#kenkey

It was another day.

Kendra was heading back to her hovel. It was unfortunate that wasn’t the hyperbole she wanted it to be. She had the luxury once of allowing just that. Fluff to her words to accentuate just how much she despised everything. Puff pieces floated off her lips in her extended vocabulary. With sharp wit, she could reduce the will of those around her in the down economy. The currency that broke the market was smithed from her mind and dropped on everyone else like stones that lowered them and buoyed her.

Not anymore.

Now, she had to work. Life had caught up quickly with her after prison. Felons, genius or not, were treated the same. It was an equitability she learned in prison. Her brilliance shone for about half a second before she was kicked down quite literally. Media played up tips and tricks of the cunning, but they were fiction. In reality, strength really did win out behind bars. No matter how many of her candy coated words came out, they were perceived for what they really were. All intention was immediately wrung out of them as if the reflexive nature she had once ushered them in with turned on itself. In a carnivorous run, opening her mouth was a bite taken out of her own ass until she learned to shut up and become one.

With the gangs.

With the groups.

Therapy.

Parole boards.

Attorneys.

It was all the same.

She was one of a million.

Not special.

Not a gifted teen.

Not an IQ to be heralded.

Just another human body to move. 

Another cog in the machine. 

In life outside, she got turned down for a hundred job prospects before a circled ad in the paper picked her up.

Antiquated back ways were through routes she had learned. The same method of smuggling into prison was bribery and, no matter how advanced security got, that stayed the same. Quid pro quo paid way more and, as people advanced, the old heads weren’t actually left behind. They were still there until they died and even then their bullshit lived on. Through their kids they never taught better or the means in which ex-cons still finding work through a friend of a friend using the same nepotism that got the current jilted generation hired when the market was crashed out by the one before it.

Another instance of eating one’s self.

Kendra really needed to stop falling asleep to those commercial channels.

Rotted spines and snake oil arthritis creams were haunting her waking hours when paired with oozing burger patties in fast food commercials as soon as channels clicked back over to the living who were deemed capable of generating nationwide sales as opposed to geriatrics.

She almost laughed.

She had now rounded back yet again, but this time to how old people persevered in some fucked up sense of rebellion.

The same class as those who had locked her up.

The world was a broken record that way and it wasn’t for her to judge.

For her, it was Wednesday.

Another shitty day to go to work and her mind wandered only because she let it on the short walk. It was all she had since she had blown out yet another pair of earbuds doing the same damn thing she kept doing because despite how smart she was, she was still a fucking idiot.

With a shouldering of her bag, she looked up at the building she worked in.

Four stories and each floor was exactly that. It was a pre-war walk-up that was classified as Queens. The first floor was busted and in a perpetual state of repair or dis- depending on who you asked. For her particular level, the third, her boss would say it was a quack. Exactly like the ducks he let his grandkid feed every Sunday like clockwork. He would talk about quacks when referring to doctors, landlords, and policemen the same as if it were a catchall term. Everyone was in a pond to him and the quacking here was that they flapped a lot of feathers over refurnishing the first floor into kitschy shops when in reality they were never going to do anything about the missing tiles and plywood windows. The coming soon sign was an omen that would never be reached.

What is today, but yesterday’s tomorrow ~ A hack, circa fuck you.

The second floor was storage and athletics. That seemed too broad of a label compared to what was below, but there was no other way to put it. Because of the lackadaisical structure and loose framework of building codes from the time period the framework of this building had come from, Kendra walked up a set of stairs from the broken lobby and had to completely cross the hall through the second floor to get to the next set of stairs which led to her own level. One side was a set of empty doors marked for maintenance, supplies, and boiler respectively. The other was pane after pane of glass that refused to conceal gorgeously aged wood. A finely crafted multi-purpose studio was there and, from the ever changing postings in the windows, it always housed something.

It was a yoga studio some months that would fill with hip, but bored mothers. They would roll out their mats to someone a little more savvy to the con than others and lead them through their own cloud of farts. Their ponytails would bob as they pretended Carrie hadn’t eaten beans again on purpose, but in reality she was on a high methane diet because that was the fad this week.

At other times, it filled with rows of haunting station bicycles, moved in from unknown edges of stagnant cities. Without real wheels, Kendra wasn’t sure how they were rolled in, but at least thirty of them would be set up with a ghostly white specter of a thirty-first faced the other way amongst the stampede. Horses would then beat hooves in the form of fans that didn’t cool off the space. They were begged to go just so many more non-existence miles in their quest to reach unattainable beauty standards even though they could have actually moved in those cities if they weren’t so terrified of getting hit like the real couriers that they so carelessly ordered from just to get gummy take-out noodles from because their calves burned too much after pedaling nonsense.

She was daydreaming again because the studio currently wasn’t either of those things.

It was The Treachery of Images really because while she knew all of those activities happened behind the glass, she had never actually seen them.

Because of her work hours.

She started too late and left the same.

No one took classes in the middle of the day.

Not in this neighborhood. 

She passed the length of the wood room and its deep set windows that showed her crossing until she neared the real front door and the little desk with the quaint plant.

The postings were there.

The same class was occupying the space as it had for three other weeks.

It was currently a junior ballet class.

Kids in tutus running amuck while their parents paid to have them out of their hair for a bit.

Kendra hit the stairs and again her cognizance for what could be vanished.

It was steps she hated and the smell of all that hung above began to permeate the upper steps.

Floor three was a hodgepodge of exactly that. Listed as 600, despite not being the sixth floor or a suite number, was, first, a chowder place. It was currently closed, but someone was cooking because the celery was being chopped. While she couldn’t see or hear that it was, it hung in the air. There was something about the slight humidity that came off the hundreds of stalks being chopped that created a phantom vegetal air. If they were still working on mise en place that meant the kitchen was a bit behind since the seafood hadn’t been brought in yet. That would reek and there must have been bad luck at the morning market, but Kendra trudged on.

The next 600 location was an artist’s storefront. No one actually came to buy from them directly, but they maintained the store as if anyone would walk in at any time. It was sunk cost when it came to their gaudy décor. They had painted the walls and installed new floors. The design read cake shop even though the art evoked wharf walls at best. Fishermen paid top dollar for these sort of caricatures to liven up salt peeled wood to give them a moment of clarity when they weren’t working the grey water. Kendra had always wondered if the artist who worked here was inspired by chowder as she doubted the man ever got anywhere near the beach itself considering he was currently in and as pasty as ever.

The last 600 and the grand conclusion of the third floor was her place of business. It was  walk-up window of sorts from the outside and her boss was ever hanging from it. He smelled of his honey and turmeric soap his wife made and he clicked his tongue as he saw her. He would tell her she was late again and she would come back with a new quip as she had done every day for the last two and a half years despite him never seeming to notice or care. As far as she could tell, it was his bright idea to have three spaces rent out a single address in this building. Confusing all customers who came, he convinced the two other idiots in his stupid trio that it was free publicity.

Even when there appeared to be no cross promotion between chowder, electronics repair, and woven tote bags with pictures of buff men on them.

“Can you ever show up on time, Byerly?!” Her boss shouted from the window without looking up.

“Check the curtain call. I’m dramatically timed today.” These were the first words she had spoken aloud today.

He said nothing as he opened the half-door from the inside, the only way it could be. He stepped out of the way while his phone ran some betting app. She shoved past him, making sure to bump him as she had hundreds of times before and he only knocked her in the way he always did. She cussed him out under her breath and he did so in return in her native language. She would say mother tongue if she knew it, but she didn’t. Like many first generations, she knew vibes more than words. She responded in English much to everyone’s disdain even though it was all their faults they had robbed her of her culture. Being a first generation citizen disjointed her like some amalgamated doll, doomed to always look aftermarket despite the supposed care poured in it to make her fit in.

She stared down at her work space.

In some ways, she loved it.

She had 360 degrees of technology all around her for all her working hours. The one true craft the man who owned this shop knew was how to maximize space. While it was questionable from a 600 stance, in her bubble it was perfected. She sat at a low set desk in the center of the room. The job was simple; broken electronics were passed to her and she would fix them using any of the hundreds of components within reach or the computer in her backpack. When she was done, she passed them back to her boss. From what she had gathered, he had the ability to fix electronics alike, but had grown tired of it. He had gotten really into fantasy something or other which made his own personal device, his phone, the only thing he wanted to sink time into. Before his addiction, he had built a reputation strong enough to sustain sales until he found the right flunky to take over and give at least a portion of the quality of care he used to.

He put out an ad in the paper.

She answered.

He didn’t even ask about her background.

There was no resume to give.

He gave her a phone to repair as a test and she found it was missing its SIM card within five seconds.

A beeper was her next task, which she had never interacted with, but it didn’t stop her from locating a faulty wire in under a minute.

Her final object was a tablet, harshly new in comparison with the last two items and was locked after too many incorrect password attempts. She had only asked if she could use her phone and, with it, she connected and had the thing factory reset in under five minutes.

He hired her there.

She was paid cash.

It all worked out. 

She got a couple of solid employment years. 

She hated it.

She lost at least eight to ten agonizing hours of sunlight. If she ever wanted to leave, she had to make it past her boss who questioned her every move. He both fought and demanded breaks of her on his whimsy. It was always when he wanted to go out and not when she was frazzled from one too many uncooperative electronics. His chainsmoking habitually pulled her out of her space so they could both leave while he lit up. He never said it exactly, but heavily implied that he wouldn’t leave a felon alone with all his superfluous parts. She had used one of her daily slots to cast judgment on him regarding the wealth he apparently held, but, as always, he didn’t hear a word for real. To him, she disappeared from existence while she worked. She was, while on the clock, nothing more than an assembly line. Her arms were the conveyor belt that passed and fixed objects until the day was done and then she was acknowledged only upon her check out release.

She couldn’t even shit unless she bought a sandwich from the shop next door, but it was what it was.

It was money.

Security.

Her field, in a fucked up way.

Enough.

It was enough.

It was Wednesday, she remembered, as she settled in. Today the mother who lost her third son’s maternity photos would be back to get her laptop which had been dropped in a leaky ice chest. There was also that film reel stuck in the Panasonic for that man who cleaned toilets. Some other smaller screen repairs should be done curing for brain dead teens who could no longer swipe through their endless slop videos. Kendra burrowed herself into her hole, checked the repair slips, and worked on priority, as she did, as she had, for years now, through the day.

-

Work was over.

Her boss stepped out of the way so she could exit the single door.

He said he would be staying behind.

She didn’t look back.

Tired.

She was tired.

Component repair was still swirling around her head like cartoon birds. She placed pieces with each step down the stairs. She watched as she descended into a motherboard and soldered the pieces. Once she hit the last step leaving her on floor two, she had clicked the hypothetical DVD player parts back into place. That would be her first fix in the morning and, in her mind, it was already done. She needed to sort dinner now and had forgotten to ask the chowder guy for leftover bread.

With it she could have made roti bakar with that pineapple jam someone’s Ibu had given her.

She closed her eyes.

It was too far away now to go back up and get it.

She could hawk some bread elsewhere or eat the pineapple jam with a spoon.

Utensil it was, as she opened her eyes to take an enlightening step.

A literal one because while the staircase had been dark every single night she had exited this building, tonight it wasn’t.

Tonight, light poured out of the athletic studio.

Kendra checked her phone.

48 percent battery as work leaned toward her laptop today and the time read 9:14pm.

Too late for babies in tutus.

She checked the front desk.

It was empty.

She wondered if someone left the lights on and took a few steps.

Behind a very small partition that barely signified where the supposed reception ended and the main studio was, a shadow moved.

She froze.

For all the stupid passing fantasies she had about the space, she had never truly seen someone here.

She disliked this.

She was about to break her immersion.

The ridiculous hobby that helped make that same exact trek to work nearly every day a little bit bearable.

Putting a face to the space would ruin all her future ideas.

She couldn’t as easily concoct a moron of the day to put down in an attempt to make herself feel superior if there was a particular idiot to contend with.

Her imagery would be annoyingly set.

She could go back.

Get that bread.

Wait this fucker out by the light.

They would have to pack up soon.

Wouldn’t they?

A shape moved.

The shadow warped.

Elongated.

She seized in the triangle of darkness she still inhabited.

A shock of jointed green and orange fawned with a cleaning tool in hand.

It wasn’t quite a broom, but not fully a mop either.

Something with fluffy sheep dog-esque fluff on the end probably made specifically for the lacquered floor.

With a rotation of their humanoid waist, the figure rose and the tool’s handle shifted in a green hand.

A turtle mutant.

Colored orange.

Bootyshaker9000 Othello Von Ryan Donatello’s brother.

One of them, at least.

He twirled.

His arms flung out with the handle of his duster stretched far out.

He rose to the tips of his toes.

He literally pointed out his pointe shoes that matched his skin tone.

He released his grip on the pole.

Bringing his leg up, he coaxed it on the strings of his arms.

Elbow jutting out, his movement undulated spry despite his shell.

His leg extended parallel with his arm before he sent it backward.

His entire equilibrium tilted as his leg went sky high.

She felt her lips part as his foot raised clean over his head to straight up point at the ceiling.

It dropped as he spun nearly on the ground to catch the handle of his duster right before it hit the floor.

He took off.

Spinning across the floor in rotations on a single toe.

His other leg pumped to keep him moving and not once did the duster get in the way.

It moved as an extension of him.

Sweeping up and in.

A way she had learned in prison.

Pushing the dirt in, not around.

Clips of voices echoed long heard.

He hit an emotionally wall and nearly collapsed.

She felt profound sadness.

Something was wrong.

Ennui lingered in his recline.

His limbs lost their elasticity to instead stick to him.

Trap him.

In busy work, this cleaning.

He stretched.

Pushed against the hold.

Fought back against the mundanity.

It imposed right back at him.

He strangled it.

Twisted and bent under the sudden weight of the tool he held.

It was a shackle.

He stepped out from it, but it clung to him.

Trapped him.

He faced it.

Stared it down.

Closed his eyes.

Let go.

He sliced the room as a knife.

Cleaved directly through it and towered in another gesticulation.

He wouldn’t lose.

He would beat this construct.

Finish.

Win.

Except it was still there.

The endless chore.

The cleaning would need to be done again.

She felt it all.

The futility.

His entrapment.

Anger.

Trying to make the best of his situation.

A tear burned her cheek and she ran.

Clean across the light and it burned her heels.

She didn’t look back.

Not to him.

If he saw her.

He had to have been distracted. 

There had to be a song.

He probably wore headphones.

He couldn’t just do that.

It wasn’t possible.

Why had she cried?

She refused to find out.

-

Floor two was clear the next morning.

No hint of that floor duster.

No obtrusive turtle note.

The studio was dark.

It was as it always had been.

It was as if last night hadn’t happened.

It had.

She thought so at least.

Her mind sometimes got away from her, but she knew reality from not.

She knew the difference.

She was sure of it.

“Get a watch, Byerly.” Her boss spoke, as she was suddenly in front of him.

“If I did that, how would I give you your head start?”

It was open sesame and he granted passage.

She was shaken as she sat.

Lost for a moment on what needed to be done.

The tickets were in gibberish.

What was she doing?

Nothing.

Nothing illegal.

Going and coming to work.

A legitimate business, though she doubted it had paperwork.

Donnie had busted her a few times as a teen, but he was a conduit.

A vigilante himself and only passed her to the law until she was on a government watch list.

Targeting Fortune 500 companies and using a giant robot in the streets of New York financed off a world famous video game did that to you.

He and his family weren’t the ones that put her away.

She hadn’t tussled with a turtle in years.

Donnie was little more than some childhood grievance.

Back when you thought things like your greatest foe was a thing to be had.

It wasn’t.

There was no good or bad.

There was living and dying.

There was survival.

There was getting caught or not.

She had a DVD player to fix.

She did so, among other things.

Thursday passed and the second floor was dark.

Friday was the same.

Saturday changed little.

Sunday was her day off.

It was just another moronic Monday.

Tuesday passed in peace.

It was again Wednesday and she had been right about one thing.

She couldn’t picture anyone else in the studio.

Every day, through the darkened windows, she saw him.

Not his corporeal form, but a figment.

The imagined him.

The one that danced.

The one that moved her.

Himself.

The one that moved himself.

He had such a command of his own body.

Crime fighting or whatever those turtles did, did that.

She guessed.

Thought.

The class posted was still for junior ballet.

Wednesdays from 6 to 7pm.

It was Wednesday.

Orange would be here today.

She scurried up the stairs.

“You’re late, Byerly.”

“It’s called optimizing for impact, not arrival.”

It was fine.

He would be down below when she wasn’t.

She got out of work later than him. 

That night was a fluke. 

Her hands shook between parts.

What was she scared of?

She had to parse dates.

The ballet class had been running for four weeks.

She only saw him once.

That was a fluke.

Her data said so.

The same numbers told others to get their phone fixed at a place like this where it cost half the price of what a mega conglomerate charged those without the warranty and they never honored the warranty. 

That was logic. 

That or an industrial strength solvent was cooking her brains.

That was good.

Got rid of gunk.

Of glue.

Of the mind.

Reason soothed her.

What did she care?

She didn’t know his name.

He probably didn’t know hers.

She had tried to destroy him as an extension of Donatello.

The Purple Dragons weren’t foes of all the Hamato, just one.

B-tier villains at best.

A children’s game at worst.

She was an adult.

She had seen a man dance.

She didn’t care.

“Byerly!”

A microscopic part popped out of her hand. “Asshole?! Why are you yelling while I’m working!?”

Her boss was nonplussed. “Youssef got extra tuna from market today. He made it into salad which makes no sense. I’m going to take some and prove it to him. I assume you want free lunch?”

She blinked.

Nothing he had said sunk in.

He was about to repeat himself when her brain rebooted. “Yes. Sure, whatever. Can I judge it too?”

“You have a mouth.” Her boss ducked out and opened the door.

They ate at the chowder restaurant while it was empty around 3pm.

A dinner rush was spoken of.

The tuna salad wasn’t half bad.

The artist had capers that gave a salty pop to the fresh fish.

The men were going out for drinks after work.

Their age bracket was so far removed from her own that they didn’t bother to drop her an invite. 

None of the young flunkies were granted that sort of camaraderie.

Kendra locked eyes with a bus boy who knew her plight.

They got handouts and pennies for paychecks.

She went back to work.

She refurbished a Gameboy.

There was some leak from old batteries and she handled the cleaning with care.

She was in an enclosed space, after all.

A small wire brush and some chemicals could kill her.

She needed a consciousness to keep track of the tiny screws.

She was a force. 

A wielder of a magnetic screwdriver.

One agile in her hand. 

She whipped it around. 

Stretched her back. 

Utilized the space. 

Flashes of him danced.

His toil.

He had danced out his frustration.

It was palpable.

It was like he understood what she was going through. 

What sort of job was he enduring?

Had those turtles finally gotten convicted?

It wasn’t as if vigilantism was sanctioned. 

She hadn’t thought to look up Von Ryan in years.

She had moved on.

There was a headline every so often.

Blurry color coded photos in rags at grocery store checkout lines.

What would stick a turtle like that with teaching ballet classes to tiny tutu’ed brats?

Like what?

A turtle like what?

That could dance.

She knew nothing about Orange.

He was round.

Soft.

What else?

The memories she had of him were so distant.

They conjured little.

His dance.

That made her feel something.

Something beyond her thought bubbles.

He was good at that.

Dancing.

Probably good at teaching the kids.

So why had she felt so sad watching him?

-

The light was on.

He was already in motion.

She needed to get by.

She stared at the ground.

At his shadow stretching into the wall.

Tonight’s dance was fast.

She needed to leave.

There was no reason to be a freak and stay.

She wasn’t going to watch through some window like a pervert.

There had to be a law about that.

To break.

To avoid.

She toed the line of the shadow.

The first floor was broken.

The third floor shared three businesses under one address.

This floor had glass walls.

What she saw wasn’t her fault.

It was an exchange if anything.

His fault for dancing at 9:22pm when he should have gone home.

She looked.

He didn’t have the broom tonight.

He cawed.

Brought his body up around claws.

He was a bird of prey.

He swooped.

Struck.

Tiptoed across the floor.

Came up again.

Attacked.

It was fruitless.

There was no prey.

He swung uselessly.

One way.

Another.

Up into form.

Down to gather sustenance.

He was starved.

Desperation made his moves more wild.

His hair fell wild.

He moved purposefully.

One foot.

The other.

Faster.

Towards her.

Her heart skipped.

He would see her.

In the dark.

Watching.

His eyes were closed.

He moved blindly.

Straight towards her.

Until he stopped and used the momentum.

He turned.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Faster.

Faster.

Faster.

Until she was scared at how quickly he moved.

He blurred.

His form wobbled.

He pushed down like thrown clay.

His limbs extended the motion.

Flung him further.

The g-forces pulled at his sleeves.

The line along his legs clipped so fast it created a steady shape that stilled in the pivoting of his form.

The caricature drew cartoon hopes of taking off and soaring away from here.

There was no freedom.

His foot left the pedal.

The machine spinning him stopped.

Physics caught up.

He wilted like a flower.

All that weight bottomed out.

Warped by speed and lay limp.

She walked by that night.

Watched him every second.

He never rose.

He simply lay there.

Done.

-

It was something he did now.

Every Wednesday.

Another dance.

Every time, she watched.

It was clearly interpretive.

Or that was ballet.

She didn’t actually know the difference.

If the dance was weekly, the lead up to it was the affair.

She never knew what sort of show to expect because there was no program.

No lead up.

Just her imagination and she let it run.

The bag broke and he lost his groceries for the week.

That sewer home of theirs flooded with shit.

One of those brats was in Make a Wish and would never dance again.

She inflicted upon him as many bad acts as she could find, anything to justify his dances.

They ached.

Fermented.

Stank up past the chowder and soap her boss used.

He was hurting.

It hurt her.

Carnivorous as she had thought weeks ago.

It was eating away at her, but she couldn’t stop.

She felt seen in not being so.

How could he relate?

He did so too well.

He couldn’t know her situation.

He depicted it exactly.

She didn’t fucking dance.

She didn’t go to dances.

She didn’t attend her proms.

She had been busy.

No need to put on a skirt and for what?

For that cunt Taylor Martin to talk shit?

It was pointless.

The orange blossom’s dance was too.

The fifth Wednesday she awoke having joined him.

She danced with him in a dream.

She didn’t want that.

She dreamed while awake.

Not asleep.

She didn’t have dreams like that.

It was her fault. 

She was wasting her precious cognitive processes on him. 

She needed to stop wasting neurons on fantasy.

This wasn’t a damn ball. 

There was no Beauty and the Beast.

Her dream hadn’t been like that.

It had been another Wednesday as it was now.

One where he finally opened his eyes and saw her. 

He wasn’t mad.

He was melancholic.

He invited her in.

Without a word.

They danced.

She didn’t know the steps, but he was patient.

She got it soon enough.

She had watched him do it for weeks now.

You go up.

You curl your body.

You use physics.

She knew that well.

Spin.

Repeat.

The results were a duet.

An astonishing mix where they spoke entirely with their bodies.

It ended eye to eye.

Seen.

Shared.

Not alone.

Sweat.

Panting.

Synchronized.

She ran to work.

She would stay late tonight.

Later than ever.

No creeping on those extracurriculars.

She would ensure the second floor’s darkness.

She would leave well alone and status quo would be gifted back to her.

The ballet class would end.

Someone else would rent the studio.

“Is that Byerly!? Look who finally decided to show up!”

“I thought we’d moved into our ‘trust each other’ era.”

She worked.

Time would pass.

Things would stay the same.

Things would change.

“Lunch, Byerly.”

That was how things were.

Devouring themselves like the fried rice she ate cold.

The kernels were dry.

“Smoke break. Walk about, Byerly.”

Time in the yard.

Freedom from eight to ten hours.

A breath of fresh air.

Work.

“Byerly.”

Work.

“Byerly!”

Work.

“Byerly!!!”

“I need to finish this. I’m behind.” She looked straight at her boss.

“Who cares? I have a game to watch. Leave it. I can tell the customer the part got held up.”

“No, I’m almost done. Flow state. That’s a thing.”

“Byerly…”

“Just once. It’s been years, Sutrisno. You think I can close up, just once?”

Her expression was undignified.

Pathetic.

Those weren’t the low blows she preferred.

Not weakness.

She was no sniveling femme.

It affected him.

A man his age.

A girl hers.

He scratched the back of his head. “Guess…”

She waited.

“This finally makes up for you always being late.” He pulled out keys and evaluated them.

“Thank you.” Somehow, she meant it.

Closing ended up being an ordeal.

She never thought about it, but whenever her boss kicked her out, she guessed he had never come down after her.

He had never chanced upon Orange’s dance.

She never once saw him leave.

She left.

There were all these lights.

Security to review.

The till to count.

This that and systems.

He took care of the whole floor.

Made sure the chowder shop and art place were secure.

Had security for them too.

He was a softy and Kendra never once knew.

He gave all the instructions to her and left with a meaningful look.

Pride or something similar.

It felt odd, but sat in her stomach.

Different than the gnaw of Orange’s dance.

More pleased.

Warm.

Like getting day old chowder.

The broth was best on a cold day.

Youssef had asked her once about Indonesian chowder.

She had told him off.

That wasn’t a thing.

Maybe she would try to bring it up again.

She bet he could make soto betawi.

He might really try to.

She thought about offal as she worked through three more tickets.

Until her hands shook as she had staved off a meal for seven hours now.

She couldn’t remember her last sip of water.

She checked her phone.

12:01am.

He couldn’t be there.

She went through the closing motions.

She remembered everything her boss said.

Did it to the letter.

Descended the stairs one quakey step at a time.

She saw the darkness from the landing.

The hallway was as it should have been.

As it was most days.

The normalcy haunted her.

She stood two steps from the end.

She did it.

The spell was broken.

It was over.

No more dance.

No more feelings that it conjured.

That first tear that was never shed again.

A chill went up her spine and she shook it out.

It was wrong.

Why?

She shouldn’t care.

She didn’t.

She did.

She wouldn’t see him again.

It hurt.

It didn’t.

It did.

She took a step.

What did she know?

Nothing.

A lot.

She hit the floor proper.

She wanted half a chance to dance with him.

She didn’t.

She did.

The studio was empty.

A husk.

Lifeless.

It was.

Done.

She closed her eyes as she took a step.

Once.

Twice.

Clunky in her boots.

Whimsy curled up her toes.

Sadness held her heels.

She rose.

The leather protested and bent.

She would buff them out later.

Get the creases.

Her feet ached.

This was not a natural position for her.

Her arms came in.

Toward her backpack.

Then out in a pump.

It turned her.

One spin.

Two.

She used her knees.

She saw him.

It was so easy in the light.

In the dark, in the hall, with her eyes closed, it was scary.

She pushed forward.

Faith.

He never hit anything.

She wouldn’t.

It was a straight line.

She had walked it a thousand times.

Again.

She spun.

Again.

Her boots creased on the worn carpet.

Again.

Feel.

Feel.

Let it out.

Finally.

She released it all.

She threw her head back.

Her spine arched.

Her hands came up.

One above the other.

The rotation pulled up her knee.

She fell.

Forward.

Purposeful.

To a squat and spread her wings.

There was silence.

Quiet.

Stillness.

She could hear her breath.

Her heart beat in her ears.

She did it.

It felt.

Good.

Incredible.

Freeing.

For just a moment.

All of it was gone.

It was only her and hers.

She opened her eyes.

Crouched down and clearly holding the ballet shoe he had just taken off was Orange.

His jaw was hanging open.

His eyes blown wide.

He had presumably been leaving when she came down.

Maybe fixing his shoe.

Forgotten to take it off when he left.

Then there she was.

A fool who danced straight over to him.

He blinked.

She would die.

There and then.

From humiliating herself.

Prostrating and for what?

A dancer’s high?

Something patently not real.

All of her being sucked up into her person and he animated.

“Wait!”

She could jump off the roof because that was the only exit back the way she came and was now going.

“Please!”

She nearly reached the stairs.

“Before you leave, at least tell me your name! You have to after that! I need something to call the person who's going to be on my mind from now on!!”

A quip.

She had told 649 of them so far.

Just not one that had ever admitted fault.

“I would… but I’m already late.” She, somehow, offered him a smile just before she ran for the safety of the third floor.

(Check out behind the scenes for this fic and support me by visiting my Patreon. I also post all updates there, so feel free to follow to follow!)

“Here.” Kendra slid the briefcase across the wrought iron table.

It was comical despite the humor of the object having long worn off. To her it was simply the containment system now that housed the laptop. Days of working with said machine had just about broken her, but awareness percolated now that she was out of her apartment. Her brain was aerated by the trip, which made her fully aware that she was making what looked like an illicit transaction out in the open.

Jeremy’s gaping jaw said he saw the same.

He quickly shuffled the case over to his person. “Got it!”

“Right.” She sat down across from him.

He had ordered her a cup of the water she preferred, but today she stared at it.

She needed to leave.

She could feel Jeremy staring.

At her.

Through her.

What was so obvious about the case must be etched into her skin.

“So…” He cleared his throat. “The next part is I look over your work and then you get your payment. That still good?”

“Go ahead.”

“I was actually thinking we’d catch up. I ordered-!”

“You’ll check it now.” She could feel the creak of her pupils moving to his.

“Check…” He patted the suit case. “Check your code now? Like right now?”

She didn’t move.

He searched her for some shred of validity, like a parking pass would spew out from between her lips. “That would take a few hours.”

“You’ll check it now.” She added new emphasis and her neck clicked as her head tipped to one side.

He inhaled deeply with measured horror at the prospect.

“Two cornetto sandwiches!" An employee chirped by their tableside with two plates.

“T-thank you…!” Jeremy tried to make room as if there was anything blocking her from setting down the food.

He had ordered this for her too. “You should get started.”

“Really need that money, huh?” He exchanged the briefcase with the plate and clung to a steaming pastry instead.

“No.” She did.

Things had been tight since she had been put on leave from the café.

“You just need to check it right now.”

“Okay.” He started with hesitation before something snagged and he actually let go to say, “Okay.”

The sandwich was set to one side.

The laptop was extracted from the case.

He opened it and began his review.

Kendra stared at him for the first half. Watching the crow’s feet around his eyes as they scanned the code. The pinch there had been enhanced by years but was premeditated. While he hadn’t needed glasses proper, irritation due to blue light hit him all the way back in his teens. His GUNNARs were one form of combat, but the squint remained. He did it then and he did it now, the exchange was the interim drew the study on his skin.

What was highlighted on hers again?

She felt like she hadn’t looked in a mirror in ages. Those balancing scales of wrinkles were the same. She had been facing down a version of herself for almost two weeks now. The thought of having to confront another, even a current reflection felt like too much to surmount. She even avoided the glint in Jeremy’s eye for a similar reason. She didn’t want to see a shred of herself and, in exchange, she watched the man work.

He should have had some kind of shame.

He didn’t.

He let her watch and he worked as if he wasn’t being spied on.

Why couldn’t she do the same?

Why was she tormented by the thought of Mikey when he wasn’t there the same as when he was?

Jeremy had that edge.

Jeremy had always been foolish.

Jeremy always had faith in his work while within the confines of his limits.

He took action.

He closed gaps.

He created wealth from both advantage and exploitation.

Good and bad.

Within the confines of his system.

One that oppressed him and those like him.

She stared down at her ham and cheese that had gone by some absurdly posh surname.

She poked at it.

Too much cheese.

Too much arugula.

Her fingers were oily when they came away.

She picked up the cornetto and took a bite.

It was fine.

It tasted fine.

Each chew zapped her energy.

Drained her.

She felt her jaw open and take in more.

Sustenance.

It agreed and disagreed with her.

Her stomach percolated.

She drank the triple filtered water.

It went down clean.

She ate more.

Her belly quelled.

Was it the food or having had food?

Mikey was right that she wasn’t eating properly.

It was an issue that stretched long before this coding debacle. 

When she was with him she did, when she wasn’t she did not.

That reliance loomed over her.

Omnipotent.

Watched more closely than Jeremy, of whom she had forgotten she was meant to be monitoring. He looked even more relaxed and she had to squint at him. He had the sandwich in one hand and he chewed genially as he continued to  check her work. Her tongue clicked and he predictably looked right at her. She turned her cheek on instinct and felt daggers of humiliation when he chuffed fondly. She might have turned on him had he not made some kind of hand signal and spoken first, “You want something sweet? We gotta balance right?”

The never ending allure came from when they were kids.

Something salty.

Something sweet.

A good day found both amounts fulfilled within Horus’ scale.

For Jeremy.

She never cared too much for sweet.

Balance was good.

What did she know?

The thought was so sharp she winced. “Yeah, get me…”

Her fingers twitched.

“Whatever.”

He hummed and the door opened.

The wave of his hand had flagged down an employee.

“Mind bringing us out some muffins? You can put them on my tab.”

“Sure thing.” The employee laughed. “Hard at work?”

She gathered the plates.

“I’ve seen you two a few times now.”

“Oh this?” Jeremy toed the briefcase he had put by his feet before he poured forward as if to block the laptop. “We’re just old friends catching up.”

The woman bobbed as if the situation Jeremy was alluding to made some grand sort of sense. “My apologies!”

He winked. “Appreciate your discretion.”

She tittered as she left.

“Normies always loved feeling like they were in a spy game.” He returned to the screen.

Kendra stared after the woman. “They loved calling the police too.”

“Unless we posed as janitors.”

“Like that was ever believable.”

“Yeah, a certain shorty made it tough.”

She mustered some form of a glare at him.

“We could have stashed you in the mop bucket.”

“Talk about shoving me into a trash can. Try it. Try just mentioning your ridiculous plan from twelve years ago and see how it goes now.”

“I’m going to guess that it’d be pretty similar to how it went back then.”

“Say it.”

“Black eye.” He had a smile to him regardless.

“Shove me in a trash can then.” She snarled.

“I didn’t say it. I said it once. I’m not dumb enough to say it again.” He gestured to the screen with his chin.

She quieted.

Warm muffins were brought out.

Thanks were passed.

Kendra picked her muffin apart instead of eating it normally.

She was full.

Her stomach had shrunk or her appetite had shriveled.

It was one or both.

Same as always.

She rubbed an eye.

Fresh drinks were brought through.

Jeremy continued his review.

She drifted and wondered idly not what Mikey was doing, but that he was doing something  patently like him. He was caught up in some half-baked scheme that he had no hand in cooking up. The greater universe stirred Michelangelo’s pot and he was a lump of carrot spun around. He helplessly stayed afloat while he was steamed from below and did nothing as he grew mushy.

He put carrots on the gado-gado.

She had yelled at him for it.

Who cared?

She certainly didn’t.

She was no purist.

She was a fool.

“This looks great.”

Cruel as ever.

“It really does, chief.” He turned the laptop to her.

She looked listlessly.

“I’m really impressed with what you corrected here. You could have rewritten this whole section, but you preserved it.”

“Simplifying the function made more sense. It was faster to reduce duplication.”

“By referencing the index.”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” He sat back. “Great.”

She gave a bare nod.

“So, what were you thinking? Want direct deposit and I set you up with a 1099-NEC?”

“Cash.”

He chuckled with his whole body. “Cash and I give you the rest of it?”

“Rest of what?”

“The code.” He pulled up the briefcase to put the laptop back in.

She held still in an empty churn of her thoughts before she eyed him.

“You think I wasn’t going to do a trial run?” He clicked the tabs and disappeared behind the dark wall of the case. “I know you too well, Kendra.”

She resisted crushing his fingers by slamming the lid down. “All that talk of-of trust! How I was the only one-!?”

His gaze lifted up so she could see him.

Her breath heaved with fury.

“Can’t both be true?”

For Mikey, it was.

The psychic damage from the thought caused her to flinch.

He watched all too closely.

“Though something else happened to you that I still haven’t quite figured out.”

“Cash and we’re done.” She bit the air.

“Maybe I fucked with the power dynamic.”

“Jeremy.”

“You know I was worried that would be a thing. With you having been my boss, in a manner of speaking, but then I thought that might also be part of the test, but then you show up here looking like-”

She inhaled her threat and it lifted her from her chair.

“I mean even when we pulled all nighters you didn’t look like this. Now, obviously, we were teenagers, but-”

“Like what.”

Her words were so caustic it cut right through him.

She stared him down.

He animated with a blink, saw he wasn’t actually injured, and reviewed her a second time. “Say again?”

“What.” Her tone was flat. “Do I look like?”

It was his turn to run through his periphery, looking for the candid cameras.

In her half-raised position, she leaned forward and craned a hand to the table so she could present herself.

“You’re serious.”

“When am I not?”

“You and appearance are kinda… hand in hand.”

“Just shut up and tell me.”

He inhaled so much the whites of his eyes ballooned. “Well… Don’t shoot the messenger, but…! You look like shit. Like you haven’t slept, eaten, or drank anything in days. You definitely did not shower, not ‘cause of some smell, but ‘cause your hair is limp and greasy as hell.”

Her gaze dropped to the table.

He knew when enough was enough and stayed quiet.

She reached up and tapped her scalp.

He was right.

Her hair was sad and heavy.

Dry at the ends.

She hadn’t showered.

That much was true.

She hadn’t done much of anything.

The cornetto sandwich she had eaten sat heavy in her stomach.

Water layered the debris it was by now.

Stuffed down with muffin.

She sank back into her chair with enough weight that it chipped the sidewalk. “I… hurt Mikey.”

She felt the aura of his astonishment.

She screwed her eyes shut. “I… went… No, I did it by doing this…”

His person tipped to see her better.

She drew further into herself. “I’m there. I’m in the code, just like you are. We’re fucking ghosts, Jeremy. It’s… hard. Having to confront that and I… I went right back to- Like I was back then. You know exactly what I’m talking about. The attitude. The shit. I lashed out at him because I was fighting… My demons? Fuck! It’s just code, but it felt like…”

“Like it had hands?”

“It always did, didn’t it?” She tossed her head the opposite way and smothered her eyes with an arm. “What is wrong with me?”

He hummed.

“Rhetorical.”

“I wasn’t really going to answer. It depends on who you ask. I thought you were awesome. We were all mean. There’s perspective and what you do with it.”

She let herself breathe.

“It’s a good a time as any to say me and Donnie kept in touch.”

Her oxygen was sucked clean out of her.

“Didn’t think I’d ever be able to tell you that, but here we are. You feeling bad about hurting Othello Von Ryan’s brother, that means something. You feeling bad about your past does, too. You want to be different, but this work… it sounds like it’s a trigger for you. There’s no shame. I had a weird time doing the STEM after everything that went down, but it was what I was good at and I knew it was innocent. I was the one that was guilty.”

Her arm slid enough that she glimpsed him and poured molten lava into the look.

He twitched and avoided her gaze. “I threw out the Donatello ref in good faith. We legit didn’t talk much. We’ve fallen off lately, but it was new graphic card this and discount on said cards that, but the man is in his family unit. That’s why we used him against his bros. He’s mentioned Mikey. All his brothers really. Usually while complaining, but with Mikey it was a little different.”

“He attracts brainiacs.”

That caught Jeremy off guard and he studied the air.

“Doesn’t matter. Get to the point.”

“The point… is… less of a point and maybe more of a question… Did you guys break up?”

She hesitated as she barely remembered their arguments. “I… don’t think so.”

“Then you’re probably good.”

“You’ve never even talked to him.” She fell forward so her forearms hit the table. “Unless you have another bosom buddy you want to reveal here.”

“Mutual love of technology. Connections, Kendra. That’s how I get work, but not what I’m saying.” He addressed her by mirroring her pose. “Straight up, no, I do not talk to Michelangelo on the DL. When he came up, once in a blue moon with Donnie, it would be about how he helped settle the score with Leo or how he smoothed things over with Raph. He sounded and probably is reasonable to a fault. He’s understanding and always chooses the talking it out road. I’m sure he’ll hear you out and I don’t even know the guy, but I do know he’s really important to you. I mean… can we acknowledge the elephant in the room?”

“I’m emotional and shit because of his infection.”

“Not… how… I was going to say it.”

“But?”

Jeremy made a face as if it was hopeless. “I didn’t think I’d talk to Kendra Byerly again in this lifetime unless it was a plea deal for one of our unnoticed crimes.”

She grimaced so hard her nose pinched.

“‘Specially not a Kendra who feels so guilty she doesn’t take care of her hair.”

“I’m so fucked!” She screamed upward.

“Are you though…?”

“Not about him! It’s me, stupid! You’re exactly right! He gave me these… feelings! Now, I am weak and I will forever be squishy and soft because he believed in me like it was his job! Do you know how humiliating that is?”

“Most people are usually stoked about finding the loves of their lives.”

“L-l-lo-!!” She quacked.

“Oh?” Jeremy lit up. “Not there yet? How many months has it been?”

She opened her mouth, but didn’t know their anniversary date.

He understood immediately and grew more smarmy.

“Long enough, but not long enough for that!”

“Man, you are tsun to the max.”

“No more! You’re giving me the cash now, Shipp!!!” She banged the table.

“Hold on!” He chuckled. “I gotta pay here first!”

“I’m following you so you don’t get any bright ideas.”

He led them to the café doors. “Swapping out the data on the laptop will take me a few days. You wanna talk to Mikey during that time and then see if you wanna go round two?”

She was quiet as she followed.

He paid and continued the secret agent ruse with the employee while Kendra glowered at the flowers.

In the three times she had been here, this was her first time coming inside.

It smelled of coffee and hydrangeas.

She wasn’t sure she liked it.

“Think about it?” Jeremy’s voice told her it was time to go.

“Pay me and we’ll see.”

“ATM and you’ll think about it.” He waved for her as he exited.

She lingered as she left and looked over pastel blooms.

There were mostly blues, but a few butter yellows.

She looked long into them before catching up with her old friend.

-

“You came!” Kendra threw the door open with a little too much gusto.

Mikey stood there looking uncomfortable. She had opened the door before he knocked and his hand was still awkwardly extended. She was watching through the peephole and having seen him, it just made sense to address the fact.

The last 24 hours had been strange.

Kendra had hovered over Jeremy a little too closely as he tried to get an ATM to deposit a wad of cash. They once again conjured the image of a dirty deal which led to the two of them being escorted into the bank. Their transaction was evaluated and it took a series of prickly responses before it was deemed to be legitimate enough. Kendra had her money in hand and that should have been the end of it, but Jeremy asked her if she wanted to get pizza.

Long gone were the days where he could drive them to the coast with his mom’s station wagon.

They instead picked the closest greenery to sit by while the both ate separate slices.

They reminisced and also talked.

Mostly about Kendra’s relationship with technology, not that it led anywhere in particular. The conversation more followed how she felt about it previously. She had no idea how little Jeremy understood about her in the final days. On paper, she knew she hadn’t really kept up with him, but her retreat seemed more stark in his eyes. He lost his best friend, club mates, and pretty much the entirety of his self image since it was equally tied up in the Purple Dragons. Where Jase was an annoying helicopter in her home, Jeremy lived separately and, when she became a literal shut-in, she had inadvertently shut him out.

He listened as she explained her reasoning for releasing those files.

He said little when she bristled at his and Jase’s choice in colleges.

He apologized simply when she mentioned he hadn’t written her in jail.

She knew why and didn’t fault him. Some things were like that. Jeremy had gone on his own journey to find his better self, outside of the confines of high school. He seemed to be of the mind that she was doing that same thing.

Only now.

Over a decade later.

She felt stunted, but he assured her she wasn’t. He got a little preachy and she poked fun at him having had too much therapy. He clearly leaned into the mind of her maybe needing some of her own, but her resistance made him drop it. They sat for a long time in silence after that. He didn’t hound her current fears and they watched people of all walks stride by. The sun soon dipped low along with pedestrians and it was time to part.

They said goodbye.

They would meet again.

She liked Jeremy.

He really was a good friend.

He also was far too close to her.

Knew her too well, but not through time.

Because he had gone through exactly what she had, just on a lesser scale.

The real difference was how they handled stress.

Jeremy, to nearly his own detriment, didn’t hold his anger in. Where Jase popped a socket, Jeremy had always been in STEM due to honest love of the field. He geeked out and was appropriately ridiculed, but he owned even that. He accepted all that was thrown at him and waited to strike like an opportunistic bear. Humble and dawdling most of the time, he was just as lethal of a predator. He just knew better when to gore and feed oneself without self-destructing.

Kendra had lost the plot.

When she got home, she pulled out the bullet of a thumb drive to remind herself.

It had been stowed in that damned white clutch from her first date with Mikey.

A place where he would never think to look and within an object she refused to use again.

She spent hours looking at it and going through all that had happened since she’d hatched that fateful scheme. Her life had expanded exponentially since and she had exactly one man to thank. Michelangelo, as much as he drove her crazy, was a fantastic friend and partner. He was caring, motivating, and dealt with all manner of shit. He was there for her even while he was going through his own self-actualizing and she wasn’t sure what she had done for him in return other than blow up in his face at his apparent menace.

That wasn’t true.

She didn’t really think he was at fault.

He was just a frustrating aggravator of her overinflated ego.

He looked her in the eye and told her to be humble without those exact words.

He challenged her.

He was impossibly important.

She had blamed him.

She stowed the thumb drive back in the clutch and went to shower.

She washed herself and her mind clean until the water ran cold.

She felt lively as the cold nipped her skin into a towel.

She treated her hair and sat wrapped up for a long time.

She awoke with a start still sitting on the toilet.

Her hair care was finished.

She dressed in warm and worn pajamas.

She slept.

The next morning she washed her face.

Ate a small breakfast.

Texted Mikey to come over.

She had no plan.

She wouldn’t delude herself.

The extent was to apologize and that was it.

Anxiety caught her when he eventually agreed.

It stretched out long as he had to set a time for when.

It baffled her how he could be busy, but she knew that to be an errant emotion.

She needed to fix this now.

The possibility that she might not be able to reared its head. 

When he was on his way, she paced.

What would she do without him?

He had been integral to her growth and wormed his way into her sanity. 

Moving forward without his hand to guide her looked both like a lonely future and one where she no longer had a path. 

He meant too much. 

She spied through the peephole.

Caught him before he could knock.

Stared him down now in probably a bit of a wreck, though she knew her hair was at least set back to a healthy state.

“I… did!” He quacked. “I said I was going to…”

“Right! Come in!” She got out of the way.

“Kendra, about your text…”

“Needing to talk!” She laughed. “That’s a scary one, right? I told you it wasn’t scary though, right!?”

“You… did…” He hobbled forward.

She rushed behind him to close the door.

“Yeah… Well…”

“I’m sorry!”

He had barely turned to track her.

“I was an ass. I… wasn’t myself… or I was, but I was caught up in my own bullshit. Jeremy said, I saw Jeremy by the way, that all of this has been trauma so that’s called what, an ‘event,’ right? I looked it up and I could get one of those. It’s done, by the way. That’s why I saw Jeremy. I got paid. Job done. It’s done.”

“That’s…” He didn’t seem sure how to label his reaction.

“It’s good!” She told him and approached a little too quickly.

He shuddered as she invaded his space.

“Super good and it won’t happen again and I’ve apologized and you’re here!”

“I… That is a lot…”

“So much, but do we really need to talk about that?!” She put her hands on his arm.

His body flinched away.

“U-Unless you want to! We totally can then! This is for both of us, right?!” She laughed.

Loud.

Awkward.

At a pitch to fill the space, until it cracked.

Mikey released a thin sound of his own.

She pushed him on sliding feet down the hall, further into her apartment.

“Let’s get comfortable and we can figure it out!”

“Uh!”

“The cushions! You know?! The ones you got me for the table you got me in this apartment that… I guess April technically got me, but you brought April here, so-!”

With her insistence he eventually cleared the kitchen, entered the living room, but he felt like he turned into tree bark along the way.

His stiff form flaked off as she released him.

Peeling wood spoke of disease.

She dropped to her knees and fluffed a cushion. “I talked to Jeremy! I told you that, but when I talked to him I realized a lot, you know?”

He took in the room as if it was new. “You keep saying that…”

“Well… you know! I’m just saying what you know. Reiterating. That’s important for remembering which is important for our talk! You wanted to talk, didn’t you?”

“Saying it differently doesn’t really…”

“It’s just with Jeremy, I realized how much you mean to me and I want you to know that.”

“I hear you, Kendra.”

“That you mean a lot to me and maybe I can’t say exactly how, which is like, ‘wow! Kendra has another hang up! Surprise, surprise,’ but then you would know! You went through all those dates. So, again, you know!” She guffawed again.

He grimaced.

“You know what a bitch I was and how I really took you for granted!”

“Hey, do you maybe think… we should stop for a second…?”

“What for? You haven’t even sat on your cushion yet!”

“Your cushion.”

“Yours! I mean you got it!”

“For you.”

“For me, yeah, but I’m giving acknowledgements.”

Mikey knelt right down in front of her. “Kendra, this is reading a lot like a spiral.”

“Right.” She hiccupped. “It… would seem like that, but we haven’t talked yet. I just need to get the words out!”

He nodded slowly as if waiting.

She stared at him.

Maybe she should have pre-planned this conversation.

She didn’t know what else to say.

She had already blurted out the poignant bits.

He wasn’t reacting positively.

She needed to try harder.

Show him.

She hugged him.

Suddenly and tightly.

He went completely tense in her grip.

She squeezed him harder.

She could channel it.

His hugs were good.

Hers could be better.

She would show him.

Demonstrate his importance.

So he wouldn’t leave.

Like everyone else.

Her eyes snapped open.

Mikey’s arms flexed to give him some space.

She loosened.

“Kendra, I’m… going to be honest.”

“You… Aren’t you always?” She was still holding on.

He looked down at where she had him pinned. “I try to be…”

“But not always!” She broke away. “Duh!”

She smacked her head.

“The bitch basics! I haven’t forgotten! You’re important too and-!”

“Stop! Saying! I’m! Important!” He wove with each word.

She opened her mouth, but he jammed a finger into it.

“Okay. Real talk! This… sucks! I don’t know what this big Jeremy talk did, but I think his advice must suck because this isn’t you!”

“Exactly!”

He reared.

“It’s not me because this is me! I’m the me you showed me to be! The normal me is a cold bitch who gets in her own way, but I’m here trying so I don’t fuck this up!”

“That’s not-!” His head shook.

“No! See! I get it now! I saw it in the code. I just have to cut that part of myself off. Kill it! Finally! So it isn’t looming over my head anymore! It’s ego death, isn’t that great!?”

“No!”

“No, it is! If I just do this then I won’t always have me looming over my head. I can finally be free to be me and you know what I want?!”

“I’m afraid to ask!”

“You!” She put the slightest bit of weight forward and he tumbled over.

She stalked his form. “Do you know what you did to me at the club?”

“That-! Huh!?”

“You touched me.”

One hand landed by his hip.

“In a way I’ve never been touched before.”

Another slammed down by his waist.

“You did it before that.”

Her knee dropped between his legs.

“That dance at The Frick.”

Her other leg climbed his thigh.

“After my interview with those damn tights.”

She trapped his head and her hair cascaded around her.

“I didn’t know how to need before-”

“OKAY!”

She winced at the blowback.

She then rose with a squawk as he picked her clean up into the air away from him. “We’re not doing this.”

“Hey!”

“No! You-you-!” He set her aside and sat up.

She tried to speak, but he blocked her.

“All this-this-this… whatever this is! It’s… too much!!”

She stared.

He looked close to crying. “Look I… I’m glad you apologized! I really wanted one, but everything else… I don’t need to know like this! I don’t… want you to kill part of yourself. What are you saying? It’s like you don’t know what I know because I’m pretty sure I’ve been telling you this whole damn time how I love you for exactly who you are!”

Her fingers curled.

“Remember!? How far you’ll go!? That’s what I want to see! That’s what I’ve always followed you for! You’re always so interesting and, yeah, there’s the empathy factor we talked about, but you know what I’ve been thinking about the whole time we’ve been apart?”

She didn’t have a chance to mouth anything.

“That maybe you were right and I accidentally did to you or you did to me, I’m still not super clear on that part, with saying no! I may have told you no, but I don’t think I did it in the right way and I think that I also may have accidentally kept you all to myself because I kinda… sorta… Well, keeping you from my family is like yeah, they’ll all blow up and that’s uncomfortable and that’s part of the empathy thing, but also I’m selfish! I wanted you all to myself,  but you… you were already all by yourself and what did I do!? I kept you that way! I brought you select members of my family, but did it in a way that you wouldn’t really connect with them! It was always on my terms! April came by because I slipped up always going to her for marketplace finds, but I didn’t even consider your past! We saw Raph because I made that promise to him without thinking about you. Sunita, she’s like family adjacent, but that was on my terms for my ‘no’ practice! I never once asked you to meet my family because I genuinely wanted you to! I didn’t!”

She felt her bottom finally hit the floor.

“So, yeah! When you blamed me for the coding stuff, I was mad because you did it so wrong and thank you for your apology, seriously, but as soon as I started thinking about it, of course you were mad! I did get in the way! Actively! I decided you needed food. I didn’t let you just work even though you had told me a thousand times you were scared of tech stuff. I walked out on you when I know, for a fact, that you have issues being left alone! Real life trust issues!”

She didn’t even think she had blinked.

“And on top of all that! This!” He threw his hands out at her. “I can’t even fault you for this reaction! We stopped talking so like, obviously you were going to hit a point, thanks Jeremy, where you realized that without me, what do you have?! It would probably feel like you have no one! So, yeah! I would freak out too! I’ve literally watched Raph do exactly this! He goes full savage if we leave him alone! I have first hand experience with separation anxiety and I was making sure you got it and then seeing it, experiencing it, you know, you want to know what I just felt!?”

She dumbly nodded.

“Scared!!!”

She kept doing so.

“Scared because that is so much pressure and I can’t-! I can’t take it! I can’t be the only one in your corner. I can’t be the only one rooting for you! I can’t handle all that! I know that’s warped as hell because that is what I thought I wanted, I made sure of it. I hung out with you all the time. I wanted to spend all my time with you. I wanted to message you and be in your face and your space, but when you bring me into yours… I… What?! I blew up at your family! I made you the other in the place where you had your biggest othering! Time and time again, and I’ve had time to think about it, I just kept realizing how scary that was and, here I am, knowing all that, and I’m just scared of you being like that!”

Her hands came up to tent over her lips.

“Wow!” He fell over. “That is a crazy tidal wave of emotion especially when I went through my own trauma of keeping my family together! What is wrong with me!? You are so right about the contradictions! I don’t just see it! I’m living it! All the time!”

He screamed.

Not loud.

Not percussive.

A soft release.

A horror that didn’t have depth only because it went so deep it now barely penetrated the surface.

He went numb from having felt too much.

She watched him.

His limp form.

His closed eyes.

He looked exhausted.

Like she was, she guessed.

She had just taken Jeremey’s word for it.

She hadn’t looked in a mirror until today.

Mikey.

Her Mikey.

She couldn’t help but think fondly.

He was right in some ways, she guessed.

She didn’t know much about him wanting to isolate her.

That part was new.

He was also way off base.

He never did anything malicious to her.

All his supposed manipulative actions were circumstantial at best and his dumb conscience at worst.

She doubted he was anywhere near as bad as he said.

She almost wanted to laugh.

Not at him, though he was ridiculously dramatic.

At this.

All of this.

At herself, for being so smitten that she trusted a man so much that he could tell her to her face that he manipulated her and she could say, in her truest heart, that she knew he hadn’t.

At him, for collapsing after all that like he had been the one fighting his own demons when they had both conjured fictional versions of their own.

At everything.

This broken world.

Their friends that shaped them.

Their families that stunted them.

Down to the moment she was conceived and he was dunked in some ooze vat.

Kendra laughed at her mom.

The exalted woman who would absolutely laugh at her for overreacting. She could picture her perfectly in her favorite slacks. They had the deepest pockets and always a little hard candy, just in case. She was there, in her apartment and reviewed the pair of them with crinkled lips. She sputtered on chuckles as she lured her darling daughter in to say, “Aduh, kepalamu itu kebanyakan otak, Nak. Hal kecil saja bisa kamu pikirkan sampai jadi skripsi.”

“What does that mean, mama?”

Mikey’s head tilted at the sound.

“’Your brain is always running a marathon, Nak. Can it take a little walk sometimes?’”

He hummed one curious note.

“That’s not what it means.” Kendra dry sobbed a single time.

Her mom had been far more eloquent in her mother tongue than English, but she hadn’t passed it on.

There was a lot that had been lost from her time.

Kendra was still finding it and would keep doing so.

She was still alive, after all.

“We’re dumb as shit.” She told Mikey.

He tried to right himself, but the curve of his shell rocked him out of balance.

She crawled over.

He fawned.

“Knock it off.” She offered her hand.

He reviewed it.

Looked at her.

Gently grasped it.

She pulled him upright before checking their connection. “Something my mom used to say. Basically, we both went nuclear.”

“But Kendra, I-”

She kissed his cheek in a swift peck.

She also retreated just as fast to address him openly. “You’re as full of shit as me.”

“You were totally justified in-!”

“No.”

“But-”

“No.” She made her open mouth obvious.

“Then-”

“No.” She stared him down with a growing smile.

“I’m sensing a pattern.”

“Yeah?”

He evaluated with pressed lids before he nodded slowly.

“Yeah.” She joined him.

“So…? What… now…?”

She breathed in and exhaled.

He followed suit.

“Wanna break up?”

He grunted. “No!”

“Me either.” Her head tipped as if it was helpless.

“But we just revealed some major damage.”

“Weird how that happens.”

“Seemed like overnight.”

“It definitely wasn’t.”

“I had my own talk track on why it wasn’t!”

“Did you make a PowerPoint?”

“I made two, but neither of them were finished because I forgot which had what info, then I realized I duplicated the slides and at that point I had like fifty plus in each and it was a lost cause so I decided to wing it.”

“So did I…” She felt the light in her eyes die.

“That was you… improvising?” His teeth appeared in a frown.

“Eat shit.”

“Not inviting you to open mic.”

“No, I’ll just let you embarrass yourself at a TED Talk.”

“This is why I exclusively don’t talk to people named Ted. They can be tapped at any moment.”

“That-!”

He fully believed whatever insanity he just spouted.

“Tracks.” She shook her head.

“Should we…?”

“Break up?”

“How can you say it so easily!?”

“You told me you loved me!”

“Eugh! I hoped you hadn’t noticed that!”

“Look!” She turned toward him.

He addressed her fully.

“I don’t know what to do here, but we both still want to be together, right?”

“Right.”

“Then…” She sighed. “We figure… that out. That… can be enough. It is for tons of cretins who basically just clone and feed all day while thinking they're happy.”

“But…”

“But?”

“We… we were happy… weren’t we?”

She stared at him openly.

He returned the gaze.

“On three.”

He nodded once. “One.”

“Two.”

“Yes.”

“Duh.”

Mikey exhaled so hard he looked like he might gag.

She watched him sympathetically.

She absolutely felt like vomiting. 

“Then, we tackle it. One thing at a time… like we always do.”

He clearly had an anxious edge.

“And we’ll dismantle shit because I do think you’re mostly wrong and you… wait, you didn’t think what I did was wrong! How I treated you! You thought it was comeuppance for isolating me!”

“I said I thought you were too mean.” He corrected with a raised finger.

“True, but also that doesn't mean you deserve it so part wrong.”

“Huh!?”

“We need to untangle it. All of it and I… Jeremy has another job.”

“He… does…? Wait, did you say that? Are you… going to take it…?” He was fearful.

So was she. “I think… I need to. I need to do this again… This is like… what would your shrink license call it?

“I need a hint.”

“When you do something again to like, address it.”

“Immersion therapy…?” He tried.

“Yeah.”

“That’s usually done in a controlled way.”

“That’s how I did it…?”

He was a bit shifty. “Not even a little.”

“Then I’ll do it right… Will you… help me?”

He went on high alert. “But wouldn’t I-!?”

“Conflict of interest, I know, but again, I think you’re way off base and we’ll figure out why. Use all your PowerPoint time and channel it better. If I’m too much for you, what can I do to fix it?”

He openly thought.

“We don’t have to figure this out right now.”

“We have time.”

“Do we?”

He softened before looking at her. “I think we do.”

“Me too.”

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Inspired by this cover that was making its rounds!