Less about the Sum, more about the Substance

The opening scene of a story I started a few years ago. I put it down, but I want to finish it sometime.

***

With one final lift and a heavy sigh, sweaty and shaking with adrenaline, I turn to my side and lay next to you. I don’t need to study your silhouette to know exactly how to trace it with my eyes: a heavy brow, long eyelashes, your father’s nose (which you hate, and I love), slightly pink lips, a masculine chin. I reach out gently and brush the back of my hand against the 5 o’clock shadow you inevitably sport by noon. You still don’t move; your eyes are locked on the ceiling, as if something fascinating, much more interesting than me, is unfolding somewhere far above your bed where we lay.

This is where it always hits me – that strike, deeper than the pit of my stomach – where it racks me with an insatiable mixture of pain, longing, and something inviolable that I’d give anything to lessen. It’s a rush, and it’s too much. I’ve never felt this much before, and I feel like I could detonate at any moment.

Say it. You’ve said it before, and he said it too, and it made everything feel better – like you were sharing this with him, as if you weren’t just in this alone. But how could I be in it alone? It’s a relationship, isn’t it? What a juvenile thought. I’m just letting my mind run away again. You always tell me I do that, I just never listen. You can say it. Stop overthinking it. Stop thinking, and just say what you –

“I love you.” It’s a whisper, but it’s audible, even over the cicadas that chant softly just outside the window. I lean in to kiss you on the cheek when your eyes suddenly focus, and turn to meet mine.

“No.”

I freeze midway between our pillows. My heart, which had been thumping tremendously, seizes in my chest. “What?”

“I thought about it, and it just doesn’t make sense. I mean, I can probably count the number of times we’ve dated each other on two hands,” yeah, but I’ve known you for years “and it feels like you’re taking this sort of fast,” but you just slept with me “and I don’t care about you that way.” THEN WHY DID YOU FUCKING SAY IT BEFORE?!

Arguments are screaming, echoing, resounding in my head, but all I can do is stare at you, catatonic and shipwrecked. My nakedness suddenly feels so wrong, and I pull the sheets around me tightly before slowly turning over, defeated and more alone next to you than I’ve ever been.

I feel a half-hearted shake to my covered shoulder. “Come on, don’t be like that. Let’s talk about it.”
What the hell is there to talk about? I can’t say anything. Stuck between a clash of white-hot anger and nauseating pain, I can’t force any words to the surface, so I lay there, listening to you sigh in annoyance and turn so our backs are facing each other.

Minutes later, my pillow damp with tears, I hear you begin to snore. The space between us is overcast, and the thought of you being angry with me is too much when added to the burden already simmering in my stomach.

I turn to face your back and watch your sides expand and contract with your untroubled breath and that longing, so intricate it’s woven itself into my core, arrests my lungs.

I slide behind your back and wrap an arm around your waist. It’s wounded, but it’s forgiving. I hear you stir, sigh again in annoyance, and drift off once more. The rhythm of your chest moves in time with the chant of the cicadas, and I am, once again, out of sync.

***