Written for the red dress club. Topic: write about sex without writing about the actual act. Because you always want to leave a little to the imagination.
“What is it that you said that one night, that you care about me. What the fuck was that?” Her body slides down the wall and she lands on his cold wooden floors.
She brings her knees to her chest, bows her head down and sobs.
He pushes the wooden chair out of the way, leans against the wall and slides down with her. Stretches his long legs under the table and closes his eyes.
They sit there, for what seems like hours, like eternity passing. She cries and whimpers. “Can I have a tissue?” she finally asks.
He gets up, knees cracking. Walks to the bathroom, pulls from the toilet paper roll and rips off the sheets. He stands at her feet, their toes touching. She looks up. Her face red, swollen, the tears crusted to cheeks, her nose running down into her lips. She’s so beautiful, he thinks. She takes the tissue, “more please.”
He hands her the tissue, still standing. She pulls herself up and walks to her purse on the floor and pulls out her cigarette and lighter. Tosses the Kleenex in the trash, opens the back door and breathes the fresh air. She quivers.
He watches her. His phone vibrates. He reaches his long arms into his jeans. Looks at the screen, the name flashing on the screen, the vibration in his palm. Puts it back in his pocket and walks into the kitchen.
He sees her back through the window. The sun is reflecting off her dark hair and he can see the specks of red throughout it. Sees the way a slight wave occurs at the nape of her neck and some hairs go in and some go out. Her tan shoulders shake, she inhales and exhales.
“Do you want something to drink?”
She turns, her green eyes rimmed with tears, her face and chest splotchy and red. “Some water, please” the tears slip off her eyes and glide down her cheeks. One stays stuck at the edge, desperately clinging to the skin, not wanting to fall.
He turns and opens the refrigerator. His mind completely blank. His fingertips cold. He walks the water out to her, leaning against the door to keep it open.
“Thank you,” she says.
He looks at her. He knows he needs to say something. He knows it’s his cue, but he just watches her. The tear is still on her cheek.
“I guess I should probably go,” she says.
She walks past him. Places her dirty glass next to the multitude on the counter, next to the bottles of beer and wine. She wants to stay and clean. She walks into his bedroom. Sits upon his bed and reaches out for her shoes. Steadying herself in her high heels, in last night’s clothes. She scans the room for whatever small reminders of her may linger, her scent on his sheets, the indent of her head on the pillow. She stands in the doorway.
“You’re just going to let me leave aren’t you?”
He looks up at her. His eyes run from her face down to her body past the waist he held, the legs he spread, onto the floor. “We knew this could never be anything else.” He finally says.
“But there was always a chance, that’s what you can’t seem to understand.” She wipes the dangling tear off her face and it absorbs into her fingertips.
Silence covers the room. Light flickers through the blinds. At an impasse neither of them speaks. Their breaths align.
