He's the guy who's been asking her out all week.
She kept saying no.
But now she wants him, now she wants the rhythmic beat of his heart to become hers, now she wants his hands to claim her body, mouth to claim her lips. She wants him to tell her he loves her and needs her and he cannot live without her.
One night. That's all she wants is one night to ease the pain, to stitch back together her wounded soul with the heat of another. His kiss will heal her scars, his touch will mend her heart, and his together they can help erase her mind her stolen backbone. He will be her rock, her spine keeping her upright. They will be beautiful.
She's in the car, in the parking lot to the bar where they met last week.
And damn it! Fuck. She just wants to be loved, held. But her house is cold from a lack of living entities. Nothing but two broken souls and a shadow of a mother that use to be, but now just haunts. Like a shadow in a dark alley.
Shouldn't it be a welcome presence?
Her dead mother's ghost? The dark company that has latched itself onto every facet of her being, dragging her, making her weak from grief.
It should be warming, right? It isn't.
Unless she isn't thinking straight. Maybe she's just hallucinating.
Yeah, that's it. Yeah.
It's not her mother. It's not her mother's ghost.
Nothing of her mother exists anymore. Nothing, but her earthly belongings anyway. The coroner has yet to release the body or her mother's personal items.
She gets out of the car, borrowed it (stole) from her roommate. She followed him here and waited for him to leave. Now she can make her move, hoping beyond hope that he still wants her.
She isn't aware of how desperate she looks and sounds when she approaches him.
Jittery, jumpy, and lost.
"Hey? Hey, you!" she calls from the street, stopping him in his tracks.
"Hey! Hi, uh, what're you doing here?" His hands are spread at his sides, reacting as if they've known each other before.
He walks up to her and her breathing starts going erratic. She just wants to be loved and God, she wants him to be the one to make her lose herself.
"Do you…still want to take me out?"
"Y-yes!" His eyes bulge out their sockets at her question, his body orienting towards her, like they're magnetic. "Of course I do." His voice is calmer now, but she can see the relief flowing through his eyes. Those big gorgeous blue eyes, like electric cerulean, would devour her. She bites her lip, steps closer to the man who she wants to be buried under.
"Okay, but how about we skip the pleasantries?"
When they get inside his apartment she tells him to rip her clothes off. She wants it rough, hard, deep; she wants him to make her scream until she forgets her own name.
She tells him she wants to be kissed and squeezed here and there, and oh just like that. And without warning he's twisting his hips, stealing the air from her lungs.
She whispers her need for him and he says it right back.
She keeps her hand on his heart to see if the beat matches her hunger for love, for affection, for life. Because she has no one else to show it to her. Her mother is dead, her father is drunken shell of the man she used to admire, and she…she can barely remember to breathe.
But the bump and grind of their hips reminds her lungs what they're there for, reminds her heart to beat, and her blood to pump.
She tells him she needs him because she does.
She tells him she loves him because she needs the reciprocation.
She begs for him not to leave her; she doesn't know how much more abandonment she can take.
And he gives it all back, gives her what she asks, what she longs for with a desperation that helps to soothe her soul, a healing balm.
So when their bodies are spent, their grinding down to a timid undulation, she throws her head back in bliss, screams her pain out as she comes.
And after the high has settled, she fights back her tears, forces her hands from reaching out to him.
Can he be her lifeline? He said he wouldn't leave her. She's never been made love to like this before, with so much honesty and intensity.
But he probably only said it because that's what people say, there's no way he meant it.
He didn't mean it and even if he did, she wouldn't do anything about it. One time thing, one time thing, she tells herself, one time thing.
Fuck.
What has she done?
"Hey, you don't have to go. Stay, stay the night."
He takes her hand in his, kisses each knuckle as he stares into her eyes. She looks away. Too gentle, too gentle.
"But I have to go," he says, snatching all the air from the room. "I have to meet a friend somewhere." That doesn't sound suspicious at all. "For something," he continues, fumbling over his words as if he's trying to get his lie right.
She says nothing as he scrabbles out of bed. "Really, please. Stay. I'm gonna grab a shower. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen."
Before he jumps out of bed he kisses her lips softly, sweetly. She doesn't want to be kissed this way. "What's your name?" he whispers against her neck. She considers lying to him, but since she plans on never seeing him again she tells him.
"Kate."
"I'm Rick." Giving her small smile, he walks into the bathroom and shuts the door.
She's dressed and out of his apartment before his showers starts and shit. He drove her here and now she's stuck walking.
Now she's back to where she started cold, alone, and abandoned.
Her father's companion keeps him warm at night, numbs his mind to make him forget.
Forget the pain.
Forget the pain of losing her mother.
Her mother.
Her mother is dead.
It's only been a week and she's already a wreck.
So desperate for love, for someone to comfort her, to help her forget. A mess. She's a mess.
And she's suddenly worried-
-how is she supposed to live the rest of her life like this?