‘No.’ And this is me with defeat in my voice.
This is me giving up.
Alicia laughs and thinks that I’m joking and she calls me cute and she tells me that I crack her up and when she does that I can feel my finger tips begin to tingle.
She takes off her clothes.
Tits to my face.
They’re perky and full of saline.
She has tan lines.
Her skin looks like leather.
Tongue to tongue and hands to skin.
She licks me from neck to ear and back again. My body shivers. And she giggles a soft giggle as if she’s proud of her accomplishment. My mind begins to fade away into the fog of lust.
We don’t make love.
We fuck.
This isn’t gentle.
I’m frustrated.
Angry that she can’t help me.
Angry that I don’t have anyone to talk to about this.
Angry that I haven’t been more proactive in finding Evaline.
I’m tired of giving up, and as I grind my hips, I can’t help but think thats all I’m doing. Giving up.
Alicia is screaming in ecstasy.
When I look at her face I don’t see anything. When I look into her eyes it’s as if she’s lost. Vacant, blank and vapid.
I assume that it looks the same from her view point.
I thrust harder.
I can’t finish.
My mind is elsewhere.
I roll off.
She looks disappointed.
‘Aren’t you going to finish?’ She seems offended.
‘No.’ And I don’t try to make things better.
She begins to pout.
Her lips go tight and her fists ball up and her cheeks get flush and she wants me to be hers.
I get dressed.
She looks like she’s going to cry.
This is a power struggle. This is her attempting to feel ok with our relationship. This is me not caring either way.
I’m ready to leave. Standing up. Looking towards the door.
‘Please don’t go.’
I start to go.
There’s no point in staying. We’re nothing more than fuck friends. We’re nothing more than two people trying to get some sort of relief. We have nothing in common other than a need to get off. Our bodies want everything and our hearts want nothing.
My feet carry me forward.
Part of me wants to be stopped. Part of me wants to feel needed. The other part just wants to walk until I’ve forgotten all the centuries up until now. Part of me wants to walk until I can start over again.
I just want a second chance.
To love.
To work.
To get things right.
Up until a few years ago I thought I did have it right.
I assumed life was perfect.
I had a routine.
I had safety and security and all the things that people strive for in life.
Now I’m not sure what I have.
I hear Alicia rustling behind me.
‘Ellis, please, there’s something I need to tell you first.’
I stop moving.
‘I think I know that curly haired man you were talking about.’
And it’s a pause, a breath, and a nervous twisting of nervous fingers.
I’m sitting in Alicia’s kitchen. I’ve been up all night. My gut is sore and my head aches and I want to sleep but I can’t. My mind keeps moving in circles. It keeps trying to process life. It keeps trying to make sense of things that shouldn’t make sense.
Alicia is passed out on her couch.
We talked until our mouths were dry and our eyes were dull.
There was a passion in the way we spoke.
There was a cadence to our words that reminded me of what it means to be alive.
There was more to us than collagen and leathery skin; there was a depth that I thought had been lost to complacency.
I told her about Evaline.
I told her about my yesterdays.
I told her about what I had.
I told her about what I lost and about all the things in my life that make less and less sense the further I get from them.
She listened.
She replied.
She told me about her loves.
Her losses.
The little things that she misses from the years before.
Awkward hands and nervous breathing.
The conversation moved forward only to fall back.
Back to the man with curly hair.
The man who Alicia began running into a few years ago.
Right around the time that her and I began speaking. Right around the time she and I began fucking.
He had said ’hi’ to her at the grocery store.
And again the next week.
Then at the coffee shop and on the sidewalk and everywhere else until it was more than coincidence.
They would stop and chat and he would ask questions and she would answer and they would part.
I still don’t know if it has anything to do with me. That’s why my mind keeps going in circles. Maybe I’m just reading into things when I shouldn’t. Maybe I’m trying to put together a puzzle using all the wrong pieces. Maybe I’m just trying to put together the puzzle with the wrong picture in mind.
Maybe we’re talking about two different people
But it’s too coincidental.
It’s too convenient.
It has to be the same man.
And I wonder where Evaline is right now.
Is she with this curly haired man?
I breathe in deeply.
