“What do you do,” he asked, briefly flitting his eyes above the resume he clutched in his hands.
She absentmindedly glanced over the piles of documents strewn across his desk, storing in her memory the stinging aroma of the coffee he was stirring lazily with one hand and the tiny cut resting under his jawbone that looked as if he had shaved too carelessly that morning.
“I’m a writer.”
He snorted, placing her resume with the other discarded papers and reached across the table for a pen.
“So you’re unemployed.”
And then her gaze finally rose to his, and he immediately flinched back. Her eyes were dark and hooded, and he could see some unrivaled fury stirring beneath the patchwork of blue and silver, and all he could think of, was how much he wanted to take back what he had just said.
“No,” she bit out harshly, “I’m a writer. I spin words out of ink onto paper for the world, trying to melt the ice in their hearts a little bit, trying to let them know that they are loved and needed, trying to fix broken hearts and broken souls because no one fixed my sister’s, who shot herself in the head ten years ago in front of me, trying to somehow make this world a little less harsh, a little less cold.”
He blushed, embarrassed with his rashness, and stammered out hoarsely, “I’m so very sorry,” and the piercing threat in her eyes somewhat ebbed away and was replaced by something else, something unnerving and rare, a terrible sort of aged resilience mingled with old pain, crumbling and distant, shackled and hollow, the sort of gray in-between that formed the bridge from the living to the dead, the unspoken promise of betrayed love, cyclonic horrors, and eternal nightmares.