Summary: Bright and Amy have sex. If you don't like the idea, please don't read this. If you don't like the execution, please let me know why. Title taken from the Damien Rice song.
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It's days afterwards — Amy doesn't know how long, because the days had drifted together, and now she's not sure that any time has passed at all — when she goes to Colin's house.
Lainey lets her in. Amy tries to make conversation about something, she's not sure what but she knows she's speaking, but Lainey isn't interested. She mutters something about Amy being fine and flees out the front door.
At first, Amy wanders through the rooms downstairs, searching for Colin. He's still there, a basketball forlorn in its corner, a magazine that doesn't quite count as pornography hanging half out of the rack. His food is still in the fridge. She checks the dates to see if they should be thrown out, but they don't mean anything to her and she wouldn't do it anyway.
It's not enough, and she makes her way upstairs. His toothbrush is dry in a cup in the bathroom. She pauses at Lainey's open door, looking in, but she doesn't enter: Colin isn't there. His parents' room is empty of everything.
When she gets to Colin's room Bright is sitting on the floor. He doesn't look up when she comes in. She'd planned to look around, but she doesn't need to, because Colin is everywhere here. She can feel him. So she crosses to Bright and touches his shoulder and shakes him until he looks at her.
There's a photograph on the floor in front of him of the three of them and it looks like it was taken that day; it could have been taken today.
She sinks to the floor beside him, staring at herself. She recognises herself in the photo, in a way that she doesn't now. She's not herself now; she's stuck behind the glass. She glosses over Colin's smile and looks at Bright instead, because it's easier.
Bright is a warm line against her side, and she presses closer, leaning her chin on his shoulder and pressing her cheek against his bowed head. She wants to look at him, see if he's the same.
"Bright," she says, calling him to her, but he doesn't respond. She kisses his cheekbone and he turns his head. He looks like he wants to cry, but she knows he won't. He's not hers anymore, and he's not what she needs, but she tries to smile at him anyway.
"I wish it had been me," he says, and she doesn't think she means it, but she wishes it were true. And because she doesn't want to know that, she leans forward and kisses him again.
She's never kissed Bright on the mouth before (never even her father, though she must have, once, when she was a child) and she's surprised when he responds, though he always does when she kisses him on the cheek. When his hands touch her back, she pulls away, startled, but Bright's mouth tenses again, and she kisses him again.
Bright's hands are clutching at her back, and then digging into her shoulders, and she moves closer so it won't hurt so much. She's not sure which of them opened their mouth first, but her eyes are closed, and she only has memories of doing this with Colin.
And she only does this with Colin, so it doesn't matter that it's good, doesn't matter that he's pushing her down to the floor, that she's letting him. He starts to tremble, and his mouth is too hard, pressing her lips into her teeth. She remembers her first kisses with Colin, when she hadn't known what she was doing. She knows how to make a kiss work now, and she does.
His fingers claw at her waist until they make their way under her top. They're cold, but they make her feel flushed, and she blinks dizzily, staring up at Colin's ceiling. There used to be stars there, and planets, to glow in the dark and keep him company, but they're gone.
He's still touching her, pulling her top up over her head, scraping it against her shoulder blades and catching her hair painfully, but she can't bring herself to complain. She drifts back down, and blood is rushing through her body. She stares at Colin's bed, thinks about crawling into it and sleeping, but he's kissing her breasts and she's warm and tight and doesn't want to move.
The cotton of his shirt is soft against her as he squirms around above her, occasionally dropping wet kisses on her jaw or her chin or her mouth, and just when she's thinking that this isn't enough, that this isn't right, his hand rubs along the denim of her jeans, up the inside seam and he's tugging at the buttons, tugging them down past her knees, past her feet, and then his hand is between her legs.
Dazed, she moves against it, moves her head around. There's a chair beside her and Colin's sweatshirt (no blood, should be a stain, like the chocolate ice-cream that won't wash out of her favourite white pants) is thrown over the back. It's been worn, she can smell it from here, smell him from here, and she thinks about reaching for it, burying herself in it, but her hands are touching his arms and she can't tell the difference.
It takes her a moment to realise — inside her, Colin is inside him like he's inside her — because it hadn't hurt, even though she hadn't done this with Colin. Bright moves inside her, and her thighs start to ache, but she doesn't say anything, just stares at Colin's sweatshirt, never worn again, stares at Colin's bed, she'll never do this with him, tries to look at the photograph but she doesn't know where it is.
The carpet is rough under her, and she hadn't thought she could be any rawer, but it's scraping at her skin, burning. Bright starts touching her again after a while, and she stops thinking, pleasure building in her stomach, in her mind, fights for air like Colin, and she tightens, tenses and tenses until she breaks, arches, curls around herself.
And when he's finally lying heavy and still on her, it's not what she wants; she wants to push at him, push him off her, out of her, wants to scream and cry and run from him, but she can't do any of those things. She can't do anything that would make this matter, make it last beyond this.
So she lies still, letting him weigh her down, and pretends that she's a child again. She pretends that she's just climbed into his bed after a nightmare, and she waits for morning to come.