I still don’t know how it happened. At first, it was 4 a.m. and I was sitting at the dining room table, trying to focus on reading through his manuscript. Then we were on the couch. I was sitting on the edge, listening to him tell me things about his past he never intended for me to hear as his head rested on my breast, his body prone on the couch, next to me.
Every so often as we talked that night, he would get up to pour together more vodka mixed with red bull, to dull the pain from a shattered wrist reconstructed just that morning. He offered to pour me something, but I declined, planning on leaving him soon to go sleep for the first time in days.
Instead, I poured myself water as he continued to talk, unable to walk away. It must have seemed a complicated dance that moved us from our positions a room apart, to our drinks, to separate chairs, to more drinks, to the facing pieces of furniture, and then finally onto one couch, next to each other.
He told me then that he could feel my heart beat, so very fast. It must have beat faster as I wondered if he could tell, if he knew, that since that last time I had seen him over a year before, I couldn’t let the thought of him go. I told him that it was a side effect of having had alcohol a few hours earlier as his father welcomed me to their home after not having slept.
I remember us kissing. He was playing and I probably held my breath, worried as I competed with a history of women I could never compare to, though all I had wanted to do was comfort him. I knew pain, persistent physical pain that cannot be driven out with talk or alcohol or sleep or anything, and thought maybe, somehow, not leaving him there alone would help.
But his good arm came around me and he lifted me off the couch, onto the loveseat, flipping our positions. He had so much more experience, and I froze at his questions, asking me about my history, wanting to be special to me in that one moment, unique, a first. I tried to give him what he needed, to distract him from the pain, but he needed too much.
For what turned out to be hours we switched positions, never letting each other go, following an unusual pattern of placements, orchestrated by one or both or neither of us, and shedding clothing in the process. I worried his father would wake and hear us, using that as an excuse not to go too far. He tried to convince me to give it a try, using his fighter’s force as he grew more frustrated, and I realized I wasn’t special, then. The more he wanted, the less he could speak, and his usual charm and his understanding fell behind his need and his force.
I twisted away, unthinking, crushing his hand beneath the fresh cast, and reminding him of the only part of this I understood. The pain.
I tried to distract him then, to draw him back into the world of sensuality that was his, but I still couldn’t step far enough in myself to lead him back.
He pushed away and dressed to go outside and smoke, and I noticed the sun’s rays filtering into the room where I had overstepped the bounds of hospitality. I held him in my heart still then, and he could see something in my eyes clearly enough to tell me not to worry as he tried to breathe tobacco through the pain.
We commented on the light neither of us had noticed before, and he tried again to stay strong and send me off. I knew concern wasn’t what he needed, so I finally left him, seeking the sanctuary of sleep, upstairs, away.
Hours later I saw him back in front of the computer on the dining room table, and we talked as if nothing had happened.
We still talk sometimes, separated by continents, and I find myself wishing at times he would kiss me again. But then I remember the weight of his arm, on the back of my neck, pushing me down. I remind myself that he was drunk, out of his mind with the pain, anything to excuse him for a night that he’ll never remember and that I’m not sure I’ll ever forget.
|
Submission Name: One night
