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Nokyoung Xayasane

His hands tighten around her throat. Some people you just had to embrace, had to bite into their flesh, otherwise they walking down the street, would begin to wave and then suddenly leap across a fence—and be gone for days, weeks, months. She had read that somewhere. From a book Theo had given her. Some people you just had to grasp them by their neck, softly and then tightening like a vice to feel their life, feel their blood pumping, to feel they existed. That you existed.

The sun outside punches through the clouds and drapes over the floorboards, the smell of musk, sweat, and fever dreams. Dust motes ride along the stream of open light.

“Did you mind that?” says Adam.

“No,” says Sam. 

She doesn’t want him to know he had surprised her. She doesn’t want him to feel satisfied, that any part of him had gotten the best of her. 

Except for the streaming light, the rest of his room is in shadow. Like a tomb beckoning towards a hidden oasis. She imagines the cold walls and hieroglyphics carved into its inner chambers, a desert outside. She lies beside him, not wishing to escape and wishing she was walking along the main strip, watching the clouds above, breathing fresh summer air. She inhales the musky, stifled air, inside this protective womb.

“I liked what you did earlier,” he says. 

She sighs. “And what was that?” 

She can feel him smiling although his face is in shadow. She imagines the corners of his eyes crinkling. What a beautiful face. What a disgustingly beautiful face. She had awoken to his soft cries and had straddled him. He had been asleep and awoke as she guided him into her. He clutched at her like a drowning man. The world, a wide, wide, open sea. 

She sighs and turns her face to the side, towards the light outside.

“What are your plans for today?”

Without her knowledge, she feels a soreness in her stomach as if she has eaten something terrible but is still surprised that it’s making her sick. When he had called her the night before, she had felt revulsion and deep desire. Some people turned away from that, but she decided that night she would run towards it. She would silence the feeling in her churning gut and move towards him. Is it strange that she always sees him in shadow? Just the soft outline of his face and body, a smile in the dark.

“Not sure. What about you?” 

She feels a deep embarrassment for wanting to stay with him. Hadn’t she said to her friend Laura that if he was sleeping with someone else she wouldn’t care? There was a line that she told herself she wouldn’t cross. She was learning what it meant, what it cost to be with someone she didn’t respect. It felt like a betrayal to the body and she kept on betraying it, over and over again.

He gets up from the bed. She watches him pull his pants on.

“Maybe I’ll go outside for a bit. Go for a walk.” 

They had gone for a walk before. He would make the effort to walk on the side nearest the road, between her and traffic. But who will protect me from you, she had thought. Outside the sound of the church bells chime. She counts eleven chimes. Her fingertips tapping gently with each ring.

“I understand, you know,” he says.

“What?”

“You need me to play the villain.”

“And you’re so good at it, too.”

“Do you see anything good in me?” 

He turns his face away and pulls on his shirt. His beautiful face obstructed by fabric and sweat. 

She pulls the sleeping bag up around her. “You’re very … tall.” 

She smiles and he chuckles softly. 

“Are we walking or not?”

“Sure,” she says.

The first time they had slept together, she had left the bar with him, determined to get this over with—this sex without feeling. He had asked her out to brunch in the late afternoon after they had woken up. In order to protect herself she had asked his two roommates to come along. One of them was also named Adam and the other was named Evan. How three totally different people came to live together she never knew at the time, but found out years later as her and Evan stayed in touch. It seemed like an illogical train of events—like how she found herself here, with him.

She had been surprised that their first time having sex lacked the passion and grasping neediness of their first time lying in his bed together. That first time they had clutched at each other, mouth on skin, teeth against rock, flesh flowing against a river. But this time it was a production she had orchestrated, intentional, and she learned she was a terrible director and was oblivious to the characters’ motivations and desires. What were the stakes? The screenwriter hadn’t gotten that far yet and was more enamoured with the beautiful scenery.

She pulled her summer dress over her head and bent over to put on a fresh pair of panties. She had been prepared the night before and had folded them into her purse—just in case. 

They turned down a path near his apartment. The church stood in the distance. She had gone to five churches with Alex to see which one would let them get married there. Strangely some churches were very selective. They weren’t seeking money—just your salvation with them at the helm. Alex and her had mandatory pre-marriage counselling sessions and their two biggest arguments had been her unwillingness to change her last name and her insistence on owning a cat. 

What hadn’t been brought up was if she really wanted to get married and if she did, was it to him? Now here she is, walking beside a tall, tall man with a face that could make you weep. His arms swing gently as he walks and she feels that old revulsion and desire play throughout her body. Was it fair to be this beautiful and this brutish?

But she doesn’t find him funny like with Theo. She thinks maybe he isn’t funny because he never had to be. When he claimed someone as his, for however long, you were pulled in as if attached to a fishing line and his desire became yours. Desire through osmosis. 

Like Theo had said to her, “It was … inevitable.” He wasn’t usually one for declarations and she laughs at it now, but at the time she had thought it was profound and conclusive evidence of why Theo and her were drawn to each other like two magnets of different polarity, sweeping towards each other, wreckage all around them. Mostly her wreckage and her sacrifice. He seemed like a surprised child that looks around at the mess he helped create and feigns innocence. But she had already forgiven him. Sometimes love is like that. 

He had told her, “No, we couldn’t go to the movies like this again. You’d be married.” As if being married was the end of friendship tinged with something unnameable. She closes her eyes briefly and watches the orange and yellow light behind her eyelids. She sees Theo as a child opening a present, his face alight, a ball of pure light. She opens them and keeps pace with Adam. Some people you just had to embrace.