enigmatic, but love is the simplest language. Anyone can read it. That’s what scares me, Scarlett. I can read the depth of yours too. Your internal has run over into the physical. I’ve never seen that in you before—not with dance, or with your family. Maybe Elliott, but this is a different kind of love.
“And right now, Brando is behaving like a self-sacrificing kind of man. A self-sacrificing kind of man will set you loose before he takes from you what he honestly thinks you deserve. They make all of the decisions because their convictions are hard and powerful. Even more powerful than their will to have. I don’t want to see your black balloon turn blue. Black is solitary, and yes, a bit sad. But in its own peculiar way, it can also serve as protection. It numbs the blow. People lie about blue. Blue is a prison. You can see through the color. It taints. It allows you to see everything you can’t have.”
Her truth hit me square in the chest. She had put into words the honest thoughts that had been trying to make their way to my heart. I decided to leave her words with the crack in my armor. She had to be reached as well.
“Is that what happened to you?” I asked. “Is Mitch self-sacrificing? Is that why your mystic purple balloon turned blue?”
With Violet, if you smothered it in humor, she was more likely to share.
She laughed, but the sound came out bitter. She turned to the mirror, glaring at herself, putting the lipstick on the counter with a hard slap.
“Oh, Scarlett,” she sighed. “There are three people in the play of my love life: the self-sacrificing, the selfish, and the damn jester, but the trouble is the roles keep rotating. No one knows who the hell they are anymore. I’m hoping one day the rotation will cease, the play will come to an end, and I’ll know my place, and those of others. Normal life will resume once again.”
She lifted her shoulders and let them fall.
“Until then…blue balloon it is.” She pointed at herself in the mirror with an angry finger, like she was about to give herself a stern pep talk. Instead she said, “Fucking blue balloon. Fuck. You. I’m going to pop you so hard one of these days.”
I took the vibrant pink lipstick and wrote Always on the mirror. With the weight of those things on my mind, we left.
The next day came, and I struggled to release Violet and our truth session from my thoughts. Turns out, the party in the country didn’t help matters.
I had been distant, alternately watching her and Mitch and fearing the blue balloon. That’s right. Mitch had been present. Which made sense when all of the dots started to connect. Of course, Violet would have to go…it was stolen moments with her secret Romeo. And, as I had discovered, her secret Romeo had more layers than an onion.
Layers were always a favorite of Violet’s. She loved peeling them back, learning about the deeper inner workings, and then occasionally reporting on them. It didn’t seem like she had much to report from the party, she just went to be present in the moment.
The party had taken place in a barn, a birthday celebration, complete with hay, a few animals, and bulb lights that hung from one side of the ceiling to another in a sort of lazy sway.
Mitch led the live band, Poisonous Dawn. He took gigs now and again for extra money. Despite the obvious, that we were not party to this tangled web, Mitch was good. Especially when he sang “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” directly to Violet. I wasn’t even sure if either one of them had realized that they were in a barn stuffed with people and the occasional chicken.
At the end of a particularly emotional performance, he lifted his left wrist, showcasing a tattoo in the shape of a V with a line closing the top. The line didn’t make any sense, but the V did. Then he repeated a line from Peter Pan, which cost him a few curious glances.
Violet had started to cry—peeling the onion must have gotten to her.
The thought of the blue balloon inched closer.
Accompanying Mitch on a few songs was Jane Jones—unforgettable candy gift-giver from the cabins. On closer inspection, she wasn’t as perfect as I had once believed her to be. She had her flaws, but something about the woman terrified me.