She couldn't remember exactly how she'd ended up on his lap in his favorite chair, nor why he'd even let her be there. Perhaps she had come to him, upset over some minor indiscretion and determined to drink their sorrow away together, leaving them both with their shields down to end up in a mutual awkward situation. Or maybe he had been the sober one and she the out-of-control desperado after a night of partying gone bad or one too many drinks.
Whatever the case, he was there and she was there, and though she could remember little about that harsh period of her life she clearly recalled the feeling of his hands roaming her back: strong, subtle, light and soothing all at the same time. If she had to name one feature of his that she actually liked it would have to be his hands, and only because of that one time in his arms.
The touch had contained none of his usual glibness, only lightly tracing her spine through the fabric of her dress – a wine-red one, long since retired or given away or lost in some back corner – and she had liked it at the time, in the way she liked the feeling of being drunk or the feeling of smoke in her lungs. It was one of the few times she had ever unintentionally allowed herself to be comforted by another, a feeling that she both craved to feel again someday and resented as a part of her past weakness.
Depending on what mood she was in she thought about that night differently. Sometimes it was an honest, chaste act of comfort on his part that she merely interpreted as being desirous because of her relatively young age. Those were on the days she spent in denial. Sometimes it was just him being a tease, knowing it would go no further than that and trying to get a rise out of her, when she hated him. But usually, between cups of tea or puffs of smoke she thought she knew the real reason, and was both secretly pleased and saddened by it. It was, she had decided, something that could have been.
Sometimes she thought she could remember feeling something in his hands that was vaguely sorrowful – almost defeatist, as if he knew that because of circumstances beyond his control there never would be anything more, but was allowing himself this one tender act despite knowing he could never go any further due to his age, her inebriation, the unchangeable future or whatever else stood between them. It was when she thought of him like that that she thought that she could have loved him – despite knowing what would and did eventually happen.
But, she reminded herself constantly, it was the past. That alone should have been enough to completely bar her from even thinking about it, but she couldn't help herself. Over time the memory wormed its way into her heart – much like he eventually had – and established itself as a fact of life. She supposed it would always be that way, and that one moment the eternal question of what might had happened between them had history somehow been rewritten.
But as much as it hurt to think about, she secretly treasured that moment and the feel of his hands – if only to look back on it and torture herself with what could have been. And if comforted her to know that if nothing else, they would always share that sin of self-denial.
- Fin