"I should be anywhere but here."
Roxanne didn't say this aloud, but the words ring clearly in her head. It's the deafening sound of early afternoon sobriety.
Her ballet-flat clad feet were perched on the coffee table, knees drawn slightly towards her chest. Sometimes she just feels like a mass of limbs, disconnected from the rest of her body. It's one of those days, and her limbs are tingling.
It's 1:13 and Mark is making coffee behind her, clattering around his apartment as if this is the most natural thing in the world. The thing is, it is natural. It's his apartment, of course it's natural.
Yesterday this could have happened, or the day before, or the week before, or the month. All of this is perfectly normal. Still, her fingertips and toes feel electric. They are friends, and have been for quite awhile now. Friends having coffee at 1:13 in the afternoon. Normal, natural.
Mark holds the cup out for Roxanne to take and she clutches it between her electric fingers. Maybe she's clutching it too tightly. Maybe she'll break it. She's good at that. Still, she smiles into the cup, as if he wouldn't notice.
His feet go onto the table next to hers, but then he's pulling her legs across his body, across his lap. It catches Roxanne off-guard and she barely manages not to spill her coffee all over herself. She doesn't have a change of clothes. Spilling coffee would be tragic.
Mark has one hand on the outside of her thigh and the other one around his own coffee. Normal, almost painfully so. It's quiet and domestic. He's not forcing her into either chit chat or deep, 'meaningful' conversation. She's been waiting for his expectations to weigh down on her, but they're just not coming.
After all this time pursuing her, claiming over and over again that he was right, that this would happen, after being so fucking sure, Roxanne hadn't wanted to give Mark the satisfaction. Then she was scared. "Only the chase," she told herself. "The idea of Roxanne," not the woman herself. She was a high functioning type of broken that seemed appealing from the outside but terrifying in reality. There were lots of things she thought about before he kissed her. Things, lots of them.
Mark's hand drifted with a purpose, but it waes all chaste, just the same. Over her kneecap, down to the edge of her flats, back up to her ankle.
The coffee was very strong and only lukewarm. She set it down on the table.
It felt normal, natural, to kiss Mark like this, her legs thrown over his, her shoes still on even though she had slept there the night before. Slept in his bed, the night before, not the couch like she had before. They had fallen asleep in their clothes like children exhausted from a day of excitement in the bright sun. The drowsiness that came from being too warm had overtaken them. Mark didn't give a damn where she put her shoes.
His hands were in her hair even though it was full of tangles. Didn't bother him one bit. She could taste the sugar that had been in his coffee. Or maybe she imagined that part.
Roxanne wasn't naïve, not by a fucking long shot, but she thought, for sure, that the giddiness would have subsided by now. Why then, were her lungs still filled with bubbles of excitement when he touched the back of her neck? Maybe it was that she liked being pursued. Maybe she liked giving in. Maybe she liked Mark.
Definitely that last one, for sure.
A/N More? I don't know if there is any interest in this
