Spill
He lay on the bed, back pressed to the rumpled sheets and hooded his eyes against the twilight-bright of the room. The music spilled out of the speakers of the battered stereo, flowed over his skin and settled across the washboard of his stomach, into the hollows just below his hipbones. He shifted his hands, knitting nimble fingers and resting them above his navel, and as he began to drift away he began to think of her.
He frequently thought of her, half-sleepy and sheened with himself; his mind tumbled over images of thick hair, a wide mouth, deep eyes. The last time he had seen her—downstairs and mussed, struggling with the coffee pot—she had thrown him a look that had meant to be exasperated and succeeded in being sultry. He had felt the heat slip into him, something curling warm beneath his skin, and retreated back upstairs to leave her with her caffeine.
The heat was leaking out again, running away along the tops of his thighs; banished by the same images that brought it to him in the beginning. He could feel the sloppy smile ease across his mouth and he ran his hands up to scrub them briefly across his face, up into his hair. With a smooth movement made only minutely difficult by the lingering tension in his legs and back, he rolled to his feet, reaching for a towel. Showers never chased the spill of life away, completely, but they were a good way to continue an already good day.
