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He wakes to quiet and darkness. Hours before sunrise, moonlight trembling across exposed curves of flesh, jolted awake by nothing more than the sheer novelty of having fallen asleep in her arms. The sharp plummet from sleep to wakefulness, made gentler by the give of soft flesh beside you, beneath you.
His fingers sleepwalk their way along her spine, from the small of her back to the nape of her neck. Tiny touches, slowed to a crawl by lethargy. If words didn't threaten to displace this peaceful, weightless silence, he'd tell her he loves her - as it is, he settles for resting a kiss on her right shoulder, next to the tiny birthmark that resides there. Stunned silent by the sheer wonder of having her in his arms. By his uncharacteristic desire to lay claim to her.
To proclaim her his, and his alone.
She murmurs incoherently in response to his fingertips, rolling over to nestle into his chest. Pressed against his heartbeat, her own automatically adjusts to take up its rhythm - the ease of familiarity, even in half-sleep. What the brain hopes to forget, the body never will.
Finally, she blinks blearily, those inky black eyes of hers shining violet in the darkness. "It's not morning yet." Accusation, disguised as childlike petulance.
He chuckles deep in his chest, drowsy enough to miss the tension gathering in her lower back. Even as his fingers sweep over the arches of her body, his distracted rapture throws them out of sync. "No, sweetheart. It's not." One hand finds the base of her neck, beneath her curls; the other presses against her spine. He can feel her little bones beneath his fingers, the steady rush of blood just beneath her skin. She smells like sex, like soap and liquor. Feels like laughter and lightning in his arms. Her every breath as familiar to him as his own. But as sleep's warm anesthetic wears off, he slowly remembers how illusory their domestic simplicity is. How little of their interaction is love anymore; how much of it pure force of habit.
Whatever soundtrack he'd given their life, it's now been replaced by her last night's confession -- that stumbling, only vaguely remorseful admission of guilt. Last night, he'd been sure he could forgive her every sin; this morning, he isn't even sure she wants him to.
For her part, she's silent now, unable to recall the part of love that's more than flesh. With his hands against her skin, she fully recognizes her own restless discomfort. And, as if she were immune to grief, love, and all those transient passions, she shifts away from him. A quarter of an inch, if that, but enough to cut her loose on the world.
"We were happy, weren't we." It isn't so much a question as it is a plea. Our memories are the same, aren't they?
"Of course, sweetheart. But happy's boring."
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"Dear you. I know it's been awhile since we last talked. My humblest etceteras. Coffee, to make it up to you?The usual spot, the usual time. Love, me."
On its fifth replay, she finds the message no less confusing than the first. In fact, with each looped playback she's washed further from the shores of sanity - first through last, some new digitized detail emerging from the embers of her memory. His affectionate inflections, the familiarity of his colloquialisms. By the seventh time through, she stalls repeatedly on the message's end: did that 'love' carry the same weight it once did, or is she imagining things that aren't there?
She could just pretend to have never gotten the message. Reject his peace offering in silence and avoid whatever he has planned by way of 'making it up to her'. There's an appealing simplicity to avoidance, and ignorance; he can't hold her accountable, if she doesn't know. But even as she weighs the option, she knows it isn't one. While he's moved on to his happily ever after - with his little Energizer Slutbunny - she's no further away from him than she's ever been. Still stuck analyzing the significance of his proposed meeting place, and time: nostalgic recreation, or pointed subtext? How much was he trying to say?
A few hours later - and a few minutes late, so as not to seem overeager - she calmly strolls into the coffee shop. Dressed in a reasonable facsimile of his favourite outfit - a replication of style moreso than a true faith to his preferred view of her. An update, upgrade - still the woman you loved, but better. Determined to look him square in the eye and, for once, not flinch.
But as she makes her way to their usual table, familiarity tugs at the hem of her skirt. Closes its fingers around hers and yanks her in every direction at once. She's unprepared for this, for the fall to remembering. Most of all, she's unprepared for the depth of color in his eyes.
"Hey, you."
Oh, his voice. A different experience entirely, without the static hum of digital playback. Concentrated, meant for her ears alone. "Hey, you."
They exchange stilted pleasantries as he hands her a coffee - the ratio of sugar to cream to coffee, as always, just as she likes it. How many mornings had they spent like this? How many afternoons? How many lifetimes?
After a heartbeat or two of silence, she rests her chin in her hand and taps her fingers against her coffee cup. Decides to seek empowerment by way of straightforward accusation. "So. To what do I owe the pleasure?" Of your company. Your attentions. Of eye contact, and the bump of your knee against mine.
"We're sorry, you know." As if singular pronouns no longer applied. She bites down on a vindictive retort and just nods sagely, waiting for him to continue. She's curious to know if he realizes what he should be sorry for. "This isn't really how we wanted it to turn out."
Again, that we. She's suddenly struck with the image of their tête-à-têtes; foreheads pressed together while they plotted their happily ever after at her expense. She grants that this might be unfair, but the fact remains. For all his apologies - and her apologies, by extension - he's still looking at her like a complete stranger. "Sorry?" She hopes the words come out with the right amount of detached venom in them; she's aiming for distant, bemused sarcasm but is quite sure of failing miserably. "And I suppose this is where I forgive you?"
From the quick raise of his eyebrow, he doesn't miss the slight lean she places on 'you'. Purposely, if subtly, disregarding the third party in their cruel orbit of one another. "Of course, you don't have to," he allows. "I just assumed you'd rather be civil than not. After all this time. I mean, we should be capable."
After all this time. Shared secrets, and heartbreaks. Enough time to be considered shared history. It strikes her that she's unsure of life without him only because she can barely remember life before him. And because she can't fathom their quick downshift: from domestic bliss, to his lips pressed against another woman's bare stomach. How quickly could you fall out of love? Fall in love again?
And why?
"You cheated on me." It's all she can think to say, words plucked from the white noise of blood in her head. She didn't mean to bring it up, nor did she mean for the words to be accompanied by a rather vivid mental picture of fingers and tongue and teeth. But there it is: essentially, the deal-breaker. Whatever salvation he was after, how does you expect me to look past that?
"I did, yes." At least he pays her the courtesy of ducking his head. Shamed, but not entirely regretful. It occurs to her, for the first time, that he's happy. Without her. The thought had crossed her mind from time-to-time, but had never held any truth value. She'd always assumed he'd thrown away forever for the predictable, obvious appeal of sex and heat - she'd seen this woman. You didn't fall in love with woman like that. "But not for the mere fun of it." An important distinction, in his eyes.
She wants to say she never believed him, that she only wanted to. That she'd known better, when he'd whispered 'I love you' and slipped inside her. She wants to wish away those nights they'd fallen asleep next to one another, those long car rides home, her head on his shoulder. To burn the snapshots from her retinas; steering wheels and headlights, you and me under those same stars.
More importantly, she wants to know when. When loving her turned into that lesser artistic representation he always strove to avoid. In the end, when you pressed your hands against my flesh, did you even see me or the woman you wished I was?
And why. Always, why. Why he'd pulled her through the loops and verses of everyday living, knowing he'd already replaced her in every way but one. I couldn't have loved you better.
As if he knows she's gone rather suddenly blank, he rushes to her rescue. In some dim, distant part of her brain, she's grateful that he's still capable of reading her mind, her cues. Even if he's forsaken the right to do so. "It wasn't you. You didn't do anything wrong. I didn't stop, and I didn't go looking. It happened, and I made a choice."
The right choice. She doesn't need to read his mind to hear the unspoken words. Whatever vestige of love he has left for her, entirely eclipsed by the woman who'd stolen him away. What do you do with love like that?
You let it go.
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She's an evanescent creature of myth; feline hips, hollow bones of a bird, borne to flight by the sheer force of charm and innocence and sex appeal. Tinkerbell, in Peter's palm. The eternally ephemeral allure of child-like innocence, even as it shatters under Life's insistent fingers. She is innocence ravaged by its antithesis, and he loves her for that very reason.
That, and the sharpness of her mind. The effortless music in her laughter. The way her dark eyes reflect light of every color, somehow clear violet in the early hours of morning. The way she holds a whiskey glass, even. But everything he loves her for can't quite erase the memory of everything he left behind to have her. Sacrifice, sobering in its permanence.
"Mm, 'morning." She stretches the word out over three syllables, arching her body to combat the lingering lethargy of sleep. Sunlight trembles across the exposed curves of her flesh - one of life's few, breathtaking postcard moments. Watching over her, he's certain of the choices he's made. Certain he loves her.
And yet.
"'morning, sweetheart." He makes his way over to the bed and lays a kiss on her forehead. Straightens up, thinks twice of it, bends again to press a second kiss against the hollow of her throat. Her immediacy - the heat of her skin, the flutter of her pulse, the sheer vibrancy of her - all that he loves her for, no matter his frustration.
But even a necessary hour's separation from her finds him in a neighborhood more efficiently lonely than the one it replaced. Not regret, that gives him pause, but doubt. Dislocation. The deserted, empirical dark turns their domestic bliss into a tender little playact - she's his low-grade thrill at being alive, but at a risk he can't help but resent her for. Her artistic whims threaten to cripple every plan he's ever made.
"What're you up to today?" One final stretch, and she pulls herself into an upright position, bedsheets tucked around her body. She's heat and madness, all the immediacy of experience compressed into corporeality.
"Meetings, mostly." He adjusts his tie, fixing her with a look. "You'll get out of bed eventually, I trust?"
She lifts her eyes to meet his, Desire's maiden. Those sparrow wings of hers, broken by the accusation. "Well, no. I was thinking about wasting the day away in bed. Catch up on my soaps. Have sex with the mailman. Same as usual." Pointedly aligning the more plausible first option with the impossible latter - whatever her flaws, infidelity not one of them.
"Sorry, love." He spares her only a second's glance, too busy for apologies. "Didn't mean it that way."
"Yes, you did," she says, her eyes taunting him. From frustrated hurt to quiet rage in a single breath. "But that's fine." She lets the bedsheet fall and unfolds herself from the bed, sleep-mussed curls tumbling around her shoulders. Shrugs into one of his shirts. Stretches once again, then shoots him a look.
"What?" He can't keep the exasperation from his voice; his highly evolved organs of rationalization never could quite cope with the manic asymmetry of her animal fight or flight.
"Nothing!" She singsongs the word, making a neat little pirouette towards the bathroom. Pauses, with her fingers poised to do up the shirt's buttons, and casts a look over her shoulder. "You know. Give me twenty minutes and I'll get that tension out of your shoulders."
He laughs despite himself, not quite catching her fugitive, pleading look. Sex, she knows. Heat and touch and the salty taste of his skin under her tongue. She lives in exile - whatever world he feels expelled from, in having chosen her, she'd never belonged there. "Twenty minutes and I'll be late for work, lover."
She exhales, a heavy sigh directed heavenward. There's a restlessness to her that he's never been able to tame - some internal timepiece that always begged for just one more hour of music. Of laughter. Of love and sex and drink and that free-spirited artist's dance that kept her feet moving well into the night. "Call in sick. We'll go somewhere. Get a room. Spend a few hours in sin."
That, at least, catches his attention. He knows he's never settled her, not since those days when hibernation was a viable option. And the blatant reminder of that stuns him into momentary silence.
But he rewards her cruel ploys with brutal calm. "I've got some vacation time coming up. All the sin you want, without the unemployment as a consequence."
They know how to hurt each other - the slightest lean into "unemployment" and those graceful shoulders of hers visibly tense. If she'd wanted to delay him for carnal impulse's sake, now another instinct demanded she keep him here. Keep him here, and even the score. "Well. Let me know when you can schedule me in, then."
But he's never played pawn to her capricious tendencies. Some endless reserve of patience negated her careening emotions - she would always land, snuggled in his arms, ready to make peace again eventually. He'd just have to wait her out. "By the way. I've got meetings straight through 'til evening, so I might be late for dinner."
She murmurs an acknowledgment; defensive, compact. That tiny body of hers folding in on itself. "I'll wait for you, then." Despite her rages, her restless discontent, she loves this man. And all it takes to remind her of that is the thought of dinner without him.
He chuckles softly, recognizing the implicit declaration of adoration as a peace offering. Whatever their fundamental differences, he knows her. Loves her, at the end of the day. At the beginning of the day. Every moment in between. He wavers, keys in hand, then gives in to saying, "Well. I suppose twenty minutes won't hurt anything."
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that morning,
we woke to the purest silence -
silence so wide it struck us blind;
darkness so deep even touch couldn't save us-
and we lay still
in that place beyond sound.
memories, repressed.
compressed from fluidity
into undeniability -
until silence was all we knew to say.
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Softly now.
He tells her, while she sleeps,
of the vulgar intimacy of fingers
against soft flesh.
Whispers the approximation of touch:
with surgical precision, the shattering foreplay
of his thumb against the fleshy insides
of her thighs.
While she only fakes anesthesia,
he narrates the blinding clarities
of memories -
and all the things he'd do to her,
given half the chance.
Their reeling, psychotic, loving, lurid intimacies
reduced to silent, invisible, painstaking desire;
mutual gravitational pull,
of the unfulfilled kind.
Softly now.
He tells her, while she sleeps,
of the self-conscious desire
sex never strives to free itself from -
and of the limbo they'd condemned themselves to
for the time being.
His whispers
against the concavity of her spine,
curve of her hips -
fingers, tongue and teeth -
the words that close the distance,
or would.
If they could.
In those waking dreams -
primal, convulsive -
the specificity of memory makes good
on every promise he makes.
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