part one mug dream
it's new year's day, early morning, like maybe 5 am.
she lies awake next to him, thinking about how it all began

into next chapter of how she got fat.

leads into next chapter, when she told him she loved him for the first time.

next chapter partially written -- postparty sex in pool then she has a couple more beers and is drunk, calls a friend at 4 am and is incredibly rude. he comes out of the shower and gets very angry, grabs the phone and throws it, pins her to the floor screaming at her, she's fighting, let me go, let me go, he slaps her, they're both horrified. she cries, he cries, they rock each other to sleep. maybe two chapters here.

she has a nightmare that night, wakes up sweating, tells him about the time her stepmother beat her up and broke her radio into tiny pieces

next chapter is just kinda happy vignettes, she meets his mom, they're in a record store and he investigates the button-fly of her jeans under cover of the alternative racks, the time they go to a children's movie and she gives him a hand job in a dark theater full of screaming kids, the cheesy christmas stocking with his name on it in glitter, all these little happy things leading up to new year's eve.

nye -- they have a fight about whether to go to parties, she goes off with an exlover to check out several but goes back to his place at midnight with a split of champagne and two glasses, sneaks into the bedroom (he's reading, has music on really loud), they celebrate. she goes back to party for a bit (everyone asks why she's glowing), then home, they walk to a restaurant a mile away for coffee and pancakes, then walk home and sleep. he asks her to move in with him.

part two opens with the dream about being dead -- upshot is that being dead was cool cause nothing left to fear

next chapter: they come home from a party, she's drunk and being mean to him, you don't love me, he gets mad and chokes her. build things up more, maybe her flirting at the party (it's about march by now). after the choking, after they're both horrified again, she tells him about how she's scared of alcohol, and she explains about the whole time her stepmother found out she had been drinking and gave her some drugs and then made her drink and how the alcohol made her really really sick and so she mostly doesn't drink. but she does.

next chapter: distance increases, they're more unhappy. she comes home from work, how do you do scene in here, perfect. sits on counter watching him make dinner like she has a zillion times before but there's just something missing. he says he doesn't see it, though, and she's frustrated. she knows some of it's due to her being weird and thinks of when as a little kid running this drawing along a brick wall as she walked and it made a hole from the friction and when she realized what she'd done, she was devastated but nothing could be done.

she's at a party.. she's tired and unhappy and there's an old ex-rival (beli) annoying her and she's just tired of it all. wants to go home and finds a friend to give her a ride, figuring that he must have left already, but she lets herself into an empty house.

next chapter: he comes home, she's reading, she says facetiously, what, were you fucking beli or something? he gets very quiet. he was. in a closet. at the party, huge violent fight, she threatens suicide, she scratches, slaps, he just takes it. she packs a bag, moves out

next chapter: they talk, she agrees to date him, they try again. it looks like it might work. this chapter will be about the acid trip

next: the day her father disowned her.

next chapter: things continue to be strange. she no longer feels at home in his bed. they have weird sex but it doesn't feel like love to her. sadness

next chapter: being tracked down by the long distance operator and told her stepmother's died. everything goes weird. she has to re-evaluate things. she decides to close the door on her father and realizes that she has to close the door on her boyfriend too. "we loved each other too much and ourselves not enough." pain, out walking, buzzed, guy offers her a ride if he can feel her breasts.

next chapter: she asks him out to dinner, they meet at the restaurant where they had breakfast on new year's.

part 3 the snake dream.
it's a year later, she gets on the bus and he's there. she sits next to them, banal conversation, interior monologue "why did i love him? he means nothing to me now" she gets off the bus, refreshed, and goes to have an ice-cream cone.