“Take it off,” I said, and she did.
I went to dim the lights but decided against. The lighting was nice, harsh enough for it to feel like a first time. No point pretending otherwise. No point.
When we fucked she smiled, absent minded, eyes low and to the ground. She asked if we could do it hard, and I tried as best I could.
“I’d like to wear you for a week,” I said, that or something like it.
She laughed, or I laughed and she followed, and either way it was nice under the fan, her head on my stomach, some forgettable band on the air around us. I hope she didn’t tell me anything true, right then. If she did, it’s gone, now. She probably said some things about home. I probably told her to stop, to keep that stuff separate, to go down on me in the silence. If I don’t remember, it’s not an act of omission. If I do, it’s been lost enough that it’s in someone else’s file, by now. What matters is it was nice right there, no matter what was around it.
I don’t think I’d recognize myself if I was better at choices. I don’t think I’d care too, anyhow.
So he says, “Why?” and I say, “Because,” and the answers don’t stack up for shit, and it’s just him looking at me and her so far gone that neither of us can remember the taste of her in any specific sense. There’s this shape, though, the edge of a word on a dumb tongue. I think to say I’m sorry, but I’m not. I say nothing, then. I know it was worth this but spare him that truth.
He looks more sad than angry. He’s months past fists, by now.
We don’t get a drink or recollect as we stare out over an overpass railing. We don’t fight. He was me, once before, and I’ve been him enough to know the ins of the whole mess. We stand there. We absorb the comfort of pathetic company, and we think of all the things we might’ve said, given the chance.
The buses stop at the edge of the city, turn, and return. If the airplanes are still running, it’s news to me. Trains roll outside my window, but it’s only for effect. In the darkness, I shift and sweat. I try sleep and booze in an alternating pattern, but neither satisfies.