Truthiness, Pt. I

So how fictitious does a story need to be in order to be a work of fiction? How much truth must be present in it to give one pause? When is the "This work is a work of fiction and all names, characters and places are unrelated to persons living or dead" sentence necessary, and when is it a load of bullshit? Do we ever really know when fact ceases to exist and something just is? Do we ever really know?

The whole thing would be perfect she decided, if a few things were different. If there were fewer drugs, or at least more clarity on the ones that were there, and where exactly, it was that they were, and hell, what they were. It would be perfect if it there was less procrastination and more dedication and yet, somehow those things didn't matter, not really, because they hadn't yet affected her. But they probably would, at some point down the road, at some point when it mattered and was too late and she had already fallen too hard to get back up again without help.
The whole thing would be perfect if it was easier, but these things never are, and she didn't really want it to be easier anyway, not really. It already felt good and right, and really, if it were any different, then it would be something else, and not this amazing, crazy and wild adventure that it was becoming.
And isn't that exactly what she had been looking for? An adventure? A story? Isn't that what she was always looking for?

She met Jake at a Christmas party. He was wearing jeans and a blue sweater and when they hugged at the end of the night, she could feel the muscles in his back through the soft, worn fabric. Stephan, the host of the party, her boyfriend, and the person responsible for the introduction, didn't have muscles in his back. Or anywhere, really. Later that night, she would think about those muscles as she was hoping that Stephan would come, already, and pass out, so she could just finish herself off and go to sleep too. She would think about those muscles and Jake and that cold night for a few days after the fact, but then, like the alcohol and the year, and the relationship with Stephan, it would all fade into the background.

She had fallen for Stephan out of the blue, against her will even, because of his wit and intelligence. She had known him through a work project and didn't like him when they first met, but he wooed her with poetry and she gave it a shot. Even then though, things had always been "off" between the two of them, and for all the attention she paid to his career and his interests, only a understanding the poetry and cooking she enjoyed was ever mentioned, and then, just barely. So when Stephan had introduced her to Jake and left to get them drinks, it only mildly surprised her that they had been childhood friends. It was the same reason, Stephan had told her, he wanted to date her. Jake was fun and laid back and made those around him feel good. Everyone needed a guy like that in his life. Jake shook things up, and did so with an alarmingly easy smile and sense of humor about it all.

"And by the time the Dutch border guard, the one in charge, came and stopped the interrogation, they had already cut through my passport and lifted up the picture. I guess they thought I was someone else."
Jake was telling a story of daring and intrigue about his European travels, and Mila was hanging on every word, stunned. The man was gorgeous and funny, and he knew how to tell a story. It made her feel warm inside, drunk on the idea of a man with such stories and how to get them all out of him, preferably as his only audience. And in the dark. If he knew how to tell stories like this, already, well then, that meant that he knew how to live life and find the stories worth telling now and in the future. And he knew how to share them with others. Perhaps it meant that there would be room in his life for more, and possibly for a companion storyteller to work with. That was one thing she had room in her life for and would happily accommodate.

"Oh, the old border-crossing story again?" asked Stephan, approaching on quiet, oiled steps. It was his tactless manner of attack in turning the focus back to himself. He was awkward in some social situations, namely the ones in which Mila found herself entertained by other men while he floated off and played diplomat. Seeing her interest in Jake (was the internal blush spreading through her body beaming on the outside too?), he produced a cranberry vodka drink with a smile, like a five-year-old bearing fruits of scribbled crayon labor.
"He's told that story over and over since it happened. Years ago." His shoulders held upright, tight and square, Stephan seemed stiff and out of place next to the two new friends conversing in the corner. Mila eyed him, wary of the meaning bound up in that, weary of trying to see through the self-deprecating humor and trial balloons floated to save face.
"Well, I've never heard it. And I like hearing stories like this. It makes my life seem less crazy." She stood up for Jake as she would have anyone else that Stephan shot down, but while looking at Jake, she delivered a clincher reserved for those she truly wanted to pull away and save for herself.
"It makes my life seem less crazy," she said, lowering mouth to drink and eyes to floor before peeling them across Jake's body, " but no no less interesting or unique."
The look could melt ice through a coating of the finest Scotch from a room away, and if the recipient could meet it, she knew she'd found a worthy opponent.
She almost never got the look back.
"Unique, huh?" asked Jake, brown eyes flashing soft and gold in the haze of the bar. "Seems like you've got a pretty interesting life. You should tell me more about it sometime." He held her gaze just long enough to secure a silent confirmation, then turned to Stephan, pulled him to the bar for more drinks and the chat they hadn't had since arriving to the bar.

Mila had grown up on the road, and it made for an interesting life to say the least. Her father's job as a bounty hunter had taken the family all over the world, and she had cultivated her sense of freedom and spontaneity under her father's watchful and encouraging eye. Her mother, a fiery Chilean, had fallen for her dad as a student protester picketing labor rights (or lack thereof) in the 70s, and Mila was the product of a long-distance love realized and given time to flourish.
Summers in Chile, midnight sunrises along the Alaskan coast, deep-sea diving along the Yucatan Peninsula had cut her teeth for travel at a young age, and now, as an adult, she found it hard to stay in one place for very long. She was always happier when she was somewhere else, and existing as part of the mainstream bored her to no end. Growing up as she had ruined her for "real life," and at 28 she had refused to settle in to the monochrome permanence of white picket fences and matching silver napkin rings her friends had fallen into. Her mother encouraged her to find a nice boy and settle down; "I pray for you, Mila, that he is the best man for your children and the best man for you," she said when they spoke on the phone. "You will find him, ojala, when the time is right. But I pray this for you everyday."
Her mom had settled down in Montana with her gringo husband before having Mila as the 70s drew to a close, and now, during those same phone calls, she would remind Mila that the "craziness" of her life had passed, as it would for Mila someday too. She would smile quietly, thankful her mom couldn't see her, and nod her head, knowing that the "craziness" would always be a part of her life. It defined her, more than any job or title or man or inflammatory gaze. Those prayer, thus far unanswered, were always in the back of Mila's mind as she went out on dates, slept with new men (always in their beds, never hers, Never.), and looked in other places for who she was. She felt no need to settle down, or simply settle, just yet, but she found that as her friends did so and she remained free and open to life, her stories meant less to those who no longer understood them or had room to understand them. She wanted someone to share her life with (who doesn't?), but she had yet to find the person who could match her, word for word in action and intensity. If craziness defined her and was her story, more than anything else, she knew she needed to find someone as alive with it as she was. In a word, Mila was picky.

Stephan laughed loud and deeply from the bar, rousing her attention and making her smile. It was true that she enjoyed his company and his wit, but she knew that long-term, it would never work between them. He didn't understand her as person on a fundamental level, and because of that, more than anything else, she had considered breaking things off in November, after her hometown dentist advised her against any and all dealings with the government.
Doc Capshaw was a big bear of a man, an old militiaman from year back, and as he delicately cleaned her teeth with this fence post fingers, she thought about his words and their sincerity.
"You say you can't trust this guy. I've never met a bureaucrat I could trust, and I think you already know in your heart how this will end."
Her issue with trusting him was not disapproving of things he had done before her, or would continue to do while with her, it was that he just boxed up his feelings and didn't tell her when he was going to do something he thought she'd disapprove of.
"Have some balls and just tell me the eyeliner stick I found belonged to someone who was here while I was home, not that you found it in the kitchen drawer when looking for a pen... I'm not a fuckin' fool," she had said to him one morning upon snapping a wooden, brown eyeliner pencil with her heel. "I don't use brown eyeliner."
She had returned to Pittsburg's bleak winter landscape with a sinking, metallic feeling in her stomach, knowing that she couldn't trust Stephan, and this had happened, so she was done already by Christmas. But he kept telling her how much he was looking forward to his birthday and having her there, adding each time how miserable last year's birthday had been.
"Twenty-nine was terrible, so 30 can't be much worse, even if it is 30," he'd say. "Not as long as I have you." The guilt hung over her in frosty layers like pale, flavorless ribbons of confectionery.

The birthday came and went, and had been miserable for Mila, but good for him. One taken for the team, as they say. But now, with Jake's electric presence humming around her, she understood why it had all happened as it did. Stephan, without knowing it, had repaid the favor of birthday happiness with the best present yet. That of his friend Jake.
She didn't know it then, when they met, or a week later, as the calendar ended and took her 28th year with it, but meeting Jake was a story all it's own. Bold, underlined, italicized. (more to come, this isn't the end)