untitled.

my notes said "this urge to run way from what i love".

Jul 30, 2024

Note: This is an old piece I found while going through things I never finished. At the time, I was doing a scene study and was focused on domestic dread. I just wanted to put it somewhere.

he picks her up right as the season changes.

It's familiar, the slow crawl of his black town car as it pulls up in front of the complex. She glances through the window and rolls her shoulders, loosely pulling her hair up as she prepares to buzz him in.

Some director’s autobiography languishes at the foot of her cream-colored suitcase. The black and white severity of the cover is more Jamie’s aesthetic than hers, but so was the townhouse before she redecorated. And so was the suitcase.

There are so many things that are symbolic of his need to care for her.

There's a sharp click of her throat as he comes closer to her and up the stairs, and she opens the door before he can knock, too impatient to wait for the vibrations of the wood to worsen her headache. He smiles slowly and crookedly, dressed flawlessly in black except for a deep green blanket scarf she'd bought him last Christmas.

His hands are gloved in impeccable faux leather and he reaches out to cup the side of her face. She feels a surge of comfort in the fact that this seems so normal, that this is leagues away from what his world usually contains. He's just coming back from a business trip, she imagines. The thought makes her laugh.

You're a little early, she remarks, pulling back to let him in.

Her coat is laid pseudo carelessly on a kitchen stool. It’s navy, almost electric against the dark brown of the sitting piece. The flat smells heavily of cinnamon and orange peels, autumn kissing gently at her neck. The world is almost as cold as she is.

I always want to be when I come get you. I always feel like I don't have enough time with you, like I'm catching up, he says.

Because you are, she thinks but doesn’t say. Still, the thought echoes silently across the high ceiling and slinks across the worn couch. She knows her face reflects it, her lips pouting and bulging with the urge to argue before she turns away.

Apolline pushes it down and distances herself from him, even more, determined to leave than before. A lotioned hand comes up to let her hair down. The curls blanket her back, a dense mass of black.

Jamie fully steps away from the door and comes up behind her, reaching forward to turn on one of the basket lamps that hang in the kitchen. He speaks against her neck so she can feel it.

Your hair will get tangled in the car. She gives him a look and he smiles. You like the windows down.

He strokes the side of her neck and lets his lithe fingers–now ungloved–seep into the roots of her hair. It’s so dark against the winter of his skin but always soft.

He works slowly, with time instead of against, and calms the coils into the thick braid. The plait thumps against the defined ridges of her spine and Jamie presses a kiss to her temple. She feels like release of his lips like the rip of a bandaid.

He leaves for a moment, only to be back with her coat in hand. He holds it open for her and Apolline is struck with the feeling of being a child again, her mother doing the same for her on the first morning of school.

In you go, he says lowly and she smiles artfully at him. Her lip splits and she licks at the beaded blood.

She does miss him whenever he's gone. She does. The ache rises, her eyes soften, and the lines by her mouth tense and then release. He lowers the coat a little and catches her gaze, their minds aligned as they always are.

I missed you too, Apple.

The nickname curls at the base of her throat, a cool necklace. He says it like ah-poel. Like her mother.

I know.

And she does.

Apolline does one last check around the townhouse. The stove is off and the windows have the blinds closed and only one lamp has been left on; one that will turn off on its own.

Jamie takes her arms and pulls them gently through the sleeves. The wool settles comfortably around her, toeing the line between comfort and quiet suffocation as it rests on top of her cable knit sweater. He slides a scarf around her shoulders, loops it once then twice then another last, final time. It's not even that cold outside, he just likes to bundle her up. Register her immobile. A return to infancy.

Her suitcase handle is in his hand before she can move and he scans their home one more time before curling an arm around her waist.

Let's get going, he tells her.

She never gets a moment.

She almost tells him she wants to stay here forever. Instead, she reaches up to brush under his eyes with the tips of her fingers and is silent. The urge to dig in, to carve him out, to–she nods.

Let's get going.

☕

The drive to the estate is one of the most tedious things about their marriage.

Though it begins in the fall, it's really for them to spend autumn preparing for winter and the family that they'll have around. Although this year might be different.

But the drive is always the most irritating portion because Jamie insists on driving them himself. He could easily call up a driver and have them do the four-hour trek instead. But it’s his hands on the wheel, getting them lost while unwilling to admit it.

Apolline suspects it’s his way of apologizing about the time that’s been wasted, spent away from her.

She doesn’t know if she’s resentful about it, and even if she is she doesn’t know if she should tell him. She lets her head loll to the other side to look at him instead of the vivid slur of oranges and reds right outside her window.

Apolline studies him, knows that he's aware of it, and knows that he won't ask.

She thinks of how he does anything she wants during this time of year. Watching terrible quality reruns of Pretty Little Liars (only to get frustrated with how terribly inconsequential or awful the lies are), cooking in a kitchen that's not touched anytime before or after she leaves, spending hours on the beige landline they'd gotten as a lucky find from a farmer's market.

She thinks of how her calls didn't go through two weeks ago, how she couldn't text him but tried anyway, how she knew more than other people gave her credit for about his true line of work: what he did to himself and other people.

She doesn’t want any part of that. Apolline had already grown up under the spotlight with two diplomat parents and wanted nothing more than a quiet life. However, it turned out that she was not a quiet kind of girl.

Jamie doesn’t mind. Allegedly. He wants to take care of her for the rest of his life and he knew that she'd only wear the lab-grown ring he got her if he kept that promise. The penthouse was the first step and the fall estate was the second, but that only came after months of timid silence where she was scared to tell him she was terrified that she’d chosen the wrong life.

Apolline turns on the radio and a French song starts playing, the vocals fried and wistful. She knows all the words but she doesn't sing, just settles her hand on top of his gloved one and feels all the jumps and skips of driving stick alongside him.

He wants to say something, she can tell, and she hopes it’s that he loves her. Jamie says it all the time since it’s her form of addiction which makes him laugh but also devastates him. After all, she’s only like this because she's never received it so freely before.

On a deeper level, he knows she’s trying to convince herself that she loves him too. They don't speak about it but they want to.

I love you.

She smiles and her eyes are evocative of a summer evening, and he feels as though his desire for her is pooling out of his skin and filling the space between them. It's quicksand and he never stops moving.

She looks out of the window and thinks about how it’ll be dark before they get there. It’s not a worry. The estate will remain there in the foggy dusk, waiting for them with gaping doors.

Apolline thinks of her mother and their last conversation on the phone.

Ah-poel, she’d said. He’s a Getty. Or a Kennedy.

You don’t know that for sure. It’s probably distant.

Well, I suspect it. And I’m always right.

A moment of silence and then she confesses.

Well, I hope he’s not. They all keep dying. If he died in front of me, I don’t think I’d cry. I’d just sit there, covered in blood. Frozen, but glad that it was over.

Her mother had hummed, and Apolline heard the sheets whisper beneath her as she turned on her bed.

You never were a pretty crier.

Now, she feels bloated and swollen with distaste, the inside of the car made heavy by her inescapable emotional instability.

I love you, Jamie.

She almost believes it.

untitled.

my notes said "this urge to run way from what i love".

he picks her up right as the season changes.

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