Ambivalent Attachments
They are sitting on her kitchen floor; the lights are out — legs an entangled nest of snakes. The refrigerator bulb shines off their skin and eyes. He blows smoke towards her face and she coughs, leaky eyes forming canyons on her cheeks.
“Asshole,” she laughingly calls him. Her teeth are sharp in the light, their edges a warning flash in the dark. The shadows of his face are familiar.
“Why else would you bring me home?” the boy reminds her. “We’re hardly friends.”
She remembers, staring intently at the way the edges of his features blend into its shadows, in the single, dull light, from her kitchen. The cut of his nose, the tense outline of his jaw, the pointed edges of his narrowed eyes; always a different face with the same shadows.
“Touché,” the girl responds, withdrawing her legs from their piled limbs, tucking them into herself.
For a moment, it is silent. Nothing but the repeat motions of blinking, breathing, exhaling smoke and swallowing saliva hints at something alive in the dark of the kitchen. The shadows play a trick on the eyes and the boy sitting beside her turns into a man towering over her; the girl remains as she has always been. They always change — eyes, lips, hands, face, names — all but the girl and their shadows.
There simply isn’t enough space for her and the smoke of his spliff is beginning to make her feel claustrophobic. The girl mentally measures their distance in the dark by the heat of his breath, before trying to swim into her beer bottle. Diving in headfirst, she nearly drowns.
He pulls the drink away from her, bottle knocking against her mouth, while her sprinkler face spouts fluid. He tells her to stop being such a dumb bitch and to slow down next time.
The girl pouts, head hanging down.
He clucks his tongue at her like a hen.
The girl grumbles that he’s fathering her.
The man chuckles. His smile is sharp in the light — smoke barely escaping through them. The man reaches forward to tuck a wet strand of hair behind her ear, his roughened fingers just barely hitting the baby soft of her skin.
She flinches. There is a pause in their motions and, for a moment, they hold each other’s stare. The refrigerator light flickers but the girl’s eyes are static, like a rabbit that caught sight of a coyote.
The girl leans away, taking two square tiles of distance with her, wincing at the very sound of his breathing. But just the same, she stays.
