The road less travelled...

During her driving lesson, Delta makes an important decision that could change the outcome of her Summer.

‘I can’t seem to concentrate when you look at me like that’.

She ran her fingers over the soft skin of her neck unconsciously brushing the bottom of one delicate lobe. Under a normal set of circumstances the gesture might have served to calm Delta but having Logan watch made it erotic. She felt herself blushing, it wasn’t the heat in her cheeks that gave her away, more a sensation akin to discovering it was possible to pass through the eye of a needle. Elation zinged through her, up her toes and through her belly.

‘Like what?’

Delta stared stoically forward trying to keep focused on the road and her driving lesson.

‘You know…’, She stole a glance over at him; so laid back one might argue he was feigning it. Logan leant into the wind, one arm draped out the window, hanging down the door frame, light hair catching the breeze, his dark sleeves rolled up and flapping; a healthy, muscled forearm and part of a well-formed bicep exposed to the warm spring sun. Logan’s full lips held the possibility of a smile and green eyes returned her look, mirroring her raised eyebrows. She took a small breath, her chest contracting.

‘It’s your eyes.’ She waited, feeling the heat of them. ‘Your eyes are promising things’

He laughed then, a rich chocolate-butter sound and a newly arrived collection of faeries in her belly scattered, performing circus tricks. She shivered.

‘Does it rub you the wrong way?’

Delta was unable to answer.

The road they travelled had opened out into uninterupted countryside, either side of the vehicle lay fields of short grass. Beyond the curved lines of her father’s yellow-green Holden Special there was no other cars. She slowed the big old vehicle to a stop in the gravel, choosing to pull up gradually, avoiding the risk of stones on the windscreen. He didn’t ask why she was stopping and Delta thought carefully about what she might say. No excuse passed her lips. 

Shaking hands turned off the indicator and ignition, silence hung between them. He'd brought both arms inside the car, big hands splayed and rigid against the taut fabric of his jeans. Bemused emeralds in his tanned face looked back at her. She wasn’t to know Logan was forcing himself to be still. He waged a war on his instinctual reactions to her. Delta made him feel tight and restless. He was anxious, as though lit from within. Beside her, the big man flexed his fingers carefully, making barely perceptible movements to relieve the coiled spring in his gut, trying to find words.

‘Why’d we stop?’ He said, too casually. ‘Did you want me to drive?’

Delta sighed.

‘No, I think I’m getting better’ 

He smiled then, not quite looking at her, thick fingers feeling his chest pocket for a cigarette. Though he looked down, he could sense the warmth of her smile through his eyelashes, burning him.

‘Don’t you?’

‘Sure’

Now they were stopped there was nowhere else to look. She couldn't very well keep staring ahead. It bothered her that he made no move to ease any of the tension between them. If anything, his coolness was almost unbearable.

‘Are you like this with everyone?’

She looked up at the sound of the passenger door opening.

‘I’ll take this opportunity to smoke, if you don’t mind’

He slipped across the beige leather. The heavy metal door slammed. She watched his broad frame in the rear-view mirror as he leant on the boot, squaring his shoulders and cupping his hands to light a cigarette. She heard the catch of his lighter. He exhaled and a delicate plume of smoke rushed away into the wind. After that his shoulders dropped. She bit her lip, could think of nothing better to do than get out and go to him.

The pale gravel crunched underfoot as she followed the low fence line. Wooden posts, pleasantly weathered, held up strands of old wire and from them, weeds stretched out into gravel as though they too longed for the freedom of the road. An odour of acrid dust and sweet, new grass lifted off the land. For all his faux-nonchalance the power of his silence lent him the air of a caged man. He stared out at the landscape, seeing nothing. It made her wonder if he, like the weeds to the weeds, longed to be elsewhere.

‘It’s beautiful’ Logan’s Irish brogue broke into the silence, he turned as she approached.

‘...like you.’

And just like that, the bottom dropped out of Delta’s day. All her confused thoughts fled, replaced by excitement that dipped down to her toes and rushed back up through her belly. She, little Delta Hardcroft made a gorgeous, tree of a man nervous. She hadn’t been imagining the excitement coiling dangerously between them.

‘What do you want me to do, Lass?’ His voice quiet, his face inclined towards her.

‘What do you mean?’

He half-grinned, checking himself, swallowing his banter and flicking off the cigarette’s burning ember, its tiny scattering ash bounced past their feet. They both watched the little pin-wheel on the wind.

‘C’mon Delta’

Reluctantly he let go of his cigarette altogether, crushed it with his heavy shoe. A lock of hair swung down across his forehead, softening his features, preventing his eyes from scalding her.

‘I want you like air, Sweetheart.’ His arms made a magnanimous gesture of defeat, falling heavily to his sides. He didn’t smile, just went on looking at her. Delta held her breath. Tentatively she surged towards him until they were thigh to thigh.

She wasn’t a small woman and though he was tall, he didn’t have far to bend his head. Their lips met and she drew him to her, licking his bottom lip, raising her hands behind his ears. He tasted of pepper and spinach, the perfect accompaniment to a brisk spring day. Delta savoured the feel of his tongue searching her soft mouth. Brushing her cheek with his thumb he drew away leaking warm, rapid breath. He wanted her so much it stole all of the lightness from his face.

‘But I’ll be going soon. Leaving here. This – ‘ he gestured to the empty air between them ‘This can’t be what you want. We start this thing between us now, get something going and by and by, you’ll think me a cunt. I’ll leave. I don’t think I could bare that.’

‘How soon do you plan going?’

‘Two weeks, maybe t'ree? I have ideas… about what I want from my life, about where I want to be headed and I’ve really appreciated your Da taking me in but it’s nout but a short stint, e'rybody knows that.’

His hands itched for something to do. He wanted to smoke some more, stop the churning of his belly. He wanted to take her in his arms. Tell her it was all bullshit, words were just words. They didn’t change the way he ached for her, he wanted to go on kissing her, pull her slight hips against his and show her his heat.

Logan stood, letting all of it go unsaid. Stupid, eager hands plunged deep into jean pockets. Alone on a country road, the soft wind picked up her dark curls, bright pink spots danced on her flawless pale cheeks.

Logan pushed his hair back off his forehead in a habitual gesture.

‘Fook.’

The younger woman almost laughed.

‘Logan, you’re troubled by a future that doesn’t exist.’

But she didn’t look at him, didn’t want to gaze into the depths of those pixie-green, honest eyes.

‘You tink…’ Delta began, impersonated his accent to mock him, trying to lighten the mood - leaving aside the fact that every time he twanged that broad, Irish brogue, a little piece of her heart broke off and melted - ‘..that we’re going to fall into bed together and I’m just going to sink into your arms and your life and cling to you like a crustacean. That just because you make love to me, I’d somehow force you stay with me and my Da, long after you want shot of it ?’

It sounded silly when she said it aloud, like he was irresistible, unforgettable and she would fall at his feet, devoting every breath to him. Inwardly Logan cringed.

‘That’s not what I know. It’s more about me and less about you. Fook.’ 

He swore again, stepped away from her, trying to find air, he got out a cigarette but didn’t light it, only played with the small stick between his fingers as he struggled to find words.

‘You’re too god-damned beautiful. I come to get good, honest work for a warm bed and a few bucks and I find you. Ok you live with your old man and he takes care of you but ostensibly you’re all by yourself. There aren’t other men aboot. What choice have you got? And so, you start makin’ come hither eyes at a man like me.’

Delta stiffened.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I tink you’re too good for this, it’s just you’ve got nothing better to do.’

She waited for him to continue, furious, flattered and once more confused.

‘Every time I make you laugh, light dances in your eyes. When you fook sometink oop and it makes you swear, I can see clear through to the fire in your belly. I want me some of that, and I know it’s wrong. I’d be takin’ advantage.’

Logan stepped back.

‘I’ve spent the last few weeks fightin’ not to touch yer. I thought I’d won out over meself and then we get out here…’

Delta watched him with her back against the trunk of the Holden. She held onto the bumper, taking in his words, cold steel under her hands working wonderfully to keep her grounded. It didn’t feel great that he was trying to get further and further away. She knew what she wanted, his lips on hers. How unlike a man to want to discuss things, before showing her his penis. Looking at a face she could easily love, besieged by shadows despite the afternoon sun and the clear blue sky, Delta could claim no relief from his unconventional approach.

‘Let’s get back on with this fookt driving lesson and make sure we hurry back to being around other people.’

‘Why? So we can go on like this? Is that what you really want?’

Logan wore confusion on his sun-browned features, looking every one of his 32 years. Light caught on stubble and glanced off his muscled arms. His body called to her. Itinerate worker or no, he was a damn sexy specimen of a man. By far the most handsome she had seen in all of her 23 years. That he didn’t know how attractive he was, astounded her.

Recalling how he came to the lunch table every day with freshly cleaned hands, the rest of him streaked in dirt or sweat and how she would spend a moment  imagining what he would feel like under his sweat-stained work clothes, vividly conjuring an image of his wide, hard chest. She had often watched him reach across the table for a side dish, displaying the sinew in his toned arms. Delta had seen how he looked at her then - too quickly, through his lashes, as though he didn’t want to burn her with the matching truth in his eyes.

It ached all over to live like that. She meant to have him without giving away the depth of her feelings. If the only way to lie with him was to have him believe he would go on meaning not-very-much - lest it damage his precious plans- then she was prepared to invent her hand.

‘What if we stayed out here just for a while?’ She spoke in a voice so soft he mightn’t have heard.

Delta turned her to face the field, drawing courage from it’s fresh scent.

‘You’ve stated very plainly you’ll be gone tomorrow. You’re hot, I want you to take me, what girl wouldn’t? I doubt I’ll make a mess of it. Why don’t you just see?’

He looked at her wistfully and she sought to contain her hammering heart. She concentrated on how handsomely he wore dishevelment. Delta pinned his hips to the car with her own and brushed slender fingers over his jaw, her body so close to his chest she felt, rather than heard him suck in breath.

Logan gently rubbed a calloused thumb over her tender, bottom lip. Green eyes crowded her world, irises almost obscured by darkness.

‘Go hifreann leat’ he muttered, finally allowing his lips to fall upon hers. 

Delta tingled all over. Curling her left hand into the course hair at his nape, she urged him closer. Stretching on tiptoes, she opened her mouth to him, giving as much as she dared. The tip of her tongue tasted like butter and light. He was all about her whilst his thick, inquisitive tongue probed, tasting as though through a dream. Logan's wide, sensuous mouth offered a light touch before his emotions broke the dam that held his body in check, enveloping her in sensation and raw, manly scent he wore like some men wore cologne.

He was all muscle and noisy breath, massive and still so uncertain, combustible. Her glorious man tasted of darkness, tobacco and cloves. Logan’s calloused palms roved over her shoulders, travelled down the contours of her body, passing smoothly down her back, stopping to cup her bottom, drawing her across an erection straining the front of his grey jeans.

Delta pulled back from his kiss to lick his ear playfully and nibble his neck. She twisted the button on the front of his pants and loosened the zipper, brave now. He shivered in response and she thrust a cold, eager hand down the front of his trousers, pulling him free. She rubbed the head of his cock, pre-cum greasing the motion. Delta licked her thumb and slid it along the thick vein, from base to tip. Holding him in one hand, she looked up into his face and unbuttoned her own shirt, hoping he’d help her.

Logan took the material from her shoulders and drew it down. Beyond her shirt she wore only a singlet, no bra. He rucked it up, using the weight of his hands on her torso to gather the fabric, his palms seeking the velvet roundness of her full, pert breasts while he planted kisses on her collarbone, her neck; working his way along following her hair line, back to the waiting warmth of her lips.

‘What would you like?’

‘All of you’ she breathed.

Logan withdrew his hands to unbuckle her belt. She slid her jeans to the ground and shucked them along with her work boots. On the deserted road she wore only a singlet. Logan thought she couldn’t have looked more desirable.

The heat pooling in her belly drove her on. She went to work undoing his shirt until the worn fabric hung from his broad shoulders. Delta spread saliva onto her own hand with her tongue and stroked his appreciative penis, teasing him, enjoying how the lightest of touches sent him reeling and ever more rigid in her hand.

She braced her back to the rear of the Holden, guiding his not-insubstantial cock tip so he was poised at her labia. Delta wiggled her hips forward. Her slippery, soft folds closed around him; her body wedged between the rounded rear of the car boot and his cast-iron thighs. He didn’t enter her, she made sure of it, his cock merely slipped forward along the slick channel slowly rubbing deliciously against every inch of her slickness and finally against her clitoris. She tipped her hips and did it all again.

Logan squeezed her nipple in his fingers and so she sought the base of his cock, wanting to be sure he was ready for her, driving them both crazy in the process. Her breath heaved, she licked her lips. In one short gasp he was inside her, thickness and courage, encased by her heat.

Delta took the full length of him without allowing him to stroke. She thought she might go mad with him poised inside her, filling her but promising so much more. Eager, shaking fingers reached out to trace his chest hair. She leaned towards him, rocking them both, sending shockwaves through her body, eyes closed in delight.

She tipped back and lifted her knees, trusting that Logan would support her weight. He withdraw, he kissed her breast very quickly and thrust, feet planted firmly on the floor, aching cock searching for a rhythm that would suit them both. Delta’s answer was to adjust so her pretty legs spread wide like a flower, she looked down at the way the head of his cock was buried inside her and Logan kissed her forcefully. As he stroked this time it brought delicious pressure to the top and front of her pussy.

‘Ohhh’ she said quietly, a woman lost in time. She wasn’t bone anymore only nameless feeling.

‘Fuck me..’ She whispered onto the spring breeze. ‘That feels so…’ and there was no real need to finish her sentence. He kissed her lips, took her thighs in his hands and set a more frequent, ball-slapping pace. Her breasts bounced.

He felt too good inside her.

She bit her lip; moaned. For a second he closed his eyes but opened them again just as quickly, as though he couldn’t bare not to look at her.

‘OoOf’ he said, his tone airless. He kissed the sole of her foot, riding her harder.

Delta squealed but didn’t cum. Logan licked his thumb, every time their bodies stroked he ensured his playful thumb touched her clit. She wanted him to go faster now, her arms reaching for his chest, clutching for his arms as she ascended further into delirium. He leaned into her, covering her body with his own, the mischievous thumb busily pushing her closer and closer with each stroke.

‘That’s good’ she said, eyes wide, watching strength and naked grace.

This time when his thumb touched the delicate nub he wiggled it a bit.

‘uUh…’ Delta was totally lost, falling. When she could speak again, 

‘Cum for me?’ - the light of hope in her eyes.

‘Not yet…’ 

Logan slowed, sliding his impressive cock out of her body, but not back in again this time. He kissed her soundly, wetting her lips with his eagerness, mirroring the play of their sexes just moments before. Delta’s knees almost gave way as he lowered her feet to the ground.

He turned her ripe arse over to face him and he tugged suggestively so she bent over, her body caressing the cold curve of the car. He sought for re- entry, hot lips on her neck and one pleasing hand in her pussy, playing lightly with the tiny delicate fruit that stole all of her silences. Logan’s breath was harsh and close to her ear, all eagerness and restraint.

‘It’s too much’ Delta panted, he eased back and she practically leapt away from him.

‘Catch me!’ she called, fleeing the road, vaulting the low fence, taking to the field in just her singlet, light-headed and wobbly, running badly. 

He followed at a pace, pinning her down easily where the ground undulated. It was a perfect compromise, their heads would be visible from the road, but not their naked pink bodies, the only true witnesses would be the fields and flowers.

In a tender gesture Logan slipped out of his shirtsleeves and laid the thin fabric out for her. He chucked his jeans and roll-bundled them behind her head for a pillow, then he kissed her, laying the weight of his body over her, nibbling Delta’s lip, lapping his tongue against the interior ridges of her mouth, coaxing her to forget everything except his hard body and restless, surging proof of his lust seeking entry to her sweetness.

Delta opened her legs and never breaking their kiss, Logan began working her peach with two broad fingers, specifically avoiding her clit. She opened her eyes at the motion, half in surprise. His clear, green gaze was inches from her own. Delta drew away, open-mouthed with desire, breathing hard and heavy, he stayed close, the heat of their breath mingling.

First he watched, then his cock replaced his fingers and he stroked, bringing her to him, joining their bodies, unable to take the tension of watching a moment longer. Delta arched beneath him, Logan clasped her ankles and sat up, finding a new rhythm.

She reveled in the joy of being ridden, totally taken, but she wasn’t oblivious to the restraint in his face, the sinew of his arms at her sides, his arse clenched as he held his own weight above her, striving to drive her orgasm ahead of his own. The plunging, surging length of him pushed her further into a pre-orgasmic wonderland amid the smell of the hillside, the sound of her own breath in her ears and the pleasing, wet noise of their fucking. He was sending her crazy. 

Logan quaked, barely holding it together, eyes fixed on the spectacle of her ripe breasts, nipples like fruit in trifle as they rocked. He squeezed and thumbed her chest and with the deep new position, drove himself close to the edge.

First he grew inside her for an instant and she watched his mouth slacken, forehead creasing with effort, his expression glassy-eyed and terrible. Then his hot seed flowered inside her, his cock shivering with release. Delta rode the after-shocks to her own orgasm, crying out, clutching his thighs and flying into shattering blackness.

Opening her eyes some minutes later, Logan was slumped over her. She watched his face through the curtain of her long, black lashes, then the moment was gone as he rolled away. They both lay still facing the afternoon sky.

Logan chuckled.

‘I didn’t have any idea it would be like that’

Delta shut her eyes to the beauty above them, she flung her arm across his chest, propping on one elbow.

‘What? Mindblowing?’ she teased.

They walked back to the car in easy silence, Logan carried his clothes, an acknowledgement that she was parading naked, save for her thin singlet. At the car she slapped his pleasing arse, found her jeans; pulled on her shoes and slid her slight arms into her shirt, thick fingers unable to re-button the front.

Delta went back to the drivers seat. His footsteps crunched on gravel and the door-hinge complained as he got in beside her. He buckled his seatbelt and Delta turned to look at him, arranging his clothes, chiseled jaw set, eyes down.

‘I guess we just go home?...’

They drove in silence. A time or two Delta could feel his eyes on her, she smiled but wasn’t sure what there was to say.

One for the Road...

It’s about the time that you should be leaving, but you don’t. You give me that look that makes my stomach seize and grief catch in my throat, a coal-like lump of regret. I remember being able to love you easily, I remember how swiftly a look like that might have won me over and in that split-second I’m wrong, maybe you’re not such a loser. We’ve broken up, I don’t see things between us as quite so dark and gloomy anymore. The weeks have passed, the long cloud of indecision and lost opportunities that hung over us has all gone. We’ve boiled down to an occasional home visit and the sweet nostalgia that makes my throat ache when you look at me like you’re doing now. I can remember good things; what it feels like to be in your arms, or sweating above you, or lost in your eyes as I orgasm.

It’s not so hard to sweep me into a kiss, a sticky-soft embrace that is loaded with the smell of your breath, and your jacket. Your brown, well-loved leather jacket that drove me to dig you so much in the first place. You smell like hope and promises (as much as a particular cheap cologne, rolling tobacco and leather can smell like those things), you smell like the happiest times of my early twenties. You smell like my Jack Kerouac novel, the dog eared-copy with the inscription I wrote to you about love and our lives and coming into romance like a car crash.

I feel heavy and wet and all confused.

I push your jacket over your shoulders, past your biceps and over your forearms. We both allow it to fall to the floor. I’m only wearing an old t-shirt and jeans, I’m barefoot with my hair unkempt and I’ve never felt sexier. I don’t want us to be together again but I know I want this. I take your hand and put it on my chest. I show you my heart thrashing out its erratic tempo through the fabric. You drop your fingertips until they fondle my nipple through the worn fabric. While we're still kissing your inquisitive digits travel on still further and support the weight of my breast, on and on your hot fingers go, tracing the outline of underwire in my cheap lace bra, giving me goosebumps. I can feel my breath getting lighter.

It feels right, this sloppy I-don’t-want-to-stop-because-I don’t-know-where-this-is-going meeting of our mouths; tongues are old friends, you know exactly how to play in my wet mouth and tease the tiny, breathy moans that sing a siren-call to the juices in my pussy. Your sexy fat lips and magical tongue start an ache that makes me want to climb inside you. I want you lay me down on the floorboards and fuck me like the apocalypse is due in under an hour.

Logic drains from my consciousness and I’m starting to pant. I fumble with your jeans buttons (you used to have zip-fly ones) fingers anxious to clasp what’s beneath. I’m pushing my breasts into your searching hands and appreciatively against the wall of your chest. I can’t hear what you’re attempting to whisper for the roar of blood and desire in my ears. Your mouth is so very close to my face, that’s all that matters. One eager hand hurriedly undoes the top button and pushes it’s way down the front of my jeans. They stretch to accommodate your big fingers and I almost burst when you plunge a deliberate finger into my slickness. With a stroke of that deft finger and a nibble on my lip I’m mewing at you, my knees trembling. I want you inside me. I can’t think how to make it happen more quickly and when I pull away from the meeting of our mouths it’s to wrench your denim down to your ankles. I cast my eager fingers past your boxer shorts and savour the heat of your cock in my hand. It twitches. I hold you firmly in the stillness.

We’re stopped, no longer frenzied but disheveled and eager in my hallway, three-quarters of our way through your exit and so very far from it now. We’re both shaking with need and I have your cherished penis in the palm of one hand. Your blue eyes, framed by dark, full eyelashes, (that I always envied) can see beyond what misty, desirous expression I must be wearing. You look at me as though you can see something I have long forgotten, I don’t know what it is and I don’t want to take the time to examine further. I want the familiar, beautiful cock I can feel in my hand. I want you to take me with our special brand of ferocity, re-kindled here in this limbo-land - sex without consequences, idealistic and temporary (like a lounge-room pillow fort). I don’t like the serious expression you’re wearing. I don’t like the questions in your eyes.

I bring your hand out of my jeans-front and suck on your forefinger with deliberate slowness. You taste like girl-flower and sexy hand-salt. You make a noise like a teenager having his cock sucked for the first time (breathy, unbelieving). I take off your t-shirt. I continue but without looking at your face anymore, I want you to be unreadable but at last glance your expression is confused, dark with lust but not yet lost in the moment. I run an eager finger up your snail-trail, away from your cock past your belly button. Your nipples stand at attention. I lick one, kiss your collarbone and take the heat of my lips up the side of your neck, back to the waiting warmth of your mouth. Home.

With a half-smile you chase my body out of it’s clothing, the t-shirt I had on comes easily up over my head, my bra unhooks hastily, clumsily (you were never very good at this, it’s endearing). You lick my breastbone, lather one nipple, and kiss my mouth in a searing seduction that hints at tenderness. I pull away and you take to my other breast with your tongue. I’m ecstatic, aching, we’re moving too fast and too slowly all at once.

In the bedroom my phone starts to ring. It spurs something in you, a sense of urgency that at last overtakes your actions. You glide my knickers down my legs and I step out of them, with my back to the wall we’re kissing like newly-mets at a house party. I’m murmuring and half-smiling into your mouth as our teeth click awkwardly in our haste. I wrap one leg up around your thigh, stretching my pussy into an inviting smile for you. You hitch up my hips with the help of the wall, sliding inside me in an inevitable stroke that has us both reeling.

No time to stop now, its sad, beautiful and fast. I’m tight from lack of practice and our position is precarious but it feels like heaven the way your cock enters me, diving in and out of my pussy at just the right angle. Sweet, almost-unbearable pressure mounts quickly. Friction from our coupling drives at my g-spot and I’m star-bound; my arms wrapped around your neck, my legs locked around you.

My cunt is an inferno; my mind is as blank as the erotic darkness that surrounds us. I want you to explode, when I do. I lick your lips and pant and I make strange noises I wouldn’t even know how to muster were I sane and in control of my desire, my choices. I feel like I’m lit from within. In this rapid fucking I have forgotten the people we have become and all I can hear past the silence of the house is the moisture between my thighs welcoming you back.

You pick up the pace, slapping your thighs against mine as you drive us both to the brink. I get strands of my long hair caught in my mouth when you pull out completely before jamming your bloated, rigid penis back into my peach. There’s lots of eye contact and I can’t look away, the total honesty in your actions reflected in the impossible blue-ness of your eyes. They glow.

Finally I cum screaming, tortured into a gut-wrenching, mind-blowing orgasm that starts in my little toes and towers over me, washing me in lust and freedom and a beautiful, shameless sense of wonder that is only temporary.

Too soon it’s over. Too soon you’re pulling your flaccid cock out from between us and wiping away mine and your cum on my shirt that you’ve retrieved from the floor. You’re smiling but it doesn’t reach your eyes. You hold me steady and help me to stand. The muscles in my hips are starting to ache. You’re pulling up your jeans and adjusting your hair and finding your far-flung jacket.

In minutes you're standing in the open doorway where the daylight flooding in turns you into a silhouette.

“Bye…” you say. I can’t tell if you’re still smiling; your expression and your body language entirely unreadable.

I’m watching you in the doorway wearing only my jeans and my purple bra. I wipe my hand over my cheek and listen to the strange sound of me breathing.

Alone.