by Andrea Speed
“Shall I start playing my violin?”
“Quiet, you middle class suburban bastard,” he snapped, and that only made Paris grin at him.
As he dealt the cards, he said, “Congrats, by the way. Good of you to make an honest man out of Dylan. Like the ring too.”
Once again, Roan had to point out he wasn’t for traditional rings, and once again he’d ended up with a guy who was of the same opinion. So their commitment rings—or whatever the fuck you called it; the “not marriage, ’cause that’s icky and gross” rings—were silver bands with a tiny black silhouette of a cat on it. Roan wanted to go with the skull, but Dylan refused. The cat seemed like an ironic compromise. “It’s not a snake eating its tail, but it will do.” He picked up his cards, looked at them, and knew he was dreaming, since the cards made no sense: all face cards, Kings, Jacks, and Jokers (what, no Queens?), some in suits that were unheard of, such as clover, tree, frying pan, and lion. He put the cards down and admitted, “I still miss you.”
“Well, you’d better.”
“I think I’ve fucked up very badly.”
“Not with Dylan?”
“No, with everything else. I don’t think I like what I’m becoming.”
“And what’s that?”
Looking at Paris’s sweet face was so hard it brought tears to his eyes. God, he was so beautiful. It was the tragic kind of beauty too, the kind you knew was doomed from the start. A face that launched a thousand ships and dug a million graves. “I don’t know. I’m so fucking scared I hate myself for it.”
“You hate yourself anyways,” Paris told him, then enfolded him in a hug that Roan realized he was desperate for as soon as he felt his arms around him. He leaned into Paris and breathed him in, aware he was dreaming and not really caring. “Change is inevitable. Just let it come.”
“And let it wash me away?” Actually, come to think of it, that wasn’t a bad idea. To reach total oblivion, an inner space where he just didn’t care anymore.
He always thought happy endings were for dead people. Maybe one of these days, he’d find out for himself.
About the Author
Andrea Speed writes way too much. She is the Editor In Chief of CxPulp.com, where she reviews comics as well as movies and occasionally interviews comic creators. She also has a serial fiction blog where she writes even more, and she occasionally reviews books for Joe Bob Briggs’s site. She might be willing to review you, if you ask nicely enough, but really she should knock it off while she’s ahead.
Visit her website at
http://www.andreaspeed.com
and her Facebook at
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001496290042.
She tweets at
http://twitter.com/aspeed.
The Infected series
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Also from Dreamspinner Press
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