love, actually

Not PG rated

The sun is milky while she lies sleeping on the cushions. She was reading, the pages lie open on her chest. He carefully picks up the piece, puts it on the table. He sits back on the glass and watches her, the proof that she is real. Some time between the successions of dawn and dusk, pain faded and allowed something else to live between them, opening up the possibility of peace. 

There are no sheets. The plains barely clad, cool in their smoothness where dark pillars rise leading down to the source forgotten yet known where he drowns repeatedly tasting the texture of a touch while the heat spreads and silence is no longer a sound.

Under his hands she comes alive reaching under his skin, pulling out the pieces while he looses the last bit of weakness that fills the deep he’s breathing in, steady, steady, in and out, rise and fall, a force of life till time no longer runs and rushes but melts down into heat and darkness filled with light she holds in her hands, pressing the past into his skin, marking his body burning deep past muscle into bone until it comes like fog falling down the mountain before she cries, softly, and the air is free again.

Her body is his blanket, he does not need more against the cold. She has allowed him, released an amnesty for this witching hour where his body felt stripped, without armor, newborn, real. She has turned a blind eye on the truth that they both know for this long moment between night and morning and in her mercy there is no weakness yet he felt no strength of his own.

At a loss now, he searched for paths and ways, roads otherwise traveled that would show him what to do with his life, void and meaningless as it was without her acceptance of those words that made up his apology. The words would need to be said no matter how often he threw them against the walls barbed with silent terror, no matter how often he sent them flying, crashing against the fortress of consequence. Every living thing insisted that they be said, be it just once, otherwise everything worth living for would be dead and what was more sacred than the rise and fall, that steady beat right under the curve of her breast?

*

‘You haven’t been here yet, have you?’ she asks. I shake my head. We’re at her new place, an apartment she shares with a friend. It looks good, books on the table, some magazines on the easy chair, a couple o’ plants. There’s music coming out of a closed door, she whispers, ‘Eddy’s here,’ grinning like that. Must be her friend’s guy then. She asks me if I’d like some coffee, we almost got caught in the rain. I keep it to, ‘Yeah, why not.’ We talk some about everything while she walks around, those jeans fit her perfect. Like always, I don’t know what to do, exactly. She looks relaxed, she always does, there’s nothing that can really throw Celine. She pours out the coffee into mugs, stirs in milk and sugar and hands me one. She still knows how I take it. Nice.

She’s sitting on her desk chair now, facing me. I’m on her bed, she’s still got the best I’ve ever seen. Probably coz I know she’s usually in it. I’d like to stop this waiting. She finally looks back at me. She stops talking, I don’t know what she just said. She takes a sip of coffee and puts her cup down on her desk. Then she turns back to me, gets up and straddles me slow, pulling off my scull cap just like she used to. Her hands fit light on my head. She says, ‘I really like these studs on you.’ I kiss her before she starts thinking twice about it, it’s happened before. Or worse, back then, way at the beginning. Half the night talking, arguing, fighting until she was crying, shouting, ‘Why don’t you even try to get me! Why won’t you even try to understand!’ She was so pissed… Her eyes all wet, and that look on her face like I was fucking up her life on purpose. That whole weekend was – bad. Just bad. I didn’t know nothin’ then. I don’t want that now. She looks too good now.

She’s smiling when I pull her closer. Her lips are as soft as ever. Just kissing her again is… why’d nobody say you had to know stuff early? That it could happen before graduation? That your girl could just know, really know what was out there? Why’d no one say?

We used to spend whole nights just doing this, hidin’ out in her room, her folks wouldn’t let her stay out after ten, especially with me. Her old man… that guy was tough. So, she’d sneak me in when her folks were sleeping, and then… Learnt to wait with her, wait until she took out one from that pink case in her drawer next to the bed. She got me used to them, she wouldn’t let me otherwise. ‘I love you Alec, but I don’t want your babies just yet.’ She meant it to. We made plans. After, with her all curled up nice, her skin perfect, her heartbeat this steady real thing right under my hand. We’d talk about it, that house, those cars, that pool. Having everyone over for cookouts, getting Nate for the barbecues. We’d had it all planned out. ‘Xcept I thought she was just dreamin’ it up. She meant it from the start.

I remove everything on her after she pulls off my sweater, taking the shirt with it, she always does it like that. She smiles, ‘Still working the gym I see.’ Her hands are warm, perfect, why’s it with her that she just knows? I lay her out on her bed before I go for her breasts. I’ve missed them like nothing else, she’s got the most perfect pair. We both get her out of her jeans, lingerie – holy shit – wait, wait, I wanna see that – fuck…  I have to ask,

‘Where’d you get this from.’
‘London.’
‘London? Like, London, England?’
‘Yeah. We have this mandatory thing where you have to leave the country for at least two weeks. I can’t do a full term so I took the two weeks Literary London. That’s how Professor Bernard calls it.’

Sometimes I just want her life. It’s always just a second, but it keeps on turning up and then I just want that way of being at the right place at the right time. Just knowing how it’s done.

‘When was this?’
‘Two months ago.’
‘How was it?’
‘Really nice. I got to see a lot.’
‘And buy this.’
‘Yeah.’

She smiles there, pulls me down – her lips are still the softest. And she did come back. She always comes back.

I go for what’s waiting between her thighs, smooth, her legs are endless with these tiny feet. There’s nothing like what she tastes like. I stay till she’s there, right there, she’s easy on her voice, her hands on my head, her feet rubbing up and down my back and I want her to black out, make her come so hard she just falls apart. I got her crying once, but now’s not the time. I’ll split open if I don’t do something – that’s new. Probably from over there. Did she –? Now’s not the time. Fits too, and I sure hope she still has a few coz I love being inside this woman. I love fucking her so much I always want to marry her right after. I’d ask her too if I didn’t know she’d just look at me and roll her eyes like I was bullshitting. Or smile that smile from that other world she lives in, which’d be worse, but now’s not the time.

. . .

‘Alec?’
‘Hm.’

That was just too good. Maybe I should move back up here again.

‘Do you still write?’

I kiss her instead of answering, I don’t want to have to explain that. I keep it long, but after I let her go she asks, ‘You still write, don’t you?’ I can’t answer that. She sits up a bit and looks at me. It’s her look, the one only she has, that special mix of anger and disappointment that she tops off with that tone as if she doesn’t know who I am anymore.

‘Why don’t you write anymore? Alec? Why don’t you write anymore?’
‘There’s no point.’
‘Why? You love to write, why’d you stop?’

She’s sitting up straight now, staring at me. If I’d said I’d robbed a place she’d look just the same. I still say it,

‘That’s not me anymore.’
‘Of course it’s you –! Alec, that’s like the one thing – ’
‘Carmine.’
‘What?’
‘Carmine. In the city, people call me Carmine.’
‘Why?’
‘Dunno. Just started.’
‘Carmine?’
‘Yeah. Or Car.’
‘Car? You mean, like, the thing you drive in?’
‘Yeah.’

I can’t help smiling.  She looks really surprised.

‘But, Alec, you’re not a machine.’

It’s stuff like that, these things she says that make it so crystal how no matter what I do, I’ll never get her and she’ll never get me. Maybe Nisha’s right and street stays street, no matter what you do to get rid of it. Yeah, it says Alec Bellamy on my license, but that ain’t really me. At least not all me, and Celine here… she never got that. And I don’t think she ever will.

© 2014 threegoodwords