Faster We Burn

said, kicking her leg out and hitting me in the stomach.
    “Hey, no violence. I can’t work in these conditions.” I grabbed her foot when she lashed out again. I held on as she struggled. Fuck the blank wall.
    “Let me go,” she squealed as I grabbed her other ankle and yanked her toward me.
    “I think I’d rather have another canvas,” I said, pulling her closer. Her eyes were wide with shock and surprise. “You.”
    “Stryker,” she said, but it was more of a whisper. “We’re friends.”
    “Friends can’t wrestle each other?” I knew I was pushing it, but I was having a hard time stopping.
    It wasn’t until I was nearly on top of her that I realized what I’d done.
    “Oh, shit. I am so sorry.” I backed away. “I shouldn’t have done that, Katie.”
    She pushed herself up on her elbows, her cheeks a little red.
    “No, it’s my fault. I was teasing you.” She got off the bed and went to turn on some music. “I was flirting with you. I’m sorry.”
    “Is that what that was?”
    “Oh, Jesus. I should not be flirting with you.” She put her face in her hands as “Never Let Me Go”, by Florence and The Machine came through her iPod speakers. “I should be dealing with the fact that my dad is dead. I shouldn’t be thinking about you. Like that.”
    “Hey, hey.” I put my hands on her shoulders. She turned and I wrapped her in a hug again. Effortless. As easy as breathing.
    “I’m a horrible, terrible person,” she said.
    “You know, most of the horrible, terrible people in the world don’t believe they’re horrible and terrible. You think Hitler looked in the mirror and told himself that? I don’t think so.”
    “What does Hitler have to do with it?”
    “Nothing, I was just trying to make a point and screwed it up.”
    She pulled back and looked up at me. The brown eyes behind those glasses would be my undoing.
    “I don’t know how to do this anymore,” she said.
    “Do what?”
    “Be.”
    “Be what?”
    “Just…human, I guess. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to do everything. Talking and eating and even breathing. None of it is easy anymore.”
    “I think that’s normal.”
    “How would you know?”
    “I just do.”
    I smoothed her hair back from her face with both hands and put a kiss on her forehead. It was a friend thing to do.
    She held onto my forearms locking me in place.
    “Fuck me. Please.”
     
    Katie
     
    I didn’t know what made me say it. I just knew that I wanted to forget for a little while, like we had before. Those times with him, when we’d been naked and sweating and together, I hadn’t been thinking about anything. I wanted that again.
    He was shocked for only half a second and then I watched his face, waiting for his response. I held him there and begged him with my eyes and my mind and everything else.
    Just fuck me.
    He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to mine and then yanked his arms out of my grasp.
    “No.” Stepping away from me, he shook his head, swiping his hand through his hair. “Jesus, Katie. Why do you do this to me?”
    “Do what?”
    “You just…You say you want to be friends and then you ask me to fuck you and it’s back and forth. I never know where I stand and it makes me so fucking crazy I can’t even think about anything else.” He started pacing the room. “You drive me insane because you never know what you want and you expect me to just accommodate you. And I do it. Every time. You say jump and I get out a goddamn trampoline. When I’m not with you, I’m thinking about you. I can’t stop thinking about you and wanting you. I want to walk across this room and do what you want, but I can’t. I can’t fuck you anymore.”
    “Why not?”
    “I can’t just fuck you because I love you!”
    I loved going on roller coasters. The moment I lived for was when the car slowly clicked its way up to the very top of the highest point, and then there were those breathless moments when it raced to the bottom and your stomach dropped into your feet and you couldn’t catch your breath.
    This was just like that, only worse.
    “I love you, Katie.”
     
    Katie
     
    I’d forgotten how to speak. How to take words and put them together in my mind in an order that would make sense and convey what I was feeling. Maybe because I didn’t know what I was feeling.
    “I know this is the wrong thing to say, at the wrong time. It’s all wrong.”
    Something Lottie said came back to me. Something about how maybe