handleyourshit | Duplicity Inbox

This is Rosita. I'll hit you back when I can.

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It's not off limits but don't you dare.

I'll see you tonight.

[She laughs, and cuts off on the tail end of it.

She turns up later that night with a dozen jello shots, a sketchbook under one arm, and a box of cock-shaped popsicles against an ice pack in her backpack.]

I brought party games, since we're apparently redoing our twenties!

[He takes one look at the popsicles and laughs]

I was going for something thought out and deliberate but impulsive and drunken works, too.

"Oh yeah?" she challenges, but there's curiosity there too as she unpacks her offerings, as she grins.

"You got something thought out and deliberate hidden behind asking me to do something crazy?"

"I'm a hippie," he teases. "Everything I do has some hidden meaning to it. Otherwise what's the point? I couldn't be wise and mysterious and people couldn't tease me about it otherwise."

"I'll tease you about whatever I want," she counters, and offers him a jello shot.

"Sara made 'em. They're safe, except the proof rating. And mine have jalapeno juice in them, I guess. But let's see your receipts: what've you been drawing?"

"Jalapeno juice and Jello? Ro, that's a food crime," he groans, but he downs his greedily. "Take a look."

He has a few pages now, flowers on one and birds on another. A praying mantis on one, a dandelion gone to seed on the last.

"I didn't make them! I didn't even ask for them! She just likes to try to flame me out," she protests, pulling his book over.

"Oh my god," she groans as she looks at them, because: "You are such a hippie."

But she's smiling, tracing a finger over the dandelion. He drew these thinking of her. She knows a page of love when she sees one.

He nudges her with his foot. "What do you have, then? Something trendy and chic?"

He's going to have another Jell-o shot. They're delicious.

"I don't want to show you now," she hedges, but this is not where her insecurity lies, and she holds hers out.

There are a lot of smiley faces, a 90's diamond S in 3D. A Kilroy was here looking over a line from nowhere.

More seriously, on another page, a simplified compass. A rudimentary set of joined hands. A square knot.

The Kilroy makes him laugh; the diamond makes him smile. How many times had he drawn that as a child?

"I like this," he says, tracing the square knot with a finger.

She glances over, sees which one he picked.

"I wanted to do something more complicated - a bowline or a half hitch or something, but. I'm not that good." She's back to the dandelion again, though she couldn't say why.

"What's your favorite superstition, J?"

He watches her study it and feels proud.

That's an easy answer. "Friday the 13th. 13 is a lucky number as often as it's unlucky, so every Friday the 13th felt special. I always celebrated."

She smiles, tips him a knowing look.

"We should, next time," she offers.

"Dandelions are considered weeds because they grow so fast, and their roots are hard to pull up. But every part of them is useful - edible or medicinal - and bees love them," she explains. "And there's the wishing, the good luck. Sun and wind and earth all together."

"I like them because they spread so far. I like the thought that when they die, they live on in a hundred places far from where they fell." It's all he's wanted, really. To matter in a dozen places, even if he never belonged to a single place or person in his life.

She nods at the square knot he liked.

"I like that they're so simple, but they never, ever slip or quit. They just get tighter the more you pull on them."

"This is what I want." He holds it up over his heart. "What do you think?"

She smiles, pulls one of the popsicles out of the box because she can't help but enjoy the way it has to look while she considers.

"Let's combine them," she decides. "Keep it simple, but make the stems the knot."

He sketches out another dandelion, then hands it over to her. "You draw the knot. That way it's both of us in it."

He's just going to grab a popsicle for himself, because yeah, it's pretty funny.

She grins around the confection in her mouth, spins it just a bit side to side and licks her lips when she pulls it out to speak, accepting the paper.

"Here what do you think - like this -" She fills in the center, four intersecting lines, two dandelion heads, one in each opposite corner.

"I like it." He loves it. He adds a little shading.

"Where are you going to put it?"

She waits, and when he pauses she picks it up and holds it over the same place he did.

"They're matching tattoos, right?"

"So next question: when do we get them done? Drake's got a tattoo parlor. I know the people who work there." They could do it any time.

She's doublefisting now, popsicle in one hand, putting down the sketch for a jello shot in the other.

"I can meet you in the city tomorrow after shift," she offers. Then she grins: "Or we can go now. We have a fucking car."