Photo by Kate Hliznitsova on Unsplash
He said he thought it smelled good, and he moved a little closer. They sat on the grey-black back steps of their friend’s building, the sides of their thighs touching. She could feel blue denim thinning from the friction of their touch and she could feel the ridges of their ribs fitting into one another. Two skeletons, each of them filling the gaps in the other’s bones. But for the moment, their flesh held them, while they held each other. She liked the way her fingers were trapped in the white vulnerability of the skin between his fingers and how his calloused hands felt soft. She liked how his hand felt in hers—his rusted silver ring pulsing into her gold ring to the rhythm of “Scar Tissue,” creating a sound like a heartbeat.
She told him that she had washed it that day. She watched his eyes follow one brown sugar strand and dock at the bottom of her back. They leaned against the brick behind them, and their foreheads met. She knew he had washed his because her fingers felt damp and the air around his head smelled like musk. But everywhere else it smelled like smoke and pizza and things they’d forget by morning.
She told her mother she was lonely. On a Thursday afternoon when the dishwasher was full of mugs. “Rest your keppe,” her mother said. Her mother placed her palm on her heart and leaned back in the bed. “You’re not alone, honey.” She put her head on her mother’s chest and felt it sink. They listened to the sounds they heard in the silence. Her mother’s pink nails caressing her scalp, their toes intertwining beneath the bronze-taupe duvet,. Her mother spoke first: “What are you thinking about?” She was trying to make a list in her head of all the people who loved her but the sheet of white printer paper had only the stain of one bullet point that had been scribbled in pencil and erased. She wanted somebody to break her heart.
She spent hours sitting on park benches listening to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers with her legs crossed. She watched people with tote bags wander aimlessly, falling in love with trees and birds. Billy Collins was right about so many things. She read books about people who were lonely and people who were full of longing. She sat under the summer sun and sulked in desiring bleached hairs and warmed skin. She drank hot coffee. And she found herself growing jealous of certain strands of grass.
“Look.” She grabbed her friend’s hand, and she pointed to a freckle on her right hand. “We match.” They stood on the rug that smelled like shin guards, staring at each other. They put their backs against the rug and stared at the ceiling, white covered in green cartoon flowers. The scents of the rug seeped into her spine. “I have a freckle on the bottom of my back,” she told her friend. “One day, someone who really loves me will know that freckle.” The girls looked at each other for a moment, and the spots of pink began to drain.