Summer Lovin' contest entry, folks. Last fucking minute, as always.
- Transverse
*
The wedding is over. Nate left early, told the bride he needed a shower, or a flower, or a towel? I don't fucking know, he was mumbling like he does when he's lying or afraid. I'm at his front door now - the one I no longer have keys to - alone in the dark of the enclosed hallway. The door has one of those giant glass panels that lets any passing dickhead look inside. A cat I didn't know he had sits on the arm of the sofa looking curiously at me. My old table is gone and there's a new one with better chairs. I am not going to cry.
I almost fall over when he suddenly appears in that fucking window. His hair is wet, so I guess he really did take a shower.
He cracks the door.
"The hell do you want?"
His tongue trips over the words, but I'm definitely the drunker of the two of us, which fills me with a confused pride.
"What happened to my table?"
He narrows his eyes, then rolls them. "Get off my fucking porch, Danny."
I lean against the door and press my face into the gap so it's only an inch or so from his.
"You smell like grapefruit."
I was never any good at this seduction shit. He wants me, too, by the looks of things; his gaze keeps darting downward before snapping back up.
"No," he says.
"What?"
"Get out."
"To where?"
"Not my problem."
"My place is like five miles away."
"Get a taxi."
"In this fucking town?"
"Get
out
."
"You really want me to drive?"
Our faces are practically touching through the narrow gap; we're breathing drunkenly into each other's mouths. He growls and lets the door open all the way and I tumble toward him, scaring the cat out of the room. He catches me like he always has and drags me over to the couch.
"You can't be here," he says. The plastic cases of his CD collection gleam in the lamplight; his old school trophies, too. Lumpy clay bowls from this one pottery class he took. The whole room is like that, stuffed with too much furniture, shelves full of all the crap I used to make him keep in the garage. "We're not doing this."
"I'm not doing anything." My head is in his lap and I turn to face his belly, my cheek resting on his zipper. "No one's doing anything, fuck off."
His brow folds into an angry line but his eyes rake over me like I'm a braless sorority girl in a wet t-shirt. He's digging his hands into the couch cushions.
"Come on, man. We promised to stop. We agreed."
We've promised and agreed and decided a hundred times over the years, through high school, through our pathetic attempts at graduating college, through whatever you want to call the adolescence we dragged with us through our twenties until it got too embarrassing to be drunk at four in the morning and couch surfing and shoplifting Doritos. So we took jobs at UPS and got a real apartment and promised and agreed and decided. Again.
We have to stop.
This is ridiculous.
We can't be serious.
We're being stupid.
Why can't we just stop?
We're not even serious!
Everything is ridiculous.
And now everyone's married or moved away or started a furniture business or otherwise grown the fuck up, and here we are again, drunk, our cocks aching and stiff and safe in our pants, reciting our vows.
"So what."
"So leave!"
"You leave."
"This is my house."
"A carriage house is not a real house."
"Danny - "
"I paid for this place."
"You did not."
"I paid the deposit."