just Leo...

                 Liz turned back to the groceries on the counter, picking at the plastic with no actual intention of putting anything away too quickly. Scowling at them with her back to Leo, she felt the stark contrast bleeding into the air around them. In the time they’d spent apart, she’d had to change some things about herself. Now — she did groceries. Now, she did babies. In fact, she did diapers, skin rashes, hand moisturizer and occasionally going to bed before ten o’clock. But the thing about these changes was that they’d all happened without her knowing, a slow and gradual aging of her character, providing less of a scare factor. Until she was faced directly with an image of her past that is, sitting behind her, clearly ebbing in hate about something.

                The other night had been all kinds of weird, wrapped up in a colossal illusion of possibly everything she’d tried not to feel in the last handful of years without Leo around. Because there were always going to be the same impossible to answer questions. The other night… why did she do it? Why did he? What would have happened to them if she’d stayed? Who would they be to each other now if she’d never even met Gus in the first place? She didn’t want to talk about any of it because she knew she didn’t have the answers.

      “Okay, first of all — you’re a grown ass man. Do what you want.” She began sharply, but of course, Liz knew exactly what he was talking about. She wasn’t the best at giving people chances, at leaving trails… but with him, it would always be different. “Okay look, what was I supposed to do? Things change. I ended up hating the city, it was full of all those fucking freaks with their Vegas Romances and literal bipolar bullshit, I just — I outgrew that shit. Just like I outgrew my mom’s place in Connecticut, I needed a change before I blew myself up.” She said, turning back around. “So I moved here and I sent you the addresses, I figured if you were still working in the city you could drop by — which you didn’t, which is cool — that’s fine. But then, you know, shit started getting serious…” She side glanced away, feeling a little awkward to lay it all out so dot point. “You know, like, I got pregnant. My mom moved in with us for a while. Gus got a real job. Things just got more and more crazy for a while there and yeah, I guess I didn’t keep you as up to date as I should have but sometimes… I just don’t want to fucking deal with the fact that my life goes up the fucking ass of Hell, every time I try and make a difference.” She ranted, leaving no room for Leo to interject even if he wanted to. “So Gus, he’s got this cool new job, right? Like, he’s been in LA for the last I don’t know how long and we’re doing this whole co-parenting thing by correspondence mostly which is — let me tell you — not great, it’s the fucking worst actually and all my friends who were around and there when Miles was born are totally fucking non-existent now because, well, who knows, I’m kind of a difficult person to be around right? So basically…” Liz finally concluded. “Yeah, I might have done kind of a shit thing by moving away…. But don’t act like I’m doing you some kind of out-of-this-world decency by letting you be a part of it when you know damn well my door is always fucking open for you… Okay? We’re family. And if family’s taught us anything, it’s about how much bullshit we gotta go through to deal with each other.” 

Liz was so noisy.  Minutes after she’d left the last of her words to bury their sharp tips into him Leo could still feel the ringing tone of her voice inside his ears.  Days before this her attempts of filler conversations were only a gray static, they didn’t fill his head and it was left to ponder.  For a long time his world had been too silent, the quiet was violent.  Now the noise was back.  So loud and clear and he could breathe.  He took one slow deep inhale that hurt,

“Do you not…? Do you not get it?” Brows knit together as his voice strained out his throat, attempting to both let him speak but yet also choke back for just a little while longer what he couldn’t control.  Confused and incredulous he could only barely get out, “You left.”

“You left me.”

“You, Liz.  You did that.  You ran away.”

At any time she could’ve taken off, even clear across the world and he never would’ve stopped her because he’d known -he thought- she would tell him.  He was worth at least that much.  Apparently that actual worth was very little.

Sporadic trips where he waited a good twenty-four hours before seeing if he’d at least get a text whenever she’d suddenly remembered what he’d be doing home alone, Leo could handle those.  Several times he’d handled them because she came back home and she’d never done a thing to feed any sort of real doubt inside of him.  Until one day she was gone and he didn’t hear for months.  Their home the apartment got quieter and the silence almost killed him.  She left spaces and promises and intentions and plans and him.  She’d cut out along the lines exactly where and what she wanted to take with her. Leo hadn’t made the cut to be inside those lines.  Only on the side he’d just been left bleeding.

“Whatever family I was to you wasn’t enough for you to tell me when or why you left.  Back then it wasn’t enough. Now you’re trying to get it back as if it’s all just sitting here right in front of you!” His hands slammed on the table and spilled cold coffee as he stood up, voice barking out of him now trying to bite and scratch at her.  “But it’s gone, I want it but we don’t get to have it back.  You threw it away, we can’t pick it up again that easily.”

In the past few days together he could see slips of it, little moments that could be reminiscent or copies of what used to be but nothing full or substantial.  Even that night in bed where he tried to reach for it, search for it in a clear desperation under that skin he used to know intimately well but now fit on her differently.

“Believe me I can tell when I’m not wanted -- when I’m not enough.  It’s not a new feeling. So when I understood that part - when I could accept it - then you started to send me all this shit. And I just--.. godamnit.” All the emails that were just as short and clipped as her voice was he could hear it through the screen, and all the pictures of a her with a child that was so real yet alien to him.  She’d tried to leave a little space open for Leo, between the pictures and words, somewhere she thought he could fit because of how easily it’d been forgotten that she carved out that space personally.

“This isn’t about how much bullshit we can shove down each other’s throats till we give in.  That’s what we used to do. That used to be us.”

“What you did wasn’t bullshit.” Slit open and draining Leo felt his voice had become a little lower and the bite of his words was going duller.  Everything that had come out, that was coming out, ripped and pulled him from the inside out he could swear his mouth tasted of wet copper.

“You left for you.  I get it.  A life happened and you were just trying.  I don’t blame you for that.  You’re a grown ass woman you can do whatever the fuck you want.” He threw her words back at her across the room with all of the little malice that was left in him.  Leaving a deafening silence that started to swallow him back up.

“Just don’t act like whatever I meant to you was more than it was, because that is actually killing m-”

When the last word couldn’t come out stronger than a whisper Leo stopped.  Pushing himself away from the table, hands drug across a dull wooden surface that’d drained almost every speck of energy from him.  Leaving it all the table as he’d just done in front of her before turning to the kitchen door.

                There were still elements about the two of them that Liz was desperate to get back to normal, like the way they used to pick on each other or the shots they used to call, even down to the way they used to act around each other while occupying the same space. Because if there was anyone that she owed thanks to in her overall survival and core of who she had become as a person on her own, it would be Leo. On her escape to New York City all those years ago… he’d taken a chance on a total stranger, and in some ways, it had literally saved her life. The way she’d abandoned him — and she had, she knew this now, she felt it under the pressure of his hands the other night, like a punishing reminder — it was probably one of the worse things she’d done in her life. But she was still having trouble admitting it.

                Noting his tone, Liz foresaw the direction this was going and quickly decided to pull the plug with her own shrug of dismissal. He’d showed up, she’d let him come in. She wasn’t sure what else she was meant to do here to make this all right again. “Yeah, well… I guess I have. That’s generally what people do when they move.”

Just like that all her effort was gone.  Rolled off in an easy shrug of that let her dispel everything in the room that she didn’t want to deal with and she dismissed him that easily. It shouldn’t hurt anymore like it did yet that dull but still very real sting across still healing ribs caused his fingers to clench and tear a page. She didn’t want to deal with it.  With him; not if it wasn’t the way she wanted or a way she recognized.  

So then why?

“I get trying to find a home, for yourself.” Setting his now ruined book down Leo put a noticeable amount of effort into that small of an action, because it took away some of the tremble in his hand.  Unlocked a little of the tension up his jaw to let his words come out not as clipped. “Been hopping around for awhile, so I’m glad if you found it.  If this is it.” Her new home pit stop.

“What I don’t get is why I’m here. Why you let me come.”

                 The air was tense, it had been over the stretch of the last few days and Liz wouldn’t admit it, but she wasn’t exactly doing much to ease it. Having Leo back in her life, close enough to reach out and pinch, it was surreal. After all these years… “You know,” She began, “It’s not like this town’s Satan’s asshole or anything, it’s actually kind of cool once you get over the fact everybody’s annoyingly nice all the time.” She told him. “I mean like, I don’t know what your plans are or whatever, if you’re staying or going back but like… it’s not that shit here. I know it’s no shared shoebox on Sixth Avenue, but it’s home.”

From his cup of weak coffee growing colder by the minutes he didn’t actually drink it and the fanned out paperback book that’s spine was deforming the longer he kept it on the same page, Leo only glanced up to Liz.  Sparing her a minute of time away from the sentences he was both memorizing and muddling to the point he knew each word before it came but also couldn’t recall what the book was about.  It was the same book he’d been reading every morning for the past week.  Pretending to read the same two fucking pages because every morning she continued to pretend several things didn’t exist and that small talk was the same as it had been several years ago.  He didn’t even know if they had small talk between them anymore but it’s all she’d been doing.  Been trying to do.  And it must’ve been that painfully clear effort she was putting into it that got just a little further under Leo’s skin this morning. Bitter about when and where she decided to really try. “Yeah, you settled in great here.”

Liz: Brick, pole, tacomobile, you name it.

Liz: Yeah, we're watching TV.

Liz: He knows an awful lot about Sex and the City...

Leo: Tacomobile is news to me, since you're the walking taco, not me

Liz: I don't know who you think I am but I will never turn down free food you know that's my number one rule; free shit is good shit.

Liz: He's still here. He wants to know when you'll get back.

Leo: You never listen to me

Leo: Why do you never listen to me. I am just a brick wall in your life aren't I. Or a pole. Just an inanimate object.

Leo: STDs are free, that still good shit?

Liz: Your creepy neighbor came over again.

Liz: He wants to know when you'll be home.

Liz: PS if you wont bang him I will.

Leo: You don't want any of that, trust me

Leo: Stay inside, lock the door