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Fiona stands at the sink during one of her worse nights, an unlit cigarette hanging between her lips while she scrubs furiously at the lasagna residue stuck to the pan. She ignores the cramp in her fingers and keeps going, mumbling something under her breath, something that sounds like “fuck” but turns into a countdown.
Around her, the house stays quiet, no creaking floors or muffled voices, no crackle of the TV’s bad reception. No one sneaks in through the back door with a hickey on their neck. No one sneaks out with a six-pack. There’s no one to scold and no one to worry for because no one is here, but the ache in the pit of her stomach tells her that the worrying will never stop.
She loses it before she hits the number seven.
—
Lip used to fold himself into tight origami-like positions at night. He remembers pulling his knees to his chest and biting at the skin there, the skin marked with scrapes and bruises. Ian’s bony elbows knocked into his back, bouncing off the knobs of Lip’s spine, and Lip curled into himself even more. Ian slept sprawled out across the bed, which Lip hated, but Ian also got nightmares and couldn’t sleep alone, which Lip understood.
Ian also didn’t know that Lip needed this, too, once in a while. Lip needed the comfort but didn’t want the pity.
Now all Lip wants is to press his side against Ian’s, for them to talk and laugh and pass a joint, for Ian to say something dumb that Lip could mock him for, for Ian to say something profoundly sad that sends Lip reeling with existential thoughts. Lip never used to know what went on in Ian’s brain, how he could be filled with so much of the world and yet never say any of it aloud.
Ian must’ve kept it in for so long that it’s found a way to seep out. It scares Lip to see the expanse of shit that Ian carries inside him. It scares Lip even more that Ian won’t tell him about any of it.
“I’m not here right now,” a younger Ian says, his voice battling with the static from the phone, “so leave a message.” Lip ends the call and goes to class, ignoring the weight pressing against his chest.
—
Ian figures he could make it to the next city over before anybody notices. Take the car, hitchhike, whatever, they’re all meaningless details in the plan that’s forming in his mind. There’s an itch in his fingers and one creeping up his spine. There’s a fight starting in the pit of his stomach.
A door slams somewhere down the hall and the pill bottles in front of him rattle from the vibrations.
Ian picks one of them up and twists it around and around in his hand, the orange plastic sticking to his skin. Take the blue pill, take the red—doesn’t matter because they all turn his brain into radio silence. His mouth turns dry at the thought.
“Yo, Ian, breakfast!” Mickey calls, voice traveling easily through the darkened hallways and settling in the crevices of Ian’s mind.
Ian thinks about the long highway stretching out before him. He thinks about Monica and her high-pitched laugh and that light that never leaves her eyes. He thinks about a baby he loves, a baby that he almost killed.
He pops the lid off and taps a round white pill into his hand.
—
Debbie’s never been in love before, but she never would’ve guessed that it felt like someone had hollowed out her heart and set it on fire.
She’s seen love and it’s always looked too complicated for everyone’s good, but she thinks maybe she gets it now. Why Fiona could never let Jimmy go, or why Lip let Karen Jackson stomp on his heart.
“Is it supposed to hurt?” she asks Derek one day, her head resting next to his on a pillow, their arms touching.
“What?” he asks. Their pinkies brush again and again. Debbie feels the fire starting.
“Love,” she says.
Derek laughs and turns his head toward her. He smiles, his entire face lighting up, and it’s torturous and it’s beautiful and Debbie wants to bathe in it. In his smile, in his laugh, in his kiss. Debbie wants so many things, and they’re all right here.
—
Carl sleeps on a thin mattress with scratchy blue blankets and a flattened pillow. Weird deformities in the metal frame of the bed jab into his spine when he sleeps on the right side. He’s always slept on the right side of the bed, though. He loves to hang off the edge.
His cellmate's snores fill up the entire two feet of space they have, so loud it hurts his ears. It's not what's keeping him up though. Nah, he's slept through way worse at home.
Tomorrow, he’s gonna learn how to melt down a toothbrush and use it as a weapon. There are some fuckers who think it’s okay to steal his shit and they need to be taught a lesson.
Honestly, Fiona must’ve been crazy to hate prison.