Author Games: Circle

Task Seven | Robin Laverne

Snapshot:

Last Afternoon, London, 2020

By the time I realize my coffee is burning, it's too late, and the crisp and bitter smell has already filled the room. A brown stain spills onto the grey marble countertops, the empty mug to its left unfilled and unimportant- there's a liquid seeping into my socks. There's a dry heat burning my skin. Rain- pouring from the clouds outside my window- rips the golden world apart and wets it blue and black. I shiver; I choke back cries, worried the sound will drown out the whispers of rainfall and the pitter-patter of caffeine wandering from its shattered pot to the floor. I shiver; I cry. And the day breaks.

"Robin?" he says. He. "What's going on?" His footsteps echo into the kitchen, harrowing and like knockbeats on a locked door. I almost answer, but my tongue stills, as if I don't recognize the name he used on me. How I wish the man was Perry; how I wake when I know it isn't.

Jamie wanders to the center of the room, the sound of his breaths loud and labored. I've come to realize he's simply an unquiet being, who sniffles and laughs and moans with a different energy than most. I love- I love perhaps the concept of him. But there's no heat when he comes near me, and the sound of his voice calms me none.

"I don't know," I finally say. He sighs in response, and my eyes seem to drag away from themselves, slipping down my face, purple and so very exhausted. Everything is dull, I think, and I'm never not drained- my core, I feel, hurts.

He wraps his arms around my waist, the light hairs on his bare skin tickling my stomach. He's wearing nothing but underwear, tall and lanky and chaotic. The sensations of him scream inside my head, brainwork rerouted to burn beneath him, be drenched in his storm of kiss and touch. Perhaps part of me loves him.

But I can't think of that now. Love- I can't. I don't deserve my own heartbeats. But they rapidly fire as he leans into me, digging his nose into my neck- he breathes in worry and anticipation, and I know he's wondering why I'm standing in a pool of cold coffee. Questioning why I let it drip to the ground. Well, Jamie, I don't have an answer; I wish I did, but you're taking in my scent and body and everything blurs and a daze slips over me. No.

"Robin..." he whispers. Though it sounds as loud as a full voice. War and peace filter between his silence and noise.

I shove him away- a ripple flows through the black pool on the tile below, and for a second I think the rain has stopped. But then it booms on the rooftops again. "Not right now." I want and need and crave him to go away.

"Okay," he says. He speaks like the thunder rumbling atop mountains far away, and unties from my hips. Immediately, I feel emptier- I'd have been empty regardless, but as he walks away, hollowness looms and grows. A wildfire.

Turning around, the whiteness of the kitchen blinds me, the sogginess of my wet socks just beginning to weigh me down. I blink; sleep beckons me with a hand I cannot take. Jamie meets my gaze, two moons circling different earths, and a tear carves through his eyes. I am breaking the man standing in front of me; I am- "I'm so sorry." Perhaps I don't believe myself at all.

"For?" he asks. I begin to think I don't even know him. "What're you doing?"

"Nothing." He's been with me for a few months now, and I know our secrets and trysts have become his daily wishes, a desire to fulfill in the later hours. I know this, and I know his care for me reigns above mine tenfold, yet I've still engaged with him. I've still loved him, and allowed him to give himself up to me. I feel sick. Guilt pounds somewhere, fluttering in the offbeats.

Jamie chokes back a tear; he realizes, I think, what's about to come. It's a weak cry, but his existence seems to crescendo even the smallest of sounds, and it ricochets. He falls into the doorframe, a loose hand caressing his bare chest, both firm and light.