Chapter 6: Confessions in the Dark
The silence in Jess’s room stretched thin, strained by the unspoken thing hanging between them. Jess stared at Alex, who was still face-down in the duvet. The acoustic guitar from the speakers felt too loud now.
“You’re not just reckless,” Jess said finally, her voice low. “You’re something else. You get a weird look in your eye. Like with the mug. Like with the foot thing. It’s not just not being afraid. It’s… what? You like it?”
Alex rolled onto her back, looking at the tangled strings of fairy lights above the bed. The cool granite of the island was still a memory under her skin, a contrast to the soft bed. “I don’t like almost getting pancaked.”
“Then what?”
“It’s real,” Alex said, the words coming out quietly, almost to herself. “Everything else is… small. School, my sketches, my life. It’s all tiny. But that?” She gestured vaguely toward the door, toward the living room. “Her foot twitching. The whole world moving. You can’t fake that. You can’t control it. It just is. It’s the most real thing I ever feel.”
Jess closed her textbook with a soft, definitive thump. “That’s the most messed-up thing you’ve ever said. And you’ve said a lot. You’re talking about our mom like she’s a… a natural disaster. For kicks.”
“She kind of is,” Alex shot back, sitting up. “A beautiful, grumpy, disaster who loves us. It’s both, Jess. That’s the point. The scary part and the love part are all wrapped up in the same package. You spend all your time trying to untangle them. I just… accept the package.”
“You accept getting kicked into couch lining?”
“It was a cramp!” Alex’s voice rose, frustration bubbling over. “You make it sound like she aimed. She didn’t. She was asleep. She was soft and warm and she smelled like her lavender lotion and then—bam—the earth moved. And yeah, for a second, flying through the air, not knowing where I’d land? It was terrifying. It was also… I don’t know. Alive.”
Jess stood up on the bed, looming over her sister. “You’re an art student, not a philosopher. Stop trying to romanticize our probable demise. One of these days, her ‘realness’ is going to be the last thing you ever feel. And I’ll be the one scraping you off her sandal.”
“You won’t be scraping anything,” a new voice said, colder than the kitchen granite.
The bedroom door, which Alex had only half-closed, swung inward silently. It wasn’t a gentle push. It was the unavoidable, gradual yielding of space to a presence that required it.
Ellie filled the doorway. She must have moved down the hall without a sound. Her expression was unreadable, a carefully neutral mask, but one eyebrow was arched high. Her dark eyes flicked from Jess, standing defiant on the bed, to Alex, who had frozen mid-argument.
“The ‘beautiful, grumpy disaster’ has excellent hearing,” Ellie said, her voice devoid of any emotion. “Apparently, I’m also a ‘package.’ How delightful.”
Jess paled, sinking slowly back to her knees on the duvet. Alex just stared, her earlier bravado evaporating, leaving a cold pit in her stomach.
Ellie didn’t wait for an apology or an explanation. She stepped into the room. The space shrank instantly, the ceiling feeling inches from her head. She didn’t bend. She simply reached down, her hand a swift, inescapable shadow.
Her fingers closed around Jess first, plucking her from the bed with a surgeon’s precise inevitability. Jess let out a sharp yelp, instantly swallowed by the vastness of the palm. A second later, the same hand scooped Alex up, fingers curling around her torso, pinning her arms to her sides. They were pressed together, back-to-back, in the warm, firm cradle of Ellie’s grasp.
“We,” Ellie announced, turning on her heel and striding back into the hallway, “are going to have a family discussion. Since you two have so many thoughts about how this family operates.”
She didn’t walk to the living room. She covered the distance. Three of her strides equaled the entire length of the hall. The world blurred past—doorframes, light fixtures, the landscape of their home rushing by at a nauseating speed.
In the living room, Jules was still in the armchair, now painting her toenails a neon coral. She looked up, brush hovering, as Ellie entered. “Oh. A field trip?”
“A tribunal,” Ellie corrected, her tone leaving no room for Jules’s humor. She sat on the sofa, the same beast of furniture that had swallowed Alex earlier. This time, she didn’t sink into it. She claimed it, her posture rigid. She brought her closed hand to her lap and opened it.
Jess and Alex tumbled out onto the soft, faded expanse of her thigh, right above her knee. The denim of her jeans was soft from wear but vast, each worn streak in the fabric like a tire track. They scrambled to sit up, disoriented.
Ellie loomed above them, a mountain range of denim and stern expression. Jules leaned forward from her chair, her giant face a mix of concern and keen interest.
“Start talking,” Ellie said. Her voice was low, a controlled rumble that vibrated through the denim beneath them. “You have theories about me. About us. I want to hear them. All of them.”
Alex swallowed. Jess was trembling beside her, silent. The living room, usually a place of movie nights and stolen snacks, felt like a courtroom.
“It was just… talk,” Jess whispered.
“It didn’t sound like ‘just talk,’” Ellie countered. “It sounded like a psychological evaluation. ‘The scary part and the love part.’ So, which is which, Alexandra? What part was it when my foot sent you into the abyss? Was that the scary part, or was that also, somehow, the love part?”
Alex felt her face burn. Heard aloud in Ellie’s calm, cutting tone, her words sounded childish and grotesque.
“It was an accident,” Alex said, forcing herself to look up at the colossal face. “I know that.”
“But you enjoyed the feeling before the accident,” Ellie stated. It wasn’t a question. “The ‘realness.’ The power. My power, over you. That’s what you were describing, yes?”
The directness was a laser. Alex couldn’t dodge it. She gave a tiny, barely perceptible nod.
Jules sucked in a breath through her teeth. “Oh, kid.”
Ellie’s eyes closed for a long second. When they opened, something in them had shifted. The anger was still there, but it had been joined by a profound, weary hurt. “Do you have any idea,” she began, her voice husky, “what it is to love something so small? Every thought, every movement, has to be filtered through a calculus of catastrophe. I can’t hug you without planning it. I can’t reach for a salt shaker without scanning the counter. I live in a world of soft edges and held breaths because one moment of true carelessness, one real moment of forgetfulness, and you are a stain.”
She leaned forward slightly, and the shadow deepened. “You seek that ‘real’ feeling. You court it. You see my love as boring, as safe, because it’s careful. But my carelessness is what’s real to you. That terrifies me. It makes me feel like you don’t understand the stakes at all. Like you think this is a game with respawns.”
“I don’t think that,” Alex said, her own voice small.
“Then what do you think?” Ellie’s question was a plea wrapped in a command. “Tell me what is in your head, because from where I am, it looks like a death wish.”
The room was silent. The clock ticked. Jules had stopped painting, her full attention on the three of them.
Alex looked at Jess, who was staring at the textured landscape of denim, tears streaking her cheeks. She looked at Jules, whose usual playful glint was gone, replaced by solemn understanding. Finally, she looked back at Ellie, at the hurt in those planet-sized eyes.
“I think…” Alex started, the words clumsy. “I think the careful love is the miracle. I know that. But it’s also a wall. The other feeling, the scary one… it’s the only time the wall disappears. I get to see you, just you, not the version of you that’s holding back. It’s like… seeing a storm up close. It’s awful. It’s amazing. It’s you, without the filter. And I hate that I want that. But I do.”
Ellie stared at her. A long, aching minute passed. Then, slowly, she raised her hand. Not in anger. Her fingers descended toward them on the denim plane.
Jess flinched. Alex held her breath.
The finger didn’t flick them. It didn’t press down. It came to rest gently on top of Alex’s head, then slid down to curl around her whole body, lifting her away from Jess. It was the same movement as in the bedroom, but infinitely slower, softer. She brought Alex up, up through the stratified air of the living room, past the level of the coffee table, until she was eye-level with Ellie’s face, cradled in a loose fist before her chin.
Ellie’s breath was a warm, humid breeze. Her eyes were impossibly deep.
“The filter,” Ellie whispered, the word just for Alex, “is love. The ‘storm’ is biology. A sneeze. A cramp. A misplaced elbow. You want to see me without the filter? That’s just my body, baby. And my body doesn’t love you. I do.”
She brought Alex in, until her tiny form was nestled in the space between Ellie’s collarbones. The scent of lavender and clean cotton was overwhelming. The steady, thunderous rhythm of Ellie’s heartbeat filled the universe. It was the safest, most careful place in the world.
“You feel this?” Ellie’s voice rumbled through her chest, vibrating through Alex’s bones. “This is the real thing. The only thing that matters. The storm is nothing. This is everything.”
Alex didn’t answer. She just pressed herself against the warm skin, the confession hanging in the air, unanswered and devastating. She had gotten what she wanted—a raw, unfiltered moment—and it had torn her in two.