“What’s First To Fade”

JACK: Our fight will fade, yours will too. There’s no stoppage to the stoppage of all
things, all evil will cease with time, so what’s the point? The sun will rise on the day we choose
to die, it’ll set too unaware of the significance of the day. The sun will rise one day to find that
it’s been abandoned by every one of us. Maybe then it’ll stop for a moment to notice the
population it’s left behind. Good times and bad, there was lots of in-between.

Remember raging in the streets of downtown Seattle? Marching interwoven and dwarfed
within the crowd, the skyscrapers, the billionaires, we felt as close as ever in comparison to the
bigness of things. Our voices became one after the first chant or two. Police would always circle
the demonstrations, walkouts and rallies, in college. They’d loom, leaning back and smiling and
amused. Hands in the pockets of their vests, they wouldn’t harm a fly.

We were so angry once, so disgusted at everything around us. We formed a fortress and
housed ourselves in, and for a moment there was only room for two. But still moments never
stay so stagnant, they pass and we age, and somewhere along the line it’s the very act of rebellion
that exhausts us. When the world does burn, if we’re young enough to see it blaze, we’ll sneer
and watch doing nothing. We’ll speak of everything that could have been, or even worse, we’ll
stand at a distance, smiling, and say we had a good run.

The fade is the falling in love. We were happy once.

And everything breaks into pieces in time.

JULIA: You smile and it’s confident, and though I can never know the inside of your
head, I think I like it better that way. There’s something in your manner that I’ve despised even
when loving you, you command their attention without saying a word, walk and talk and fuck
without letting them in on your second thoughts. These doubts do exist, and I know now that you
have them more than almost anybody, but that’s the essential truth that unveils the lie of your
being. You let me in, and that’s the moment your promise is broken.

You used to bring me to boxing matches, but only the ones you thought you’d win. We’d
celebrate afterwards, always at Cap Hansens. We’d get too drunk and get shoved out, fall into
one another stumbling on the sidewalk. You always called, win or lose and regardless of the
shape you were in. Sometimes you’d call while still at the venue, in the locker room or on the
trainer’s table, “Can I see you?”

“Not tonight, I’m sorry. I’m just not in the shape for it.”

“I’d like to take care of you. Really, I’d be happy t—”

“Julia,” You always cut in with the call of my name, “No.”

Only once did I manage to see you after a loss. Puffy around the sharp edges of your face,
you sat arched like a vulture nursing a cigarette in its beak. The room, some kind of a backstage
nightclub that attached to the casino that attached to the ring, strobed in a toxic green light that
cut you into stagnant images. You shook, I could always tell, but the light took the power from
your movement, turned you into stop-motion.

The club had no business being as crowded as it was. I was standing in the doorway,
craning my neck to see you without being seen. It was a Wednesday, I remember, it was the day
before Christmas Eve and the snow was threatening to sock everybody in just south of Seattle.
You couldn’t have fathomed a loss before the fight, it was some old friend in the other corner,

some square guy with long shorts who you’d beaten since before you could drive. You were so
confident and at the time I thought I might’ve loved that, maybe it was the loss that stole my
love, maybe it was that embarrassed look on your face.

You stood when you saw me making my approach. Not alarmed but dizzy, confused like
you could remember that you didn’t want to see me, but you couldn’t remember why. In a room
packed full of people, you drank your beer and stared at me alone. “You shouldn’t be here,” You
swallowed when I came into earshot.

“I’m sorry,” I didn’t meet your eye, I stared instead at the swelling that rounded your
right cheekbone into an inflatable. Drifting closer, I reached a delicate hand up to brush the
wound. You winced and I drew back, but when you didn’t move away I reached back up and
grazed your cheek with the backs of my fingers. I was slow and you closed your eyes. Only
barely making contact with your skin, I brushed.

“I am too,” Your breath rippled, and you tightened your eyes in embarrassment.

My fingers come up to your hair and I rake my way through, “Don’t be.”

Your eyes were red and irritated, large and open mostly for my sake. Sometimes I try to
think of a time before you existed in my life, but I always draw a blank. I led you away from the
main room of the nightclub, holding your forehead as it droops against my hand, your brain
pulses like a heart lifted up to beat against your skull. “Let’s go,” I whispered, maternal like my
own mother, and I led you like a child away from the lights, away from the noise and the drinks.

We found our solace in the bathroom, purple tile all around to match your outfit, but at
least the lights were dim, consistent in their sorry excuse for a shine. You all but collapsed when
I let go of your head, you wilted in a controlled fall to the corner of the room. Wedged between
the nearest stall and the farthest urinal, you groaned when you turned your face back to me from
the wall. “You,” You point, drunken exaggeration carries heavy in your finger and your voice,

“You are a kind, kind woman.”\

I couldn’t help my smile, it came easier and with less of a memory. I walk towards your
puddling body in the corner, “You’re not so bad yourself.” I knelt, and when he reached out I
accepted his hand, “You shouldn’t have disappeared like that, though.”

You roll away. Groaning, you grab at your stomach with one hand, and your chest with
the other. “You,” You strain, wincing away as if you’re trying to escape, “You were never
supposed to see me like this.” You speak through the tight grip of your teeth, and when I try to
touch you you jerk away. Sharply, you retreated to the very end of the corner of the room. Groans
turned to whimpers, and finally with nowhere left to run, you soften.

“Am I becoming less relatable? I feel like there’s a space that grows when I turn from the
part of myself that wants to please. I’m more myself, and farther from you than ever. Does that
make sense? And it’s nothing to do with the lonely moments, even in the lonely moments I still
care. It’s a feeling, something like the cloud of a mental illness I’ve yet to find a name for, and it
comes when you’re right here. It’s when you’re at your closest, and sometimes I think it’s worse
whenever you’re happy.”

JACK: The city is literally fading all around us. Smoke pours in from the mountains,
Mount Baker has long since disappeared from view and with each new day, new closer
mountains vanish as the dark gray comes to find us. It’ll snuff you out, the force of toxic air
when carried by the wind. There’s nowhere to go, nobody to cry to when your tears are choked
back inside of your poisoned throat.

I remember seeing you from a distance walking along the train tracks at the point where
the beach turns to the coastline, and before both give way to the cliffs. Your head was down,
shoulders melting in towards the path you walked. There are fire pits as the cliffs grow steeper in
the direction you’re walking. Your hands shoved deep into your pockets, and you didn’t look up.
Both of us could hear the sound of a bonfire raging just beyond the crest of the nearest beachside
ridge.

Then, a sheet of smoke passes as the wind shifts. Your image is obscured, fading into the
gray that encroaches from the outskirts of our world, our shared Bellingham is disappearing right
in step with my obscuring view of your walk. The last I see of you, Julia, your hair flicks back
when your gaze comes up from your shoes. You smile, and the bonfire illuminates your face
from just beyond the point that I can see. Someone speaks and you nod, your walk is slowing but
you never seem to be considering a stop. You’re about to disappear into both the thicker smoke
and the edge of the ridge, and I break into a run down the beach. Approaching you, I sprint to
keep your body in view. You look for a moment, I see you seeing me, but someone speaks from
the fire and you turn away. Step forward, your smiling face turns to the smoke and the
impenetrable structure that’s standing between the two of us.

And everything is darker when I turn, ripping myself from the sight of the firelight. No
step is an accident, and I haven’t said a word to stop yours. Never have, and apparently I never
will.

JULIA: Harper came by on my first day temporarily back in town. Equal in her welcome
and her warning, she floated around inspecting my space for changes, signs of my turn towards
the void. She showed up with a basket: fruit and an old hat, cheese and a pair of my panties.
They were white ones, I’d bought them specifically for you to see. There was white wine and a
toothbrush, cured meats and a photograph. You never were any good at throwing things away.
And more than the leaving, more than the absence and the memory, even more than the
fade of the memories, that basket hurt the most. Objects are concrete things, and to see them
carried away from your eyeline—well, something unemotional, something irrevocable, had
changed.

Harper uncorked the bottle and offered a glass that she knew I’d accept. “He’s a wreck,
since you disappeared,” She said, drinking equally for what I thought was the sake of her own
pain, “You do know that, don’t you?”

“I’m sorry,” I sip and give the glass back for a refill. “For you,” I reiterate, “I really am.”

“It’s simple; being a first love. I’m sorry too, just in case I haven’t said that yet.”

“You have.”

Harper bounced herself up from the counter and paced, inspecting the untouched corners
of my kitchen. Like a pretend intellectual in the Smithsonian, she stopped in shock and deep
study when she got to my prayer rug. She sighed, “You had your young-ness. You and him, with
nothing to focus on except one another.” There’s a long pause, and another long sigh, “You don’t
have to apologize to me, I’ve caught some cowgirl’s disease. Forever and ever stepping
away—I’m nothing to worry about, no one to apologize to.”

Tim Donahue was born in Kenmore, Washington in 2001. He began his writing career at Western Washington University in 2023 when he released his debut novel, “The James Gang” with Central Park South Publishing on June 2nd of that year. He is a recipient of the Emerson Community Writing Scholarship, and his short works have been published in 45th Parallel Literary Magazine, Gekker Publishing, Half and One, Jeopardy Magazine, and many more.