by Tabitha Vohn
***
“So what’d ya think of Tim and Chessa?” he asked as they were driving back to the house.
“They were lovely,” she replied.
“What’d you all talk about for so long?”
“This and that. What went on with you and James?” She sounded hesitant as she asked.
“Whatta you mean?” he replied.
“It sounded like you guys got into it. At the studio.”
“It was nothin’,” he said, a closed door.
“James seemed not himself today,” she remarked, running her finger over the window seal.
“Yeah.”
They watched as the concrete streets gave way to open fields, kissed with gold, and the oranges glistened in the trees like iridescent suns, and shivered as the winds blew in from the sea. The sky was a cloudless blue, the kind of blue that’d break your heart and remind you of childhoods spent on old porch swings, of wishing well buckets nestled on rusty hinges, casting shadows across the grass and the white rose bushes that whispered prick your finger and the petal will fall and the beast will love you, will break his heart for you.
The iron gate folded open at the chauffer’s command, and their car sauntered back the paved road through the green woods and the cavernous hills that were his sanctuary. But today, they were prison doors swung shut, and her heart suffocated at the thought of being in the house alone with him tonight, beating against the walls of all she wanted.
Her resolve was as fragile as crepe paper, bleeding its color, its one beauty. He reached over and took her hand. She didn’t pull away, but wanted to. The distance between them was a phantom chasm, and endless precipice of wanting.
“I think I’m going to go for a walk. I need it,” she said.
“Sure. Want me to come with you?”
She could hear a hint of something-was it worry?- behind the softness of his voice. It tugged at her heart.
“No,” she said, less distantly. “You have work to do. I’ll be fine.”
The car had stopped. She kissed his cheek and turned to go.
Suddenly, he put his hands on her face, his fingers tangling in her hair, and brought her to him. It was so rare that they kissed anymore. It was just too painful to pull away, to stop; like being offered a few drops of water in a sun-blistered heat, and then having the bottle dangled in front of you, its possessor mocking you, you weakling, you chicken shit. And it was always, and it would always be, her, pulling away and dying of thirst.
His tongue seeped into her veins like heroin, bringing her instantaneous ache, heavy as scalding pain. His moan hummed in her ear and their gasps reverberated through the air in a vast echo against the leather seats. And, for just a moment, she heard his words, reflected back in her memory, and she agreed, just for a few moments: fuck it.
Her hands found the places they had been craving. She tore at the collar of his coat, pushed him back against the seats with all the anger and aggression that simmered beneath her skin, her soft facade. She glided over top of him, wrapping her legs around his waist as she had done those long lifetimes ago, pressing her hips against his in waves, her skin shocked at the stone pressure that greeted her there. She ran her hands over his hands- touching her- ran them down the length of him, taking his hair in her fists and banging his head back against the seat to tear at the rough flesh of his neck. Her breath rushed hot against his ear and she ran her mouth over it. Her lips found his again as she brushed her whole body against him, her breasts sliding up his ribs, his chest, wanting to forget, wanting to sink inside him and meld herself into him and be his.
He clung to her as one possessed or caught in a storm, so sudden and disorienting that he had no time to process or think of a reaction. This was a dream, he had had it before, but never awake. This could not be her, rushing over him like flood water. His head pounded with blood and electric tendrils shook his legs and arms. This was not his sweet girl; this was that phantom that had stolen her body and possessed him once, on a club stage in some nowhere city. This was more than he ever imagined hidden beneath her quiet, still surface.
When she ran her fingernails up his thighs he lost all consciousness and pulled her under him. He locked his hands around her hipbones and pressed her up to him. He treaded the crests of her breasts beneath her sweater with his mouth while her arms and legs encircled him, entangling him in the delicate web of her. His long fingers bore their way into her, and she flexed and curved around him like the soft, succulent insides of a plum, dark and warm and heavenly.
Her cry was like music.
The pain pressing inside threatened to break him. Just as he pushed apart her legs, running his hands over them like a precious treasure, she bolted upright, as if struck by a horrible thought.
“Ah, shit,” he gasped. “What’d I do? What’d I do,” he asked, grasping desperately at her face, trying to get her to look at him. She was grabbing at her clothes like she was covered with worms, smoothing them down, brushing away this madness that she had been lost in and pushing away from him, out of the car.
“Wait. Wait. Wait.” he said, his worry swiftly giving away to frustration, to soft-kindling rage.
“Stop!”
She met his eyes then, and for a moment there was only him and her and the sound of their breath. Calmly, she took his hands in hers, removed them from her face, and placed them in his lap. He heard the sound of the car handle’s click as she turned it, the rustle of the upholstery as her frame passed over it, out and away, leaving him behind with the resounding close of the door. He watched the silhouette of her running away, down through the forest to the sea-spot which she loved, the one that harbored a little ocean cove with a grassy roof that smelled of salt and soft earth.
As he stumbled into the house, as he brought his hands to himself to relieve the pain and ache that was deep as a severed limb, he wondered if she was doing the same, and wanted to bash in her skull with such a raging desire that he trembled with it, sickened with himself and sickened with her. He would never, especially to himself, admit the depth of hurt that her rejection caused him.
Meanwhile, she would collapse onto the floor of her sea cave, arms and legs cradled in the position of the unborn, the position of the dead animal, closed in upon itself. She would not release herself from the torture as he had done. She would languish in the burn, the ache of his absence. Her tears poured hot from the innermost recesses of her core until she felt like her very soul would break, her heart’s meat ripped into two, its jagged edges bearing the scorch of her folly. Her legs felt like fiery jelly.
She took off her clothes and stumbled out into the surf, uncaring of who might see her. The water was frigid and pricked at her skin like red-hot needles. I deserve this, she thought as the icy flow turned her lips a purplish blue and her teeth clicked against each other. She dove in and swam until all the agony that tore at her soul was exhausted. She floated, naked, in the light of the distant sun, its fading warmth casting a reddish glow across the waves. Every lick of the sea against her felt like his tongue. She laughed at her own misery, and spit up the water that choked her lungs as it gurgled in and out of her mouth. Gray-green clouds crowded into an opaque sky. The enclosing rumble of thunder beckoned her back to land. She threw her sweater and skirt on as best she could and, holding her boots in her hands, walked silently back to his house.
The house was shrouded in a shadowy pall when she arrived, the first drops of ensuing rain falling against her shoulders. One light burned in the kitchen. She put her hand to the doorknob, sensing his presence on the other side, and let it drop away. She sat on the stone steps, drawing her legs in under the shallow porch and out of the rain, which was now coming down heavily, its drops crackling like wooden embers in a winter fire. She heard the door behind her open, and turned to see his darkened outline against the warm glow of the lamplight. She could not see his face.
“You better come in, baby, before you get sick,” he said in a gentle voice that unne
rved her more than the obvious disgust that he must be feeling.
“How’d you get so wet, anyway?” he asked as she passed by.
“I took a swim,” she replied, as if swimming in the ocean in fifty-degree weather required no further explanation.
“Why don’t you go get dried off and changed,” he said. “I’ll make you some tea.”
“Thanks,” she said, no longer able to mask the emotion behind her voice.
He took her by the arm and brought her close to him, wrapping her in his arms and folding her into him. Muted shadows quivered against the walls in the softened glow of the lamp, and the air smelled of cinnamon and pine.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered in between sobs that burst from her in short, painful gasps, the folds of his shirtsleeves balled into her fists.
“It’s okay,” he replied, sighing. “It’s okay.”
No, she thought. No, it’s not.