The Fall Of Edith

Chapter 8

I walk around the grimy streets of London, looking up at the polished towers and Victorian-style houses and pretend I'm in a movie. I'll be the main character, on my way to tell the love of my life about my feelings, and then -alas, tragic love!- I'll get hit by a car. It'll be slow motion. Me, crossing the road, turning in horror towards that vessel of destruction - mouth agape, eyes wide- watching the headlights dive into my body. I won't bleed in a puddle on the concrete, no, my body will dissolve in the middle of the street, in broad daylight. It will vanish, melt into the air, like soda. 

"watch it!" someone mutters right in front of me. I didn't realize I bumped my elbow into a pedestrian next to me. Instead of apologizing, I show the woman a middle finger, covered under my jacket. 

I reach the Costa Coffee shop right on time, and peculiarly I'm utterly calm, calm as a lake on a lazy summer evening. 

Mauricio enters the shop 9 minutes later. My worst fear was he'd turn out to be the cliché middle aged man, but thankfully it's him and I have no problem recognizing him at all. With his jet black hair, parted in the middle, ivory skin and dressed fully in black, he's rocking the edgy vampire look more than ever. He's almost a head taller than me. "Hey, my dirty Edith" he whispers into my ear and all I'm thinking is Dear God, this is gonna be a disaster.  His accent is a mix of spanish and american and he smells like he showered in cologne. He's good looking definitely, but there are some features that make him not be handsome, but average. The slouched posture of his lanky, gangly body, the acne scars on his face.  I get up from the bar stool I was sitting on and, smiling, I reach out to fully embrace my disaster. He smirks and lets his eyes travel up and down my whole body.  "holy shit, it's really not my fault if I get horny later, you're so hot" I want to smash my forehead into the marble top of the bar table. "you're pretty hot yourself, Minderella" It's not really a lie, but also not the truth either. I noticed that about myself recently. Mostly when I talk to people I try to find whatever they want to hear and say it, regardless of the truth. It's pretty challenging at times, but nobody really wants to hear the reality of things. 

"nah, I'm not" He's typical Mauricio, exactly like when we were talking online and I'm glad, I feel like I fully know him.  Always self-deprecating, jumping into the role of the victim like into his favourite suit and always, always thinking dirty. Like a slot machine Mauricio asks the same three questions every time we talk: "how is your day", "how are you", "what are you doing". I don't have answers to any of them and always try to make up something remotely interesting, like I want to impress a teacher in a pop quiz. Our conversation still flows pleasantly, if ordinary. Sometimes I wonder if his mind really is so unembellished and plain that there's nothing else in his head to talk about when it's not about sex. But then from time to time he cracks a joke that genuinely makes me laugh and all in all we get along alright, slurping our hot drinks in comfortable silence. I notice the hungry way he's looking at me and I feel like I'm a piece of meat and he's undressing me in his head the whole time. It feels good though, I don't mind being meat at all. I  know that I'm beautiful, but I hate my body. Hate the fat, the folds and small wrinkles, the mundanity of it all. If I had to paint a self-portrait I'd use all my yellows for my hair, then add my bones and wrists, covered in scars, half-dead, thin and fragile as sticks. I'd make myself a ghost. 

"so , will you come back to my apartment?" The most ordinary question on this planet. Just for that reason I want to tell him no, but of course I say yesyesyes. I'm walking next to Mauricio and I'm half happy, half sad. My happy half is excited to see his apartment, excited to have finally found a friend or a lover, excited to embark on an adventure and possibly unravel a whole love story. My sad half on the other hand, doesn't believe in any of that. It thinks about how Mauricio and I don't  belong together, how he is so unmagical, so sincere most of the time, so whiny. I try to focus on the happy half, and shut the other one up. I'm mad at my sad half, I want to scream at it you talk like I have so many options, where are the magical people huh? he's the only one I have, I don't care if he's boring, I DON'T CARE. I kick a empty soda can across the pavement with so much aggression, it loudly smacks into the menu chalk board of a restaurant 20 meters ahead of us. 

"I always knew you're aggressive, one day you might beat me up" Mauricio jokes and I smile up at him, insides calmed for now .

"yea you should do whatever I say, you know they call me iron fist" 

"I'm sure they do" He chuckles. 

We board a bus and a train and another bus, travelling for almost as long as it took me to come here from Birmingham. It's dark outside by the time we get to his apartment in one of the low class concrete buildings outside of London. He opens the door for me and we enter his apartment. It's pretty much the opposite of what I expected, small, old fashioned, sparsely furnished. It's clean though and there's a pleasant smell, like he sprayed air freshener before leaving or something. 

"you hungry?" he asks me and I say yes, even though I'm not. I just feel like eating is a good thing for us to do right now. He shows me his collection of cup noodles, and grinning I chose one called "mi goreng" with a red dragon on it.  I never get to eat the cup noodles. As soon as I stand next to him in front of the kitchen counter, he turns towards me and says "I don't think I can eat now, you're so hot" From there we start kissing feverishly, he lifts me on top of the counter and stands between my legs. He has his hands all over my body and I feel like we're two fire crackers, about to explode. The next two, three, four, five hours I'm on holidays in heaven. This isn't sex anymore, he's catapulting me into a parallel universe filled with moans and touches, lust and desire. He's a magician, using his fingers like a wand. His fingers, his tongue, I'm bursting with joy. He softly moans into my hear, black hair whipping across my forehead and I melt in his hands,  just to -seconds later- be pounded into being again. Over and over and over. And the whole time he tells me things that make my mind spin.  "come on, you can take it further" holding my chin. "good girl" sliding down my throat. "fuck, you're wet again" trailing his fingers along my lips. "you make my dick so hard, baby" pressing into my stomach. And I'm not a person anymore, I don't have a brain anymore. I'm a cloud, white and fluffy, floating next to him, every single thought focused on his body.   

The night passes and morning comes. Light filtering through the only window in Mauricio's flat. There are two pots of unopened cup noodles on the kitchen counter, on the floor next to them a pile of clothes, black boots, sneakers, pants, a skirt. There's a wooden chair thrown on the floor. In the bedroom there's underwear on the blue carpet, boxers and a dark blue bra. Crowded together, in a single bed, I wake up on Mauricio's chest. We're completely tangled together, he has his arms and legs around me. It smells slightly sweaty and stuffy in the room, but I let my cheek rest against his skin and enjoy the moment.  A couple of minutes later Mauricio stirs and wakes up too.

 "Good morning, hottie" He smiles at me.  

"Good morning, Minderella" I smile. "by the way, you're hard again, just saying" 

"yea, I'm always horny with you" he says and winks at me. I like how unapologetic he is, always confident with me. 

He moves his head down and whispers in my ear "you should wake me up with a blowjob next time". 

His phone vibrates next to the bed, and I see the name Ana on the screen, Mauricio turns and taps on "ignore call". I want to ask "who's Ana", but it's such a cliché question, copied out of bad romance movies, I cringe and forget about it instead. 

We get up and eat our cup noodles for breakfast, then we go shower together. Mauricio fucks me against the shower wall and once again sends me into blissful delirium. I emerge 15 minutes after him into the living room and know his mood shifted as soon as I enter. He's in front of the TV, playing a video game.  "sorry, a friend called me" he says to me, but barely looks away from the screen. I know him and I know this was it, I'm not going to get anything else out of him. 

"should I go?" I ask uselessly. 

"whatever you want"