Squint.

The love game is never called off on account of darkness. ~Tom Masson

Darkness. It flirts at the edges of my vision when I look too hard at Fonce. Fat, shadowy hands that threaten to grab hold of his light and suck it down deep, where I can’t see it anymore. I wish I could find a way to tell him that.

"I'm sorry I can't look to long, if I do you might get eaten up by the shadow monster in my mind."

Everyone has one you know, no matter how sunny and bright and shiny they are. Everyone has a boogie man just waiting on the edges of your existence to find a crack in your veneer and slink inside.. and suck out your soul. There is only one way I know of to stop up the gap and keep in the light.

Fake it.

So when Fonce hurts me, when he lashes out at me for small things, for my not so quiet reminders, for my patience.. I have to assume that there is more then me going on up inside of his head. I have to think that other things are swirling around up there, egging on his boogie man. I have too.. or else my veneer will crack.

There was so much hope in my eyes when we spoke.

“I .. do not know you Asria
I have never thought of you .. like that
I know nothing about you .. in a personal way
you do not know me.”

All in one breath. I was mentally scrambling to hold on to my sunshine. Letting those things take up residence inside of me. But right then.. They weren’t so bad, they were the truth, right? We needed time; I had other fish to fry so to speak. I was just showing him my pink ribbon.

"Do you want to know me Fonce? You will have to speak to my guardian you know and he is a terrible brute!" I grinned.

He smirked at me and agreed, that yes.. he was. Which might have been a warning to me. He was a brute and I was checking how sharp his claws where with the soft underbelly of my heart.

"There is no woman that I am pursuing right now that I have found any kind of focus on." More truth, things he had said before, things I knew. It pleased me and sat heavily on my shoulders. "I have very little faith in though .. I would be a liar if I said any differently. I do not .. believe you ... I have no basis to have that kind of belief."

"Faith in me, Fonce?" I asked quickly and with surprise.

"I do not think you are a liar .. I do not think you say an untruth. I have no faith in the words."

"You think I am confused? That I do not realize the weight of what I am saying or the choices I am trying to make?"

He said that wasn’t it at all. It was just those words and I realized how many times he had heard similar words from women, women who pushed, rushed, cajoled, teased, forced, shouted, threw things and were genuinely baffling. Women who were.. women. Little bits of understand filtered though my personal haze of emotional protection. Yes, I said haze.. I have no sturdy walls to keep out .. feelings. Just a foggy haze with my heart at the center.

I told him I wanted him to know those kinds of things about me, that he could ask, that I wanted him to ask because I was always doing all the asking, the worrying.

"And you could tell me .. or I can learn them. And I learn them .. with time

"Are you trying to brush me off?" I squinted a little at him. I was teasing him. Tonight I would learn though that my attempts at keeping conversations to light hearted.. were not always best.

Fonce.. changed, like a glimmer in the middle of the desert.. one moment he was there and the next.. someone else was. Everything inside of me tensed up, clutched and I held my breath. I think Fonce, for a moment, wanted to hurt me for saying too much. I think he could have hurt me. I watched him intensely; the widening of my gaze was subtle. He was my friend, and then my enemy in the space of a heartbeat.

A moment later he was my protector again.

People often forget, I notice, about Fonce. Oren has spoken to me..in her spooky, ominous way, about him. Trayu too had said things now and then. Little hints, whispered rumors. There was tragedy in that man that deserved to be acknowledged.. but oh so carefully. To ignore what bubbled under his skin was to ignore who he really was.

"I will be at the fires .. Asria" I couldn't recall ever seeing that in him before, not so close up, not.. for me. It would have been easier for me if he had hurt me, pushed me down in the dirt and called me a name. It would have been so much easier.

"Fonce.. please don't walk away."

But he did.

He walked away to keep me safe and.. to teach me a lesson. Time. Just as I wanted to tread carefully into his world, he would tread carefully into mine. Time. We would both need time.. and a torch to light up the darkness.