The Sun, The Sun.

They had woken up fully dressed, after drinking too much and falling asleep beside one another. They were still new to each other, and seeing the other grey with sleep still surprised them. He reached over and felt the bones in her elbow, sharp at the front, and then cushioned where her pillowy arms flushed pink, and yellow, and white. He kissed her, and then pulled her towards him delicately, as if she would bruise.

They undressed where they lay, unceremoniously and with difficulty. Once naked, Rachel found his eyes unforgiving of her flaws, uneasy under his gaze, and suddenly she felt stale, inedible. They had met in various disguises, at first she was with someone else, someone she was used to, and to Richard she was a prize that he had finally won. She had won him too, because it was all about winning then, as it always is, eventually.  A game of impatience, drink, and long looks followed, stumbling half-blind at each other in the half-light of street, touching each other occasionally and deliberately. She had hidden her nakedness from him well, given him an exterior she could defend and he couldn’t argue with. Now she was defenceless, and he had looked away.

Rachel could feel her limbs collapsing in on her body as she attempted to hide the parts of her that she had been told were special. She begged for darkness, and found herself creating shadows, eventually hiding her eyes, like children do. He rubbed his eyes and sat up. After a while she followed, taking his hand and placing it softly in her lap.

They sat in silence as they realised that this wasn’t what they wanted at all, and that it never had been. It had been some wonderful dream that they had salivated over, they had kissed each other to bring it to life and now it sat between them uncomfortably like a divorce. He pulled his T-shirt back over his head and reached for his rolling tobacco. As he made a cigarette Rachel could see his socks peel back onto his ankles, his trousers run back up his legs. She felt her clothes return to her, prodigal in their homecoming. He handed her the tobacco and watched her as she placed it by her side and ran her hands over her shoulders and the curve of her neck. It was a ghostly motion, a retracing of old footsteps once made on her skin.

He stood up and looked out at the window; his car, unlocked, looked lifeless in the mid afternoon sun. He didn’t know what he was looking at beyond that, but he felt like it was the right thing to be doing, or so he’d been told. Behind him he heard occasional, smooth movements, and then a thump as her head hit the mattress. He didn’t turn around for a long time.

Rachel stroked her sides, and remembered how those lines had been followed once by hands that she’d understood to know everything about her. Those hands that made her familiar with her body, pulling at her thick thighs and full hips with insatiable energy, the flash of teeth and nail. She turned away from the window and fell asleep.

 

A Character Study.

Andrew slid her glass across the table and took her hand. They had been like this for weeks, afternoons of pregnant pauses and long looks that made Alice sick, she had never looked for movies in her life, so she was angered when she saw parts of their relationship bordering the scripted. Andrew had come to life when her relationship with James became a series of non-events, struggling for warmth against the great weight of apparent expectation. The cracks had become large and deep, and although she sensed this doubt was temporary, it was still doubt all the same. So she let another life overlap the one she had with James, and learnt to lie quickly and convincingly. Andrew had become the root of her understanding to what emptiness felt like, and when he had begun to introduce himself to her she was overwhelmed.

When he smiled, his head leaned slightly to the left, and dipped into his chest in a shy swoop. The transformation of his smile, from post-orgasm to post-sleep, had become one of the cementing memories that shadowed any true thought of what he had become to her. The intimacy of the traffic outside her window, left open to air their smoke from the room, became so telling of the times that would no longer exist that a dull ache had formed within her, beating away laboriously under the weight of her own chest.

His glasses had steamed up from the heat of the room. For a moment she couldn’t see his eyes and wondered where he was looking. She had the terrible feeling he was looking at the floor, because looking at anything else offered the promise of an answer that she wasn’t prepared to give. To look at her hands, her bare shoulder, or the tips of her hair was unbearable.

‘I can’t do this.’ She said.

‘I know. I was beginning to wonder when you would say that, I was close to saying it myself.’ He knotted him fingers firmly into hers. ‘I didn’t want to say it though.’

‘You don’t have to because I am.’ She tightened her grip. ‘It was always for me to say.’

‘So what do we do?’

Her phone rang, and rang. Alice didn’t reach for her pocket. She didn’t know what to say if she’d answered.