⊹˚. ౨ৎ

the sun glints above you, and you lift your chin to meet it. the heat slides down your cheek like a palm, and takes your face and kisses, right at the thinned skin underneath your eyes.

you swallow, thick and seedy.

then shove up from the ground, and try again.

hour four is no kinder.

in an act of desperation a few buttons on your top are popped out, and your hair is pinned up and out of your face. every ligament in your arm wails and grinds like teeth. you squeeze your jaw against the burn and keep your arm standing. 

like a beacon of hope, an approaching, lumbering truck slows. you scramble to attention, your brain waking with an electric shock, and gather your arm back towards yourself. the ache is forgotten, all of it. 

the window lowers and a clean-shaven face rolls into view. small, pinched features. the truck behind him sounds the horn and pulls around him, but the man inside ignores it. he ignores you, too.

his eyes sit evenly on your open chest, and then glide up to meet your eyes.

“where you headed, miss?”

his voice is thick and briny. his eyes are shadowed under a cap and wander too often, too sharp, too searching. your senses are softened by the sweltering late afternoon and you know he picks up on it, sees the way your lids flutter and your tongue works slowly, searching the cave of your own mouth for hydration or saliva to spare. 

you sling arms into the lowered window, and the air conditioner nearly makes your mouth water. lean charmingly against your elbows.

“west coast,” you lift your words up the sweetest they can go, drag your lips into a similar curl. “but i’ll go as far as you can manage.” 

the grin doesn’t reach your eyes, but this time it doesn’t matter. 

“got room enough for you,” he smiles in return. his teeth are lined up together like a curling spine. “climb on in.”

A CAPELLA: 𓆝 HURTLING.

you hug your guitar to your chest and your bag right between your feet. the heat is unbearable this way but you prefer it to the heat of the wandering eyes beside you.

samuel, he tells you his name is. samuel has a large 2 liter water bottle quarter full on his dashboard. he watches you watch it, and the water jostles back and forth in the rocking truck. 

he tells you the polite thing to do would be to tell him your name, in return. 

it takes you a while to smile this time. it’s sickly and trained and you let it drop the moment after. 

offering him the name of your childhood orthodontist—you ask him, against all better judgement, why he’s heading north. 

we aren’t, he tells you. my uncle used to take me up and down this highway. know it back and front. 

he’s lying. he’s going north.

your heartbeat thins out. your fingers flutter for the door handle. you laugh, light and airy, “that's perfect then. i’m gonna try to head towards town and restock first, so you can just let me off right after the ramp.“

his elbows bends out the window. “so soon?”

“you saved me the walk,” you say, smiling tiredly. “thank you.“

he turns, his face flattening. he passes the exit, and the vehicle doesn’t slow.

you grip on the door handle tightens, and you sit up, veins buzzing painfully.

“sir. you passed it.” 

“don’t worry about it, sweetie.” there’s a hand on your knee. “i can take you to where you’re going.”

your eyes slide shut, tense fingers digging into your temple. you tug your thigh out of his grip, heartbeat starting to knock against your ribs, grip tightening around your things. 

“it’s fine, really. you can just let me off.”

“i’m telling you, sweetheart–“

“get your fucking hands off me. pull this truck over, i asked you to let me out,” your voice rises, threading and pulling tight, cutting the oxygen off at your throat. the car space is too small and damp and his eyes feel like acid.

he exhales, at length. 

he palms the turn signal and then pivots the truck over into the grassy shoulder of the road. he puts the vehicle into park, and when you reach for the door he reaches for you. 

words you don’t hear try to reach you and fails. with his body closing in, your vision whitens out. 

hands batting and feet kicking and chest heaving as all the panic drums through your system, adrenaline kicking at the walls of your skull. 

you feel hands clawing for you. your guitar protests all the squeezing, suffocating motion and then shrieks out a discordant note as you push and push forward, thumbs pressing and hands closing together—and then finally the note snaps out into the air while you break through. 

soft as anything. you feel it, like biting into a pocky stick, or like cracking your knuckles. 

there is and then there isn’t. 

flesh bends to force with little resistance, and hours bent over the fretboard was the most intimately you understood this. 

the silence leaks, and leaves a quiet buzz in your ears, ringing where you can’t reach. your sticky hands claw for your own throat, wondering when you stopped shrieking, heaving past the scratch and the burning dryness for air. 

your body jerks violently. you veer out the side of the truck as your stomach convulses, but the bile doesn’t break past your throat. 

a turn signal light lights up behind you—in the rearview mirror, edging the corner of your vision—and blinks red.

the burning in your feet is nothing against the pulsing in the back of your head.

your guitar strings squeal, the string bending to the heat and tense pull of your body. you’re not so romantic as to call it a requiem. the note may as well be wailing from your own throat, but you touch at the tendons and nothing shifts or vibrates. 

you feel every pound as your soles connect to the grass and the uneven terrain taunts your balance. the bones in your knees slide against each other threateningly. the guitar on your back pounds into your tailbone and your hair whips into your eyes and the muscles in your throat burns in ways which you can’t remember if your body will repair. 

your legs may reduce to a memory—and you’d let them. but once you lose your voice you’ve lost it all.

the thought wakes you up, and slows you down.

an 18 wheeler rolls up ahead and then settles, oil and groaning iron bones, to a stop. the fumes interrupt what’s left of your oxygen reserve and your left knee unlocks and buckles to the grass, and rock and stone bites up the palm you use to break your fall. 

you shake your head, panic bubbling again, tilt your chin up to the sparse layout of clouds that block nothing and spare nothing and measure out who up there to curse first. 

the window lowers and your skin fires and you’re ready with nails and teeth bared to carve your way out again. as many times as it takes. 

once the window sinks, what’s revealed turns the wind over in your lungs, and your defenses wither and recoil. 

she’s got a cool brow, and her eyes are hard and steady. unfazed, the first thing they find is you. 

“can you stand on your own?”

your breath comes out ragged. you wipe at your mouth, take some of your lipstick with it. panting still, hunched over one knee, the sweat makes your breath salty. 

you work the response out of your throat. 

“yeah. i can.”

she juts her head in one clean line. “then get in.”

she drives easy, one arm bent out the window and twining a cigar between two metal fingers, the opposite one manning the wheel.

your hands are gripped to death around a plastic bottle of water that she had nodded over at wordlessly. you sit at a tense, tail bone digging marks into the edge of the cracked leather seat. there’s a strong sandalwood lifting the space between you mixing with human skin, diesel fuel, and the tart smoke from her cigarette. it creates a confusing, creamy warmth in your fingertips that you bleed out with the teeth of your guitar. 

her head bobs to the low beat crooning from her stereo, and only eventually, when traffic starts to clog and thicken, does she glance over, and down at your cargo shorts. milky and blossoming with color at the knees.

“that yours?”

your eyes fall to where she’s gazing. there’s a splash of vermillion, new and webbing outwards on the fabric. 

your heart lodges against the wall of your throat. you hover the stain and then conceal it, offering a pale, arched smile.

“sorry, my body’s still chugging out the last of my period. i have pads and a change of clothes, just—”

her stare lingers at the side of your head. if you saw pity there you think it’d make you sick. but there’s nothing, and she says nothing, and somehow that’s even worse. 

“would you remember much about periods?” you can’t bite your tongue. “at your age, i mean.”

she’s unmoved. her scoff is short and sounds out mostly in her brows. 

“not there yet.” she gives you a short once over. “and you don’t look far behind.”

then the song picks up and your loose and tired bite is left behind, as her fingers begin to tap on the wheel. a metronome you count the measures to, as the sound soothes against your skull.

you exhale, slowly. then let your back sag against the seat. 

“so?” you ask, watching the mountains grey each other out in the distance. “how far can you take me?”

“how far out you headed?”

“san clemente,” you say, carefully. “orange county.”

it’s her turn to glance at you. her metal fingers flex on the steering wheel. 

“i can take you just to barstow,” she offers instead. “since my course doesn’t take me any further across the border.”

you blink. perfect. that’d be perfect.

“and i’ll be making stops along the way, getting lunch, resting for the night.”

right, there it is. you eye her. she catches it in the mirror and holds you there.

“non-negotiable. that’s my system.”

you frown. “it’ll take me days longer than it has to.”

“it will.”

“i’ll owe you for the motels?” 

“naturally.” she angles her head backwards in a quick motion. “‘less you sleep in the trailer.”

“…doesn’t seem too bad.”

she smiles, slow and wily. “wanna try your luck?”

it’s enough to make you drop it.

the low hum of the radio, and the smoke curling inside, and the wind lifting and tumbling your hair. you drink it all inside and squeeze.

the silence stands and stretches. and then she exhales. 

“and you? you plan on crying the whole way there?”

it’s a poor question and so you don’t bother answering it, blinking straight ahead. you press a hand down on your breastbone and then into your stomach, willing it to stop shuddering. there’s the tender hope that if you press in deep enough something will break. you don’t need the feeling to fix itself. you just need it to go quiet. 

she switches on the wheel and reaches one arm back—strains gently and the swelling muscle there tightens while she rummages—and lays the travel-size tissue pack she finds onto your knee. her hand hesitates there, and then is gone, silent as it came. 

the road pools outward endlessly. she drives. you clean yourself up in the quiet.

with the truck parked temporarily she pushes the door open to a small but lively shop while a tinkling bell above announces your entry. her jacket is wound tight around your waist and swishes against your knees. she tells you to go ahead and pick out some new pants.

at the cashier, she doesn’t give you the time to rummage through your bag for your wallet.

on the house, she tells you, pushing her card forward. and then takes you to fill your stomach next.

if she notices your unease she doesn’t call any attention to it, but your self importance slides like a needle between your ribs. she must know. she must be biding her time, fattening you up ‘till you’re dizzy with relief and unable to slip away.

sevika. you’d seen it on the receipt. and the cashier had called her name out with an accent that filled the mouth like a swollen tongue—her name had sounded rich, and full as a song. 

sevika.

sevika’s a thing that towers. the thick parameter of her arm snags in your vision as she winds fingers around the bag of thai food. 

“eat,” she thrusts it to you, eyes crunched against the sun and swallowing in all the light around them. “it’ll be a long drive.”

to your chagrin you catch a thread of sincerity. it’s not hard. her eyes are cloudless and clear.

your throat squeezes. still, still, kindness burns like bile in the lining of your stomach.

hunger has a similar reach. the smell of chicken over jasmine rice makes an animal of you briefly, and you let her watch you tear with jaws apart.

sevika wasn’t wrong. it would be a long ride.

you groan and your bones groan with you as spread out tiredly on the second of two beds. 

she hadn’t been looking before, being overly careful of you. you tuck your knees up to your chest, and your blue cutoffs ride up your ass and create a cavern in between your legs. her gaze is briefly careless, sweeps like a wandering hand. 

she left you with a ziplock bag of pomegranate seeds to spend the time on, while she checks the sister bed for bugs, and if the way she had peeled you apart doesn’t kill you then the way the fruit dyes your fingertips just might. 

the T.V. spells out your route with a noncommittal tone while you suck the juice off before it dribbles. 

samuel’s full name stretches across the screen. you look once and then forget it the moment after, your attention flitting over to the newswoman on screen instead. she has a long face uninterrupted by wrinkles and her hairline strains against the demand of her braided bun. 

her voice is bouncy, and she stares at you while she tells you that the authorities have taped off the scene. that even when a neck snaps and dangles from a severed spinal cord the life lingers and his might’ve been spared had you dared to try. had you wanted to. 

his body was heavy when it crumpled. the unnaturally white bone of his body pressed to the side of his throat. 

you hold your body, tight. there’s no point in changing the channel, so in the margins of your periphery, you watch sevika instead. 

even with her steel toe boots at the entrance and sandals underneath her she moves with a heavy foot, a steady thunking backtracking her movement across the room. her midriff is a sharp line of brown. her back expands like a deep breath when she leans over the bed and snatches up a pillow. 

you can’t tell if she’s listening or not, and you twist just enough to see her face better. 

her hair is loose. relieved of its ponytail it falls just at her shoulders, only long and feathered in the front. it thins the window of her face out, makes the corners rounder. 

she looks contained, and careful. almost weightless. 

all she casts to the screen is one side-long, weary look. she scans the headline, and when the T.V. light catches her, her grayed eyes nearly look blue.

“wanna change the channel?” she asks with a lid to her voice, and gladly, you stretch for the remote.

“hey,” sevika says, quietly. 

the room is nearly as true black as the sea, for the entire second where you can’t tell which direction her voice is coming from. she doesn’t touch you, jostling the bed to shake you awake. “shower’s free.”

“right,” your voice scratches with salt and sleep. you rise onto your elbow, and try to rub it out. 

“thanks.”

when you exit the bathroom, freshly scrubbed till your skin stings, you find her curled tight into herself, winding the sparse blanket around her.

“night,” she says gruffly. “turn the light off when you’re done.”

she’s deathly still under the covers, unmoving as a mountain. then the bed creaks loudly behind her and her neck cranes to find the source of intrusion. she stares at you incredulously.

“no. find another bed.” 

“this one’s closer to the bathroom.” you tuck yourself in at the far edge, testing, testing. “and comes with a portable heater.”

it's a silent dance, and a quick one, and it happens hazily and marred by the dark. she shoulders you and your elbow slips and jabs at her ribs, and somewhere you manage to kick harder than you mean to, and her legs slot and then clamp around yours, barring your movement.

you find out a cage can be warm, if it’s skin wrapped over bone, or a thick arm locked over your neck.

sevika doesn’t let you go, and she exhales irritatedly through her nose.

she humors your shitty plea for the safety of another body. with the freedom she gives you, you fold your arms across your chest with finality, and let your eyes shut.  

your body doesn’t shake or shiver, it's far too late for that. but in the dark and a few hours past midnight with the night withering away at your sharpness, it's easy to let absurdity have its way.

sevika sleeps, eventually. you try to follow behind.

your sleep is nonlinear and fitful, and you wake often, startled and sweating or thirsty or heaving oxygen faster than your body can expel it. you get up to throw up into the toilet or wet your scratchy throat or to wash your hands—which never really gets the dirt out, no matter how raw you scrub them. 

every time you return to bed, sevika is in the bleary margins of sleep. she’s only ever just awake enough to lay sprawled on the bed, her human arm flattened against the crinkled, alabaster sheets, bore open like an invitation. 

there’s little fanfare. she traps your legs when you kick in your sleep; her thighs are thick and heavy and it’s easy work. but most times there’s no trapping, just fitting together. it’s easy. it’s unsettling. it’s during those moments where the air gets gummy in your throat and sleep hardly comes at all.

in the quiet of early morning when the world is still holding its breath, everything is delicate, and bendable. 

egregiously, it’s barely 5 a.m. sevika moves about quietly. 

her normally heavy footsteps are unnaturally silent, snuffing out when they glide onto the floorboards. it only dawns on you after minutes of letting it simmer you awake from sleep that you think she’s trying to be mindful of you. 

slowly, eventually, she notices you watching. says, took you long enough, and then, there’s breakfast. come and eat.

breakfast means a bowl of cinnamon toast crunch and two bananas. but they're sliced into a little spiral and drizzled with honey, and kindness is still thawing no matter what form it takes. 

you gather your bones, and sit up.

the amount of driving is only difficult until sevika starts talking. 

maybe it’s your newfound ease. the sky is the same bold blue of your guitar and you’re finally catching up with your goals. maybe it’s the way you grin slowly whenever she tells you to please take your feet off the damn seat or tells you to leave her alone about the weather. that she can’t saddle down the sun.

in between it somewhere, in your own unwinding, she also finds some makeshift safety and peels open like a puckered wound. 

she has a near arsenal of stories to share from her years on the road. her voice is undercut by the balmy rock music drifting from her stereo, and the wind racing past your ears, and your makeup mirror catching stray sunlight and glinting like rhinestones atop the sea. 

some weeks are quieter than others, she tells you. most weeks are quiet enough that the commercial breaks are the thin line she traces behind delirium. 

but then sometimes she happens across people like you.

they’re her words, but they don’t cut, just settle. there have been hikers before you—granted, she’s been on the road for years. somehow no matter how much time’s passed she remembers the name of every single one. 

the hours roll by easier. eventually so does the breath in your lungs. 

sevika exhales a long stream of smoke.

“they told me to go kill myself,” she says, flatly.

you sigh, sagely. “right. as predicted.”

sevika leans back against the vehicle, screwing her eyes shut as she works her brain. the cigarette rolls around in her teeth and her thumb rubs the sore out of her temple, like she could materialize a way forward through a beam out of her forehead just by needing it desperately enough. 

it would turn out that half a decade isn’t enough time for old men to forget old broken bones. sevika swore if she could just get inside, she could smooth their history out like a curling, yellowed map and you’d both still be on time towards the warehouse. 

a gamble, apparently. but you can see in the hardened line in her brow that she’s unaccustomed to entertaining regret. 

“i’ll drive straight through if worse comes to worse,” she tells you, and you clarify, in a dubious moment, whether she meant to plow through the clubhouse itself.

like tugging a loose thread along a frayed hemline the worry unravels from her face, for a moment—her mouth fidgets and nearly quirks. her cheeks lift towards the orange sky.

through the night, i meant. but would be nice, huh?

your own grin is toothier and big enough for the both of you. but then when you ask why she pummeled him to begin with, her face flattens, all humor dead and gone. 

she says thinly, someone had to. 

you say nothing else for a while. then your hand advances into her space, tapping the corner of her mouth.

she levels you with a look. but her jaw unhinges, just slightly, just enough to tug the cigarette out. 

you flip it between your fingers, and fit it between your lips.

”you’ve got a handsome face. beg them for forgiveness and use that to get us in.”

her eyes settle on your mouth wrapped around the filter, where her mouth had just been prior. 

“they don’t want a handsome face,” she says, after a long moment. says it like she’s telling on herself. “they want you.”

you’re prodding. the balminess and sticky air and her semiliquid eyes on you makes it hard to care. “yeah? what’ve i got?”

she beckons for the cigarette back but you hold it out of reach, a small smile fleeting, your dare silent and loud. like loosening mooring lines from a ship’s bollards, sevika takes your bait, and slowly rocks forward along your tide. her hand hovers just under your chin, and your mouth tilts open for her, feeding the smoke into her mouth. it tumbles out in an iridescent waterfall. 

you watch as she closes her mouth around it, gathering it inside the cavity and trapping it there. then pauses. lets it rush back out in waves. 

her eyes are foggy with condensation and golden heron gray when they finally steal towards yours again. 

“you’re attractive as shit,” she says, plainly. “and the folks out here like to be devastated.” 

after a long second she watches you stand up taller. you take sevika’s face, nails digging into the hard line of her jaw. your thumb sits against her lower lip. you place the cigarette back inside.

you nudge her aside with your shoulder, and sevika’s fingers ignore the new, moon-shaped dents in her skin, and draw instead over the memory of your mouth.

adjusting your chest and popping some buttons your skin crawls, stomach shifting—but you clench your jaw down, and remind yourself this time is different—and smile. all teeth.

CRESCENDO: 𓆟 COLLISION.

their voice chafes like cedar. tall and imposing is not unfamiliar to you with all the time you’ve been spending inside sevika’s shadow, and even less for the nights you’ve bargained your way through a door with far less to lose. you lean against the railing and scoop their attention like loose soil. 

please, you tell them. i really don’t want to go home. 

you croon sweetly in their ear, borrowing your mother’s accent, the one she only scrubbed clean off her tongue after 11 years of having you. you make small talk easily while they shine a flashlight on your passport, spin a half-truth about your journey here and the clubs you’ve visited already and how they measure up against the ones at home. you tell them the humanity feels a degree different. but the intensity is all the same.

the lie passes safely between the truth. you really don’t have anything to return to. 

you trust sevika to stay awake the whole night if she had to, but you’ve also spent one too many evenings bent over a toilet with nausea pumping at your stomach, wondering who would come to collect your body should any given day be your last.

a thin hand slides towards the small of your back and coldness makes cement of your legs, until you realize the hand never landed.

their gaze is weary—they know—but understanding. they know. 

when they move to usher you inside you plant your feet and point back to sevika, who’s still leaned against the truck, the cigarette lifted to her mouth—skipping them entirely, and watching you.

it bristles up your back like cold ice. you hold her stare and then glance away. 

please. you make your case firmly. two.

they send a long stare over your shoulder. then make a quick gesture with their hand, beckoning sevika on over.

the first thing to hit is the fog—the world is as if split cleanly in half.

the music pools into your head and takes over for your heartbeat, a deep and resonant bass cramming a new rhythm inside. you buzz as if you had touched a naked, sparking wire. faces blur out, and sweaty foreheads reflect the rustic lights, bodies surging, writhing, swimming.

with all your senses in use at once you lose sevika for a second. your neck swings wildly once the emptiness dawns on you like a backhand, but she hasn’t lost you. she’s leaned down close with the bouncer, her hand silverish and bronzish and loose around your waist.

you feel drunk about it. and you’d love a drink, and to maybe chance towards the centrifugal tug of the dance floor, and join the bodies in forgetting. just not more than you’d hate for her to let go. 

sevika mistakes your dazed stare as your undivided attention. she tries telling you something and you barely register that she’s addressing you to begin with, until the cold metal clamps down and everything crystalizes—clears out.

you zero in on her, lids fluttering over wet eyes. 

she makes a face, before pressing inward. cradling your back as she bends for your ear.

you nearly miss it again, for the way her lips graze the shell while she speaks, plush and pillowy and tracing out her words; 

“they’re gonna take us downstairs,” she repeats, voice still outdone by the pounding music. when you shiver only half of it is apprehension.

sevika doesn't lean back far enough—can’t. she takes you in with both brows pulled. 

she doesn’t ask, and you wouldn’t tell. 

but there’s work to do, and so she slides down from your waist—metal catching the sparse light and speckling out in your vision like firecrackers, like her own little piece of the sun—slips her fingers through yours, and tugs.

the crowd is far gone and the music is faint. it carries only through the floorboards but never pierces through, and you can feel it more than hear it pulsing like a fresh wound, if you press your body against the oakwood. 

you’re sitting on a stool with your legs crossed neatly, while sevika and the club owner pretend to catch up.

they really just measure dick sizes. arguing about whose property is whose and the history of things and what fees can be reduced and more aptly whether they should.

it’s all code for you hurt me. i want you to hurt for hurting me. 

he reminds her, with a poor pass at impassivity, of what a cracked jaw feels like. sevika tells him some people need to feel that once in their life since it’s a sting that stays. 

”the club looks a bit safer,” sevika concedes, quietly. the flag is not quite white, but it’s flying. “your girls look happier, too. ‘least you’ve managed to do something right.”

her grim face says take it or leave it—and maybe it shouldn’t, when her sleep schedule and driving performance for the next few days counts on it, knowing she’ll trip further up the road than she can make up for later. time’s hands are rough and unforgiving. and there’s always work to do.

but you believe her, if she says this matters more. 

it’s heavy for reasons you can’t fully disentangle and you wonder if you should even be witness to this at all. or it’s the heat of proximity making your bias tilt on its axis. 

unfathomably—she hasn’t yet let go of your hand.

the man’s gaze slides to you for the first time since you entered the room behind her. even with your eyes and attention wandering the four walls you feel it immediately, like the cold muzzle of a revolver. 

his eyes are cool when you meet them, but not in the way sevika’s are. you don’t offer a smile. he doesn’t seem to mind.

he taps the wood with his pen, “finally settling down?”

sevika’s hand squeezes. “sure.” her voice redirects his gaze. “something like that.”

she gets the parking space. it means you both get to sleep.

“you’re accruing a lot of debt,” sevika informs you, leaning against the front lobby’s rolling marble countertop. “it’d cost you less to find someone else to ride with.”

“it’d cost me less if you stopped paying for rooms with two beds,” you return.

the lady on the other side looks ready to kill someone or herself, and she repeats in a strained voice, “any way i can help you two?”

sevika looks pained to say it, face pinched. her metal fingers drum against the counter, next to her I.D. 

“one room, one bed. just for the night.”

the lady lets a flat look pass between you two, before she starts punching into her desktop. the bill does immediately look prettier, and you knock a hip against sevika’s and give her a little look at that. she ignores it, and turns for the elevator with a sigh.

you set down your guitar along the only safe surface you can think of, too scared to lay it down on the floor. she eyes it from where it balances precariously on the T.V. stand. 

“that thing play at all? or you carry it around just for show?”

“yeah.” you overturn your hair and bend at 90 degrees, wrapping a saturated silk scarf around it. your voice muffles with the effort. “just for the mystery. leaves people wondering what i’ve got going on.”

she's unimpressed, and you exhale, tightening the knot and taking a seat on the edge of the bed. 

“yes, it plays. of course it plays. i thought you needed to sleep?” 

she lobs a look your way. then a grin curls out of her tired face.

“are you secretly shit at it?”

heat flares in your skin, indignant and itchy with irritation. the gap in her teeth shines before disappearing, while she shucks her tank top off, and redirects, easily. “california won’t fix that.”

you turn to remove her solid body in a sports bra and boxer briefs from your line of sight. “if you’re gonna tell me it’s stupid don’t waste your breath.”

sevika spares you one last look, and then crouches over her bag for a change of clothes. 

“i wasn’t.” 

she gestures with her head, offering the bathroom over for you to take your shower first.

you flip through the channels while biting into a banana you borrowed from her cooler. she’s logging a delivery a few paces away, and in a short outburst she exhales and leans away from the table, pushing the stack of papers to the side. 

you send a sigh her way, knees drawn to your chest as a soap drama wails away on the T.V. “stop already. your restlessness is distracting.”

she doesn’t acknowledge the comment at all, heaving herself up and reaching out for the wall to pat the burning fluorescent lights off.

there’s no working air conditioner. you’ve both been good sports about it, but sleepiness isn’t coming any easier in the sticky heat. 

“this is the part i hate, having to adjust around someone new.” sevika’s lips thin under whatever words she doesn’t say, and pulls her toothbrush out from her things. “it’s too hot to be in here with a shirt on.”

“nobody’s stopping you.” you gesture with the remote in your hand. “take it off.”

her eyebrows lift.

“here,” you say, because your foresight has always been your worst attribute, “i’ll make it easier.”

it does admittedly make the room feel miles more bearable. and still your skin bleeds everywhere her eyes fall. 

her face cracks like glass, and spreads into a thin, poorly contained smile. like a cheshire cat. like you’d unknowingly proved something right.

then she steps away from the dim light into the bathroom, and you sit up incredulously. embarrassment crawls up from your belly and lodges red and bursting in your throat. 

“you snore when you sleep,” you call after her. “if you wanna talk about adjusting. but i don’t complain about you honking away in my ear.”

“thats fine,” she says around the toothbrush crammed in her mouth, “‘cause you kick like a damn horse.”

“you're heavy as a damn horse.” 

“and i should start charging you for that, too. since you have me doubling as a weighted blanket now.”

“don’t bother,” you say, and click the T.V. off. the room gets colder instantly without the ill-fated actress on the screen to compare your woes to, and you wrestle your shirt back over your head. “don’t want it anymore anyway.”

when she’s finished, you’ve curled around yourself and stuck to the far edge of the bed, wrapped in a cocoon in your thin blanket. you can feel her staring at your back.

“the hell are you doing over there?”

“you said it’s hot. don’t wanna get in your way.”  

there's the tinkling sound of metal shifting against metal as she works her limb out of its socket, and settles it beside the bed. the mattress dips under her weight, and then a strong hand latches around your waist, and the air exits soundlessly from your mouth as she drags you towards her.

“it’s fine,” she says, low and into the back of your neck. “you like the heat.”

you're glad for the darkness and almost for her proximity, so she can’t tell when the hairs there stand on end. 

you shoulder at her arm, and sevika rasps in the dark, don’t be upset.

the concern sounds all syruppy, teasing. her hand on your bare stomach is large and calloused and crawls up from the dark to cup your breast, and squeezes. 

you go rigid, make an odd noise that dies your throat—and your thighs squeeze against the warmth that licks between them. 

her hand doesn’t remove itself but merely lowers to your stomach, settles over your diaphragm. her warm breathing is slow and consistent on your shoulder. you can almost feel her mouth brushing your skin like a branding iron.

you wrangle your heart rate into control, knowing she’s mapping out the whole measure, that you’re allowing her to. you stare into the dark in front of you, imagining what her eyes look like in the moonlight. thinking you could almost turn around and check.

the day bathes sevika in gold. 

she’s lively for merely moments, happy to have a full night’s sleep, happy to be at the warehouse on time—and then the truck doors slam shut and the air conditioning leaves you both behind and her displeased frown settles back in again, right where it belongs. 

a clean sheen of sweat has been threatening her vision for the past half hour from where it’s perched on her brow, and she misses it somehow each time she gingerly carries the back of her hand across her face. the sweat draws her clothes to her the way an old lover lingers, the slick and sheer material clinging to every smooth turn of brown skin. 

it’s pornographic. damp heat thickens in the air and ripens, too sweet. you feel sweat pooling everywhere on you, sticky on the fuzz of your skin. it makes it easy to avoid her, for the most part, an easy excuse for the careful distance you keep. 

what you don’t search for is an excuse for the thin ache between your legs. you know who the pulse belongs to.

avoiding her—and equally your peace of mind—never lasts as long as it should.

“this one here’ll be hanging around today,” is how sevika introduces you to the warehouse supervisor. 

they seem to know each other, in the sanitized way one knows a coworker—politely and still far more than desired. 

you smile a little, and extend your hand to meet his in the middle. he steps back afterward, but you correct your position on the crate anyway, and lock your knees together. 

he makes a humming sound in his throat. “that your woman?”

startled, your eyes shoot over, but she isn’t shaken, nor looking at you. “sure is. that asshole been talking about me?”

“talking shit about you, yes. always and religiously.” 

discussion around it ends as fast as it began. the man pats her back and then tips his chin at you on his way back. 

“have a good one, miss.”

you turn on sevika the moment he’s gone, a resignation to your voice that you hope carries nothing else inside it, “does your woman ever get any say in being your woman?”

“for the next two hours you don’t.” she gives you a hard, pointed look. “they’ll leave you alone.”

you blink. your hand ghosts over your heart, protecting the spot. for an unnerving second her gaze cuts a gaping hole there and she’s staring right inside. 

with your conversation only halfway in her head, sevika makes a frustrated grunt, and all in one movement tugs her hair out of its ponytail. it picks up the sunlight and drags it across her face as it flutters and shakes down to her shoulders. she gathers it all in its entirety again, and pins it away. 

you watch, your breath held in your mouth like a bead.

“i can take care of myself,” you manage, once her arm is no longer higher up in your line of sight than necessary and you can go back to failing to avoid looking at her at all. 

she makes it difficult. “i know.”

sevika gazes down at you before returning to dragging produce around and it's something like being singed with the sun.

CUTAWAY: 𓆞 UNDOING.

you’re watchful—vigilant—but no one approaches. no one pries. 

sevika generally stays steadfastly in your line of sight, or you in hers—

but it’s been hours, and she’s shot down your every offer to help in order to drag the ordeal along. instead she’s being helped by a worker she seems to know, and you can’t recall the name you overheard. somehow it doesn’t matter.

your eyes pass between them, back and forth. weighing, like a cube of dice in your palm.

sevika lets her palm descend on his arm, thick and burly and still dwarfed by hers. some sort of nonverbal show of gratitude that’s received fluently.

the man—her friend—makes a gruff noise alongside a sharp, bearded lift to his face, barely there and gone the next breath. his stance curls at the top like a willow tree but his shoulders are steady and his gait calm and he doesn’t look in your direction once. 

not without effort, you tear your gaze from his retreating neck and flicker back towards sevika. a shudder touches the base of your spine, quick as a splinter. same as always, she’s watching you right back.

she makes a vague motion with her head, beckoning you over.

her practiced eyes search your approach for heat-exhaustion, her hand suspended as if to touch your arm. never landing.

“all good?”

you settle before her. “of course.”

she drags up the last of the crates and you stare at them witheringly, and stop yourself from calculating all the time it’ll take. “he’s an old partner of mine, we’ve been in the business together for a long time.”

you smile, slowly. “that’s sweet.” then observantly, “he’s handsome.”

her eyes flicker, first back towards her friend, then towards you. lingers. holds and then drops. 

“he’s alright.”

the crate lifts, and then so do her brows. “that your type?”

you teeter forward. both on the balls of your feet and the line you’ve been toeing. 

“big biceps?” you trace with a light finger her arm that’s flexed with effort, heavier until your palm slides against the taut skin. “tall and strong?” her unhurried gaze follows the path you draw down her. gets stuck a little too long on your smile. 

you fold your arm back into yourself. it’s too late, anyway. if she sees your desire strewn out and honey-dense you hope she knows only she can launder it. 

“yeah,” you let go. “i’ve got a thing for those.” 

it lights in her eyes first before it descends down her face. when she smiles, finally, it’s small and curled. 

“great. then remind me to introduce you two.”

dinner is takeout for the second night in a row.

the diner is a spot right in the middle of nowheresville between the warehouse and the next motel closest to parking. it has more than modest if not invisible outer dressing—but the interior surprises you, briefly—is pulsing, customers and chefs hollering at each other and a randomly large cerulean fish tank crammed in the far left corner. a buzzing, soft and neon glow tosses around with the background chatter. it’s pinkish and softens your companion, from where she’s seated across from you. 

the table is small and cramped. you both make it work. sevika keeps her left leg stretched out underneath and nestled between yours, and you have both your feet propped up onto the stool rung. a significant amount of eyeballing alerts you that there’s not nearly enough food in her portion and you’re plotting on how to sneak some of yours onto her plate without her noticing and making a big deal about it.

the food is good, above everything. sevika looks mildly pleased when you melt at the first forkful.

“how the hell do you stay so fit,” you mumble around the shrimp lo mien, and she points at you with wooden chopsticks wedged between three fingers, and chides, chew, then swallow, then talk.

it peeves you enough that you only respond with your mouth full and don’t acknowledge her again otherwise. she’s disbelieving and then exasperated, and then something else, quiet and mirthful and warm. 

it's its own form of prayer, in a way. the teamwork of it. it’s all a ball passed back and forth. you push your half-finished bowl towards her, subtleties abandoned, tell her eat. don’t just watch. don’t just offer. if this delicate thing you’re both balancing is an altar then let me worship here, too.

she refuses, predictably. you refuse her refusal too. 

her disgruntled face after miles of back and forth begs why?, and you shrug, empty your bowl into hers and nudge it closer.

“never been taken care of before?”

silence is a tattletale. despite her creased brow, she eats.

you wake up gripped tight to sevika’s chest like a clenched fist. 

you roll with a bit of agitation, briefly irked at greeting the day so damn early and then at your head scarf lying halfway across the bed. 

sevika’s snoring softly out of parted lips, and somewhere in her sleep her ribbed tank top shifted up and out of the way. her midriff makes your tongue thicken in your mouth.

the careful silence of the morning eggs you on, with even the sun nearly absent as your witness. you trail fingers along her peeking ribcage. angle your head and kiss her stomach. her breathing continues uninterrupted, while you stumble to catch yours. 

she’s so real you don’t know what to do with it. 

you press inwards again, wondering how much it’d take to break skin. how close you could get. how far she’d let you. 

she wakes up with her skin sucked between your teeth.

slow, a rocking ship docking at sea. her eyes murmur open, and her hand slides into your hair, cupping your jaw as you look up at her. you between her legs, hand flattened on her stomach, peering up at her through your lashes. and her skin between your teeth.

you release it, and press your thumb down into the spot where it blooms a deep plum. she exhales sharply. her stomach locks underneath you. 

you kiss the bruise, right at the elastic of her boxers. 

“‘morning.”

the world gets softer with her in it.

or it’s the heat making everything languid and slow. or the music circling from her radio, crooning funk and jazz and rock with gentle melodies and incessant professions of love.

you get ready blanketed underneath it. and your fingers buzz in your hair as you tease through it, imagining it were your own fingers plucking the sounds into the air.

sevika’s duffle is already packed, and she’s bent over a banana on the single courtesy chair, swaying like tall grass in an endless field, staring out into nothing. 

“tryna eat me alive?” she had asked, yawning out of her sleep. like she was doing it on purpose, her stomach stretching, her face squeezing tiredly.

you looked sweet, you’d responded. trying to sound more jokey and less tortured. less hungry. just wanted a bite.

the guitar of brazilian jazz rings out from the small box, an early 2000s track you perk to attention at. the introduction descends into percussion. you don’t even remember standing to your feet.

she doesn’t startle when your hands find her neck.

your touch is light and she cranes to look up at you, and you grin, your thumb brushing over her pulse. 

you tell her to come dance with you.

she says no. then hauls herself up, anyway.

the morning light descending in strips on the wooden floorboards is your stage and your hips gyrate while the rhythm trickles down your bones. she complains fruitlessly that she doesn’t dance, and to not expect anything from her, but being good at it was never the point.

you close your eyes, for yourself and for her. sevika catches your body when it tips back into hers, while her hands glide down the bend of your torso and flattens on your pelvis. your ass slides flush against her and her stomach shifts against your curved spine with every inhale, her diaphragm lifting like she’d break past your skin if she could, and settle herself between your bones. 

the music bounces and dances with you. she sways, supports every pull and whine of your hips. the instruments layer on top of each other and sweetens the air, and your movement grows more excited, losing yourself to the sound. 

“it was too bad we didn't get to do this at your friend's club.” you swallow and it goes down like a blade.

“we would've if i knew you wanted to.”

you slide your palm over the hand on your hip. “you knew.” 

nothing else needs saying, and the silence closes in. it’s warm and buzzing and ripe.

perched on the bed you watch sevika rest her hip bone against the bathroom sink, leaning towards the mirror with a well-used kajal pencil sitting loosely between her fingers. she drags it along her waterline, pulling at the skin near her crow’s feet. it’s the period to the end of her morning routine.

she pulls back, and stares at her reflection.

she stands like that for too long. you can’t see what she sees, you don’t know what she’s searching for. whether she finds it or not the moment is gone, and she turns away and flips the light switch, and tucks the stick away.

she pauses when she enters your line of sight. a brow rustles in question.

“bathroom free?” you ask her. she hums, moving to stand before you.

“can’t get ‘em right for some reason,” she sighs, her eyes flickering closed for you to pick out the imperfection you won’t find, and aren’t searching for. 

your eyes drift seedless over the rest of her face. sunlight peers golden and red through the blood in her ears, the flyaways in her dark hair glowing white. dust mites balancing in the light around her in a halo. you’re almost scared to let yourself exhale should the mirage shudder away with it.

when you recenter focus her eyes sit on you, silently. 

you tug her nearer, past pretending you're getting a better look.  

sevika’s hand comes behind you and presses deep into the mattress for balance, tilting precariously into your space as you pull without relenting. you pass the parted plush of her mouth, press a suggestion instead to the weathered, soft skin of her cheek. 

her lids are low. you trail a kiss to her chin, her chest rising and settling as you hover, unhurried, until your lips are brushing. 

sevika’s breath catches on your skin. she slides calloused fingers under your chin and presses forward in one motion and finishes the distance for you. 

her lips are soft as you remember them. 

her kiss is unhurried for moments, a gentle rhythm. she smells like rich wintergreen and morlboro smooth. she breaks away, eyes searching your trembling fingers and heaving chest. you press forward to take her back in. 

the kiss becomes bruising—her mouth presses forward firmly, spurred by your pleased noises. your lips part for her and she licks inside. she’s handsy, her knee coming down onto the bed and your arm wrapping over her shoulder while she drags your hips forward to meet her thigh. they lower to graze your ass, humming when a soft moan slips from you, gathering the sound off your tongue.

when you pull back to quietly catch your breath, sevika’s hazy eyes drop, dip and trail, taking you in in your entirety, laid out before her on the bed. 

the airy fabric spills off your shoulder in waterfalls, skin soaked in freckled sunlight through the window pane and in nothing else but your underwear—sevika reaches out and pulls the elastic waistband of your panties till it snaps against your hip.

your breathing hollows but she pulls away and rocks off the bed. 

tells you throatily, “yeah. bathroom’s free.”

you fall apart all over your hand. 

a whimper threatens its way out of your throat as your hips roll into your fingers. the nub of your clit swells against your incessant rubbing, your stomach clenching as you climb.

with a sharp, pleading moan; you forget yourself. for a moment, while your pussy clenches tight and then breaks and everything sweetens, this doesn’t matter.

yet your body goes cold immediately after, clarity clawing webby fingers at the base of your stomach where you had just been tight and warm.

leaving the bathroom is nightmarish. and you take entirely too long cleaning up in the shower to prolong it—and you try not to check. you make an honest-to-god effort. 

sevika’s eyes are a forest fire. your eyes meet and it scalds.

with your towel folded over your arm and hips donned with denim, your breath holds you as you wait for her to remedy the silence with salve. a stupid quip or a beckon forward or a reproach.

but she gives you nothing, continues eating like it’s nothing, a lazy ghost of a smile tilting her lips. 

your breathing doesn’t truly even back out. it’s fresh and warm as a wound and floods down to your toes. your fingers flex at your side, and you carry the feeling cursing in your stomach with as much pride as you can offer it.  

sevika stops you at the door.

with the day flickering around her broad shoulders, slipping through the cracks in the rusted white door and into your eyes—she passes a hand down your torso, and cups you through your pants.

you go rigid to your core. she swatches your dampness through your cotton shorts, like a painter would their palette.

“thought you took care of it?”

you grip her wrist when she begins to pull away. stare right into her eyes, and let out a quiet, breathy moan.

it lets your own shock take a backseat while her brows sink over her eyes, blackened with desire.

you’re slick and aching between your thighs, and she lingers in the heat like a promise, before slipping her hand away. she pushes back against the door for you, and you shoulder through.

you imagine you’re a delight to her, like this. fruit sweet enough to bite into. something of a dam breaks, and her hands don’t leave your body often.

there’s a thumb soothing your thigh, high up on the pulpy flesh near the loose hem. you do a fine job of ignoring it, even when her hand gathers the meat and squeezes.

the radio isn’t playing music. a droning voice describes a primary witness’ recount of the bodies found east of the interstate highway sevika’s truck thunders along.

she doesn’t change stations. presses her thumb down into the pink tissue until the wound weeps.

the sound of laughter greets your arrival—you weren’t warned of the tighter community of workers at this warehouse, and stockers who do not know you welcome your stay with wide smiles. sevika looks properly disgruntled at the jovial bodies wrapping around her at entry. you taste envy in your mouth like iron. 

adjusting her cap lower in her face, sevika tells you to stay put and to holler if anything happens.

of course something happens. outside her tall, unbending shadow, you’re an easy kill.

your guitar doesn’t go unnoticed by the workers she leaves you by. making mountains out of cardboard boxes, they goad you on to play for them.

you briefly wish past-you had left it in sevika’s truck, but even the slightest chance of the finish fading worried you, and now your fingers tighten around the neck while you shuffle through your mental catalog for all the songs you know by heart.

the thick, tar guitar strap is embroidered with pink and white hollyhocks. it braces against your chest as you hoist the body to your hip.

you let out a steady breath. and then let your hand descend.

you imagine instrumentals, even an orchestra cropping up behind you, pouring in with a force that could knock you to your knees. a piano might pluck in like raindrops. percussion might hammer like life at your front door. you imagine the sound nose-diving clumsily, unconcerned with where the note lands, undeterred by its mangled body and snapped tendons spilled across the floor. 

the music makes itself almost, underneath your thumb. it leaps forward, and heaves with lungs. 

for a moment, under the fluorescent lights, you are beautiful. 

your fingers still stumble, veins of your wrist bending to make the barre. you miss a chord and have to run after it. your voice strains when you forget your finger placement and land your bones on the fret too late. 

but the music never stops moving. it coasts over the space and you feel it, pumping and thudding like a heartbeat. you map out its rhythm with your own thumping feet against the ground and however many stragglers that stuck around bob heads and tap hands against their thighs. 

you get a single, lone whistle and you grin under it, succumbing to the spiral. these are bodies surging, in their own way. you worship the moment with all you've got.

when you’ve played yourself empty, slightly sweaty and throat wound tight—you find her, stood in the corner of the scant crowd like an afterthought.

sevika’s arms are crossed and her head angled, as if turning a curious thought between her teeth. or seeing you for the very first time.

the guitar eats your nails down to stubs, but you bludgeon your way forward anyway.

your brain flickers with every memory of sevika’s gaze, clinging like sea salt to the back of your legs. when she’s near you, when she’s near you, and you can barely hear yourself over your own pulse, and your heartbeat clatters against your spine like a drum. it begs for release and offers itself over, arteries clipped and leaking like a sewage drain.

it makes an unfortunate sight. and still with all the audacity required of love, pleads, quietly, to be wanted in return.

you’re made up of many awful things. they’ll all catch up to you someday. 

but you’re made of this, too.

so just for now—you sing.

CADENCE: 𓆝 SERENDIPITY.

the world is orange enough to slice into. the wind passes like rushing water through the trees, and if you close your eyes you think you would almost smell the salt, see the dark and foaming sea.

“not much longer,” sevika says, offhandedly. she’s stretched out on the park bench, elbows propped behind her on the wood. you’re sitting on the table top just an inch above her, and your knees sway apart and collapse into her shoulder.

“scared to miss me when i’m gone?”

“yeah,” she admits simply, staring out into the bruising sky. 

then after a moment, “tell me about california.”

you don’t respond, chest squeezing against your spine, not quite ready to move on yet. but after her pointed stare you blink away and wave around the sandwich in your hand, vaguely. “i’m gonna be a musician. right where the sea is, i’m gonna make people dance.” 

you lower the patty to your lap. your legs cross, knotted like pie.

“and when i smile, i’m going to mean it.”

she watches you, her face difficult to decipher. “yeah?”

“yeah. and…and when i’m touched by anything, even by death—it’ll strike out like a chord. it won’t be muffled underneath anyone’s body, or anyone i leave behind.” the words break as they hit the crisp, evening air. with eyes sharp, your earnestness drives them into the world like a spear. “it’ll be wild, and loud. something with wings. a note that never stops ringing.” 

the sentiment sounds off like a vow. she’s your single, reverent audience.

“don’t have to die to get all that,” sevika says, finally. if you lifted her voice and peeled the cords apart, you wonder what you’d find inside.

“yeah, but,” you spin your finger, eddying the drink in your cup. “can you imagine? i’ll want for nothing else after i get it.”

“i can imagine,” she says. there’s no judgment in her voice, but she doesn’t scrub out the scratchiness. “i’m just wondering if you can’t.”

you’re uninterested in the question and the thickness it raises in your throat. it gives the dream a bit too much leverage over you than you’re prepared to afford it, so you swallow and say nothing, lifting the cup to your mouth. 

she leaves it at that. together, you eat, and watch the sun settle to sleep.

the day wanes and surrenders to night, and sevika secures parking late again. it’s late again. she’s shuffling around in her boxers like a slut.

there’s a purple mark that reveals itself when she stretches her hands above her head in a suppressed yawn or reaches under her shirt to scratch her stomach. at each instance your breath pauses and folds in your gut. 

it might be the leftover dregs from your conversation earlier but when you shoulder your way into the bathroom beside her she forgoes your reflection in the mirror to watch you approach, keeping the toothbrush working steadily in her mouth. you sit on the toilet lid with your own toothbrush and rest your right ankle on your left knee and begin to scrub, too.

freshly showered, and smelling like malted barely, sevika tugs a little at her hair. grunts, twists her neck, and frowns.

she steps into the marmalade light again and you ask her what’s wrong and she lifts shears in the air, pointedly.

“i put this off forever. it’s getting too long.”

you hum lengthily, then perch yourself on the bathroom sink. “give it. i’ll do it.”

when she doesn’t move you gesture for the shears again, fingers dragging through the air.

“don’t make it too short,” she requests wearily, placing them into your open palm. 

“relax. my mama ran a hair shop,” your legs extend and wrap around her hips, and squeeze till she’s dragged forward, in between your thighs. “i’ll take good care of you.”

the position is not the most optimal for cutting hair. you wait for her to voice her opposition but she seems to care as little as you do, hands coming eventually to rest on either side of your hips. 

“show me the length before you cut,” is all she says. that much you can do.

you nudge her shoulder until she’s turned around 180 degrees. her back is a thick expanse and just barely rounded forward, and you pull the hair back between two fingers to expose the nape of her neck, a pretty thing. you tip forward, kiss along it. murmur, “this long?”

she takes a long time to respond. her voice is awful when it comes. “longer.”

you try again, and she’s tensing. rolling into it, laying her neck to the side, bearing herself open.

“there’s good.” sevika squeezes your knee. “go ahead.”

you thread through her hair, re-gather it between your two fingers, and then lift the shears. 

her thumb absentmindedly soothes your calf, unwitting while you sit and sway dizzily, terrified by how soft her throat is. wanting to sink your teeth inside.

you have her doing pirouettes as you work and sevika complies without complaint, turning every which way at your request. 

she prattles aimlessly about the radio drama you both became invested in on the ride here, and as easy as ranting back and forth was earlier you’re exerting effort to pay attention now. 

her cologne is subtle, but wraps the room like incense smoke. you can pick out her shampoo underneath it. she always finds a way to keep a hand on you like an anchor. she’s practically wearing nothing and you can see every twitch and flex of her arm as she adjusts her weight, and you stare at her mouth to better keep up with what she’s saying until that stops working, too. 

when you announce you’ve finished, her smile is light and leaning. “how’s it look?”

you sweep the debris off her shoulders. push the hair out of her eyes, and turn her face in your palm. 

then, helplessly, “really good.”

her smirk quiets. her expression flickers. she braces against the marble and kisses you. 

your fingers tighten around the shears in your hand, and when you grab at her hips to drag her closer they press in between the ridges of her ribcage. 

after a moment and a gentle hum she breaks away, and leans around your shoulder to check your work in the mirror. her breast pushes up against yours and your lids flicker, arousal coiling pitifully in your belly. 

she isn’t wearing a bra. your thighs twitch around her hips.

“you did good,” she drawls, pleased while she combs fingers through it. the front is cropped right to the halfway point of her jugular, just long enough to tug back into a ponytail if the summer heat had her needing to. 

“‘course i did.” your hands on her waist squeeze a little. “i hope that’s not shock i hear?” 

she leans back, a satisfied smile stretching her face. you catch her eyes drop. she examines your wet, kiss-swollen lips and then lifts to take in your heavy eyes.

“alright,” you duck away from her probing gaze, “get out. i need the bathroom too.” 

you nudge her back and keep pushing with your foot, amusement heavy in her eyes as you shoo her away.

she stoops to gather the hair inside a compact disposable bag, and you don’t stop yourself from looking anymore, her thighs straining against fabric, her hips swelling like the moon. she tightens the bag with a loop on her way out. 

the silence she leaves behind rings and pulses. 

your bare thigh on the cold sink anchors and sends a shiver rippling up your spine. it wakes you a little, loosens the thoughts in your brain. you hold your greed underneath your tongue like a pearl of spit. use it to wet the fingers you rub your clit with.

she finds you like that, legs spread and whimpering under your breath, and the shock nearly wipes both the wind out of your lungs and your very own life away. she’s looming in the entranceway, the dark from the room pooling in behind her, the diffused orange hues of the glowy, cramped bathroom gracing her arms and nudging at the deep geometric shadows along her silhouette. it cuts her up and angles her, sharply, more than she already is.

she asks you why you stopped. tells you to keep going.

you scramble for your underwear but she beats you to it. when her thick fingers slide to feel your wetness your brain goes soft and jelly and all reason exits your body. floods out straight from your mouth, a jolt and a moan and a curse.

her tone is slow and unwavering. “keep going.”

a whine threatens your throat when her fingers coax over yours, drawing out small circles on your clit. 

“i leave for three minutes, and you’re humping yourself like a dog?” she lifts your chin so her taunting smile scathes inescapably, “you gonna get off everytime i kiss you?”

“you get off on it,” you huff, jaw slacking then tightening when her fingers apply more pressure in response. “bet you touched yourself too.” 

“i did,” she bends towards your ear, breath warm and voice low. “came over and over just thinking about how sweet you sounded.”

your eyes are glassy when she draws back. 

“be good for me. put on a good show.” 

she feels your speed pick up, the desperate noise climbing up your throat, and kisses the vein there. 

“keep it nice and slow.” her eyes are stuck to your glistening cunt, and you comply with a low whine. “right there, good girl.”

the praise seeps in through the skin and whites out your coherence. sevika massages your thigh while you roll your hips into the pleasure, your clit swelling under your hand. 

her hand is restless. it lifts, taking your top up with it. grazes over a stiffening nipple with coarse fingers. 

you shudder under her heavy, roving gaze, taking her time to stare greedily before squeezing the flesh in her palm. “wanted me to see these real bad, didn’t you.” 

“that’s—” air slips gently from between your clenched teeth, “that’s not what that was.” 

pressing a palm flat onto your back, sevika beckons the bud into her wet mouth. her eyes flicker to catch yours.

“no?”

you arch into the heat, sevika’s teeth closing down and wringing out a harsh, breathy moan. she suckles and nips, and rolls the other between her fingers, while the heat builds white hot in your stomach. 

your slick is thick around your fingers and your motion gets sloppier, raising your foot to the counter and bowing your knees out. you paint a crude, clear canvas of yourself, every fold and leaking crevice, arousal sticky on your thighs. 

her attention lowers like she can’t help herself. she reaches down and rubs her fingers over yours, until your hips are stuttering into her hand. “your pussy’s so pretty,” she murmurs, swiping her thumb over your entrance.

“please,” you whimper, gripping her moving arm. “i need you, baby.”

she takes your gaze. “please what? need what?”

“need your fingers,” your hips reach pleadingly for the relief she’s dangling right over your head. “wanna cum on your fingers. please, feels so good when you touch me.”

her eyes go dark as her pupils blow out, breath leaving her in a sharp rush. her hand shifts targets, pushing until she’s breaking past the peeking band of her underwear. “rub yourself faster.”

your brain depletes to a shuddering moan at the thought of her rubbing her fingers coated with your cream onto her clit. 

“fuck, sevika. please—” 

“finish what you started.” sevika’s fingers gyrate in time with yours, her eyes fogging over. “cum for me, sweetheart. then i’ll make you feel real good.”

your fingers move furiously as your orgasm starts to scrape inside. her steady breathing grows heavier while your whines climb in volume, her glazed, lust drunk gaze floating between your screwed up face and your drooling pussy. your thighs start to quiver, pleasure collecting into a tight coil— 

it breaks. a resounding tremor rocks through you and clears your vision as you gush over your fingers, her name bubbling and overflowing on your tongue. the last syllable breaks off with a prolonged uhhhh fuuuuck—, your fingers come to a twitching stop. 

“there you are. easy.” she’s there when your body slumps, taking on your body weight while you recover. your panting wanes while she soothes your shoulder.  

your eyes raise to attention. her waistband snaps as she lifts her fingers up, slick and shining. leans over, takes your jaw and squeezes, beckons your mouth open.

“clean these for me,” she instructs, low.

your lips wrap around her fingers as she feeds her fingers to you, her lids heavy as you suction yourself off. your gentle moan vibrates around her skin, and sevika slowly pulls them out with a pop and thumbs at the line of drool that stretches with it. 

her fingers trail down your bare stomach. “how’s it taste?”

you lick your lips and swallow, eyes fluttering down to her mouth. 

“find out for yourself.”

she takes the bait, no resistence. slides against your lips, your arms coming to tangle across her shoulders, into her hair. she nudges your legs further apart and grazes your entrance, glides up to your clit. applies the barest bit of pressure. 

your breathing stutters. 

her fingers, thick and delicious and dragging your cream up into your folds—over and over, gliding up, down, pausing only to settle on your clit and rub tight, slow circles. arousal expands in your stomach, ragged against her mouth. 

she just barely dips inside your cunt with each slide. your breath hitches at every tease, squirming and rocking your hips forward to meet her. 

you’re tired of her teasing and you want to say as much, until she sinks inside with one finger and whatever words you were preparing dissolves down your throat.

a satisfied sound leaves her, attention sucked back to your pussy swallowing her down to the knuckle. 

“you feel fucking incredible,” she pumps inside, staring unashamedly. “so wet baby, this all for me?”

you can’t manage a response, can’t manage anything but to plead for more, asking her to add another, to make you feel full.

sevika searches your face until you lift to meet her eyes. she chooses then to ease her ring and middle inside together—to watch your lids flutter and your mouth hang dumbly.

she turns her wrist to run her thumb over your clit while she fucks into you with increasing speed. her languid pumping falls further and further to the wayside until she’s drilling inside and you’re crying out, finger nails carving crescents into her forearms. 

you can hardly hold yourself up anymore, warmth building while variations of her name and please please please dribbles like drool from your mouth. 

her low, smooth voice purring praise in your ear sinks you closer to that sweet spot—you try to respond, mmmng right there, ‘m so close, feelssogood, and she volleys it back to you, “yeah? right here? feels so good?”—mocking and endeared and enraptured. hovering over your gleaming body like an awning, entranced while you crumble apart.

you clench around her fingers. it’s her final warning as your orgasm expands till bursting, rippling and shuddering through you, all sweet and sticky. 

her grip tightens while you cry out and spasm in her arms. she pumps you through it, gradually decreasing the pressure, cooing while you claw at her body. 

your brain liquids. panting and muscles lax, you're held up by her arm alone. 

sevika kisses your hair. extracts her fingers, gently. 

“you did incredible,” she thumbs your cheek, keeping you upright until your trembling subsides, and your breathing evens out against her chest. the soft linen material on your skin wakes you back up out of your daze. 

you draw back, hand sliding along her waist.

“want this off,” you tug at her hemline. “can you—can i—?” 

“‘course.” her arms lift and she tugs her top over her head, letting it stumble to the rugged floor. 

you gape. then swallow and seal your mouth shut.

you’d already seen some of the scarring. but it blooms out from her chest like arizona red shades, feathering down her stomach, crawling up her neck. you can’t choose where to latch your eyes to. you trace up her side, mouth working, staring hard at her chest.

her amusement withers into a soft grunt when you drag her closer by her belt loops. everywhere her skin meets yours starts another fire. she’s flushed warm with arousal, watching you eat her alive. 

“shit,” you whisper, starting to squirm again. “you look—you’re gorgeous.”

her eyes crinkle. “stealing the words out of my mouth.”

you stroke her waist, right at the small grape-sized bruise, fingers drawing up to her sternum. you watch her watch you. you say it again, tell her she’s beautiful, cradle her face and repeat it once more. her smirk wavers, breathing becoming unbalanced. 

you cup her breasts in your hand and tweak the brown nipple. she pushes into your touch, shoulders loosening with a pleased exhale.

“did it feel good?” you ask, holding her stare. “touching yourself with me on your fingers?”

she inhales, sharply. 

“shit, yeah.” her voice, hoarse with desire, sends a shiver down your stomach. “need you on your back, baby. i wanna stuff you full with something bigger. can i take you to bed?”

her hands squeeze on your hips when you answer, “yes. please.”

“can you stand on your own?”

your chest thuds. the memory is a sudden and tender sore. 

the lie slides against your tongue first. you take a moment to let it dissolve away. then— 

“not...not sure.”

sevika braces along your back and slides her arm under your knees, and whisks you up against her chest. 

surprise sends the wind out of you. your arms secure around her shoulder, heart beat slamming in your ears. she toes the door open wider and the glowing bathroom light drags out with you two, smearing into the dark bedroom and clinging to her back as she lowers you carefully, pressing you down into the sheets. 

“gimme just a second,” she murmurs, with a kiss on your shoulder.

you sit up on your elbows as she crouches to blindly rummage through her belongings. her back is almost painted blue, and you miss her immediately. hugging arms around her feels overwhelming as wrapping arms around the sky.

she returns with a dark, leather harness drawn up over her hips, gripping at the flaps drawn through its buckle and tugging it taught. your throat properly dries, and then an incredulous laugh manages past it. 

“you had that in there this entire time?”

her smile is just short of sleazy, eyes bright and finding yours in the dark. 

“you don’t even know how long i've wanted you like this.” she settles on her knees, sucking her own fingers and using them to work you back open. “thought about bending you over every surface and fucking you ‘till that smart mouth was hanging open.” 

her words are dizzying, twisting around inside your stomach, consciousness blurring while she circles your clit with the tip. 

she keeps on until your hips are lifting and rolling into it—barres your hips down with metal, lining herself up and using your slick to coat her strap. 

you fucking could’ve, you’d tell her, if your head wasn’t pushing back against the pillows with the easing pressure at your cunt, thoughts slipping and emptying out your mouth. anywhere she wanted you you would have let her. but it’s nothing she needs to hear because it’s nothing she doesn’t already know.

your legs lock around the back of her thighs and her hair fans and drapes out—skin damp and draped over you, rocking forward in one motion and fucking into you all at once. she groans like she can feel it, watching you stretch around her to settle her inside. 

the fullness has you drawing out a high, needy moan. she lets you adjust to it for a moment until you’re squirming and reaching for her hips. she smiles and keeps a maddening pace, all in slow and deep drags. she rocks her hips forward, pulls back. the sound fills out the room, your heavy, laboured breathing and her controlled movements drawing needy whimpers from you. 

“faster,” you plead, grasping her wrists loosely. “‘s not enough like this.”

“you sure?” her rocking doesn’t pause for even a second. her steady gaze finds your hazy one, thumbing the damp hair against your forehead. her voice drips with a honeyed, faux concern. “wouldn’t wanna break you.”

“i can take it,” you breathe. 

sevika kisses at your throat, fingers sinking into your hips. 

“that’s my girl.”

she drapes herself over you, ramping up in a few strokes, giving you time to adjust—praises getting kissed onto your skin until she’s pounding hard and fast. your fingernails sink into her back like you were being drowned, gripping her down closer. she grunts with the effort, her hips bruising while your body rocks with the impact. 

sevika grips your ass for a better angle and your back arches off the bed, whiney, pleading moans straining inarticulately out your throat. 

the angle does something new to her. sevika lets out a wet sound, breathing growing heavier until she’s beginning to pant. she reaches around your hitched thigh to pat at your pussy, rubbing down on your clit. your hips buck violently—the moonlight is watery on her glistening skin, and it tremors and then breaks and spills from your gasping mouth, sending your hips crashing up against her stomach.

there's no let up. pleasure tumbles into discomfort, your hips cringing away from the sensation.

sevika keeps going, and your whimpers descend into whines. she grips your thigh, keeping your hips still, searching for her own orgasm as the strap rubs up against her clit.

“you’re—fuck—doing so good,” she rasps, “taking me so good, baby.” 

she pastes herself to you, cursing repeatedly in your shoulder, the wet squelches clouding your head and stirring in your stomach. all your whiney protest melts into soft, climbing moans. 

losing her earlier precision as she sinks further into bliss, her nipples paste up on yours when she shifts to rock against you, snapping turning into frantic thrusts as she closes in. none of the precise strokes from before, simply ramming into the tight nerve bundle over and over until your throat is clawing for air. 

you dig your nails into her back.

“cum inside me,” you plead into her ear. “wanna be full with it, baby. fill me up.”

sevika’s body seizes and she arrives with a slew of curses and your name slurring out on your shoulder, pouring thickly around a strangled, gasping moan. 

the desperate sound directly in your ear immediately reawakens the pulse in your pussy as she rides you through the orgasm rocking through her. you keep her wound tight in your arms until she's milked out the last of it. her body’s tremors are so close they feel like yours. 

her hips shock and jolt, and she rests her forehead to your shoulder while she catches her breath. you choke down the hiss in your throat at the angle the dildo settles up at. her hair tickles your cheek when she shifts and kisses your temple, breath shaky on your sweat-slick skin. 

“fuckin’ hell,” she breathes. 

you soothe her back, up and down. then grin a little, at the ceiling. lean your head and inform her, “you moan like a girl.” 

she scoffs, hard. a smirk fills her features out and spreads into a grin, her laughter a rumbling, pretty staccato against your chest. 

the sensation makes your spine tingle. she kisses the giggle off your mouth. she kisses you until it blisters.

your body thrums pleasantly, still just short of the orgasm that’d been regathering inside you. sevika gives your ass a firm squeeze, spreads the cheek apart lewdly. it sends a whimper into her mouth and drives you to squirm where she’s still sunk inside. you’re vying for friction, trying to rise your hips and fuck yourself on her—your breathing stutters as sevika grips your hips down and slowly slides out.

you watch her descend the bed. bend forward on her knees and drag your hips to her face.

“wanna give me one more?” sevika trails sticky kisses along your thighs. “make all those pretty sounds for me again?” 

her breath fans warm on your cunt, and you peak towards her mouth, her name snug between a breathy moan in your mouth. she looks up under her lids and locks eyes with you. “atta girl. just like that.”

sevika’s tongue runs up your slit, licking a long stripe that your hips rise into. 

speading your lips with her fingers, she presses more sticky kisses against your clit—dips to lick at your entrance, and lets out a rough groan when you grind your clit down against her nose. 

she glides back up to swirl her tongue against the sensitive nub, works the warmth back in, flicking, kissing and suckling incessantly. you twitch away from the intensity, but her mouth chases after you, warm and wet.

“nuh-uh,” she presses your thigh back until it folds into your chest. “said you can take it.”

she sinks back inside, laps messily, the noises growing sloppy and obscene and mixing with your own. while her hand flattens on your stomach—your hand slides through her loosened hair and gathers purchase and tugs hard, and she grunts appreciatively. you grip like a lifeline, feeling the ache in your cunt regather, tight and familiar. 

you push her head down into you, rolling into her mouth, “ngh—right there, shit—”

she growls into you, prompted by your needy abandon. “that’s it. come on baby.”

the warmth collects in your belly, and you writhe warningly, tightening your grip on her hair. 

she grips your hips—your thighs start to squeeze around her head so hard you're afraid she might crack cleanly in two. her name garbles from your mouth and she murmurs out encouragement, tells you how perfect you are, lays it flat and then suckles it on your clit.

your cry cuts off into nothing as you convulse against her mouth. she guides you through, “there you go. there’s a good girl.” harmonizing your cries with a soft hum.

thoroughly rocked, your body lets go in a sort of collapse, going limp against the twisted sheets. gazing, blissed out, at the ceiling. 

she wipes her chin with the back of her forearm and climbs up from between your thighs. you grasp her face and pull her down into a kiss that feels like an exhale, and tastes breathless and airy, like laughter. 

she braces herself on her arm, rests a grounding hand on your stomach. 

“now who moans like a girl?”

“fuck off,” you respond heatlessly, and her grin is so toothy you ache to catch it in the moonlight.

the guilt is only a tiny wisp in your stomach but you watch her move around with a small frown tugging your lips. she looks drowsy enough that you hope the maybe four hours of sleep she’ll manage will have been worth her while.

she brings back water and wash cloths. passes you the bottle and then kneels, lifting your legs.

“i can do it myself,” you tell her, quietly, watching her work.

sevika glides the cool cloth up the back of your thigh. kisses the damp trail left behind. 

“i know.” 

you wake before her.

the sun is starting to pour over the trees outside, and you should probably jostle her awake. but the sight makes your chest go still, and you spend the time committing her to memory instead.

eventually sevika rustles under the weight of it, her face scrunching and loosening. quietly, her eyes creak open.

they zero in on you immediately. she’s always been that way. 

“‘morning,” you offer.

“creep,” she returns. 

she kisses you. everything quiets.

the radio chatters about road safety and weather conditions.

you listen while drifting in and out, staring lazily out the window. there's barking that sevika’s truck rumbles past, but it’s faint and growing fainter, keeping a safe distance. you think nothing could touch you right now. not even death.

you seem to remember her only in moments like these. when your defenses soften and erode. your mother, what you remember of her, had said women like us. 

you were 11 standing before her while she crouched to her knees, narrow enough to be hardly anything at all. your chest drew pointy, puffy peaks through your trainer bra, and still held a crooked crescent-shaped scar from when the shame sprung up so tall you’d tried to plunge the buds back inside.

her acrylics were french and lined red. she gripped your shoulders, dug inside, and said, there’s no way out for women like us.

it was her mantra. her life philosophy, she would correct you, with a tight pinch to your cheek. she would be so skeptical of this quiet and curious feeling you’re nursing right now. she’d pick at it restlessly like a hangnail. 

women like us, she’d said. you and me, she’d meant.

there’s no way out for women like us. so this is how we make it. how we carve our way out.

her whole life was packed inside a bag at her strappy heels. also red, a color that was always meaning the end of things. you were trying not to look at it, while she pressed your trembling fingers to the guitar strings, strings with teeth. 

you were softer then, and bled easier. 

you’d bit down hard on the flesh in your cheek to keep silent about it, keeping space for her words as she lay them down and ironed them out on your fingers. her own hands were safer than yours, double the size and thickened by years of threading through coarse hair, nimble from knowing her way so well through something she hated so much. you knew somehow it was important you listened this time. that it would maybe be the last thing she ever gives you.

if she’s still alive she might hear you playing in a commercial or something one day. in her car, if she finally got the pink volvo she was dreaming of. and maybe she’d wonder how such a scrawny thing managed what she couldn’t.

the radio drops from celebrity roundtable debates to a stream of commercials, and sevika reaches over to switch the station.

there’s a dog waiting outside the restaurant. you’re not sure what, or who for. it’s tied up loose enough to nudge its way free if it wanted to. it lifts its head as you both approach and stares with empty eyes. 

the place is only gently bloated with people and sevika leaves her hand on your lower back while she gives the woman behind the entrace counter her name. 

soft, dense gingham fabric lines the wooden booth seat you scoot into. the sign outside had read family owned, over 75 years. it felt like it on the interior. a hug warm enough to melt into. 

while perusing the breakfast menu, sevika tells you, deliberate about not sounding any type of way about it, we’ll reach the border by late afternoon. 

her calloused hand slides onto your jittering knee. it doesn’t stop the movement, but she doesn't mention it. 

the waitress has a button lined uniform rolled at her sleeves, introducing herself as your server for today. her smiling eyes pause when they register who’s across from you. somehow you think the whole nation must know sevika. you try not to let it make you feel lonely.

“sev, sweetie,” her grin expands and her hand comes to clap at her shoulder. “now where the hell’ve you been?”

sevika squeezes her arm in greeting, “nowhere new. got the same old customers.”

“darling, we hadn’t seen you back in so long we were scared that asshole had gotten to you, too.” she smacks sevika’s hand away, laughter tinkling and light like a child’s. she turns her smile on you, leaning the notepad on her hip. “who’s this?”

“my partner,” she says easily, eyes sliding to yours. your stomach bends and swoops. 

the waitress doesn’t withhold, or can’t, picking you apart with her gaze. your blood pumps hot and bassy in your chest.

you smile to her, all teeth.

“i owe her my life,” you say, raising your hand for her to take. “she takes good care of me.”

“well, it’s nice to meet you, sweetheart.” she takes it and squeezes. “a doll, isn’t she? hope she’s not causing you any trouble.”

sevika frowns and sends her grievances the lady’s way, and amidst the laughter words are exchanged that you can’t hear. she gives sevika a short look, presses a private and brief hand to her shoulder.

then her smile lifts again, and with it a pen to her notepad.

“has it got you spooked? all this talk?”

you jump. 

swivel a little, and lean back against the truck. there are rows of other semis just like hers, lined up for refuel. the lot is otherwise vacant, bored drivers wandering inside for snacks or air conditioning. you turn away from their silhouettes in the window. 

“sort of.” you cross your arms and hug yourself tight. “crazy world we live in.”

she’s quiet. after a moment your head lolls to the side. you watch her back move, glide.

“you aren't scared?” you ask, carefully.

“of what?”

you give her pointed silence. 

“ah. of a killer?” 

“of the killer.”

you sidle up close, waiting for her body to tense at your approach. “of them getting to you. to me.”

she unhinges and tucks the nozzle into the fuel tank. then sighs.

“should i be?” she twists around, over her shoulder. stares at you, long and mutilating. 

a shudder runs up and down your body and stills your breath. your stomach hollows and flutters painfully around the emptiness. 

then the moment passes. and everything resumes, reduces back to calm.

sevika watches with interest, and then hums, low and deliberate. 

“slow down.” a disbelieving smile tugs and then tears your face in two, “that’s not what i was getting at.”

“wasn’t it?”

sevika turns her full body towards you.

“first guy that disappeared was doing the run i had last year. last guy—i saw his truck pull over for you.” she slips a hand down your side, pressing into your ribs. lets it rest atop your waist. “no point in lying to me.” 

she drags your hips to hers. presses a thumb down against your bottom lip, traces the lie out. it’s faint curiosity, but mostly amusement. “period blood? on your thigh?”

you shove back, but she has you caged in easily. she’s unmoving while she waits for your answer, while her tank slowly churns itself full. you can feel your heartbeat in the fingertips you press to her chest. your whole body pounds with it, your whole body one continuous nerve ending. 

“why pretend to believe it?”

“why’d you choose to believe me?”

when you say nothing, her thumb skirts to your neck, sinks a little. “should’ve killed me then,” she murmurs, bumps your forehead, and then your nose. slots your mouths together and presses the sentiment to your tongue. 

it dizzies you a little, and she pulls back too soon—and you want her to do it again, and then again, and then one more time. maybe it’s why you flatten your palm on her breastbone and lay your pretenses to rest there. breathlessly and a little high, “what makes you confident that i won’t kill you now?”

“you won’t.” another kiss; hot, heavy—no teeth. no need for teeth. “you waited too long.” 

“i’ve put down countless dogs before,” your breathing is laboured, shaky. “life long partners to me.”

she takes your fingers up off her heart, fingers bloodied by fruit and by fear and by worse things, and kisses them. then reaches back and releases the latch. 

“no dogs here, sweetheart. just you and me.”

sevika saddles a tight duffle of non-perishables and spare water bottles to your bag.

you angle at her the money you owe. 

she stares down at it. her face does a sharp and ugly thing, and then smoothes back out in a flicker. 

“thanks for everything.” you force the words out and they scrape like shards of glass. “i can make it to barstow from here.”

she exhales, tightly. 

“it’s too early for this. just get in the truck.”

you wave the roll around, irritatedly, “just—take it. why aren’t you taking it?”

“i will, once we’re inside the truck.”

then, inside the truck:

“i need my hands to drive,” sevika says lightly. then lights up audaciously and uses her spare hand to hold the cigarette, and the other to lazily wind around the wheel.

you give up, and shove the fat wad into the cup holder, and turn your body towards the window. it's quiet, and tense, and every moment of it pulls at your skin. you know it would vex her if you cried. you’re weighing how much you care. 

the silence seems to slide a needle underneath her skin, too, and therefore it doesn’t last long. she makes an odd and gravelly sound in her throat, halfway to a groan and just short of a grumble, and says, “wanna know something?”

you sniff through your nose and work your mouth. “sure.”

“truck’s got a built-in inverter. you can plug the amp straight in.”

it takes a moment for her meaning to settle but when it does you shove forward and try it and it works. you strum an open chord and then start laughing breathlessly, disbelievingly, “why’d you never tell me?”

she doesn’t look at you. “didn’t think you wanted me to hear.”

your back hits the seat again. your fingers on the wood drum lightly, then slide up the strings—mapping out the rise and fall of her voice for you to hold for later. her tone lilts smoothly, densely. you wish you’d gotten a distortion pedal, to match the frayed edges. 

your fingers hesitate, then stretch to position.

“i was scared,” you allow a tense thread of air to extend between you, “if i gave you a piece of me i’d never get it back.”

“well, you’re probably right. you probably won’t.”

you smile helplessly, and then laugh, in a way that snags in your gut. “no, right?”

her eyes aren’t exactly sad. she takes in your smile for a long second.

then turns back to the road ahead, towards the end where all things lead.

“play,” she tells you.

you play.

you’re used to all the driving now—the 10-hour days taking balm from the rolling trees and skirting gravel and sevika’s long mixes. you pick out every song that she knows and you know and mess around with it on the strings until it has her head swaying side to side. 

you’re used to all of it. her favorite radio stations and the gossip segments she does a poor job of pretending she isn’t locked into. a scent circulating, sandalwood and cedar, warm as candlelight. her laughter flickers the same way.

the body’s ability to stretch and adapt was the single mechanism you prided yourself on. it brought you this far, after all. no adverse or unfamiliar circumstance would break you because you wouldn’t let it. 

it meant riding the tide and not resisting. knowing the world would take and would take and would take. thinking you were hovering above the hurt because you were always prepared for it to.

sevika tells you someone she knew would’ve loved the punk in one of the songs you put in her queue. she says the word kids carefully, like she wasn’t sure what else to reach for, grimacing around taste.

you stretch your legs out and then fold them to your chest, lowering your chin to your knee. “they’re living elsewhere now?”

“they’re gone,” she corrects, indelicately.

“oh. crap.” you blink at her, and drift a hand out. “i’m sorry.”

“i’m not,” sevika says. she swallows like the words are pins and needles to push out. “you know, her morning routine started with waking me up with this one stupid song. just the chorus, over and over, everyone i love is dead. far away enough that i couldn't reach her from bed but cranked loud enough the whole parking lot could hear. would play it every morning at 5 like she was—cramming the hex inside through my ear canal, and then she went and left too. the irony could make you laugh.” 

she doesn’t laugh. and you don’t speak. 

her jaw is prickly, brows nearly colliding on her forehead. you watch quietly until it passes. 

her face releases and smoothes over and every line of worry is buried. she expels out in one exhale of smoke whatever memory was holding a bayonet to her head.

“listen—i didn’t know how to tell her i’d have liked for her to stay.” sevika looks at you, briefly. “even if it never got better. even if it got worse. not that knowing would’ve made a difference, but making it different wasn’t the point.”

she’s the axis the entire earth tilts towards. you take her right hand and close your fingers around it. 

“then it’s easier if it isn’t love.”

“no,” she draws it to her mouth to kiss. “it’s never easier. it’s always love.”

there's no beckon or request this time, when you two stop to dance. 

sevika says there’s a nice view there and starts easing the machine off the exit ramp and she’s right, of course she is, and you almost trip on the way out to gulp it all inside. 

there’s arching trees swallowing the sun and the whisper of waves far off in the distance if you strain your ears enough. 

it aches in an uncontainable way. 

so you don’t contain it—you give it space to breathe. let the feeling toss around inside your body. it’s its home, too.

dancing is all a tangling, an easy maneuver given all the practice you’ve both had. the radio is still jumping and someone’s hip collides into the other in your shared eagerness and you can’t tell whether it's you snickering or her and it doesn’t matter, it’s all the same. 

it’s that soft kind of wine-drunk, summer-drunk swing. like slipping under warm water and taking in a breath.

time trudges forward as though moving through molasses. cruelly, and for once, it doesn’t leave you behind.

my love, you’d pressed into sevika’s palm. my nomad. here’s where i’m headed, and all the places i’ll be, if you ever want to find me. or ever want me to find you.

sevika returns the cash in your bag’s zippered pocket somehow and you only find it 20 miles deep. 

you hunch over the weight of it. you can almost smell her hands through the wad if you press it close enough.

the familiar pressure of your guitar on your back alone reminds you of your feet on the earth. 

you do the only thing you can do, and continue forward.

the town sits right in your nasal cavity, icky and congested. it’s desolate. the whole thing is coated in a rusty terracotta gray and the horizon seems to warble as if unsure of itself. 

sevika would have truckloads of shit to talk about the town and the misadventures she’d been victim to here. or lack thereof. you might’ve asked about them if it weren’t so daunting to carry all her memories here on your own. now, tired and chest heavy, you sort of wish you had.

the rest of the day takes the last few miles in. walking, mostly, and one quiet and uneventful ride, and you’re somehow at the motel you’d promised. it’s cheap and 3-star but also familiar, the creamy walls painted with golden ribbons by the sun. 

the lady at the front takes your name and then cocks her head to the side.

when the memory makes its way back to her, she stretches under the desk for a dice of paper that she slides over to you. 

she taps it, once, twice, with a ringed finger. “this came in for you, dear.” 

it’s a postcard. handwritten, with no return address.

how’s cali? 

you owe me no debt. was never gonna take it. 

the days drag sometimes, and they’re real heavy when they do. i’m wondering if time had always moved this slow or if it’s just too quiet now you're not around. i really hated hearing you complain about the shitty summer heat in my ear, like i could do shit about it. now i get all my weather reports off the radio. none of them get it right. don’t sound like you do.

i gave it some thought, and i’m not a dancer. i’m really not a dancer. i would’ve loved trying, though, in the san clemente waves with you. it’d be a damn good time, just you and me. though with your amp that loud we'd have maybe seven minutes before the locals called the cops on us…if they haven’t on you already. i hope you’re safe. i hope you made it.

i’ll look out for you on the radio.

don’t die anytime soon. if you try not to die, i’ll try to learn how to dance. maybe to your music, one day. we’ll have a good time for a long time. 

see you down the road.

© esccpism.

i can’t post this fic—especially this fic—without bringing up ICE and LAPD’s violence against black and brown immigrants/communities, and the protestors trying to stop them. linking info and resources here and here. please stay safe, stay informed, and protect your neighbors.