#bodyafraid

some meme a long long time ago.                 /                accepting anyways.

“   what makes you so certain that it’s   me   who’s having doubts?   “    your words are sharp enough to draw venom , and now that this relationship you’ve had with your best friend feels   threatened,   it’s making you lash out and sabotage everything good you’ve ever had with jonah.  you tell yourself that you weren’t cut out for this  — that modern day    romance   wasn’t your style, and that you didn’t deserve this. or maybe, you were too far gone and felt things way too   deeply   to really be able to continue down this path.

HE SCOFFS AN ABRUPT LAUGH      that leaves his throat gritty,    tasting like every mistake he’s ever made.      

‘      —    ¡vete a la mierda.      ’      muttered as a dismissal,    a meager attempt to play this whole thing off.    pretend it’s a joke.    some big,    elaborate hoax.    dry ice behind the parked cars and whispered recordings playing through mounted speakers too small to see,    trick glass on the mirrors with people in masks on the other side.    a theme park attraction that runs during halloween,    except this particular horror show goes all year.

but it isn’t any of that.    isn’t a joke,    or a trick,    or a well - crafted illusion.

delusion    is still on the table.

he hasn’t slept.    maybe that’s part of what makes this so   …   is there a word for it   ?    certainly not one that measures up.    (    what do you call the fingers that crawl up your spine if you stand in the dark a little too long   ?    what do you call a bad dream when you’re wide awake,    or the sound of   her   putting on her makeup ten feet away in the same room that,    you could swear,    had been splashed in arterial red when you looked away for a   split - second    —    ?    does your terror have a name   ?   )

a vague,    inarticulate gesture at the dullness of their surroundings   ;   deceptive as a funhouse mirror,    he’s learned not to trust anything here.

anything,    or anyone.

the curl of his lip is less a smile,    more a dry,    wordless,    you doin’ this again   ?    a question to which he already knows the answer.    jonah has a habit of setting his back teeth on edge just because he can.

‘      forget it,    man.    finish your book.    i’m gonna go work on my tab across the street.      ’

                                ‘   just  so  you  know  ----  some  kid  came  in  earlier  talkin’  about  his  girlfriend  or  fiance --- apparently  she  passed  through  not  too  long  ago.  you  wouldn’t  know  anything  about  that,  would  you?   ‘   

QUESTION STARTER SENTENCES   /   accepting 

as his dark gaze meets her own, she takes in a breath of air. she’s not exactly sure how to answer that, but at the same time, it’s like she already knew the words she was going to say. how does she begin to tell him that he reminds her of everything that she’s ever lost   — that all of those things that she thought were gone forever, had returned. how did she begin to explain to him that he was her atlas? that he kept her from wanting to sabotage her own life, far more than this town ever has? 

she can’t even start with the basics. she can’t even explain why the cavity in her chest was so full with feelings of protection and the strong desire to comfort him. it’s things she’s only experienced secondhand in the novels she’s read, or the movies that she’s seen. it was never something meant for her. people like them weren’t supposed to have happy endings. . 

‘      DOESN’T SOUND LIKE SOMETHING I’D SAY.      ’      except he did,    and they both know it.    a couple of hours ago,    he’d dragged the room’s only chair outside and planted it in front of the door.    sat down,    facing the parking lot,    and started nursing a cheap bottle of   something   in a brown paper bag from the liquor store up the block.

that was before it got dark.    he hasn’t moved since.

‘      —    i heard her in there.      ’      head tilts in a loll to indicate the room behind him,    as if   in there   could mean anywhere else.    as if jonah didn’t know exactly where the fuck he meant.    a broken rasp of a laugh scrapes his throat like sandpaper,    or the drag of jagged fingernails    ;    he’s   drunk,    and he has no intention of sobering up tonight.    not after that.

he ignores the phantasmic echo of that laugh,    the residual static that creeps up his spine and grazes the shell of his ear like a kiss.    one weighted gaze meets another and the play of shadow on his face makes it look   bruised.

‘      in the bathroom.    like,    uh    …    she used to do that,    you know,    forty fuckin’ minutes doing her hair,    it’s this whole routine.    she was in there.      ’

humming.    he remembers that.    it goes like this,    like a recording of a memory played back for him    :    he’s lounging on the bed and he sees her walk past the open bathroom door,    on the inside.    she   hums   while she gets ready,    an easy cadence blending with the soft click and clatter of makeup cases against countertop.    more jarring when he gets up from the bed and steps breathless into the light and finds the room empty.

you’ll understand why he hasn’t gone inside again.

why his eyes turn   hard   after he takes another swig of liquor and looks up.    wetting his lips to catch the bitterness,    detaching from the question he’s asking because he’s already started to guess the answer and it makes him want to wrap an extension cord around his neck and   pull.

‘      who stayed in that room before me  ?      ’

‘      WHAT  ?      ’      a pause,    a half - turn away from the door he’s pushing open to look toward the motel reception desk.    jonah’s sitting behind it,    the worn paperback novel he’d been reading set facedown on its surface.    he stares.    jonah stares back.    seconds tick by,    slippery as oil,    as he waits for an explanation that doesn’t come.

‘      look,    if you’re tryin’ to sell me some   abandon all hope,    ye who enter here   shit    —      ’

he just wants a drink.    there’s a dive bar maybe fifty paces across the road,    dingy neon flickering eerily through fog - shrouded midnight,    the   open   sign a beacon.    everything else is dark.    the dull glow of the streetlights doesn’t illuminate beyond a two - foot radius.    if he looks out,    across the parking lot,    he can’t see much other than outlines    ;    a couple of cars,    one of them his.    the vague,    cinderblock shape of the bar.    a night wrapped thickly in   silence.

if he looks a little longer,    the fog seems to shift despite the lack of a breeze.    shift,    then settle,    like something’s moving through it.    a stray cat,    maybe.    or maybe not.

his hand withdraws,    and the door drifts shut again.

‘      ...    for fuck’s sake.      ’      it’s an exhale,    precursor to thumb and index pinching the bridge of his nose.    a beat passes and he nods,    a resignation.      ‘      fine.    fine,    but   you,      ’      he points,      ‘      owe me a drink.      ’

‘      THAT WASN’T IN THE BROCHURE.      ’      he says it flatly,    without inflection,    and the curiosity in his eyes is belied by the   dullness   of his stare.

it’s quiet here    ;    that was one of the first things he noticed,    when the road he’d been following unspooled into mist and the reaching limbs of trees pressing close on either side.    he’s used to a certain level of ambient noise    —    traffic,    sirens,    dogs barking,    the errant hum of voices.    there’s none of that.    and it isn’t that there aren’t   people   here,    because there are.    they just don’t seem to produce any noise.    neither does the wildlife,    skittering insects or trilling birds    ;    what he notices is   absence,    not presence.    like the way you toss your shoes by the front door and think nothing of it until somebody moves them.

he watches jonah,    steady and almost unblinking.    almost   lazily   in the slant of heavy lids,    but they’re looking at each other like two closed doors across a hallway and somehow it doesn’t bother him.

‘      how  ?      ’      he asks.    a drawl,    one syllable rolling off his tongue in three.      ‘      how’d he die  ?      ’