Spiced Brandy Lipstick by Rebecca M. Griffith

The hand pointed to everything…

Spiced brandy. It was her holiday look, her winter look. It was drawn over her lips with precision every morning—fireplaces and tinsel, candlelight and shadows…

“Okay....”She snapped her eyes all over the sidewalk, like Fourth of July fireworks, even though it was December, and shyly hid her hands in her pockets. “Did you ever figure out an answer to my question, by the way?”
He began walking again beside her, and she belatedly took a step. “I don't remember, what question?”
“Never mind.” She said it quickly, with a dismissive toss of hair he’d once told her was too long. It was long again. Almost the same. Almost, but not quite. There were layers now. Layers of dark blonde. Subtle, but there.
“Maybe I do remember.”
“...Mmm,” she murmured, waiting.
“... Mmm,” he echoed, as though to mimic her. His eyes caught hers, accidentally, like a stray hair catching on the side of her mouth, and she nearly lost it again. Every bit of her resolve fought to leave her and float somewhere in the sharp blue of those eyes.

The nice thing about winter is that the sky is dull. You still get sunlight, but you don’t get blue skies, you get gray. You don’t have to think about his eyes every time you look up. You don’t have to wonder what you might have lost when he walked away…again.

“I'm not just checking up on you. But that doesn't mean we talk all the time.” He started up the stairs, his hand on the peeling banister.
“Why do you keep doing that?” She wheeled a step above him, hurt making her tone sharp. “Adding those ridiculous disclaimers. As though I'm going to jump all over the fact that you're not ‘just checking up on me,’ and cling incessantly. Is that really how you see me?”
“Mmmmmmm . . . yes. I'm not gonna lie.”
“Fine, then. Don't. I'll leave you alone, then. I should head to bed, anyway.” She turned from him, facing the strikingly cold air as it bit across her cheeks, and sprang up the rest of the wooden steps.
“Okay, go be huffy now,” he told her, his voice as strong and confident as ever.
She turned, fire covering hurt, hurt covering disappointment, in her green eyes. “I cannot believe you just said that. How would you expect me to react?”
“Hey, you asked.”
“Yes, I did. I'm aware of that. That doesn't mean I have to be all sugar and niceties. I can still think you're being a jerk at the moment.”
“I can be cruel, yes.” He held her gaze, watching her eyes simultaneously pull away from him and attack him.
“And you're just fine with that, apparently.”
“It's not as if I enjoyed telling you that, though.”
“What do you mean? You certainly act like you did.”
“The pause was meant to imply uneasiness.”
“Fine.”
“I was uneasy about saying that.”
“Either way, it's the truth, so me and my overemotional tendencies will leave you in peace. How's that?” She turned again, intent on leaving him alone in the cold, but her boots hit an ice patch on the landing, and she slid a bit before she caught herself. She looked down to find his hand on her elbow, and shook it off.

Winter is a cruel season. It is so cold, you are driven to find warmth, the warmth of having someone next to you, of having someone else’s hand in yours, or someone else’s arms around your waist. But if you can’t, if you are too proud to give in when he places a cracked hand on your jacketed elbow, too scared to let him see the vulnerability in your eyes when you say you’ll leave him be, winter can be a long season, a season full of frost and frozen tears, and nothing but a shade of lipstick to imply warmth on your face.

Winter is a cruel season, allowing everyone to stay frozen in their thoughts and assumptions. If he thought you were weak-willed, overemotional, and easy to take advantage of when the first drops of frozen water fell into your hair, he won’t change his mind again until spring brings the rains and washes all of winter away.


“I can't really help it,” he began, “regardless of how much you may have changed, if that's how you were the last time I interacted with you frequently.”
“Fine.” And then, she remembered that this wasn’t fine. His was an excuse made out of convenience, not truth. “You could help it, though. Don't use that kind of cop out. At least take responsibility for choosing to stay in that kind of assumption about me. I’m not the weak little girl who needed your hand to be pulled out of her mistakes.”
“You're right, I could help it, but that would require a lot of talking, and that's not something I'm really up for.” He laid claim to her elbow once again, and moved her away from the ice patch with a little too much ease.
She stepped away. She was not a pawn on his chessboard that he could move around at will. “Fine.”
“Honestly, this isn't a good time to talk to me.” He moved past her and opened the front door. “I'm in a bad mood right now, anyway. The Cardinals just won the NL pennant, and my best friend blew me off. Not a good night.”
She stood on the doorstep, contemplating finding somewhere else to spend the night. She hadn’t known he’d be here, too, renting a room in the same cottage over the holiday break. It was a thrilling coincidence, but one that was beginning to hurt with every dismissive, careless word from his mouth.
“You know, you aren’t always right, Austin.” She was shivering, but hoped he wouldn’t notice. The last time he’d noticed, she’d all but fallen apart. But two years had passed since that day they’d stood on her front porch, she, trembling in the freezing air, he, taking her into his arms. That had been the last time she’d shown him vulnerability. “You think I’m so weak, when I’m not. You think you can use me for your own casual entertainment just because you don’t prefer my company as much as some of your friends. You think I’m in love with you when—” His eyes caught hers again as he looked up, just a fragment of blue cutting into a haze of blazing green, but it was enough to take stability out from under her. “When…” She paused, and so he wouldn’t hear the tears, lowered her voice. “Just because you don’t prefer someone's company doesn't mean you have the right to treat them as though they have no feelings worth taking into consideration. And I do not mean some infatuated, over-glorified idea of you or who you are or what you stand for. I simply mean you have no right to treat someone with what you yourself consider ‘cruelty.’ Frankly, I deserve better, even if I am a ‘second rate friend,’ as you so nonchalantly told me the last time we talked, and even if you didn't have a good night. Go be in your bad mood. I'm heading to bed.”
“Jessica, don't go to bed mad.” His soft request followed the few steps she took away from him. She stopped, but kept her back to him. It was so much warmer in the house. She stood, listening to him close the door and hang up his black jacket. When she heard nothing more, though, she turned, her cold hair sliding across cheeks reddened by the weather and the argument.
Austin was looking at her sweetly, regretfully, like a dog who’d gotten into the garbage under the sink.
“I think it's a little late for that, and I don't think you have any right, at this point, to give me such advice. I'm sick and tired of you walking all over me just because you feel like it, when you feel like it.” She stepped toward him, boots clicking on the laminate floor. “You do it quite often as of late. And I won't stand for it. I told you that before.” She pulled her scarf from around her neck and hung it next to his jacket. Then, her coat rested on top of the scarf. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Please stay here, yell at me. Don’t walk away angry.”
“Why? So you can say more drivel along the lines of what you've been saying? Besides, I doubt the neighbors want to hear me going off on you as they get into bed tonight.”
“I won't say much. I want to hear you say this.”
“Why? It's not like you're ever going to bother to see me for who I actually am, anyway.”
“That's not true.”
“You said it yourself.”
“I never said never.”
“Oh, come on! Don't give me that. You made it clear enough to count. And I'm sick of waiting on you, Austin. I'm tired of you always calling the shots. Always deciding what level of...whatever we're on. Of how comfortable I can feel talking to you. You waltz in and out of my life as you please, saying and doing as you please, as though nothing is of any consequence, and expect me not to cling, not to wonder if this is the last time I'm going to talk to you? And then, you have the absolute nerve to make my trust in you even shakier by telling me I am, in effect, nothing to you. A second-rate friend, right? Someone you’ll pretend to be able to stand, but won’t bother to get to know.” She hooked her hair behind her hair and then dropped her hand to rest on her hip. “Say something, damn it.”
“Wow.”
“That's all you have to say?”
“No. What can I say? Hear me out?”
“Maybe. I'll try.”

Shortness is what we use to cover up fear. Sharpness is what we use when we don’t want it to be known that we entered battle with our hearts on our sleeves instead of behind armor. Harsh glances and harsh words are often a mask for the tears trembling behind them. A mask for weakness. A cover for vulnerability.

”Ok, thanks.” He took a breath, collected his thoughts. “I honestly want to forget the past. People think everything needs to be solved, but when things were bad, I think it's better just to forgive and forget. And you forgive, you always do . . . but you always have these questions about the past. What did I mean by that? Why did I say that? I wish you could just forget everything about me from before, as I wish I could just forget everything about you from before.”
“Why?”
“Because, there's no point in talking about it—it's done, over.”
“What is?”
“Can't be helped. Everything that has already been said, everything that has already happened.”

Spiced brandy. It is the color of roses exploding into bloom. The anticipation of seeing him turn back that day two years ago, take her by the shoulders in the middle of the road. The heady confusion as she waited for a kiss that never came. The way her breath still caught every time his eyes chanced to meet hers.

“Yes...” She dropped her arms as adrenaline left her, as she cradled a new rose between his words. What was he saying? Why did he want to erase things that had very obviously happened?
“You forgive, bless your little heart for that, but you never forget. I wish you would just forget. It doesn't matter anymore.”
“Forget what, exactly?”
“Everything I've ever said. Don't forget, just don't ask me. And don't wonder. It doesn't matter anymore.”
“How can you say that?” Her voice tore, tears leaking out, and she fled up the stairs as the clock began to chime midnight.

Downstairs, where she couldn’t see, he glanced at his watch. Twelve o’clock exactly, the hands lined up and pointing toward the stairs, which still held the scent of her perfume. As the second passed, the minute hand stayed, as though pointing to her wake. As though pointing to the space which had, a second before, held her, in all her fragile and mercurial beauty.

The hand pointed to everything.