Chapter title is, once again,
from Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here. Nothing here belongs to me.
Chapter Two
(we're just two lost souls
swimming in a fish bowl)
He knows. Of course he knows. How could he not? Half the Garden is in love with him. Either way, I hate him. I hate him if he doesn't know for being so fucking stupid and I hate him if he does for ignoring it. I hate him, I hate him and I want him so much that it makes me shake and burn on the inside and--
I cut that particular thought off mid-flow and concentrated on the flow of conversation around me. Nida is chastising a younger student for throwing french fries into the air and catching them in his mouth.
I want to tie him up and kiss him and leave him there crying. Bleeding ice and water and needing me.
I savour that thought and hold it (him) in my head. Next to me Nida is chattering away. Fuck off, I think at him as hard as I can, I'm busy obsessing over here. The longer I inwardly tell him to go away or shut up, the longer he keeps talking. Cause and effect. I stop thinking and just read the graffiti carved into the side of the table. You can't really see it, but if you run your finger hard enough along the surface, you can feel it. I press my fingers down. Straight line, curved v shape (a heart), two curves (S), a circle with a line jutting out near the side (Q), half a circle (U.)
I push my chair away from
the table like it's made of hot coal and my fingertips are blistering.
For a second I can see blisters form on my hand, stretching down
my bronze coloured arm, biting down and down until they hit bone and muscle,
all from coming into contact with the first three letters of his name.
One of these days, I'm gonna
implode. Maybe it'll be the next time he brushes past me in the hallways
and in my mind he isn't walking away lost in his own personal world, he's
slamming me against the walls and kissing me roughly, biting my bottom
lip
or shoving his tongue between
my lips.
I store all of these thoughts quietly at the back of my head, a few brief snapshots of what is never going to happen for constant replay: him, whispering my name in my ear, kissing my neck, killing me slowly and painfully, tipping me apart, freezing me to death, doing something.
The feeling that one day all the electricity and energy is going to pour out of me and I'll burn to death gets deeper as Nida pours me another glass, spilling most of it onto my floor. I'm never gonna get the smell of vodka out. I slam it back at the same time as he does, trying not to choke on taste. For a second my vision blurs and Nida has paler skin, darker eyes, and nearly the right shade of hair. I close my eyes and start to drink from one of the semi-full bottles (somewhere along the way, it seems, I decided to show off about how well I could open bottles of vodka with my hands, and it progressed from there).We drink in silence and the liquid burns my throat, like the acid you get when you're about to be sick, and suddenly I can't see straight.
Nida leans into me, so warm, and for the first time I wonder about the wisdom about inviting him on a late-night binge in my room. Zell, he slurs, you're so goddam beautiful.
To my credit I don't choke on my drink, instead I swallow it and slip a little further down the spiral, because suddenly my arms around his waist and I'm kissing him. Then one of us lunges, there's a dull thud as we hit the floor, and the empty glasses and bottles smash together on the floor and his lips are on mine, somehow his tongue is in my mouth, strong and slick muscle. The vodka seeps into the carpet and I think Quistis is going to know I got drunk, I am so fucked.
Then there's not time to
think, and I don't care about the glass that's cutting into my back, because
Nida is close enough to being him. His fingernails are scraping
roughly down my chest, down and down, past my stomach, and then I'm writhing
under him and moaning shamelessly.
The next morning I wake up, and miracles will never cease, because we made it into bed. The sheets are spotted with red- the glass cut us or his fingernails did.
Nida rolls over in his sleep and presses close to me, looking blood-flecked and surprisingly real and very much like Nida. I stare dumbly at him until I realise he's not going to disappear. I close my eyes. I count to ten and open them again, and Nida remains depressingly solid. He whimpers in his sleep and starts to wake up slightly, throwing an arm around my waist and nuzzling against my neck.
I suddenly loathe myself.