Pink Lip Gloss

This is gonna be the day. I can feel it. Morgan had been anticipating this day for as long as she could remember and it was finally here. She looked at herself one more time in the mirror on the passenger’s side of James’ rusty, 1999 Ford pickup truck so she could be sure her espresso, brown hair wasn’t sticking to the sweet, pink lip gloss that she found in her makeup drawer this morning before leaving the house. Her eyes moved from the mirror to the clouds out the window that rolled along with their tires that drifted against the backroad that was taking them to the sleepy, old cabin they visited every June. But this year was different because he was going to propose to her. She could tell because his nerves projected off of him and were as obvious as freckles on his face. She always joked about James’ freckles and the amount of pale skin that almost couldn’t be seen behind them. He took the jokes like a champ. He always too polite to protest her jokes anyways.

“Hey J”, she grabbed James’ hand from the steering wheel, “I’m really excited to be at the cabin again. It feels like it’s been forever since we’ve been up here. It’ll be nice to get away for a little bit and just be the two of us don’t you think?”

“Yeah it is. It’ll be great.” He has never been much of a talker but Morgan know that it’s okay because she has a lot to say and she can make up for all the silence he brings with her own effervescent personality. She often wondered if there would ever be a moment where he decides that all of the thoughts that have been hidden somewhere in the depths of his mind will be too much to bear and he will tell her all the things that he feels and maybe needs to get off his chest. But for now, she would love him as he is until he decides he wants to share those emotions with her. She is as patient as any girl could be with these sorts of things. Three years and she has only pushed him to open up more than he has been willing one time. It was a mistake that wouldn’t be made again. It ended in tears. They were her tears of course because James would never cry in front of anyone. She wonders if he’s ever cried at all. But of course, he has to cry eventually. Doesn’t he? This behavior could easily drive any other person up the wall. But not her, she appreciates him the way he is. But Morgan sometimes wonders if maybe she doesn’t actually love James the way she wants to love a person. Morgan has always had a deep desire to make everything in her life perfect, and it’s possible she is only dating James as her next project. She wanted to be the person who can turn him into the person she thinks he should be. She thought she could be the one to convert his personality into that extroverted person that society desires. She could be the one who is special enough to hear what he has to say and get him to open up and be vulnerable. And is it wrong for her to feel this way? All she longs for is proof. The proof that she is special to somebody and can make a difference in their life. But so far, James had been the closest thing to this feeling for Morgan. She didn’t even know the love somebody is capable of giving to her because of the amount of time she has dedicated to telling herself she is worth the love she gets from James, which didn’t always feel like very much. We’ve all been the Morgan in this story before. Those of us who haven’t been Morgan are sure to know someone who has been.

This is really it. I can’t believe how long I’ve been waiting for this day to come. Best part of it is that she doesn’t even see it coming. James has been picturing this day since the moment he met Morgan. In fact, the object of interest has been sitting inside of its black box in his center console this whole time. He bought it after a few months of dating her because he knew that this was what he wanted. James couldn’t see this relationship having any outcomes other than this one.

Finally, they’ve arrived at their tired, old cotta ge after three hours of driving with little to no words out of James. Morgan on the other hand, was talking nearly the entire time, like she does. The pine trees acted as a roof over their heads, hiding pieces of sky and the clouds they watched for the last few hours. The silence of nature is comforting to James, like an old blanket that he’d kept since childhood. If he didn’t have other obligations, this is where he would live. Nobody to bother him. Just himself and the forest in complete serenity.

He is surprised that she hasn’t discovered his secret about why they’ve really come out to the cabin this time. If she’s figured it out she can ruin the whole plan. By this point, it has been tucked into the front pocket of his backpack for so long that if she hadn’t found it yet, she probably never would.

“What are we waiting for? Let’s go inside and get unpacked so I can start dinner! All that driving made me hungry.” Morgan is far more eager for this weekend to happen than James. It’s not that he wasn’t prepared for what was to come next, but he was much more nervous than even Morgan could know. By the time she was done talking she was already halfway through the front door. He was beginning to question whether or not this was the right thing to do. It was.

If I do this today, there’s no turning back. I can never be a free man again. But I’ve been waiting for three years. I can’t put it off any longer. This is what I want to do. No. It’s what I need to do. For both of us.

“I’m coming Morgan,” he said with a lack of enthusiasm, “I just have to grab my things...and yours.” What a gentleman. Carrying in his girlfriend’s bag and his own, not by choice of course. It’s just what’s expected of him at this point. He checks the front pocket of his backpack one last time while she’s not looking to be sure it’s still safe in its hiding spot. And of course, it hadn’t moved and would not move until the moment was perfect. James made his way up the steps to the front porch. He stopped on the second step where he loves to hear the wood creaking under his feet. The creaking is much easier to appreciate with the added weight of all the luggage he was carrying up to the house. He set everything down for a moment before stepping onto the porch to stop and linger in the presence of the forest. His hand glided along the railing thinking about how someday he should really consider doing some work to this porch. Maybe spruce it up a bit with some new wood and sand it down until it was perfect. Lucky for James he had been to this cabin enough times to know which spots he shouldn’t touch if he wanted to avoid a splinter in his hand. There were so many memories for him at this cabin but this was bound to be the most memorable. His thoughts were interrupted when Morgan asked why he was still standing outside. She picked up her things, brought them in, and set them down of the floor of the bedroom, James following behind her.

James stopped in the doorway, leaning against its frame so he could stop and admire Morgan. He only ever seen her wearing that sticky, pink lip gloss a few other times, and the first time was on their one-year anniversary. Normally he wouldn’t remember things like this but after that day, he couldn’t get the smell of plasticky strawberries being put on his lips from hers out of his mind. The scent lingered on him for the rest of that evening, and he has fancied that lip gloss ever since. And he wouldn’t admit it, but he wished she would have worn it a bit more often because it’s so cute on her and she never got dressed up for him anymore.

James didn’t want to unpack in case he slipped up and Morgan saw what he had been hiding from her this whole time. “You don’t have to make dinner tonight. I can do it,” he told Morgan in his most kind and convincing voice.

“You don’t have to do that James. I don’t mind cooking.”

“Really I can do it. Just unpack and relax for a little while up here. Take off your shoes, make yourself at home. I’ll call you when it’s ready, okay?” He flashed a smile and headed out the door. He was getting so nervous that he could feel his blood pulsing through his ear drums. The pounding in his ears was so loud it was almost nauseating. As he stumbled down the stairs, he could barely feel his legs anymore. He was almost convinced that they were no longer there. And on the second to last step his knees nearly gave out underneath him so he tripped over the last two steps until he found his bearings again by grabbing the nearest wall. Frozen and leaning against the wall he waited until his head stopped spinning and he could feel his feet again. How much time has passed? He wondered how long it had taken for him to calm down. It felt like centuries since he had been upstairs telling Morgan he could make them both dinner. Shit. He left the backpack upstairs where he told her to wait for dinner to be done. This isn’t how I planned it to go. I wanted to surprise her when she came down the stairs, not have to go back upstairs to do it. Because he was not willing to adjust his plan, so he sat at the bottom of the steps, just behind the wall until he could hear her get up to use the restroom before tiptoeing as quickly as anybody can up the stairs, grabbing the velvet, black box and rushing back down without putting too much weight into each step to avoid the creaking of the staircase.

At this point, it had been long enough that dinner should have been done. But James didn’t make anything of course. He was too busy perfecting his plan to have time to actually cook the dinner. And besides, he could do that after he had finished. “Babe, dinner’s ready!”, he called to her from the bottom of the staircase. He stood with his back against the wall adjacent to the steps. His trembling hands took it out of the box and looked at it shine under the barely bright enough lights of the cabin. Here she comes. With every step that she took he could feel his heart beat harder. It was beating so quickly it was almost painful. He thought he might pass out before she got the down the stairs. He had never felt this frightened in his life. His jitters were overtaking his body, but he knew that he only had one chance to do this right and he did not want to mess it up.

James gripped on as tightly as he could to the dagger in his hands, and the second he saw her pink lips come out from around the corner, he stabbed her in the chest. Her body dropped to the floor and it was over. The shallow breathing only lasted for a minute before she was quiet and James could relax. It all went by so quickly that he didn’t really get to enjoy it. But nonetheless, he was glad to see could no longer boss him around all day and try to make him into someone he was not. He knew the whole time that she wanted to change him, even if she didn’t realize it. At some point, it became too much for him to bear but he didn’t know how to articulate this with words so the frustration overtook him and he planned her murder. James always had a desire to kill, he just didn’t think he would act on it, and he definitely didn’t think it would be Morgan.

At this point, he had no plan so he left her where she was and made himself his favorite dinner, chicken piccata. James was quite a phenomenal cook but Morgan never got to taste many things he made because she liked to have control in the kitchen. But now he could cook whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted and it was glorious. The seat at the table that he picked had a perfect view of her body on the floor. It’s too bad she didn’t wear that lip gloss more often.

By the time he had finished his dinner it was getting late, so James put all of his dirty dishes in the sink, carefully stepped over the corpse in front of the steps, grabbed his backpack from upstairs, and started on the drive home. He didn’t care much for the cleanup portion of their day so he left the dishes in the sink and left Morgan on the floor in front of the staircase in the hopes nobody would ever find her. But even in the darkness, James felt love for the trees of the forest. It turns out that his love for the greenery was the only love he ever felt after all.