the weekend

“i’m scared that telling you all this is going to make you want to pull away.” i can’t look at you.

“i might.”

suddenly looking at you is the only thing i can do. a cigarette dangles precariously over your knee, nestled in between lackadaisy fingers that shift back and forth as you gaze back at me patiently. the smoke rises as silently as the moment that sits between us. it disappears into the soft orange sky that peers through the tips of your coarse, spiky hair i had just bleached a few hours before. the colors are practically imperceptible. your new blonde is too short to be disturbed by the faint exhale of a breeze around us, but if it hadn’t been, the last rays of the sun would have danced through your strands the way my fingers have danced through yours the past 4 days you’ve been lounging around my house like a stray turned housecat. you’d look pretty with long hair.

“how does that make you feel?” you follow.

the question startles me. as if you’re wondering how easy it would be to pull me apart with your words. that’s my thing.

“i can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”

“well i mean, we’ll see what happens. you’re leaving in a few weeks anyway.”

i’m always on a timeline. a bullet train, as you would put it. onto the next place, the next thing, the next stop. and the next for me now is back to england, back to the cold, to finish my psych degree that i’m having second thoughts about. it’s partially your fault. only partially.

you’re on your own bullet train, too. and it’s a relief, honestly. my train seems to be coming apart at the seams these days, groaning and whining under all the times people have tried to rust my gears. you have not tried yet. if god has not, then god will not. tell me, is that god or is that you?

and yet, despite your incredibly unforgiving response, i feel in this moment as though god herself has forgiven me of the sins that i have spent eternities crucifying myself over.

“do i look like i’m pulling away?” you add. you give your cigarette its last breath on the shingles of the roof we’re sitting on. i note with a quiet satisfaction that you don’t flick it off into the abyss of twilight below us and instead place it carefully beside you. you look at me again, with those eyes that have more depth every time i’ve let myself look back into them. you have this smug on your face that i don’t think i could wipe off even if i tried.

“…no,” i concede, tucking my shoulders further into my knees. i try to hide away from these things.

you shift closer, close enough to crumble the wall between us i had been trying to sneak a brick or two onto for the past twenty minutes. i let myself sigh into the crevice of your neck in the midst of the rubble.

i keep scanning your face, your hands, your soul for any sign of hesitation, any sign of fear from you. i am conflicted when i find none.

your lips push into mine as if to prove a point. i let them. i let you. i let you. your point is made. is that selfish to say? god forgive me for this fear that keeps me from you.

a shuffle is heard from that same abyss below us. you pull away (not for any particular reason) and glance to the street in front of us.

“oh, fuck,” i whisper as i watch my father avert his eyes and continue walking into the house. i thought he was already back from walking the dog.

you burst out laughing as i smother the fire in my cheeks with my palms. it wasn’t like it was much of a shock to anyone, anyway. my family is probably overly aware of my… lifestyle. becoming irrevocably entangled with people overnight seems to happen about as often and as naturally as the sun rising again the next morning, and when your car broke down near my house on a weekend after the rave we had gone to together, i had offered to let you crash at mine for a few days while it got fixed rather than finding an hour and a half ride home. in my room. in my bed… in me, as i’ve discovered. and i mean, there’s only so many nights a boy can spend in my bed in a row before my parents ask the dreaded question. sooooo, are you and x a thing? they’ll ask me when you leave, probably. my mom is always just as nosy.

you’re one of the first people that i’ve been completely upfront with about this pattern of mine. let’s be clear, i had confessed, i have major commitment issues (said like i must disclose my existence before you love me). i mean, i wouldn’t have kissed you if you hadn’t known that. we had both known from the moment we met a few months ago, dragging speakers and dj controllers half a mile back up a trail at 7 in the morning, when i shared with you how much more there was to life than the toxic relationship you had confided in me with. you had broken up with her a week later. you like being free. so do i. and i suppose this had been a long time coming.

the embarrassment hangs in the air as my parent’s suspicions are confirmed. “well, hey, it’s not my dad, that’s for you to worry about,” you laugh.

“shut up,” i groan. we sit, the moment and the laughter lingering on each other’s lips in faint smiles.

“do you hate destiny?”

i scoff in amusement and awe at the perfection of your question. you seem to have a lot of those. you let me sit in my disbelief patiently, studying me as i glue my eyes to the front yard beneath us.

“…yeah, actually, i do. a lot,” i say after a few seconds. my own answer surprises me. “i’ve had so many connections at this point that i just… i’m tired. i’m tired of people saying i’m everything to them, that it was fate that we met and all that… i think for once i just want to be nothing to someone.”

“no expectations that way.”

i look at you. like, truly look. it’s one of the few times that weekend that i let myself slip through the cracks of my own caution. “exactly,” i respond simply. i feel us both sink deeper into the gaze before you tear your eyes away from me and back onto the fading sky.

“my butt is getting wet, can we go inside?” you break the silence. it had rained pretty hard awhile ago and the towel we’re sitting on has started to soak through. you’ve done that a few times so far—-broken a moment—-but it somehow never feels forced. never feels avoidant. just an acknowledgement that the moment is over.

“fine,” i sigh. the sunset had turned to purple now anyway and the scattered flickers of fireflies had begun to illuminate the branches of the trees that spilled over the edge of the roof at our feet.

i watch, lightly amused, as you struggle and scramble through the window and back into my brother’s room.

—

you disappear into the bathroom to brush your teeth with the food lion toothbrush my brother stole for you on your first night here. i had made a fuss about it; it’d had only been two dollars, but he had shoved it in his pocket before i could complain further. part of me wishes you hadn’t taken it with you when you left, either.

eventually you emerge and begin to change into the pulp fiction shirt and bleach-stained sweatpants i had lent you. i’m too busy staring nervously at the wall from my spot on the bed to admire the way my bathroom light bathes your back and chisels the shadows of your shoulder blades. “how are you feeling? you’re, like, staring at the wall.” you interrupt my spiral.

“anxious,” i reply bluntly.

“yeah?”

“yeah.”

“well that’s good, means i said something worth thinking about.”

god fucking damn it, another perfect line. what is it with this guy? no one out-performs me on prying questions. “of course you did,” i end up saying.

you smile at me and walk back into the bathroom, probably to wash your face. you’ve been complaining about the acne you developed while you were here and didn’t have your own face wash.

this is one of those pivotal moments, you see. comical, almost. i have two options: rush into the bathroom and beg (are you sure? are you sure you can love me? what do i have to do to prove that i, too, am alive and worthy of love? i am alive. am i worthy of love? i am alive and therefore i am dangerous. here’s me warning you now, woe is me, run while you can!!!!) or…

do nothing.

it’s much too late for the former, anyway. my brain begs me to hold onto the tight feeling in my chest; it loops and performs the most elegant acrobatics, desperately leaping off a trampoline in flailing and bedazzled limbs, searching for the most awe-striking pose to garner my attention once more. it reaches into the sky. it would fall into the sun given the chance. but your words and your smile have already woven their way into my ribs. they root into the bed i lay on, all the way into the soil beneath the floors. i cannot perform anymore. i don’t think i want to. i feel my bones loosen as i continue to stare at my poster-covered ceiling. i am not tempted in the way i used to be, you see. and you have made it very clear that you are not tempted in the way that those before you have been. and so i smile. and i don’t move an inch.

and from the bathroom: “wanna watch that movie now?”

19/08/26