Rose
Abel doesn’t smell like himself as he approaches.
He doesn’t look like himself either. His hair is pushed away from his face, as if the minor inconvenience of it was something he didn’t care to be bothered with.
He’s smiling like he’s got some trick up his sleeve.
And when he kisses me, he tastes like kids hiding under the bleachers, pressing against each other, stealing innocence without a second thought.
I should know. I’d made my rounds, the stench of cigarettes clinging to me, even as I’d decided the hit of misbehavior just wasn’t enough for me. “Are you my Abel?”
He cocks his head to the side, and his hair slides from his face, the longer strands in front beautiful in their anarchy.
I may look like lightness with all this blonde hair and fair skin, but he is the fairer of the two of us. Fairer in his soul, deep down, where it counts.
Where I’m black as night, he is beautiful and bright.
A beautifully broken man.
“Who else’s would I be, ?”
The suave answer tastes as awful as he does. But I still relax in his presence, content to stop counting. I’d stopped at nine hundred, just as the walls were starting to close in on me.
But they hadn’t. I was still here, hours later.
He doesn’t wait for me to answer. “I got something.” There’s still a smile on those lips that made me orgasm not too long ago.
“Oh?”
He shrugs out of his jacket but takes something out of the pocket before tossing it on the chair in the corner of the room. I’m staring at the hand he’s hidden from me when he gestures with the free one for me to stand up.
Without a second thought, with all my trust in him, I do as I’m told. His eyes travel, like a caress, up my body, from my white tank top down to my cotton panties that are still damp from earlier.
“There are no words,” he says as he holds out his hand.
And when I think this is about to go in one direction, he surprises me, taking my hand in his and stepping directly in front of me.
I notice a new phone in his hand and he offers me a grin.
“I swiped this from some kid out there.” He clears his throat. “I want you to listen to the type of music I grew up listening to. I want you to dance with me.”
And with that, I ignore that I hate how he smells as I he scrolls through the phone and begins to play a song that I’ve never heard before. I can’t make out the words, some of them similar to French but not enough for me to follow the meaning of the words being crooned to us.
“Anything that will keep us from saying something to fuck this all up,” he murmurs after setting the phone down on the bed and straightening to pull me in his arms.
My eyes are closed before the words are all the way out of his mouth.
Abel is pointing down at his feet for me to watch what he does. He counts over the music, in time with the rhythm. One, two, three …and the he juts his foot out as if to kick.
“Listen to the music and follow the feeling,” is what he tells me before I try to mimic his steps. His smile is the biggest I’ve ever seen it and he nods before telling me, “move your hips more.”
I’ve never been much of a dancer, often opting to sit out at the few school dances I attended. But in this motel room, I’m not worried about what anyone thinks of me. Certainly not when Able is looking at me the way he is.
“You’re doing so good, mi espinita linda, ” he exclaims as the next song comes on. When he twirls me, I actually believe I might be doing okay. “We’ll keep practicing and you’ll be a pro in no time.”
I stand on my tip toes to press my lips to his as the song ends, my hands on his cheeks as if to keep him from going anywhere.
It’s palpable, the circles both our minds are doing in this otherwise empty room. Just our thoughts, our emotions, and our fears dancing with us.
And when he pulls away, I squeeze my eyes shut out of fear. You feel so far from me , I yearn to say. Instead, I settle for, “Do you regret this?” My mother would disapprove of my lack of clear and concise verbiage, but she’s dead now and its only me and Abel here.
“I’m worried I won’t be enough,” he tells me with a slight squeeze of my fingers. “That one day, all of this death will be more important than anything I could ever give you.”
Our hands are still clutching each other’s, so I bring them up toward my face and kiss his fingers like we always do. “My sister killed herself.” There isn’t a moment’s hesitation. Arms envelop me, and every doubt dissipates. “I found her suicide letter in my mother’s house.”
He presses a kiss to my neck and asks, “She didn’t…blame you, did she?” His words are muffled in my skin but his earnestness is heard clearly.
“No.” Under the scent of tobacco, is my Abel. I breathe him in again and again before I speak again. “She was raped.”
His body stiffens before he sits up, scooting back from me enough to look into my eyes. His eyes are wide, his lips in a tight “o”, like he isn’t sure what comes next. “Do you know…”
“His name is George. We all went to school together.”
“And you’ve known this all this time?”
“I’ve been trying to find the best way to explain?—”
“That he has to die,” he finishes with one singular nod. “And you have to be the one to do it.”
Abel’s expression is hard to decipher, so I brace myself on my elbows to get a closer look. “Abel…”
“He has to die.” There’s this resolute understanding in his eyes. “He has to die and then we have to leave.”
I don’t know that I’ve loved him more than in this moment.
And I don’t know that I’ve ever wanted to submit to someone sexually up until this point. Certainly not as strongly as I want to give my whole body to him now.
“I want…” I start, my voice low. But I can’t find the nerve inside of me to say it.
“What is it?” Abel’s hand reaches out and cradles my face.
I want you to spank me again.
I want you to take my clothes off.
I want…
I pull my shirt off and stare at him before I speak again. “I want you.”