Variations on a Love Story (Prompt 05, Kowalski/Stella)
Variations on a Love Story
Kowalski/Stella, G, 674 words
When she looks back, sometimes it's hard to remember when it was good. When just thinking about him, seeing him, didn't make her want to scream in sadness and frustration and anger. It's hard not to remember divorce papers and pleading phone calls and him showing up at her office, begging her to take him back. She'd felt pity for him, and been cruel, because she didn't know how else to be and protect herself and him, too. She's moving on - moving forward to something that isn't teenage fantasies and dating the Polish kid from the wrong side of the tracks to piss off her parents. This is her life now.
She sees him when she goes to the station, and he always smiles at her first, like he forgets that she's not his anymore, that she won't smile back. Then, the smile fades and the lines come in around his eyes, and he's cool, he's professional, and she pretends that he's not watching the way her legs move when she walks away.
Sometimes, late at night, she stares up at the pristine white of her bedroom ceiling, sleep eluding her around every corner, no matter how she chases it, craves its oblivion. It's in those moment that she can remember their love story before it became a pathetic comedic tragedy. She can remember him in his too-tight jeans that made her feel a little overheated when she was fifteen, the ridiculous spikes of his hair and his big, black glasses. She can remember the first time he showed up at her front door, his bike propped up against her mailbox. The first time he came to her house in his dad's car to pick her up for a date. She remembered that date still, every heart-stopping, exhilirating detail. They'd gone to see Cannonball, which she didn't really care about, but he was excited, and so she was excited too. He watched, only moving to eat his popcorn. It was a pretty good movie, and Stella didn't realize they hadn't so much as touched until her hand brushed up against his as they both reached for a handful of popcorn at the same time. She went to pull her hand out of the box, but he held onto her, their fingers tangling, turning his face away from the movie and grinning at her in the dark, his face light up by the flickering images on the screen. She had known, in that moment, in that crowded theater, that she was going somewhere with him.
This isn't the place she had thought they'd end up in, and even though she knows, with a gut-deep certainty that she only ever really gets in the courtroom, that she did the right thing. Leaving him. They aren't teenagers anymore, and they aren't right anymore, and her only regret is that she had to realize that so long before he did. She knows he does now. He's stopped following her around; he's stopped calling, after a few too many drinks. He knows.
She curls up on her side, on the bed, always, after she thinks about them - this whole life she had in front of her to just reach out and grab and take - a husband who loved her, no matter what, the kids he wanted, the domestic life - the house, the yard, the dog - that most women wanted. It was never what she wanted, and she had to escape it, but on nights like this when she remembers all the hope and possibility and the adrenaline rush of loving Ray Kowalski, she lets herself mourn it. Lets herself cry or scream or laugh into the silence of her empty, spare apartment.
And then she gets up, puts on the suit and the stockings and the heels and everything that is Assistant State's Attorney Stella Kowalski, and faces another day of her life, which is everything she never thought she should want, but exactly what she wanted and needed, in the end.
My prompt table
Kowalski/Stella, G, 674 words
When she looks back, sometimes it's hard to remember when it was good. When just thinking about him, seeing him, didn't make her want to scream in sadness and frustration and anger. It's hard not to remember divorce papers and pleading phone calls and him showing up at her office, begging her to take him back. She'd felt pity for him, and been cruel, because she didn't know how else to be and protect herself and him, too. She's moving on - moving forward to something that isn't teenage fantasies and dating the Polish kid from the wrong side of the tracks to piss off her parents. This is her life now.
She sees him when she goes to the station, and he always smiles at her first, like he forgets that she's not his anymore, that she won't smile back. Then, the smile fades and the lines come in around his eyes, and he's cool, he's professional, and she pretends that he's not watching the way her legs move when she walks away.
Sometimes, late at night, she stares up at the pristine white of her bedroom ceiling, sleep eluding her around every corner, no matter how she chases it, craves its oblivion. It's in those moment that she can remember their love story before it became a pathetic comedic tragedy. She can remember him in his too-tight jeans that made her feel a little overheated when she was fifteen, the ridiculous spikes of his hair and his big, black glasses. She can remember the first time he showed up at her front door, his bike propped up against her mailbox. The first time he came to her house in his dad's car to pick her up for a date. She remembered that date still, every heart-stopping, exhilirating detail. They'd gone to see Cannonball, which she didn't really care about, but he was excited, and so she was excited too. He watched, only moving to eat his popcorn. It was a pretty good movie, and Stella didn't realize they hadn't so much as touched until her hand brushed up against his as they both reached for a handful of popcorn at the same time. She went to pull her hand out of the box, but he held onto her, their fingers tangling, turning his face away from the movie and grinning at her in the dark, his face light up by the flickering images on the screen. She had known, in that moment, in that crowded theater, that she was going somewhere with him.
This isn't the place she had thought they'd end up in, and even though she knows, with a gut-deep certainty that she only ever really gets in the courtroom, that she did the right thing. Leaving him. They aren't teenagers anymore, and they aren't right anymore, and her only regret is that she had to realize that so long before he did. She knows he does now. He's stopped following her around; he's stopped calling, after a few too many drinks. He knows.
She curls up on her side, on the bed, always, after she thinks about them - this whole life she had in front of her to just reach out and grab and take - a husband who loved her, no matter what, the kids he wanted, the domestic life - the house, the yard, the dog - that most women wanted. It was never what she wanted, and she had to escape it, but on nights like this when she remembers all the hope and possibility and the adrenaline rush of loving Ray Kowalski, she lets herself mourn it. Lets herself cry or scream or laugh into the silence of her empty, spare apartment.
And then she gets up, puts on the suit and the stockings and the heels and everything that is Assistant State's Attorney Stella Kowalski, and faces another day of her life, which is everything she never thought she should want, but exactly what she wanted and needed, in the end.
My prompt table