Sea

Sea ~ part 3

Their conversation skips from films to TV dramas to music to dogs, their families, places they have both visited, their bucket-lists; their language oscillating between his mother tongue and hers. His dog snuffles around them for attention to begin with, and then settles down onto the cushion, exhausted from his run on the beach.

       The daylight, under a curtain of rain, dims at the window, and he finds two pillar candles on the floor by the mattress and lights them behind the sofa. The flickering glow illuminates his face when he sits down again, bouncing off his dark eyes and glittering against his lip ring whilst he refills their wine mugs.

       "Why are you here alone?" he asks, abruptly.

       "Why are you?" she bounces back at him.

       "Because it's the only place I'm ever properly alone," he answers, "and I long for being alone..." he pauses, "but then I'm restless, and I don't know how to be by myself sometimes..." his voice trails off and he shakes his head, as if banishing confusing thoughts.

       "Now I really feel like an intrusion," she sighs.

       "No," he cuts in. "This is different. This is okay."

        She realises she's avoided answering him, avoided showing him that side of her which cannot connect, cannot settle, cannot commit, always flutters off on wing to another flower seeking something shining and intangible which she doesn't comprehend; burning bridges behind her, offending and betraying with an unsettled boredom as if she's always uncomfortable in her own skin.

       "I just..." she starts. He looks at her, his eyes wanting to understand what is within her hesitation. "I like it this way," she says. "I'm selfish. I like to make my own decisions about where I am and not rely on or obey anyone else." She knows this notion is about as far removed from his own experience as anything could be, and that, however hard he tries to play at a solitary existence in a wooden beach-house, the enormity of his world will never allow him to be the selfish and aloof person she can afford to be.

       He sips his wine and a smile twists in his eyes and at one corner of his lips. "You don't have anyone? No boyfriend? No girlfriend? Why not? ... You're pretty."

       She spits a mouthful of wine back into her mug at his audacity. "I told you: I'm selfish. And it's not pretty in here," she touches her forehead. "I'm intolerable. I'm awkward. I'm really, really annoying." He laughs. "You don't believe me?" she says.

       "I do," he smiles, and then adds, "I don't have anyone either right now. I like it this way. It's easier."

       Their conversation drifts, and the wine she's swallowed hits her empty stomach and hums in her head, making her talk faster and more animatedly. She's sitting cross-legged now, his long t-shirt pulled awkwardly around her thighs and his hoodie around her knees. Their elbows rest a little way apart on the back of the sofa. The first time his hand touches hers, she pulls away, assuming it's an awkward accident. When he moves his hand next to hers again, she realises it's no accident. His upstretched palm meets hers and he laces his fingers between hers, playfully tracing her skin as she talks. His fingers then circle her wrist and trace up the inside of her forearm and elbow, and her focus is now on his touch and not on their words, which seem shallow and irrelevant. With his other hand, he reaches down for the wine bottle.

       "Absolutely no more wine!" she bursts out. He quizzically looks at her, one eyebrow raised. "No," she giggles, her voice nervous and her speech unleashed, and as galloping as her heart which races in response to his touch and his closeness. "Any more wine and I'll do something utterly stupid..." she breathes, "like try to kiss you or something ridiculous." And she cannot believe she's heard herself utter those words to him in a breathless voice which seems flirtatiously unlike her own.