I was in a bad mood. There was no particular reason. Well, there was. I was PMSing, badly, and it put me in a cranky mood. I was camping when I didn't want to camp, but it was for a friend's wedding, so I sucked it up.

I lay on the floor of my friend's open sided tent and watched a topless man in a kilt teach a couple of women how to crack a bullwhip.

"You know," I told Mark, "I'm laying in the nice sun, a Crabbies in one hand, surrounded by my friends and watching a half naked man crack a whip, and I'm still not happy."

"Take it easy," Mark told me. "It'll come."

I believed him.

~

I started to relax. I wanted to enjoy the event. I wanted to relax. I had already snapped at a couple of my friends for touching me, and I didn't want to snap at any more.

I decided puppy love would do me well. I took a solitary walk down Merchant's Row, stopping at every puppy I could find.

My lap was full of puppies when James found me.

He crouched down close, like he was going to whisper a secret, and put out a hand, palm forward, like he was trying to placate me.

"G is here," he told me.

Cold gripped me. I felt sick, and excited all at once. My breath started to come quickly.

"Thanks for warning me," I told him.

I gently placed the puppies to one side and stood, bee-lining toward my tent.

I saw him from the back first, already garbed, though I'm sure he had only just arrived. I skirted around him, a wide, fast circle.

I lay in my tent, with only my Blundstones sticking out, and tried to get my thoughts to settle. I brushed my hair, tweezed my eyebrows. I wish I hadn't gained weight recently. I didn't cry.

I stepped back out in to the world, calmer, though no happier.

~

I avoided him at first. I avoided him with all my being, though I'm sure he glimpsed me here and there. The site is not that big.

It was when I stepped out of one of the clothing stores, and he was right there, that I finally had to say something.

He was looking at me. The look was electric, heavy with a hundred thousand unsaid words, and maybe too many said words.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," I said. I kept my body language cool. I felt like throwing up or crying.

~

The Milky Way was blazing. There were no artificial lights for miles around.

A young man stood beside me. I'd met him merely hours before, and teased him mercilessly. Apparently this is the way to get into the good books of all the young men, because he was with me at the top of the castle.

We talked about stuff and things. I had been drinking raspberry wine. He didn't drink.

"Can I kiss you?" he asked, then proceeded to stammer about nonsense until I laughed at him.

"Shut up and kiss me already," I told him, so he did.

He was a good kisser. I wished a little bit that I hadn't had so much wine, and broke off the kiss earlier than it could have been.

"We ought to get back," I said. "We'll be missed at the tavern."

~

G and I sat in front of the castle, on his cloak. The stars stored, cold and strange.

"I guess you didn't get my email," he said.

"No," I said.

"No wonder you were surprised," he said.

I was silent. I was angry at him for showing up.

"Why did you come?" I asked him, pain making my throat thick.

He looked at me with those clear, burnt-sugar eyes.

"Why do you think I came?" he asked.

A thousand words spill over my tongue, contradictory statments.

"Because you like the game."

"Because you like the event."

"Because you want to show that no angry girl will scare you away from something you love."

"Because you don't know when to quit."

"Because you're a dumb boy who willingly travels into hostile territory."

"Because you have as hard a time staying away from me as I have staying away from you."

"Because you love me."

"I don't know," I told him honestly, not looking him in the eye. "I don't know."

He looked at me with sad eyes, and I didn't know whether to trust him.

"Why do you keep contacting me?" I asked.

"I want to see you smile again," he said. "I just want to see you smile again."

"I don't think we can be friends, G," I told him, and this seemed to actually affect him. I felt a small surge of satisfaction at this, even though I didn't like saying the words, however truthless they may be.

"I need to go to sleep," I told him. I wasn't tired, but I couldn't bear to face another minute among people.

"I'll walk you to your tent," he said.

~

The walk was long. Too long. There were a lot of invisible guylines from other tents.

"It's getting chilly," I said, shivering in my linen dresses. I stopped in front of my tent. "This is me."

"Do you have enough bedding?" he asked. "I can bring you some of mine."

"You would do that?" I asked, genuinely perplexed.

"I would bring all my bedding down here if you needed it," he told me.

I didn't know what to say, so I went to sleep and didn't cry much.

~

"Come watch me fight?" he asked, almost begged.

"Maybe," I said. I wasn't feeling very charitable. I stole some of the food he was holding when he wasn't looking and crunched it cheerfully when he was.

I went and watched him fight. I was surrounded by other women, come to watch the fight.

When it came to the point of saluting his inspiration, he alwasy saluted in my direction.

I do not know if he was saluting at me.

One of the other women was trying to tell me about him. I refrained myself from correcting her, or pointing out precisely how well I knew him.

Perhaps he was saluting at her.

~

I kept seeing the young man I kissed on the castle. Just glimpses, but he kept catching my eye, tilting his head in my direction, no matter who he was in a conversation wtih.

I hid in Mark's tent a lot. Played games with friends, drank my afternoon away with luke-warm Crabbies.

The sun was setting when I ran into G again. We walked up past the castle, and sat on bales of hay there.

I remember very little of the conversation.

We walked back toward the castle, and I picked up lost arrows as I went, tossing them in a pile against the safety net. G did the same.

There was a forgotten chair there, and I sat in it. G sat at my feet.

I cried. He put his cheek on my knee. I stroked the short, curly hair at his temples.

He sighed and closed his eyes.

I forgot all the words that were said, seeing his cheek on my knee, feeling his face under my hand.

It only made me cry more.

I left shortly after that. I needed to find food, and get ready for the party that night. I wasn't really in the mood, but I thought I ought to give it a try.

~

I wandered for a while, in the dark. I followed some friends for a while, but my heart wasn't in to it.

I went in to the big party, found I had to go the bathroom, and left.

I wandered in the dark for a while, ignoring where my feet went. So many people had twisted their ankles in gofer holes, but I completely missed all of them. I was almost hoping to twist my ankle, to give me something else to think about.

I decided to go back to the party.

When I stepped inside I came face to face with G.

"Walk with me," he said. "I'm going to go put away my cloak."

I walked back to his encampment with him. He was sharing a huge pavillion with two other people. Some of the guys there filled our tankards with vicious, vicious liquor.

We walked up to the castle again, up to the lowest level of the walls, just to look out across the camp.

"Get 'er done," he kept telling me. "You say you're not happy. Step up your game. Get out of that city. Go for what you want."

"You know what I want?" I said, in a fit of frustrated pique. "You know what I want above and beyond all that?"

"What?" he asked.

"I want to wake up every day and see your face."

He jerked and made a noise, like I'd finally hit home. I turned my face away and started crying in earnest then.

He pulled me to him, and I let myself cry -- full out sob -- on his shoulder. I tried to pull away, because my nose was running, but he held me tighter and let my nose run onto his velvet doublet.

I finally pushed away. Everything hurt, from my heart outwards.

"I need to go to bed," I told him.

"I'll walk you," he said.

~

"Half of me loves you," I told him, "and half of me hates you, and I don't know what to do."

He hugged me, and kissed my forehead.

It made me feel worse, so I went to bed and cried myself to sleep, and almost to sick.

~

"Where did you go?" my friend asked me. "You disappeared when we got to the party."

My face was stony.

"I had a conversation," I told her, coldly. "And then I went to bed."

"Well, fuck," she said, and correctly so.

~

I saw him in the distance. He was dressed in his normal clothes.

I might have ventured from my camp in hopes of seeing him, and see him I did.

He raised a hand, I tilted the brim of my hat. He beckoned, a question, but it might as well have been a fishhook on my heart.

"I'm going," he told me when I got close enough. "We've got a long ride home. Seventeen hour drive."

"Alright," I said.

The goodbye was short.

I didn't want to see his vehicle off. I left the site before he did to get ice cream in town.

~

I walked the camp with the young man from the castle. We sat in the dark and talked about music and names. He told me what his real name was, and I told him mine. His name didn't suit him as much as mine entirely suits me.

We wandered from party to party. We walked the same paths that G and I walked, and farther still.

I didn't kiss him again, though I would have liked to.

I thought maybe he'd try something, but he never quite made it.

He walked me back to my tent in the end, shivering because he wasn't wearing enough wool.

I called him a foolish man, and foolish he was. You always wear wool at night, even in July.

He was very nice, but that's all I can really say about that.

~

"How was the event?" my roommate asked, lurking in the hallway. The dining room was filled with his own camping gear, a stack of swords on top.

"Could have been better," I said. "I really wish G had not showed up."

"He was trying to pick up So-and-So," my roommate told me, helpful distain in his voice.

I turned on him, probably unjustly. "I don't need to know that shit."

The sorry he said was to my back, because I was angry.

And now, I'm a little bit drunk.

A little bit drunk, and a whole fuckload of idiot.

I'm an idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot.

.

Rosie.

Before&After