This Tryst

This is how it begins.

He calls to her, shouting her name, saying that he needs her. She is sitting inside her bathroom, only wearing her underwear, smoking by the window, waiting for the water to warm up. She thinks he is ill, so she runs up the stairs to his room where he is lying there, naked, post-coital, and completely at ease. She has seen him undressed on occasion, and is not unnerved by the image before her: bare, smooth skin and clean, graceful lines marking downwards from his abdomen, pointing down, down towards his sex.

He sits up calmly, asking if he could please have a cigarette, he's run out and they don't have the goddamn things in town. She smiles and nods. They both smoke special French cigarettes; he got her addicted to them ages and ages ago. They are the only kind she uses now. She is holding the pack and lighter in her hand, and she pulls one out with the same hand that she is holding the box in and lights the cigarette by holding it up to the burning end of her own. She crosses over and hands him the burning stick, and he takes it before grabbing her wrist and motioning for her to lie down beside him.

They are vacationing together with his girlfriend. They are on the coast of Greece somewhere, an old summer home of his family's. The house is entirely white, and the furniture is elegantly modern. His room consists of a sleigh bed, a sleek walnut desk, several tall sea-foam colored glass chest of drawers, and beautiful paintings. The art is a sharp contrast from the sleekness of the rest of the room. The swirling colors of an original Soutine and Chagall, all jumbled and seemingly haphazard, seem to pop out of the otherwise bare walls. The paintings are in rich reds, golds, and browns. They have passion that cannot bleed out any further than its two dimensional prison, cannot stain the pristine white of the rest of the room.

The bed is covered in white sheets of the finest Frette Italian linen. She smiles as she notices a small burn mark at the top right corner of one of the sheets. She made that mark: it is the only real imperfection in the otherwise perfect room. She had been attempting to light an incense candle while stoned and had dropped the match in her inability to control her movements. She remembered how her hands, jerking, refused to hold still, stay steady.

She settles down on the bed, crossing her left arm under her chest, across the top of her flat stomach and props her right elbow onto the well in the palm of her hand, allowing her left hand to grip around the base of her elbow, just below the forearm. Her cigarette, which is in her right hand, burns lazily, and she admires the beautiful colors of its flare. The blaze is a delightful, heady orange: when she closes her eyes, she can see the imprint that the brightness of the flame has left, seemingly burning through her eyelids and tattooing itself onto the inside of her head. It resonates there, echoes, fading away until all she sees is black again.

Beside her, he stares at the far wall impassively, gaze stony and face blank. Suddenly he begins to speak.

He proceeds to explain that he's desperately in love with her, can't she tell? He's loved her for three years. You, he says, are always on my mind, and I can't knock your face out of my head. He says this with complete calm, as if he doesn't care, but his words defy the tone of voice, as does the slight shake to his hands.

You, he says at last, you are what I want, and what I so desperately need.

With that said, he stands and pulls a bathrobe off the chair in front of the desk, striding quickly through the door that leads to bathroom, pulling on the robe as he goes. She soon hears the sound of the shower running.

She is lying on the bed, still holding her elbow and cigarette, in complete and utter shock. She had assumed that he would never love her, and that he never had. She is both overjoyed and pained, thinking about what had passed between them, and how they had had to let each other go.

There is no time for rest stops here

She had first really met him first three summers ago, four years after he had graduated a year ahead of her. They had both been in the south of France at a mutual friend's party, and she had stumbled upon him rummaging through a box of tampons, attempting to tug the cardboard applicator from around the tight packed, absorbent cotton in order to smoke some unknown substance. She had been so far gone, so utterly wasted that all she could do was try and help him, taking a hit of the mystery drug herself. He had ended up collapsing on a bed next to her, and they had woken up the next morning at the same time. She remembered what her first real impression of him was that he was handsome and all too aware of the fact, which made him arrogant. He had gone shopping, insisting that she tag along. She had been annoyed by the amount of money he threw around so carelessly that day, buying useless items at a whim, and she told him so. Before she could storm off, he had grabbed her hand and apologized, and she had stayed.

They were close friends, talking often and seeing each other frequently. But their relationship stayed cool until a year later when they were at his summer home in Greece for the first time together. They had been relaxing outside, lying down on the sheets that she had ruined the previous day, when he had suddenly grabbed her hand and kissed it before taking her cigarette and taking a drag. He had then put his arm around her and kissed her forehead. That night was spent with soft kisses and tender embraces, and she fell in love with him.

She was still a virgin, and she told him so. He had been surprised, but his answer had been just that they would take it slow. They spent long hours learning about each other, mapping out each others' skin, discovering their bodies' likes and dislikes, the spots that made each other moan and the areas that raised their body temperatures to unimaginable heights.

Towards the end of their long vacation in the sun, they had woken up beside each other, and things had quickly progressed. He pushed down her pants and tugged at her shirt, sweeping the thin cotton over her head quickly and efficiently as she undid his belt buckle and the buttons of his shirt with trembling, eager fingers. Before either of them could fully understand the gravity of their situation, they were naked and pressed up against each other. He was above her and breathing into her collarbone, kissing her neck softly when the telephone rang. He fumbled for the phone, but missed and the answering machine clicked on.

Hi, it's me, Liz. I just wanted to call and check on you because you haven't called since we last saw each other. Um, I was worried that the sex was bad, you know, but it was my first time, so you could, um, teach me? Uh, sorry, I miss you though. I'll call you later.

As the machine stopped playing, the silence throughout the room suddenly made its presence known, and he had hovered above her still, resting his weight on his forearms as he tried to keep from looking her in the eye. He got up swiftly and pulled his clothes on before leaving.

She had stayed in bed, reaching for the stash of drugs she knew he kept inside his bedside drawer and taking a few hits before stumbling towards the closet and grabbing one of his dress shirts and wrapping it about herself, waiting for him to get back and take her home. She waited all day and night, but he never came.

When she woke up the next morning, he still wasn't home, so she just kept using his stash, trying to ignore the ache in her chest, telling herself he would be home soon. When he came in at eleven, she knew he'd been with Liz, and she finally managed to sober up enough to use the floo without fear of ending up in some godforsaken place. It was all that she could do to prevent from screaming.

They had stopped speaking for a long time, but eventually he called, if only to ask for his shirt back. Before he hung up, he had said softly, I'm sorry to have canceled. I had a previous engagement. The last thing that she had heard was Liz laughing in the background, ordering him to come back to bed.

Present tense is necessary as past and future fade

For some reason, she had agreed to coming back here with the pair, knowing that it would hurt, but she had thought that it would prove that she was really over him if she went. And now, here she is, sitting outside the shower and wondering what the fuck his problem is.

I'm a fucker, he says, voice low and trembling. I'm sorry for putting you through all this.

She agrees, silently, that he is a fucker. But she isn't sure of how sorry he is, and she voices this thought aloud.

He laughs, hoarsely and without humor.

She had known, of course, he still felt something for her as soon as she had seen him. He had stiffened, barely perceptibly, and had avoided looking directly at her. The careful way in which he approached her and spoken to her had been indicative of the uncertainty he felt of how she would react to his apology.

Pomp and circumstance go hand in hand, taking careful steps

She knows that Liz is gone for two days, giving her the option of spending the night with him if she wants. She still has refrained from sleeping with anyone, but she knows who she desires to sleep with.

They lie in bed together, just like they had before, smoking and talking unhurriedly.

Sometime during this day, though, between his confession and lying here together now, she has fallen for him again. Fallen for his bony wrists and elegant, tapered fingers. Fallen for his beautiful French cuffed shirts and gold cufflinks that he had received from his grandfather. Fallen for the seemingly permanent five o' clock shadow that graces the hollows of his cheeks and chin, highlighted because of his ever so high cheekbones. Fallen for his sharp grey eyes, dark and intense, and seemingly endless: they seem deep enough to drown in, if she wants to badly enough.

Now that she has been given the opportunity to be with him, even if just for one day, would she be able to follow through? She has taken showers with him, slept in his bed, and even lived with him for a little while; it felt as if they had made love figuratively, if not literally, and he treats her like a lover, not a friend.

She is at a loss.

She always wondered what life would be like if Liz had not called, or if he had been able to pick up the phone before the answering machine had. She probably would not be a virgin, and he probably would have left her for Liz anyways.

Before their first day alone together ends, he kisses her again, this time on her cheekbone before swooping down and caressing her lips with his. He picks her up and wraps her in one his charred sheets and carries her to the bathroom, where he has the tub filled and waiting for her. Carefully walking about her and pulling her clothes off, he watches her stand and complacently lift her arms when he asks or step out of her panties when he commands her to. She is naked in front of him again, at last, and he hungrily takes her in, looking as if he wants to swallow her whole, and she revels in the desire in his eyes. She lays inside the tub, and he sits down on the chair that she had brought in that morning, with his elbows on the rim and chin in hands, watching as she stares without blinking at the granite wall in front of her. He leaves again, muttering about going out to get something to eat. She stays in the tub for several hours, allowing the water to cool down, and she is shivering by the time he comes home.

With an expressionless face, he picks her out of the tub and rewraps her in the sheets before taking her into the bedroom and putting her down. He gives her the last of the cigarettes, which they share before falling asleep.

The next morning, she wakes up to find him sitting beside the bed, watching her closely. He is dressed, but she is still naked, and she sits up, allowing the sheet to fall about her hips.

He takes in a sharp breath before coming close and putting his hands on her breasts and kissing her forcefully, rolling onto the bed and pulling her on top of him. They kiss like this for a long, long time, slowly and leisurely, murmuring to each other underneath out breaths, creating steady rhythms, a clear tempo that beats under both their skins.

As night falls once more, though, she knows that she must leave. She can not stay and let herself be taken over once more. She knows he will not leave Liz. She knows this in her heart and even if it aches, she tells herself, it is better to be like this. Hurt now, not later.

She remembers how she felt last year when he left her body to go worship someone else's. She was once an exalted temple, and now she is empty and desecrated.

Why is it that she is so easy to discard? Jeter les ordures. Of course.

She decides that this time, she must leave instead.

She gathers her clothes and goes.