Bluer than Blue

Lissey Wilde
Aug 27, 2017 · 2 min read

She walked the winding path to the pool at her apartment at dusk. The air was already cooling, the crickets chirping. Her whole body ached. She smiled, thinking of her friend Ajit telling her in his so-close-to-perfect English, “My body is paining”.

Yes, her body was paining. Her feet, thighs, lower back … the teacher’s curse. She needed to feel enveloped in cool liquid, her body supported, almost weightless. She longed to be relieved of gravity.

She’d texted him before she left, “Whatcha doin’?” He didn’t respond. Something in her belly always dipped, and her whole center of gravity lowered, thinking of him. Remembering the touch of his thigh against hers, pressed too tightly against him in the back of Mr. Reed’s red Fiat.

She kept snatching sideways glances at his profile as they drove to lunch. His eyelashes were so long they brushed his cheek. He’d lost weight over the summer. His cheekbones were more defined. Desire began to flow inside her against her will. She imagined sitting right beside him at the conference, his little finger interlocking with hers as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

She remembered his skin against hers. The way he straddled her, pulling off his gray ‘Atoms Make Up Everything’ t-shirt in a single, easy gesture. When they were being physical, they were completely at home in each other. Lying in bed together they belly-laughed about their students’ antic behaviors. It was only in everyday life that they felt like strangers.

There were moments in time that she lost herself completely, thinking of his cock inside her, filling her, stroking and moving inside her. The dark shock of hair, those bluer than blue eyes.

The water was about the same temperature as the air. She slipped in easily, her iridescent one-piece glittering in the dappled evening light. She swam in wide, gentle strokes from one end of the pool to the other.

The question remained the same after two years: “How do you love a man who doesn’t see you, who doesn’t see beyond himself?” It was the question she could not answer. She was drawn to him by a physical desire beyond her rational self. Knowing full well that she could never be known by him, knowing that he did not have the capacity to love her.

She pulled herself reluctantly from the water. It was almost dark now and she had things to do before sleep; clothes to set out, lunch to make, a bag to pack with lesson plans and still ungraded papers.

She looked down and checked her phone to see with surprise that he’d texted back:

Hey. I want YOU. You looked beautiful today. I’m coming over.

)

Lissey Wilde
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