If This is Dinner, What’s Dessert?

Is that a bite mark?

Bee slapped her palm around the side of her neck to impede the two semi-circles blossoming red against her pale skin.

Her roommate’s boyfriend chuckled and tipped back his wine glass.

Someone had a good night.

Brad don’t judge.

Not at all, Bee, not at all. Did he at least buy you dinner first?

I was dinner.

Bee winked, filled her water glass, and walked back to her room. She stripped down to her underwear and examined her body in the full-length mirror.

Head tilted, she swept her hair back into a sloppy ponytail and rubbed at the spotted teeth marks dotting her collarbone. Small marks, blood blooming red and deep purple under her pale skin, scattered a trail from her belly button and across her chest.

No hickies! She had commanded. Going to work the next day looking like a hormonally-charged high schooler was not her plan. So instead the marks covered areas normally secreted by clothing — she had raked his back with her nails and nibbled at his shoulder, he bit at her neck and tasted her stomach.

Bee slipped back on her t-shirt and checked her phone — it was Kellen.

Dessert tomorrow?

Marks would fade. It didn’t matter what she looked like now — she knew he was worse off.

—

I wish I never asked you to stay. I wish I didn’t beg and I didn’t plead. Because at the end of the day, it wasn’t about you — it was never about you.

It was about the slow rise and fall of your breath, another heartbeat to wake up beside. A name to see on my screen. A knock on the door, a seat at the table and a credit card to pay with.

You left — I should have just let you go.

—

Day No. 19 of my #100DayProject. 100 days of fiction, 100 days of story. Watch the story unfold here, day by day.