North 2

North 2

I woke up like the world, not completely until dawn; and when the sky's eye dripped through her blinds, I let my own open by degrees. She was under my arm and facedown in between my ribs and my bicep. Her sleek back went up and down just as a mother gently rocks her child side to side. Even though my sight was tired, I couldn't rest from watching her figure. I loved tracing her hips and her legs and her sides; I loved counting her frizzy hairs in my face; I loved the feeling of her satin skin against my palm; I loved her. It wasn't hard for me to admit anymore. The last time we saw each other was impossible for me to accept if I'm being completely honest with myself. The words we said to each other and the things we did to each other formed a mile high wall between me and the destination I assumed was called "Moved On", but for the past several months I've felt like climbing the wall was as difficult as spitting over it. Last night I felt every crack and crumb of it collapse. Now I was among the settling dusts, and I was happy, not excited, happy to see what was waiting for me.
She moaned and stirred under the comforter. I let her push herself slowly up onto her elbows. She smacked her dry lips, swallowed a pint of bitterness in her mouth, and took two depressingly deep breaths.
"Morning," I tried to whisper but inevitably croaked. I smiled in my humiliation, but she only observed the mountainous folds of the bedsheets between us.
"Hi," she managed to successfully whisper somehow. Her voice was different than last night, more aware and therefore more cautious. I felt the strain she held her tonsils with as clearly as I felt her warm body next to mine.
"Something wrong?"
I never thought a closed mouth could say so much before she looked into my face. The same lips that were earlier as full and as pink as a rose petal were now two strings of flesh, tied together in stringent knots far beneath her cheekbones. Her face became pale, but not the porcelain shade I was used to admiring. Altogether I became aware of what the settling dusts were hiding; the same gray particles were accumulating under her eyes, beside the bridge of her nose, along her temple, and deep in her expression. Everything about her now said "ash", however last night she told me "fire", and my heart was suddenly coal.
"I made a mistake," she said finally. I breathed in smoke.
"What does that mean?" I asked with equal parts hurt and fear in my voice.
"I don't know," her voice was muffled by her vibrating hands. "I just....I didn't mean for this to happen."
"You texted me, how could you not mean-"
"I mean this!" She shrieked, forcing the back of her knuckles onto the bed. "This wasn't supposed to happen! We aren't supposed to happen anymore. We called it off, it was over. Now..." Her mouth apparently abhorred the taste on her tongue, so its corners ran towards her chin. "Now you'll never move on."
I sat up against her headboard.
"I'll never move on? What the f**k is that supposed to mean?" That coal inside me sparked and a stinging heat licked my tongue.
"You know you're more attached than you let on," she retorted.
"Says the one who invited me to her house at 2 in the morning drunk off her a*s."
"Exactly! I was drunk! I wasn't thinking straight, you shouldn't have come!"
I threw the covers away, and the room felt colder than before. I began gathering my clothes.
"I shouldn't have come? Obviously there's something between us, or I wouldn't have even occurred to you last night." The only sound was the cloth and jeans complaining as I hurried them onto my body.
"Texting you was out of habit," I heard her say. "A habit I want to break, that we both need to break." I stopped. Habit? I was a habit? I felt thrown down then, lower than the carpet and the house and the world itself. I felt reduced to nothing more than an option, an option that wasn't consciously chosen, an option than was randomly selected through a haze of alcohol. Was that what I was? To be so low in the downward-turned eyes of someone I held so high. A sickness rose into my mouth that tasted like wound blood, but I swallowed my blisters and stood up and approached the open door without a word. I quickly left her house, and it took all the strength my eyes had to hold back the tears that were whiplashed after I ripped my heart from the place. I hardly heard her calling my name in the doorway when I started my car.
"Jace!" She screamed, waving one arm and using the other to cover her deceit. I didn't look up, only reversed, turned, and raced my anger down the road.