winnerloser

I was drabbling, and it came to me in a rush. I don't think it's pieced together very coherently...

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Indentation author's last name comma first name period underlined book title period, followed by...

There's always a feeling of accomplishment when you're about to finish a difficult assignment.

...place of publication colon publisher comma date of publication period.

That feeling was slowly rising in my chest as I smacked the enter key twice, and worked on my final Works Cited entry.

Indentation author's last name comma first name period underlined book title period...

And...

...place of publication colon publisher comma date of publication period.

There were no trumpets or confetti or great feasts. There was just CTRL S and a relieved sigh. The final, and most hellish term paper was over, done with, and out of the way. Forever. A burden was lifted off of me, and all I could do was stare at the blinking cursor on my screen. Blink, blink, blink, blink, still here, still here, still here, still here, here. Here. Here. Here...

“Are you done with your paper?” My roommate asked, appearing suddenly in the doorway. She was standing in the doorway holding a bottle of something in her hand. She had rolled her eyes at me when I had asked for an empty room where I could finish my paper. Summer break was near, only a little more. Her dad had informed her that he would not be home for a few weeks, the house was hers if she wanted it, so she decided to make the most of it ('getting a head start' she called it), inviting me along for the ride. We were friends in that 'surprise! We don't hate each other even though we act it!' kind of way.

I smiled at her, and she smiled back. “Yes. Thanks for letting me take your room hostage.”

She shrugged it off and I heard the sounds of her boyfriend talking loudly behind her. I guess they had invited people. “There's... someone here to see you.” She mumbled, almost as if she wished I hadn't heard her. I raised my eyebrows and she rolled her eyes. “It's the whore.”

My smile widened. She never did like my ex-girlfriend.

“She's waiting for you somewhere behind the pool house.” Her tone of voice gave away her distaste, like she was verbally touching a slug.

I thanked her and clicked my laptop shut.

-

Alcohol has such a disgusting taste. I sometimes like to compare it to getting water up your nose, but I have weird comparisons and they're never usually related. Unless they're moment's like this. Whenever I see my ex, whatever outlandish description of discomfort and awkwardness you can come up with are usually accurate.

“Hey.” Stepping on a snail. Having twisty-ties all around your colon. Eating raw meat...

“Hi.” Getting a root canal. Having “the talk.” Going to your first gynecologist appointment...

She smiled because she was pretty and her smile was pretty, and pretty people have to grace you with their pretty, because you are not pretty enough on your own. So she smiled and I smiled back. Pretty girls smiling at each other.

“I've missed you, babe.” She tells me with her pretty voice. Her eyes twinkle, but I don't pay any mind.

“Thanks.” Was my reply. I stopped, not too close and not too far. She asked a question and I asked a question, and a question cannot be answered with a question. My question however, rang louder. Why, why, why, why, why, why, why are you here?

We stood statue-still until there was movement. She gently grabbed the hem of my shirt and begins to tug. “I can't stop thinking about you...”

Chewing on glass. Catching on fire. Hammering a nail through the knee cap...

In the beginning, there was me and her. She was pretty and I was stupid. I fell in love with her bright eyes and perfect smile. The bones beneath the muscles beneath the skin beneath the clothes took my breath away while her pretty tongue tasted my skin and whispered filthy promises.

I smiled, because I still love her. “Have you found yourself someone else yet?” It's a stupid question when you think about it, since she's grabbing my shirt in her teasing way and her body is still asking a question.

“I still want you...”

In the beginning, she would hold my hand when we walked through the store. People stared, but maybe that's what she wanted. She would tell me stories and let me read while lying down on her lap. In the beginning, we did what cliché characters in equally cliché love stories did.

“I know I made a mistake, and I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Won't you...” Her hands start to shake. Because she thinks she understands love and she thinks she knows what she wants. Her idea of love revolves around the five senses.

“... Won't you forgive me?”

I make no move to reply, and only stare at her. Her eyes are basins ready to overflow. They shimmer, they spill, and she's crying, cradling her face against my shoulder suddenly. She seems to remember when I was her shoulder to cry on, and I don't point out that she was never mine. Instead, I just hold her.

In the beginning, she begged to take something away that I wasn't ready to give. She'd use her pretty hands and her pretty mouth, pretty sure it was enough, even if it never was. Eventually, even the most relentless hunter will get bored if waiting. This hunteress did, and she sought her fill somewhere else.

I don't point out that she broke me, then came to me at my weakest, and used her pretty mouth to take from me what she couldn't when I was right of heart and mind. I don't point out that she treated me like a conquest as her way of somehow showing me I was in the wrong all along. I don't point out how many chances I've already given her, because I still love her. So I just hold her.

Punch to the throat. Baseball bat to the shins. Genital piercing?

She is slightly taller than I am, so she pulls back and angles her head slightly downward. She knows I'm going to say no, because I've yet to say yes.

Her hands push me, against the wall, and she pins me. Her mouth finds my neck and she clamps down, biting hard. “Who has had you since-”

“You took advantage of me?” I offered for her. I am polite.

She winces and stays still. My neck stings and my heart is thumping a mile a minute, because I love her and I can feel her pressed up against me. No one but her has ever taken me. Memories of her and that night and that bed are all I have. I hate them and I love them, but right now, I relive them.

Her body shakes and from her glorious mouth spills her need and desire and her idea of love, all of this with a tidal wave of apologies. Love.She believes she has it to give when she hasn't even unlocked it yet. To her, love is a few words scribbled on a notepad. To everyone else, love is pencil, love is the paper, and love is the intent.

Her hands have worked their way inside her jeans, and she's whispering in my ears while her hands act out her words. My body is reacting violently as my blood rushes and my heart pounds. She is talking to me, her breath catches and so does mine, and from her comes a sound that makes my pulse race. She is hurting herself in the act of satisfying herself, her voice comes out as pained more often than not, but she doesn't seem to care.

I love her, and that means I Goddamn care. So I grab her hand and rip them away from her. I pull it behind my back and hug her tight with my free arm. Her body is ridged but she waits patiently, because even loveless her can understand the virtue of patience.

As I release her, she pulls away, and her eyes stare down into mine. Her body is still asking a question. I answer by releasing her hand and leaning back. She is breaking and I love her, so I motherfucking care. What's the point of holding out anymore anyhow? She has already taken me.

She grins. Victory is hers, and she won't waste time not savoring her conquest.

Her mouth travels along my neck and collarbone. She is gentle, rough, but always commanding. She is treating me like her property. She kisses down until she is kneeling before me, her mouth kissing down my tummy. “Oh baby, you're so beautiful,” she moans, her fingers pressing against me through my jeans. I clench my eyes shut and try to just feel, her words reverberating in my head as nothing more than “Your 20.8 body mass index is appeasing to my sense of aesthetics.” All she sees is skin and bones.

I let her unbutton my jeans, and I let her bite at my tummy. Her fingers push against me harder, causing my knees to almost falter. I let her fingers play with the hem of my panties and I even let her dip her tongue teasingly along the elastic band. But I draw my line in the sand somewhere.

I drop to my knees in front of her, and press my lips against hers. Her kisses give me tingles, but that is because I motherfucking love her. I drag her on top of me, so she is on all fours over me and I am on the bottom, my hands wrap around the small of her back pulling her all the way down. I couldn't help but moan, because her weight felt good. I needed her, I needed her but I couldn't figure out if it was because I love her.

Her hands find their way inside my jeans, exploring and claiming. Her fingers slipped inside of me, and her mouth pressed into mine. I clenched my eyes shut as tight as I could, tearing my mouth away to moan against her shoulder. She is the only one I've been with, and her fingers hurt as they pushed inside of me. I try to adjust but it doesn't take long, they're moving inside me and it's starting to coax pleasure into me quite nicely. I wrap both arms around her and clench her tight as my hips move with her. I want this more than I care to admit, and bite down on her shoulder hard. She moans and bites the same spot she bit earlier, sucking hard enough to no doubt leave a mark. My breathing shook and my head spun. I moaned loudly as my orgasm hit. Her name doesn't appear in my mind.

I could hear her whispering how much she loved me through the haze. Her fingers were about to pull out but I held them fast, moving my hips to push her digits in further, shivering at the small jolts that it earned me.

She was still whispering, begging me to love her back. She thinks that her ability to make me an astronaut out of me every time her fingers slip inside my panties is enough to earn love. I don't point out that love and sex are at best, mild acquaintances. One hardly has much of a sway on the other.

Witnessing a car crash. Attending a funeral. Visiting a Death Row inmate...

Her body shifts, and her fingers pull out. Her body is sliding downwards. Her mouth bites teasingly at the swell of my breast through my shirt. She's about to move further down but I stop her. I don't want her mouth on me. I pull her up and push her upright until she is kneeling, her weight resting against my abdomen. My hands unzip the rest of her jeans, and my eyes flicker to hers. There is a glimmer I can't identify in them, but I don't care, so I pay no mind. I push my fingers inside of her and watch her, pretty, pretty her, arch her back.

-

She is lying on top of me, her breathing has regulated somewhat, and she's talking. I remember, in the beginning, when she would talk to me about sex. She said she enjoyed sharing things during the “afterglow” phase. She said it made her feel secure and loved. And I want her to feel okay, so I let her talk. She tells me the most insignificant details of her life, the kind of details you wouldn't bother to put in the “About Me” section on Myspace. She tells me things about people I've never even met, and she tells me things about places I never plan on visiting. She talks and I hold her.

The sky is a radiant orange color as the sun sets, and just as I'm noticing, she turns to me. “Tell me things,” she said. I pause, hesitating. I do not love her enough to share my mind with her, not anymore. So I open my mouth, and the thesis, main sentences, supporting paragraphs and concluding sentences that I have been wrestling with for the past week comes spilling out of my mouth. I throw in a few statements and mild jokes, to throw a thin veil of intimacy over the situation, and that's as far as my love for her allows me to lie. It's still clinical.

She's receptive, but different.

We lie in mutual silence, staring at the sky in an almost meaningful manner. Ignorance is bliss, but an illusion is an illusion, and all you need is a small pebble from the real word to halt and destroy the gears of make-believe.

My pebble came in the form of a 5'7" tall woman named 'roommate.'

I froze, the girl in my arms froze and my roommate froze. She looked at me and I looked at her. Her eyes flickered, but she hid it well. “We're going to get something to eat,” she started, as if she never saw me holding my ex. As if she doesn't notice the fact that our pants are hardly buttoned. As if she doesn't remember the hatred she harbored towards the girl who took me away from me. “You know that little place on 9th? Was just wondering if you wanted anything specific.” I would give her an Oscar if I knew where to steal one.

I sat up and smiled at my lovely, lovely roommate. The paper and pencil to my intent. “I'll have anything.” I replied, and watched her eyes shift towards the two-dimensional, erasable words. “Are you staying? I can get you something, too, if you like.” I would give her 40 Oscars if I knew where the Oscars-making factory was.

The girl beside me and sat up. She turned to me. “Do you want me to stay?”

She stared at me and I stared at her. This was the moment of truth and she thought she already knew the answer. It seemed so guaranteed, she thought it had been soaking her fingers just minutes ago. Because she thought the answers she wanted were attainable with a stroke of a finger and a flick of the tongue, because a two-dimensional object can never understand anything more than a two-dimensional universe. But she knew, she knew, she knew, and I could see it in here eyes how certain she was that I would say-

“Only if you're hungry.”

There was a pause, and I listened hard for the sounds of the gears hitting the sugar-coated floors, but all I saw was the look in her eyes.

The silence remained, and her expression contorted into something like “Ouch”, because her eyes watered and her eyebrows sunk downwards, her mouth giving a small smile. I smiled back, trying to go for “Thanks for taking my virginity when I couldn't say no”, but settled for “Just kidding, butnotreally.”

She opened her mouth, but opted to shake her head at my roommate instead, her voice not working for some reason. There was a nod, and I watched my three-dimensional friend walk off.

I lifted my chin to the sky and slid back down, listening to her rustle and stand up. She walked off, but I didn't see her to her car. That's something a lover would do. I didn't watch her leave, that's something an admirer would do. I merely lied on my back, and listened to footsteps retreat.

I didn't love her enough to pretend like I love her enough.

Feeling a little less clean and a little more drained, I watched the sky slowly explode into a black canvas dotted with twinkling stars. The moon indolently made it's way across the black, and not a single thought crossed my mind until my roommate returned.

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Not too painful, I hope.
Mistake-pointing-out/criticisms/general whateverness is welcome.

Thanks.