AN: It's really strange to work backwards yet oddly more entertaining for me. So I think I'll update this story much quicker than all the others I've posted. Plus these 'chapters' are, after all, only short moments.
Anyway thanks for the reviews ;)
Snapshots in Reverse
Halfway through the movie she grabs my hand. I shift toward her touch, blinking my eyes in adjustment. My focus has been shattered.
When I turn to my left she's not looking back. I want to beg her to return my eye contact, make this all the more intimate, but I don't. The theater is dark and cold, the air conditioning, humming. I feel the right side of my mouth itch up as I see our hands. She tenses when she senses my gaze.
I don't want her to stop or pull back so I look up to inspect the blades turning and start calculating their cycles.
Of course they're moving too quick to get an accurate count and on top of that Bella's playing with my fingertips. Nothing is more distracting than her and she knows it. She twists both rings on my hand, tracing the patterns etched into the metal.
I hate the rings for creating a barrier between us.
The movie is long forgotten. I re-close my eyes and visualize the intrigue that clouds Bella's face when we touch. How her eyes twitch almost in surprise, the way she molds against me.
And as I image this I feel her nails tickle up and down my knuckles.
Her nails are short and perfectly rounded. She paints them twice a week in an almost clear lacquer because she's paranoid of ripping them, or at least that's what she told me when I asked. At one point I thought she might be obsessive compulsive strictly by how she treated her nails. It was a silly theory that I don't believe any longer.
When the lights flicker on behind my lids I want to scream. They're ruining the tranquility and ease of the situation. I'm about to suggest we wait until they kick us out as I break open my lids but hesitate when I notice how she's enamored with my hand.
She has raised it up so it's near her mouth and her breath is breezing down my arm, hitting the silver watch I never take off. I'm obsessive about time; checking time; monitoring time.
She lowers her face and I suck in a pregnant breath. Her lips consume my ring in a cherished kiss.
And that's the moment my heart explodes and the air leaves me.
The sound startles her and she drops my hand. I regret everything before she speaks; which she does of course because it's just so her.
"I'm sorry," she murmurs.
"Don't be, don't ever be," but I know, because she does, that she's not apologizing for the peck. I wish she was.
"We're the last ones," she comments, toneless.
"I like it better this way."
She confidentially leans toward me, and whispers in my ear, "Me too," a conversational pause has my toes curling, "why can't it always be like this?"
She's pulled away before I can ask what she means; already in the aisle. Am I that slow or is she that fast?
I follow her faithfully, watching her feet because she's wearing black kitten heels that we both don't trust her in. I can feel her emotionally pulling away even as her body heat radiates down my side.
My car is expensive, the interior; leather and there's a cherry scented deodorizer hanging from the mirror that Bella picked out. I told her it was ridiculous, because it was shaped like a foot, she said it was cute.
I bought it.
I open the door for her, extending my arm to guide her in.
And I take note that her physicality is all that's left for me to hold on to. I brace myself.
Once I'm in the driver's seat I tap the music back on, the song we were listening to croaks to life with a sympathetic voice pulsing through.
It's so shameful of me
He hums to us through the speakers. I feel the pain vibrate to the deepest part of my bones. I'm doing my best to fight off the self-induced drowning sensation.
I don't tell her not to go because I know how bad she gets when she stays past her expiration. She'll fidget and scratch at herself. She'll sit in the big black chair in the living room with two blankets, just shivering. And when I try to hold her she just gets worse.
She starts off with mentally closing herself off, not just from me. While she's half away already, she tries to enforce our physical bond, not necessarily by sex, usually more just touch. Bella has always been about touch, always.
After this, if she or I let it get so far, she's found herself literally frozen out, touch only makes it worse.
So she's completely gone though her body lays limp.
It's, frankly, worse for both of us if we don't let her go. And I've gotten better at losing her, or at least that's what I tell myself while I'm tidying up the kitchen. Bella has remained quiet since we parked, since we walked out of the theater, really.
Because I know what's happening, how we're pulling apart from one another, I do what I have to do, I tidy-up. I can't say medically why it's helpful, maybe just because I feel like I have control over the objects in my house, maybe not. You can never control another person, so you have to dominate something.
Andy Patridge's words come back to me in this time, his catchy guitar playing and gentle way of putting things echoing in my head.
I simply want her in my arms forever more
He explains. I throw the dish towel haphazardly over the edge of the sink before I find Bella to make 'forever more' into 'tonight'.