Distance

Distance(Melissa Thorpe) The evening is as intoxicating as the house wine that steadily draws me away from a state of sobriety, taking my inhabitations but leaving a burning, vinegary after taste. I am loose lipped and loose hipped, dancing in small circles on an empty patch of beer slicked floor. I lack style and grace but I make up for this in pure, unbridled enthusiasm. I just wish I knew this song so my lip synching looked more impressive. I don’t care; I love it. One of the guys we came out with is making his way towards me, dancing, swaying, pulling me into him and grinding his alcohol sweating body against my own, every inch of our bodies pulled and pushed like magnets as the music pulses through the room. The lights above flash in a rhythm that no one can fathom, leaving brief pauses of darkness where optimistic hands search out hidden spots of flesh beneath the dress that swirls and ripples round my thighs as I dance out the music that fills me. From over his shoulder I can see you, leaning against the bar, casual in a way that I could never carry. You’re watching the lights and the flowing, ebbing dancing of people too drunk to care, and I hold onto the hope that you are watching me. I close my eyes and dance with him as if he were you, bodies pressed together, tight and bruising; soft lips and nicotine sighs that land on necks and ears. Breaths that are now too hard and too fast, delivered with lust fuelled kisses to lips that were never meant for him. I hope that you’re watching and the burning inside your chest rivals the acidity of my wine.

His hand slips further under my dress, drunk and fumbling fingers probing at the soft flesh of my inner thigh and suddenly, the spell is broken. He is not you and I can’t hold onto my spite long enough to endure any more. I’ve wanted you for so long and have hurt myself in so many ways just to clutch at thin straws of fancy that you might be looking at him and wishing as hard as I do that you were in his place. I untangle myself from him and push my way through the crowd towards the bar, towards you, where you remain insouciant.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask when I’m close enough for you to hear, my mouth to your ear and one hand resting on your shoulder.
‘Yeah. You look like you’re having a good time’ the deadpan response is thrown back to me, absent of eye contact, and I dare to believe that there is a hint of accismus about you.
‘Yeah, it’s a good night. Don’t you think so?’ despite our close proximity I feel a million miles from you as you continue to watch the crowd around us; the song changes and they adapt to the new beat with fresh, frantic movements. I feel the air between us clogged with viscous atmosphere, the feeling of an impending impact. I’m tied before an oncoming train, just waiting, waiting.
‘I don’t like seeing you with other guys. With him.’ And there it is. My chest tightens; the air forced from my lungs and as I gasp for oxygen my ears begin to ring with such intensity that I’m beginning to doubt I heard your words at all.
‘Are you…jealous?’ I test the word, roll it around my mouth and taste it before spitting it out at you.
‘…Yes’ I don’t feel like dancing any more. I don’t feel the hefty weight of a drunken haze any more either so now the music is too loud, the club is too busy, and what the hell possessed me to wear these shoes?
‘I think…I want to go home now.’ The bittersweet irony is that these friends we came out with are not yours but mine and you have nowhere else to sleep for the night, save the bed I offered you earlier that morning, with barely hidden indecent intentions. But intentions rarely come to fruition and now the night is tainted with an awkwardness that trails behind us. Your own bed is three hundred miles away and so we leave, together, conversation short and clipped as the taxi drives us to the house and, inevitably, over charges us.

I take longer than is necessary to unlock the door, slowly turn the key, lock clicks, double check. I climb the stairs, one by one, and as I take each step I feel another part of the night dropping away from me and floating to the floor like so many decayed feathers. You are upstairs already, waiting, next to the bag you brought and your small pile of stock items: phone, loose change, Navy ID. I snap the light off and start undressing, the knowledge of the act committed more important than you seeing it. The bed still harbours a chill and I wrap the quilt around me, fighting off the shivers that crawl across my flesh. My eyes are still unaccustomed to the darkness so I don’t see you climb into the bed, but I feel the mattress shifting beneath me as you lay your body beside mine. And I feel your hands and arms as they snake around me then tighten, drawing me in close to you.

I pull in long, deep breaths and hold them inside my lungs, letting the scent of you burn through the insides of me. I try to move closer but this wall of flesh and blood and bones conspire against us, so I am left scrabbling at you, wishing that I could fall through your pores and hide between your sheets of skin so no one could take you away from me. I’m trying so hard to just live in this moment but I’m holding tears behind closed eyelids and I don’t know if they are from the joy of having you here or from the heartache of knowing that you will be leaving me again soon. I’ve grown accustomed to your periods of absence although each one mines a slightly deeper crack into my heart, but this one is different. And I feel the dawn steaming ferociously towards us, my back braced and arms pushing against the tide of time, heels digging into the ground; split and hemorrhaging. The silence is as heavy as the elephant in the room. An infinite number of unsung songs and my mouth is filled with blood from trying not to speak. I daren’t even look at your face because I’m so afraid of what I might find there or, more to the point, what I will find to be lacking. So I’ll lay eye straight, examining every inch of your naked chest as it rises and falls beneath my head, listening intently to your breaths and heart beats and wondering if any of them are for me.
‘Will you miss me?’ my voice is barely above a whisper.
‘I always do’, your words wrap me up and for one brief, glorious moment I can forget all the doubts that breed and fester in those dark corners of my mind that only speak up when I’m lying in a cold bed at night, alone and afraid of the empty future ahead of me.