I leaned over and pushed my face into Nut’s back, half-bald and still moulting. She’d lost nearly all the fur on her flanks by now, and you could see her thick pink skin glowing beneath the lingering fuzz. Since Art had told me he didn’t feel right, I’d taken to keeping Nut close to me and periodically checking her soft fingers – newly broken through the buds of her paws – and her toes for missing digits, and running my hands along her back and belly for stitches, or scars. I combed my fingers through her coat, pulling out a grey clump between my fingers. We were both changing, growing into each other. She looked up at me with Art’s eyes and I kissed her on the forehead.
Nut was my main source of companionship those nights. I used to go out a lot before this life; birthday nights, leaving dos, anniversary parties, or post-work catch-up coffees. I can’t pinpoint the day it all changed, when all my intent curled back on itself so radically. Where had all those friends gone? How hadn’t I noticed them slip away?
Before Art, I hadn’t really thought about what “love” was, or what it meant. But this doesn’t mean I hadn’t experienced it. I suppose this is where Luke comes in. Luke’s smile lit up a room, drawing people to him because he looked like someone who could make you feel better about yourself. But when they came to him he stuttered, too shy and self-conscious to understand why they would love him. He was tall and carried his head low, hiding beneath a fringe of curls. Words fell from his lips in gusts, as if he pushed his heart (still beating) painfully into the world just to reply to you.
He didn’t stutter with me. Ever.
Even that first conversation we had at the bar. Brazen with too many margaritas, I stumbled up towards his friends, made sure I was close enough for him to see me, and danced with my arms in the air in my best attempt to mirror his shine. His friends turned and laughed at me before he did. He watched me with a straight face, hiding behind his hair. I danced harder, flicking my wrists and tipping my shoulders one after the other. I didn’t care where my friends were or who was watching – all my drive was focussed on proving to him I was an equivalent flame. Slowly he started to smile, as if he’d finally understood something. I felt like a beacon in a lighthouse: “I’m here, I’m here”. The next part I remember like a scene in a film; his finishing his drink, placing it on the bar, walking through the crowd, holding my hand. His eyes on my eyes all the time, letting me see through the curtains to where he kept his secrets.
I didn’t feel like I’d won a prize, I felt like I’d opened a door. And the whole room, dark and dingy with dirtied posters and peeling paint, burst into colour and life. Tingles in every bump from a dancing stranger, in every crack of broken glass beneath our feet.
I don’t know how long we stood like that, just opening up, but eventually he leaned down, pressed his forehead against mine, and whispered, “Do you want to go somewhere?”
Now, I wonder whether he didn’t stutter because he didn’t feel afraid of me. Or maybe he didn’t love me as much as all that after all, and he didn’t care enough. I could believe that. I can’t imagine approaching anyone like I did in that bar now – how do I know what they’d do? Or say? How do I dance?
Luke wasn’t a dancer. He was gentle, uncoordinated and long of limb, but he had the steadiest hand I’d ever seen. Hypnotised, I’d watch him paint his little figurines of soldiers and monsters and things long into the night. Even though his hand wouldn’t appear to move at all, each figure would bloom with colour like a flower creeping open at dawn. I suggested once that the littlest ones must be goblins so he should do them green, but he just laughed, gave me a wry little smile, and told me that they weren’t goblins, they were just children. He painted those with the most care of all.
I found him and everything he did lulled me into a deep sleep-state. Sometimes we’d just lie on his sofa for a whole weekend, dozing and fiddling with each other’s fingers and toes.
Those were different days. The sister-me. Luke broke my heart, and even now I hate the day I met him, for life would have been without so much hurt if I hadn’t known he existed. Years later, when I knew he must be long dead, I still felt the blow he struckme.
But anyway, even in those days I still had my own life outside of Luke. Life flickered by, yet I fit so much more in. But life with Art… no more invitations. Though I sometimes still heard whispers across the office about the same nights out, the same gettogethers. But no one told me about them anymore.
Later that month,
