At the time I’d thought he meant to kill me.
Now I wondered if he’d only meant to claim some piece of me, to see if he could draw blood with words alone.
There was nothing left to bleed now, but I felt myself craving any closeness, any friction.
He was the only heat in this world.
I watched as he slumped, legs sprawled. His face was ruinous, but I still recognized the old glint beneath the scum of exhaustion.
He caught me staring.
“What? You want something?” His voice was barely a whisper, husked and raw, but it curled around me like a ribbon, tight and mean.
I pressed my hand harder to the sheet of glass between us, willing it to shatter, or soften, or dissolve. “I never thought anything could be worse than you tormenting me,” I said, the words forming in my mouth before I could stop them. “Shows how stupid I was.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he looked away, rolling his head into the crook of his arm as if he could hide inside himself and never come out. “What’s worse,” he said, finally, “me tormenting you, or me being the only thing left?”
His tone was colder than the glass between us. I had no answer.
He closed his eyes, lashes clumped and caked with sweat. “You’re the only one who doesn't let me forget who I am,” he muttered. “It’s fucked up, but it helps.”
A long pause, punctuated by the rasp of his breath. “That’s all I’ve got.”
“We should have let the river take us,” I said, and meant it, but my hand stayed pressed to the glass, unwilling to let go, to float away.
He opened one eye, bloodshot and yellow around the edges. “You were always the quitter,” he said. “I just finish things.”
I watched the ripple of his chest, the way his shoulders trembled under the thin skin. I tried to hate him for being right, for being the one who could hold on until the very end, but the feeling wouldn’t come.
It was burned out by fatigue, or maybe I’d just lost my taste for it. He was all I had, and in that deprivation, every cell in me bent toward his gravity, the way a plant will always strain toward the only source of light.
We didn’t touch, couldn’t, but the hunger for connection swelled with each hour alone together.
I whispered, “I used to wish you’d die. Really die, like in thewoods, or a car crash, or some jail cell. Now I wish you’d just keep talking so I could remember what a voice sounded like.”
He didn’t open his eyes, just smiled, slack and mean. “You get sentimental in captivity, Langston?”
“Fuck you,” I said.
“You wish.”
That sparked something inside of me. I thought about the times he drunkenly kissed me. One time I kissed back, and other times I froze. Paralyzed by fear.
“Why did you kiss me those years ago? When you’d be drunk and angry. Why did you do it?”
His mouth curled, more snarl than smile. “I don’t remember half that shit.”
“I hated you for it.”
My voice cracked, but I steadied it on the next breath. “I hated you for making me want something I couldn’t even name yet.”
He pressed his forehead to the glass, and for a moment, I imagined the skin melting away, the bone beneath. “You think I wanted to want you?” he rasped. “You think that’s what I fucking wanted?”
The ache in my chest doubled. “Then why did you keep doing it?”
“Because,” he bit out, “it was the only thing that made me feel less than dead. That’s what you were. A reminder I might still have a pulse. Even if I had to make you bleed to prove it. And, maybe I liked how it affected you. Made me feel powerful. I don’t fucking know. I don’t think when I drink, I just act.”
He closed his eyes then, maybe ashamed, maybe just past caring.
