♯ mala - mia . mp3

       ‘   and what is his type ?   ’ he shoots back, the jovial smile ebbing into mischief as he leans forward with perked brows. his spoon scrapes tirelessly against the side of the container, the last of the ice cream curling up against his spoon, acting as a brief reprieve before his next onslaught of menial banter surfaces. ‘   i’ll have you know i’m six on a good one. but i always say five-eleven. keeps me humble.    ’ the spoon’s barely out of his mouth before he’s speaking again, add-on’s never ending, a trail of thoughts that never peters out. ‘   yep. that’s what made kai fall in love with me. my modesty.   ’ it’s accompanied by an idle shrug and a swipe of his lips, a sweet-tooth never satiated, seeking solace in the saccharine ; with the fanciful visions of romance and sugary treats. 

Emma’s not a fighter, plain and simple. She adopted the same virtues of helping others and ‘sharing is caring’ that she taught to pre-schoolers — she figured more ADULTS needed to take them into account. Smiling and hugging and warm greetings: those were what made sense, not possessing the knowledge of how to throw a solid punch. BUT YET, Odette made some sense that Emma was essentially indefensible. Long limbs wouldn’t help her if she didn’t know where to swing them, and she wasn’t certain that polite conversation and 911 on speed-dial would do much to shield her from becoming the first victim of the next Ted Bundy. Odette moves her body for her, but she hangs on to each word still, nodding after every command. Punch with the middle fingers, curve it, go for softer parts of the face. She swings lamely forward, arm not extended fully, hitting nothing but air. It’s rather OBVIOUSLY not out of a lack of comprehension of the instruction — Emma could perhaps be a little ditzy or naive, but she wasn’t a complete idiot — but lack of certainty in what exactly she was supposed to be aiming for. “ Get a … pillow or something from the couch and hold it up so I can hit something, ” She says, motioning with the hand not still wrapped in the fist of Odette’s curation. “ It’ll be like one of those karate boards, but I won’t break my hand. ”

Emma, for lack of a kinder word, was a KLUTZ. She’d never succeeded in sports — though in FAIRNESS, the most she’d ever attempted was gym class, unable to climb the rope provided and smacked in the face with a dodgeball — and her only occasional exercise was a hike, which she attributed her taste for mostly to the fresh air and the appearance of an occasional bunny rabbit. She tripped over her own two feet more often than not, and she was grateful for lanky stature, because high-heeled shoes were a rarity in her closet. So at the prospect of Odette possibly teaching her anything remotely aggressive, she balks. And with surprise taking over, she can’t help but laugh. “ You’re — you’re joking, right? PLEASE tell me you’re joking. ” She stares at Odette through wide eyes, laugher ceasing as she realises the older is still standing, and expecting Emma to follow her command. Shit. Wordlessly, she pushes back her chair, stands and tentatively makes a fist, thumb tucked inside. 

DESPITE HER WORRIES on how exactly Odette knows anything about the accessibility of chloroform, part of her has to admit that her friend is right. Perhaps the particular brand of naivety Emma brandished — knowing about everything bad in the world and electing to ignore it — didn’t work as well as she could hope. No amount of GOOD SAMARITAN virtue and positive thinking could save the world, not anymore than faith & trust & pixie dust. Even though she hesitated to admit to the other how much she believed that those were good things. “ OKAY! Okay. I’ll buy Mace or something. And no more pro-bono late night driving. ” Though she could sense there was something off-kilter about the conversation, the seriousness it had adopted, there was no semblance of a clue about what. Emma had grown up quickly — but quickly for suburban Missouri. The type of quickly where she made dinner every night ( albeit BURNT ) and drove to work shifts until eleven pm after school, where she placed bandaids on scraped knees and helped with math homework while her mom slept all day long. She had little knowledge outside of the safe haven she’d always been in — self-sufficiency without a threat of danger. But the idea of her having any sort street smarts were null and void. “ I’m not as useless as you might think, ” Emma objected, scooping folded slice back up to take another bite. “ I know to go for the eyes. Or punch them in the nose, like a shark. ”

       he plucks the ice cream out of her grasp, before hopping up onto the kitchen island, the very same that sends two beer caps flying to the floor with a PLINK. he’d throw his arms up in surrender but she’ll just have to settle for him nodding along to her quip, hard to disprove when he’s got quite the track record for reading into things that aren’t there. forever lost to a fairytale land of romances and one too many proposal compilation videos on youtube, it makes a martyr out of him, resigned to singledom in spite of an unfailing want for family, though god, he’d settle for a warm body or even a hand to hold. the lid of the tub is tossed to the side and he digs the spoon as deep as he can, greedy with anticipation. ‘   that’s good. that it’s all hypothetical i mean … because i have something to tell you.   ’ he holds up a finger, enunciating the pause as he shovels the spoonful of ice cream into his mouth, completely forgetting that this is meant to be a set-up to a moment. his tongue swipes over his lips before he says, ‘  it’s kai. we were going to elope, but now that you know, i would be HONOURED if you’d be my maid of honour.   ’ a taunting, honeyed smile coats his lips, dimples deep saucers as sickly sweet as the ice cream he’s still going at. ‘   you can rest easy knowing there’ll be someone to identify his penis if, god forbid, my love were to ever get in an accident.   ’