AnCatKatie
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
That...was quite satisfying.
Now if only my two of Ruth's opinions would merge and make writing her easier...
***
1978
Eve had no idea Larry and her sister the aspiring drummer had been kicked out of the practice room at Mount Temple, so she assumed they would be somewhere else the next day. The house was peaceful, quiet, and little drifting currents of air washed through the sun-spotted stillness. She was thinking about how cold the bathwater had been, still was on the parts of her skin still wet, when there was a sudden sharp noise and she froze and stiffened with her entire body, peeking to see the door and then flattening herself against the wall, wishing herself invisible. It worked well enough; she was often overlooked, and whoever was coming in was certainly preoccupied.
She found herself outside the house shivering with wet, bare feet, confusion still smack across her face. She might have seen Ruth widen her eyes to try to communicate something, but that charged random intuition between them had broken utterly and Eve had had no idea what the hell her sister was saying with her eyes.
The day was warm enough, when the water dried away at last from her skin. She lay back at that little junction of porch and yard, the bricks pressing warm and unforgiving against her shoulderblades, the grass waving tall and endless above her vantage point. With Ruth’s arrival just now, her thoughts were serious and slate-grey and the beauty of the day was nothing.
Eve felt a little sick; she had a very bad feeling about whatever was going on in the house. Whether it was good or bad. Aodan made the hairs rise on her arms and gave her body the signal to run.
Ruth, she thought a little sadly, be careful.
They were no longer children. Eve had been the one who would wander away every once in a while, Ruth grinning and toddling after her, shouting at the people who tried to direct Eve back that she knew what she was doing. Everything was so different in the real world.
She had her schoolbooks outside and tried to work on some of the work she’d been assigned, but the tight words unraveled and blurred together and seemed like nothing against the hard knot of worry building in her stomach. She shoved the books away and leaned against the porch, counting the seconds and then the minutes and then the hours, ticking away.
It had been hours. She’d lost track. She fell out of her drifting worrisome thoughts when she heard a voice like music, just in front of her.
“So you are real, then,” Larry noted. “I wasn’t sure for the longest time.”
She was stark pale against the brick of the porch and the tall grass. Her hair was falling into her face and her eyes were lost in thought. He had assumed she might have been reading, and approached, to find she looked troubled.
And she was real. And might actually speak.
“I’m Eve,” she said, something still very serious dragging through her voice. Something was wrong, or just very complex, Larry sensed. She held out her hand and he shook it a little awkwardly, unexpectedly shy for a boy his age. He didn’t often interact with women who weren’t in his family. Not seriously.
He was quite unprepared to thud into the grass beside her, and rubbed his wrist wincing. He opened his mouth to say something in protest off the top of his head—but she interrupted him.
Her eyes were urgent. “Don’t go into there,” she pleaded with him. His brows snapped together.
“Wha—“ He turned his head minutely. He could hear there were people in the house. “But why—“
“Ruth’s boyfriend’s over. If you open the door—go ahead, but y’shouldn’t,” she explained in a cool voice, “he’s going to assume the wrong thing and there will be Larry Mullen scattered all over the street.”
She sank back against the side of the porch and regarded him with that intense stare again, turning her head away and appearing disinterested, though her heart pounded high-speed and she had to still the trembling in her body—adrenaline? No…she stole a glance again to see her looking at her, with all the unbearable suddenness of the sun.
“You can do what you think is best,” she said with that same feigned disinterest. He smiled.
“It’s been a while since anyone’s said that,” he noted, and he noted as well her relieved exhale when he made himself comfortable in the grass and made no move to be noticed by Ruth or anyone.
“It’s not my business,” he said quietly, “but tell me, Eve, how long has this been going on?” She knew what he was asking, and tried not to look hurt. She kept her eyes away from him when she answered the short amount of time it had been.
“Well, it is none of my business what Ruth does in her spare time,” he sighed, and looked moodily out towards the street and the faint smoky clouds.
“If it helps, I don’t trust the guy,” Eve said, looking at him. The sun trickled across his face and, it seemed, through his body to illuminate the troubles in his eyes. She was no longer aware of the grass waving softly around them, the book cover digging into her side, the soil underneath her bare feet. All feeling was caught in the sudden speechlessness rising in her throat; she stared.
“It doesn’t at all,” he groaned. And something happened in that instant. Before he knew what was going on, he was pressed to the ground and had grass scratching his elbows, and a sigh of wind or rain condensed, became sunlight, became the incredible sensation of Eve, who kissed him hungrily and seemed at that moment more woman than ether.
He was at first very surprised. His brain spluttered and came up with, But what about Ruth—
Ruth was taken. Ruth was…there was something about her that didn’t quite mean romance to Larry, though she was captivating. Perhaps it was the music. She reminded him so much of himself, a terrifyingly reckless part of himself. And…Larry groaned, feeling a heat building in him…he didn’t really know Eve, but he felt a slowness and a truth about her that was easier to face. In the movement of her lips against his, in the way she stayed lightly separated from him and nearly bolted away before he caught her against him.
She could have become myth again. She could have headed for the deep woods of the garden and lost him, leaving him suddenly. The girl who smiled with a flush of embarrassment rising to her face, her fine light hair coming out of its confines and trailing over her rapidly rising and falling chest, her fingers playing with the grass and her eyes all his, was real. She didn’t speak, just hugged her knees to her chest and didn’t realize when Aodan left the house. Her euphoria trailed across the sky, held ties in Larry’s face, and took the edge off the sudden relief when she came back in the house. Ruth’s eyes were hard and bright, with happiness or tears, and her hair all loose about her. Eve had no idea what had happened—the relief was that what she had expected hadn’t, and Ruth was outwardly unmarked.
Although perhaps not. Ruth held herself tightly, staring out the window pensively, wondering whether it would have been different with Larry, wondering why she wondered, why she kept bringing him between her and Aodan.
It was scary for someone to give themselves in a promise of forever, without words, without anything she had thought. She could still feel Aodan’s arms around her, but…she didn’t know him. She knew the way his face would become suddenly captured by some intensity, the way of his silences and his occasional understanding. But this man she had just done something with she was suddenly unsure about—and when she’d looked into his eyes, she’d known he knew her, but she…she belonged to someone else.
She held a hand over the electrifying chill of the windowpane and looked out to see Eve’s schoolbooks abandoned in the yard. Her thoughts wandered that way for a moment: oh, to be innocent as her sister, to have spent the day somewhere beyond this body, this room, this situation.
That makes me excited!
That was fun. 
Ending this conversation before it becomes explicit.
