I don’t like that he walked out of this conversation without knowing I appreciate that he spoke with Folk and Saint in front of me. That wherever he’s gone, he might be thinking the way Sol is, even if it’s true. Wedon’tget on. Except…
We do.
We really fucking do, and the alien emotion rattling the cage around my heart has nothing to do with the mad and utterlysilent sex I can’t stop thinking about any moment I’m not having it. An emotion I don’t understand, and I wonder when I became so dense. So hard to reach, even for myself. And it’s a stupid rumination that won’t lead anywhere fixable.
I know why I’m like this.
Trouble is, there’s only one soul on earth who knows it too, and it isn’t Mal.
It’ll never be Mal.
The emotion fades, leaving an oily, unclean mess in its wake. The gym calls to me. But I haven’t eaten enough to survive the punishment I’m bound to inflict on my body and it’s a small victory to head up the stairs in the right direction. One I need to face what someone’s found the time to leave in my room.
Dinner.
Chicken. Rice. A simple salad that’s a kaleidoscope compared to what I’ve managed to eat this week.
It’s Jack’s style of cooking. Plainer than Sol and Oscar’s. But it’s a weird thing for him to be up in my business enough to bring food to my room, so I have to contemplatewhy, and the only conclusion I settle on is the exchange I missed before he left the kitchen.
Mal told him to.
I don’t like it, but that cage rattles again, another dare I can’t seem to walk away from. I leave the food and shower, so I won’t use it as an excuse to go to the bathroom later. Then I come back and face the plate with the comfort of knowing I’m only alone because I choose it.
It’s a state of mind that works for a while. I eat on the couch and watch TV with heavy eyes, pretending I’m not hyper-focused on the sound of doors opening and shutting downstairs as Sol and Jack close the pub.
Revellers leave, and they’re not quiet about it, hollering through the streets in a way locals have had to accept, giventhey’re usually making most of the noise. Staff leave. More doors close. Locks click. Jack and Sol ascend the stairs together, but go their separate ways on the landing.
Then it’s quiet. No Mal. Unless he’s been in his room this whole time, a fatigue-fuelled mindfuck that has me shutting off the TV and taking myself down the hallway to his empty room.
He makes his bed like Jack does. All neat corners and straight pillows. Like a soldier, maybe. But it doesn’t feel like him. The Mal of my dreams is scruffy and kinda wild. Sometimes it’s hard to remember the institutional machine that’s shaped him, especially now I know what a mess he can make of a bed.
Rough lips.
Hot limbs.
His strong grip hauling me from the sheets and crowding me to whatever surface he feels like.
I’ve been cold all week, every moment I haven’t spent with him. It makes the heat that ripples through me so much hotter and my fingers dig into the doorframe, charged recollections that come at me from all directions and leave my veins thrumming.
Scalding water on slick skin.
His body curved around mine and the snatched rumble of every sound he suppresses.
A physical memory, but tonight, maybe because he’s not here, it feels rooted in more emotion, as if it’s my heart that craves his chest to my back and fresh bite marks on my shoulder.
As ifIcrave more than that.
I return to my own room like a fucking ghost. I leave the light off, and in the dark my stomach becomes a yawning grave, clamouring for more than I’ve given it until I get up and eat a little more to pass the time.
But alone in my room again, it feels like a mistake. I lie on my back, tracking the cracks in the ceiling with too much weight on my ribs and an evil urge burning deep and dark in my gut.
Can’t lie, it hurts, both real and imagined, twisting sharper as I grind my teeth, screwing my fists into my eyes like Jack does when he’s worried one might fall out.
We’re all so fucked-up.
I laugh at the shadows, at the edge of what I can bear. But just when I think I might die right here in my bed, the window pushes open.
Mal.
