11-01-2015, 01:30 AM
Love makes you do stupid things. It makes you stick by a person's side. It makes you want to comfort them.
Well, really, nothing 'made' Grace do any of that. It had been a choice. Love didn't put a gun to her head and force her to spend the night with Mike when he wasn't allowed to sleep. If love had a gun, she wouldn't feel so bad about everything upon waking up and finding him gone.
Gone, not answering his phone, not responding to texts, not even showing up when she tried to find him in ways less mundane. It makes sense, knowing their quarry, that he wouldn't want to be found. She tells herself that. It's okay. He's just gone somewhere to be alone for a while.
That excuse all but evaporates after two days of radio silence -- two days in which Grace filters the news reports for new, horrific murders.
Surely love wasn't meant to be like this. It wasn't meant to be a zero-sum game of joy and pain. If it were, why would people even do it to themselves? The rational part of her says that of course people only do this to themselves because millions of years of evolution has dictated that it be so. Chemicals flood the brain, bonding people together, making sure the species stays social, because that's good for survival. Our genes don't care one way or another, they just mutate at random, throwing new behaviors up against the wall to see what sticks. Love stuck.
In other words, it's so very human, this. Natural. It makes her feel more human, at least, and she's not entirely sure that she likes even that part of it. Is it, as Kalen said, never a sin to have loved?
She spends a lot of those two days thinking and wanting to write horrible poetry while cats use her as a conveniently still heat source. And then, her phone rings. It tells her Mike is calling. It only rings once before she picks up.
On the phone, she sounds as nervous as she feels, and he sounds as put together as ever. He always hides how he feels, except when it comes to her. Their conversation is short, cut to the quick. He explains that he hasn't killed anyone, even though he did sleep that night they spent together. Alice woke up, and took him to the Eastern seaboard somewhere, he doesn't know where, exactly. New Jersey? Alice brought him there for a reason, he says. He's going to figure out what that reason is. He'll be back.
Of course, she offers him help. She can be there immediately, should he need it. He knows that. It's why this call needs to be short, see? So she can't find him. Any second now, he's going to hang up, so she stops trying to keep him on the line and blurts out that she adores him, in case he's forgotten. He hasn't. That wistful warmth returns to his voice when he says goodbye.
Kalen told her, how ever long you have with a person, it never seems like enough. Why does he always have to be right?
She has to fight herself to keep from throwing the phone across the room, because hers is no Nokia brick, and it wouldn't be able to take it. Instead, she gingerly slides it on a coffee table before laying into a couch cushion and scaring a cat. Fuck that man. Hope he finds himself out there before someone else has to die.
Yes, fuck that man. And then fall for him so hard you do stupid things.
Well, really, nothing 'made' Grace do any of that. It had been a choice. Love didn't put a gun to her head and force her to spend the night with Mike when he wasn't allowed to sleep. If love had a gun, she wouldn't feel so bad about everything upon waking up and finding him gone.
Gone, not answering his phone, not responding to texts, not even showing up when she tried to find him in ways less mundane. It makes sense, knowing their quarry, that he wouldn't want to be found. She tells herself that. It's okay. He's just gone somewhere to be alone for a while.
That excuse all but evaporates after two days of radio silence -- two days in which Grace filters the news reports for new, horrific murders.
Surely love wasn't meant to be like this. It wasn't meant to be a zero-sum game of joy and pain. If it were, why would people even do it to themselves? The rational part of her says that of course people only do this to themselves because millions of years of evolution has dictated that it be so. Chemicals flood the brain, bonding people together, making sure the species stays social, because that's good for survival. Our genes don't care one way or another, they just mutate at random, throwing new behaviors up against the wall to see what sticks. Love stuck.
In other words, it's so very human, this. Natural. It makes her feel more human, at least, and she's not entirely sure that she likes even that part of it. Is it, as Kalen said, never a sin to have loved?
She spends a lot of those two days thinking and wanting to write horrible poetry while cats use her as a conveniently still heat source. And then, her phone rings. It tells her Mike is calling. It only rings once before she picks up.
On the phone, she sounds as nervous as she feels, and he sounds as put together as ever. He always hides how he feels, except when it comes to her. Their conversation is short, cut to the quick. He explains that he hasn't killed anyone, even though he did sleep that night they spent together. Alice woke up, and took him to the Eastern seaboard somewhere, he doesn't know where, exactly. New Jersey? Alice brought him there for a reason, he says. He's going to figure out what that reason is. He'll be back.
Of course, she offers him help. She can be there immediately, should he need it. He knows that. It's why this call needs to be short, see? So she can't find him. Any second now, he's going to hang up, so she stops trying to keep him on the line and blurts out that she adores him, in case he's forgotten. He hasn't. That wistful warmth returns to his voice when he says goodbye.
Kalen told her, how ever long you have with a person, it never seems like enough. Why does he always have to be right?
She has to fight herself to keep from throwing the phone across the room, because hers is no Nokia brick, and it wouldn't be able to take it. Instead, she gingerly slides it on a coffee table before laying into a couch cushion and scaring a cat. Fuck that man. Hope he finds himself out there before someone else has to die.
Yes, fuck that man. And then fall for him so hard you do stupid things.