Hot Thin Skin (or, Half-Darkness and Guitars)

Seven scenes, in half-darkness.

001

You said that you loved me. I was lying in bed listening to you hum a lullaby, and wondering how you guessed that it was my favorite. When you broke your song, it was with a murmured Goodnight. I love you. Then came a terrible, expectant pause before I managed to wish you, too, a good night.

I dreamed of your brother, of him thrusting roughly into me in half-darkness tinted the color of your eyes. Our hot thin skin sliding together whispered I love you, and I awoke weeping.

 

002

You called and told me that you were moving your brother into college tomorrow. Four hours and three states away, it would be a weekend trip. You didn't tell me until now that you were leaving at four in the morning. I answered with a faint What? and let you needlessly repeat yourself.

I was going to take you and him out to breakfast for a proper goodbye. Now what will be his final real memory of me? Giggling over jokes about sex in a cheap film until two in the morning? A clumsy hug stolen as I climbed out of his car, the gearshift poking into his side and his air freshener caught in my hair? Or worse, that hasty phone call with both of us half asleep as I wished him goodbye, and wondered what to say in lieu of an embrace?

You ended our one-sided conversation with a tentative 'Night.  Love you.

And for the first time I echoed your words. But my 'I love you' sounded tinny, and tasted like lies.

 

003

When you called me from his car, you described the beautiful countryside you drove through on the way to his college.  I heard him laughing in the background, and I laughed, too.  You asked me what was so funny, and I told you it was just tragedy.

He got on the phone to say hello, and I said goodbye.  Don't say that, he told me, his voice still smiling.  I'll be home at Christmas, and I have such a thing as a cell phone.

But it won't be the same.

 

004

After you finished moving him into his dormitory, you drove his car back home and picked me up for homemade dinner at your place.  I walked out of my house in pajama pants and his old sweatshirt that you had passed on to me, and slid into the front seat of the car.  You drove well, signaling before turning and slowing for yellow lights.  But nonetheless, I clenched my hands into fists so tightly that my nails carved half-moons into my palms, as if you were cruising at a hundred and fifty down the highway.

It felt wrong to be sitting in his car without him beside me.  When you turned your head I could watch the breeze stir your hair and pretend that you were him, that the twinkle of the sun on the rearview mirror was really reflected off his glasses.  Then you looked back at me with warm blue eyes, and I swallowed violently to combat the bile rising in my throat.

 

005

On Halloween, we dressed up as two kids in a punk-rock band and walked around your neighborhood, your brother's guitars swinging freely from neon straps slung over our shoulders.  You told me that the battered acoustic that I carried looked out of place, that I should have taken my electric guitar instead.  I shrugged and said that I liked the acoustic better.  What mattered was what I didn't say: that this was the guitar that he taught me to play with, and that whenever I played it, I felt the ghost of his hands on mine.

When you leaned in for a kiss, I clutched the guitar in front of me like a weapon.  Your belt buckle scraped against a string, and the note that resulted sounded almost perfect, if not a little off-key.

 

006

Your family planned a vacation in the south for the holidays, but he called up two weeks before and said that he couldn't spare the study time for midterms.  I turned down your offer of letting me come along, and you sold the plane ticket instead.

We went to dinner at a casual restaurant the night before your departure.  You drove me home and parked in front of my house, and we began to kiss.  I rather liked kissing even if your sights were set on other activities, and even allowed your hand to graze my breasts because it was our last moment together.  But then the gearshift poked into your side and the air freshener got caught in my hair, and I had to leave.

 

007

The next day I packed an overnight bag, threw on his sweatshirt, and told my parents I was leaving for the weekend.  The drive was long and I got lost often; several times I was asked in rest stops, probably because of my crazed eyes and bed-head, if I was alright.

I will be soon, I said.

When I got there, I parked haphazardly outside his dorm room and ran up the stairs.  I hurried past rows of doors adorned with magazine cutouts and sports team pennants for what seemed like miles when suddenly, I heard his voice.  He shouted my name, and I spun around to see him with a laundry basket in his hands.  I ran towards him, and he dropped the basket just in time to envelop me in an embrace.  I buried my nose in his shoulder and inhaled so deeply that it almost hurt.  This was what was missing from my clothes and your car and my skin, and what I had driven for hours to find.

Then he kissed me.  Our hot thin skin sliding together whispered I love you, and I had never heard such a beautiful sound.

Author's Note

I'm stuck in six, without the courage to make my seven real.