near the recommended eight hours. nausea soon makes its home below her diaphragm. a stale muesli bar in hand, juniper pulls over and opts to walk from the parked car, chewing the tough oatmeal as a cow working on its cud. fresh air’s meant to settle the stomach. rather than a trophy wife who eye’s at juniper’s sleep-darkened face suspiciously whilst power-walking a purebred dog, she’s pleased to find the hog nearby, magda uncaring. the look from her is reassuring, taken to be a subliminal message she’s not out of place. a piece of the muesli is broken off, lowered in an open palm to him. “he looks friendly.” at the edge of the disturbed soil, she arranges herself cross-legged, watching intently. a limp zinnia meets the toe of a sneaker. “can i? he won’t mind?”  

      she’s used to his antics by now, which is why she meets owen’s dramatics with a playful roll of her eyes. “ yeah, you look like you’re about to tip over,  ”  darcy teases, the slightest of smiles tugging at the corner of her lips. she might hate to admit it, but things are always a bit better when owen is around. his company is something she’s grown accustom to in her months spent in irving. she eyes the bill in his hand, contemplating actually taking his money for a moment, but no one else is around. she’s closing all alone. “ nah, keep it. you’ve just so happened to come here on darcy gives people who’s name starts with an ‘o’ and ends in an ‘n’ a singular free drink hour, so you’ve really lucked out.  ”  with that, she leaves him standing there, still holding out the twenty, as she makes quick work of preparing his drink. 

               august comes again before they’re ready like a kick in the shin, hard and relentless. midsummer ; mating season, and the cicadas are buzzing loud enough to drown out conversation. the humidity is palpable. it beads against their skin like pearls, bright drops of sweat across rina’s hairline and margo stretches out her hand to catch it on her finger, bringing the salty taste of it to her mouth. “when i was a kid, i think i thought that they did the seventeen years thing because seventeen just seemed like the best age, y’know ? like… if we can come of age at seventeen, why can’t cicadas…” backs against the hot tin roof of rina’s trailer the two of them toast like salmon on a grill, a lukewarm bottle of soda passed between them as they take it in turns to reach up and pluck an apple from the tree that only slightly shades them. rina’s slicing theirs, the knife in their hand glinting under the high noon sun as margo rolls onto her stomach and begins arranging dried maple leaves like the spokes of a sun dial around rina’s abdomen. she’s simply looking for an excuse to touch them but won’t let that be known, the attention she puts into the task so absolute it’s almost primal. “i think it’s actually something about like, prime numbers, or fucking… keeping the predator-prey relationships in balance.” she wishes she knew more about the subject so that she could tell them things for longer, a kind of begging in her stomach to prove herself to rina. her eyes drift down to the other’s mouth for fear she’ll miss what’s said over the humming ensemble of cicadas. “i dunno. can’t remember. you’d have to ask my dad.”     @absentsdream​​

‘heat.’ the answer’s an old one, recited from the crumpled page of a tenth-grade biology textbook long stolen out of a stranger’s locker. the syllable is plaintive and matter-of-fact but not harsh; far from an effort to shut margo up. they’d rather see the conversation to eternity. ‘they think, anyway. you’re not far off. cicadas show up when it’s not real hot, not freezing either. just perfect.’ perfect is meant to be quantitative, statistics neat as a pin, the calculation of a time when rina finally doesn’t gulp down the urge to close the distance between theirs and margo’s mouths. instead, knowing is abstract. letters and numbers jumbled, impossible algebra, the flip of their gut as the cool of the knife blade and sticky-sweet apple slice meets their hot thumb pad, offered and waiting for margo’s own reach for the fruit. ‘when... when the conditions’re just right. whatever it is. it’s a feeling. but it happens earlier, sometimes. later, too. felt sooner for me. did it feel the same for you?’

philomena: lets PARTY!!!!

philomena: tea party

philomena: i've never had one

philomena: my teddy wants 2 get high

juniper: it's four am

juniper: ?

magda: never hungry. i survive on fractals, slime and light beams alone.

magda: the old girl makes her sound like a kind eyed dairy cow

magda: i'll go if you name one person in irving you'd eat on a desert island.

rina: having variety in your diet is good

rina: she kind of does look like a cow. i think it's how she styles her hair?

rina: ummm

rina: feels like a trick question. i say myself. then i know exactly what i'm eating

valentina: no ... no it's not.

valentina: why am i always cleaning up your messes?

valentina: also, do you have bleach?

rina: it's made with genuine feeling though?

rina: of course i have bleach

rina: i'm not an animal, valentina.

will: fuck that

will: did you hear about those cia training sites

will: big ass fake towns with nobody but cia fucks

will: alien territory

juniper: yes

juniper: we should go visit one soon

juniper: do u think we can get abducted there

juniper: not by the cia that's boring. i mean actual aliens

closed to  :  @absentsdream​ location  :  kahlo’s, as per 

       “  this is the third time this week you’ve shown up at closing time,  ”  darcy muses, glancing over her shoulder to shoot owen a pointed look, “ and you haven’t even ordered anything.  ”  she knows very well that he’s most likely there to just see her, but it’s not something she’ll readily admit to noticing. “ if you’re here to scavenge through our leftover pastries every night, i’m gonna have to start charging you. ‘cause we donate our leftovers, so …  ”

“have a bit of sympathy, darce. i’m tired.” owen murmurs in false exasperation; after a shift at the surf shop to cover last minute, hungover and craving greasy pier food, it’s enough to make anyone appreciate the abba-filled cavern of the emptying cafe. eventually he straightens on the chair he’s slouched in, half-asleep when he approaches the counter to examine the last few pastries in the case. “no scabbing off you today, though. it’s payday,” with a flourish he produces a twenty, the folded note hovered in front of her in a waiting game for an open palm. “please, ma’am, if it’s not too late... an oat hot chocolate?”

juniper  rothschild  &  self  .