silver bullets, c

GOD FORGIVE ME, I WANT YOU ON YOUR KNEES.

By Frank's bad luck, her light sleeping crosses over into harmful drowsiness. A blink, her eyes closed, a lick of the lips and another blink before she opens them. They feel glassy, she sees the couch and turns her head to look at the ceiling. It isn't familiar, and she knits her eyebrows together before realizing that she's on her couch.

But this is not her couch beneath her, not her couch that her hands are clutching and it isn't her couch barely touching her hair, breathing against the line of her scalp.

She holds her breath for a second because she feels a few things; a repulsive anger that threatens to make her sick, a gentle relief that makes her dizzy and, finally, the overwhelming urge to stay put, statuesque on top of Frank and breathing against his broad and warm chest.

Noémi decides that being angry would betray herself. She gathers every bit of younger self that she can remember, the one with more substance who seemed like a go-getter. She pieces that Nae on a miniature scale in her mind, gets the nerve to stretch a little before she gentle rolls to the side, sits up and gets off the couch without saying a word.

The dark sweater hangs limply off her frame, and maybe it's a trick of the light but that frame looks a bit slighter than it did when she left the apartment a few days ago. Nae stretches, tosses her braid over her shoulder and it falls in a perfect line down her spine.

Noémi reminds herself that she does everything on purpose.

GOD FORGIVE ME, I WANT YOU ON YOUR KNEES.

She needs something she can control, so she keeps her eyes forward and watches the wall. Her gaze is so steady, so absorbed that you'd think a movie was screening there, personally for Noémi. A documentary was more of her taste than whatever she could fee Frank painting her as.

"Morning," she says, omitting the good. The nature of the morning was objective, and Nae couldn't inject anything into it. She refused to. It was neither good or bad; picking one or the other would acknowledge that something had actually happened. Noémi wasn't doing that.

She walked into the small nook of a kitchen and pulled out a slice of wheat bread, popped it in the toaster. Nae yawned, scratched a patch of hair above her ear. Looked forward, looked at her hands. Looked bored - she was bored. She was uninvolved, uninvested, a good actress.

GOD FORGIVE ME, I WANT YOU ON YOUR KNEES.

The toast popped at the same moment she realized Frank was behind her. She jumped, but composed herself. When he moved to the side she moved to the fridge, pulled out a small jar of raspberry jam and then moved back to his side. She pulled a knife out of a drawer, placed the bread on a paper towel and cut it diagonal, meticulously.

"This is all I'm making," she said in a monotone. She started to spread the jam. "But you can help yourself to whatever you'd like."

Truthfully, Nae wanted to punish him. Her cold shoulder was supposed to be like solitary confinement, her rebuff of his help was supposed to be a slap on the wrist. She wanted him to bleed at her feet, but she wasn't good at getting the point across. Noémi was afraid she was chasing him away but she didn't want to welcome him with open arms.

GOD FORGIVE ME, I WANT YOU ON YOUR KNEES.

She bites her lips as he moves away, abandons the toast in favor of her thoughts.

Nae wants to kiss him simply because she can, but she feels like that's waving a white flag. Then again, doing so could keep him on the hook. She wants Frank on the hook, wants him to always follow after her - blind or not. Maybe blind, so she can lead him on and here and there. Noémi needs to be in control - it calms her down.

She turns around to watch him. "Do you believe everything you're told?" She forgets that he loves his mother, because Noémi doesn't love anything or anyone besides herself. There's that hollow, lack of feeling in her chest again. It nearly hurts.

GOD FORGIVE ME, I WANT YOU ON YOUR KNEES.

Frustrated, Noémi taps her foot.

Tap, look at me, tap, pay attention to me. Nae's losing her patience. She knows he doesn't, he doesn't believe everything he's told. He's probably heard bad things about her - Noémi doesn't remember if he had friends other than her (she's truly narcissistic, self involved, self obsessed) in high school, but he probably did and they probably told him to give up. That girl's a trick, she's a ruse, a distraction, a pretty bandaid on an ugly bruise.

He isn't looking at her and Nae looks at his lips. She's ready to do dangerous things for attention, for the spotlight. When she blinks, her mind goes golden, the soft color of his hair in the sunlight when she woke up. Breathing him in. "Do you always do what you're told?" She probably isn't making sense, but the question is baited, anyway. It's a trap, it's all a trap.

GOD FORGIVE ME, I WANT YOU ON YOUR KNEES.

Depends, she narrows her eyes.

"Come here," she says, and maybe there should be some softness there. Maybe her voice should be like the underbelly of a rabbit, warm and soft, with a vulnerability that can't be put into words. It's not, Noémi's voice could never sound like that. It's a command, harsh words for a dog.

Maybe that's all you can ask from Nae - for a pull instead of a push, even if the pull is rough and demanding. The pushes happen so ofte, the pulls are so rare. It's baited again, she's leaving a line of mouse traps for him. Nae wants frank to snap one, wants him to set off a chain reaction that snaps them all.