fall
by Julia
The one that was going was saying, the one that was glowing, the one that was going was saying then, I am content, you are not content, I am content you are not content, I am content, you are not content, you are content, I am content.
Gertrude Stein, from “Storyette, H.M.” 1914
iv. lift.
If she was his drug, then yes. This was the first empty ache of withdrawal. Or simply the initial lack of sensation after a sucker-punch. He wished he could see the scar she left, see the tattered tissue and the color of the surrounding bruise. Purple or yellow, festering or healing. He walked into the store, his dry eyes blinking against the florescent glare beyond the hiss of the doors.
A nod to the boss, an upturn of precious lips to the girls working the registers, and a quick swing through the iciness of frozen. Swanson and Ben and Jerry stared him down, prickling at the edges of his skin. The sensation should be familiar but today it can’t even touch him. Inside, she has already made ice of him, and anyone who looked could see it in his eyes.
JC looked. He
turned the corner, pushing a cart stacked with Mrs. Smith’s frozen cornbread
and peach cobbler. On a normal day they would have laughed at the idea of
frozen soulfood and Justin would tell a story about when he was 10 and his mom
still had him doing auditions and she finally let him go home for the fourth of
July and ate peach cobbler, the kind Grandma made with juices running all down
the sides of the pan.
Today, Justin stopped walking. He could feel the other man’s eyes soft upon him, seconds later a gentle arm around his waist, leading him to the stock room.
There amid the crates of detergent and Wonderbread, the hand JC had slung so casually round Justin’s hip guided him to sit on a long row of low boxes. Cat food, probably. The taller boy rested his temple against JC’s shoulder. Finally, something that felt warm.
“Thank you,” Justin croaked, his throat dry with not-crying.
“Anytime Justin,” JC answered quickly, a combination of fear and instinct preventing him from asking the necessary questions.
Justin shifted, impossibly closer, his forehead against JC’s neck and wet lips slipping against his collarbone. A big hand that had been clutched in his other crept cross JC’s belly, resting in the curve of his waist.
A deep breath. JC tried to ignore the way curly hair rubbed across the underside of his chin as he exhaled, tried to focus on cases of Campbell’s soup lining the shelf across from where they sat. He listened, but no sound of footsteps rescued him.
“Justin?” he whispered finally.
“Yeah.” The boy lifted his head to meet his eyes. There was none of the protection, the barriers that appeared in those those eyes the last time he had touched Justin. It was just there, all of it.
“Um. Nothing.”
“Well, shut up, then.” Justin was so open at that moment. Grazing JC’s cheekbone, his lower lip, his fingers trembled. His liquid eyes followed the path of his fingers.
A kiss, small enough to mean nothing if they tried hard enough. Just an exchange of breath and warmth against warmth, eyes squinted shut so the image of Justin’s slightly parted lips would not have to be forgotten.
But it wasn’t the numbness Justin had felt ever since he had seen her. And he wanted more touch, the tingling of body parts waking up from sleep, something to pull him out of gray and into red. He didn’t know who had moved first, where this had come from. But, lips against lips and now it was Justin whose pink tongue appeared. JC slackened his jaw and they burned.
Justin ran a hand through the length of soft hair that curved around JC’s ear. Pulled back. “C. I think—yeah. I probably should go.” His icy eyes had been replaced by sudden vulnerability.
JC matched his gaze, his head cocked in question. What was the appropriate thing to say when you felt that you had been conned into taking advantage of someone? Was that even possible? Should he—
“And JC? Thank you. For everything.” Justin met his eyes, not afraid anymore of the pattern that might be forming. As Justin walked away, realization’s rosy complexion crept across JC’s face, and his lips turned up as he watched the gentle turn of Justin’s hips in his lowhanging jeans as he walked away.
The echo of the closing door was a little less hollow than it had been when they had come in.
