There had been a drink, she thinks. They were friends, nothing more. It wasn't that he was not attractive, but there was a "type" she thought,
her
type, more specifically, and he was not it. She liked them intense and difficult; he was kind and . . . gentle. She could not abide by gentleness, so even though he had never asked, not really, she already knew what she would have answered.
He was safe. They had been with friends, a loose, warm group, and then she was stumbling a bit, but it was alright; they were friends; she was safe. She remembered a car and the streets flashing by them in an unfocused blur. It was early fall, too early to be beautiful (and anyway, you couldn't see the jewel-colored leaves of trees at 1:30, 2am), but cool enough that she needed the warm breath of air blowing out of his dashboard, caressing her knee.
She thinks it was the air, the heat.
The radio was on, something low, and he was talking to her sometimes too, lower, and they were both laughing. She remembered that he hadn't drunk at all, had volunteered to be the sober one for the group - devoid of alcohol and poor judgment, like the rest of them.
His arm was around her lower back, not too tightly around her coat, and they were in an elevator. It was cooler, the metal against her cheek, and their own reflection was disconcerting to her in burnished silver. The small, rumpled girl with the too bright, flushed cheeks, and the tall man looming behind her. Looming? But it was just her friend.
There was a hallway, their footsteps silent in the thick carpeting, and then his arm round her waist again, and the jingle of keys. The door opened like a sigh, and they were in. In the low light of a lamp, she realized they were in her apartment. Home, she read somewhere, was the one place where it smelled like nothing. Everywhere else smelled like
something
, but home is where it smelled like
you
.
He was setting her keys down, not in the usual little blue glass plate where she did, but next to it, and then his hands were shrugging her thick coat off. She shivered a little, clad only in a thin black dress - sleeveless, with a fluttery skirt that kissed her knees. It was more suitable for summer than right now, but she loved this dress and the way it hugged her body, the way it made her feel.
Cold, he asked? He was helping her, or she was finding her own way to the couch; either way, she sank into it gratefully. A plump pillow was in her hands, her eyes were closing again. She thinks she said thank you, for helping to get her home, for being the cool, watchful one, but perhaps not before there was a glass brushing her lip, and she half opened her eyes even as she opened her lips, like a child.
The vodka was a shock to her slightly numb lips, and she licked the salt from them as she swallowed, automatically, her mind thinking, oh another one; we're not yet done. It was fire in her belly, and she giggled at nothing, and she heard him laugh, too.
More, he said, his tone just a little bit serious, like the doctor when he tells you good advice. Make sure you finish it.
She took the glass from him and swallowed it bravely, with a toss of her long hair, one long swallow in her slender throat. All done, she murmured to herself, and he whispered, Good girl.
It was blurry after that, as blurry as they had been in the elevator, or the buildings had been from the car. It had been her neighborhood, seen hundreds of times, but rendered unrecognizable tonight.