fear

what are you afraid of he asked or yelled and she said i’m not afraid of anything. bullshit. it’s true. you’re hiding and you know it. fuck you you know what i’m hiding from.

and she was right. next to her husband and his kids they spend more time with each other than anyone else courtesy of sharing an eight by fifteen office enterprise rental cars honey chicken at p.f. changs in princeton new jersey or the rotating restaurant on top of the loews in quebec city in a blizzard.

when they were new conversations had to do with inconsequential shit like favorite tv shows and he did get her hooked on family guy so they could laugh on monday morning between conference calls but he couldn’t get her to watch gray’s anatomy which is funny because it’s a chick show.

by the time they crossed the canadian border two days before the snow she was comfortable enough with him to sleep in the passenger seat and burp when necessary and tell him about having her nose broken by the fucker she dated when she was younger and that she married her husband because he didn’t hit her but maybe that shouldn’t have been the only criteria to look for in a spouse but it is what it is.

she didn’t like being away from home for a week but there were customers to visit and he was happy to get the chance to watch over someone for a few days since it had been a long time since he’d had that type of responsibility with anyone other than his little boys and that’s different anyway. he held her door and carried her luggage let her take his arm so she wouldn’t slip on the icy sidewalk and she teased him and called him her bitch and he reminded her that he could just let her fall but they both knew that wouldn’t happen ever.

his ipod was her biggest enemy since there are not many 28 year old girls her included who like the same music as 44 year old men. journey prince and michael jackson were the extent of the overlap even though they did not really talk about mike’s pedophilia since her favorite show is to catch a predator and he can’t watch a whole episode because he gets too pissed off and would not think twice about taking the law into his own hands if the opportunity presented itself and how can that guy from nbc not just beat the shit out of those assholes anyway.

during the sappy - her word not his - song of the day selection he would play she told him that john mayer’s comfortable was shit and he said fuck off in fun becasue it reminded him of elizabeth and then he asked her what she was afraid of.

her choice is to hide from the pain of the past in a sure to fail – his words not hers – attempt to avoid pain in the future and he said you can not play out of sight out of mind with sorrow and deadbeat dads and beatings by someone who alleges to love you when he’s not off fucking someone else.

his choice is to meet pain head on whether it is delivered by a heartbreaking movie or a poignant – not sappy – song because after learning what the cocktail of clinical depression emotional abandonment and a three year old girl whose initials he wears on a bracelet slamming into the north tower on her way to disneyland can do he needs to know that he can expose himself to despair and make it through to the other side without falling apart again in a what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger type of arrangement. superman exposing his chest to the bullet with a fairly good feeling that he will withstand the blow just like he has to watch the news every morning to make sure that nothing blew up overnight and that the empire state building is still standing even though he watches only out of one eye as if to brace for the impact he hopes doesn't come but suspects will and then maybe he'll have to hide from the thoughts of harming himself again.

he’s not sure that any of this means anything other than avoidance and acceptance are two sides of the same coin and jackson browne and justin timberlake can coexist in the same eight by fifteen room and there is not much difference between not wanting your face or your country to get hit again while life is giving it to you up the ass because that could end you as a person and that everything can be made better by a business inappropriate kiss on the cheek as a girl gets off of an elevator on the eleventh floor high above the streets of eastern canada on valentine's day.