Gravity

I could almost feel the space in that room, the dark gray air that only really touched the flat of the table, the folds of the couch that weren’t creased and the curve of the beer bottles that lined each shelf on the back wall. I could still see the words scribbled onto the chalkboard on the wall in boyish writing, but they were nothing more than illegible scratches without the light overhead.
All that was left was the glow from the lamps lining the street outside. The people had gone to their homes, the music had been unplugged for near an hour and the boys had returned to their beds quick to sleep and quick to forget their nights.

I hadn’t left yet though. I stayed sunken into the white fabric of the living room sofa, running the edge of the archway with my eyes as all of the voices from earlier fell away and the room was left with a nostalgic silence.

There was a mild buzz in my head, the beer I’d been nursing for the past half hour still loose in my grip as I waited to be joined again. I ignored my nagging nerves and the sense in my stomach that I should run home or at least have accepted his willingness to walk me while I still had the chance. Because I knew in given time, I’d be back in his bed believing everything I shouldn’t have the first time around.

I wished desperately I could have remembered the way he looked when he kissed that girl a little better. Or the way my stomach dropped when I realized his clothes were the same as the night before in passing for breakfast the next morning. I wish I remembered the way he avoided looking at me as he walked beside her and I wished more than anything that my skin would burn at the sight of him or that my stomach would churn when I thought about it. But I couldn’t even muster up hatred when he leaned in to kiss me. I couldn’t remember.

I didn’t even flinch when the front door scraped loudly open, nor did I look over to check who it was, although I knew it was him. He came in slowly, his feet drunk and heavy on the hard wood and dropped his take out carelessly onto the coffee table, cautious to avoid the cans and plates still scattered across.

The satisfied look in his eyes sparked some sort of feel in me that I couldn’t quite pinpoint as to what it was, but it made me shift my position, turning my body towards him ever so slightly. The comfort and familiarity he gave me was nothing short of terrifying.

He pulled my legs towards his chest as he fell to the couch to the side of me and rested them on his lap as I merely watched his movements as he reached for the food in front of him. His motions were mindless as was most of what he did when he drank to this extent and he drank to this extent quite often. And I watched the boy before me, wondering if the goodness I felt in him had drowned yet or that goodness had always just been an optimistic hope of mine. I had come to question whether or not the sweet words and solicitous gestures came from a place within or a length of rehearsed relationships and aspiration for love.

“You want some?” he asked, his left cheek entirely full. I shook my head slowly, still watching him carefully while he shrugged and laughed once in response, turning back to his late night meal and pushing an unnecessary amount into his mouth.

“You’re ridiculous.” I joked, settling further into the couch in an odd attempt to make myself more comfortable despite my sobering mind and reservations.

He shook his head and set down the last round of crust left to the slice of pizza he’d all but inhaled, leaning back into the offensively plush cushion behind him, laying his palm on my knee cap, “You always say that.”
And maybe it was the way his voice gave off warmth and solidity as if he knew my tendencies, how he understood what I meant even when I couldn’t come outright and say it that forced the pounding in my chest. Because with that tone rang that feeling I wished I’d remembered but had been dreading all along, rang that hollowness in the weeks where speaking his name felt like I was betraying myself and my strength. It was a slap in the face just as it had always been.

I pushed myself up, struggling to balance myself on my shaking hands and the shifting fabric beneath me and it wasn’t until I was on my feet, frantic to find my small brown satchel that he seemed to realize something was amiss. I couldn’t hear what he was asking me in the panic that was rushing through my head, but I could sense a similar tone in his voice. I could feel the regret, the good intention, the guilt rushing from his mouth but I failed to receive it.

“What is it? Talk to me, what are you doing?”

I shoved my arm through my jacket sleeves and ignored the way my hair caught roughly in the zipper. And I moved quickly, as quickly as my inebriated limbs would allow and before I knew what I was doing, I was yanking at the door eager to get into the night air because the room had changed and it was suffocating. All I could feel was his mouth pressed against mine, pushing harder and harder and moving faster than I could breathe. And I could feel it all on her as well.

At a time, I had almost been able to feel the space in that room. But I couldn’t anymore and I never would.