Fiction_Online

Chocolate and Citrus

By Choking Anteater

He woke up and found that it was hard to remember and hard to breath. He clutched at the hotel room sheets as if they were the memories he was trying to pull back from cavernous subconscious.

He chased down the memories of liquid smoke. They dispersed and left a residue on his hand, slick and warm. A feeling without image. Like a brush of wind in the middle of the night.

And suddenly there it was.

Her breasts crushed softly against his chest. They’d never be there again. Her leg thrown across his hip in early morning slumber was no more. Lazy, late afternoon showers scented with lavender shaving cream and old spice body wash were gone. There was no one left to love the scent of his cologne nor the feel of his early morning stubble. She’d never again jokingly beg him not to shave nor wake him with the purr in her voice.

And he remembered.

She used to rest with the bridge of her nose curved along his neck, the tip tickling softly at his adams apple with each swallow. She bit her thumb when she balanced her check book. She drove with one hand and the sunroof open, legs spread for greater stability around sharp turns and mumbled at other drivers.

Those long, hot nights in pulsing darkly lit clubs. A few drinks, but never enough to get drunk. They didn’t need vodka or gin. Hip against hip, skittering red and blue lights, a hand where it shouldn’t be: that was all intoxicating enough.

Her lips smiling against his cheek feeling, the line of his stubble, the difference between the soft and rough. Her fingers lightly wrapped around his bicep. The way she whispered every conversation against his ear. He had learned to listen to her through touch. To make sense out of every movement against his ear and the slight way her calves bounced up and down when she was nervous.

That first night, that first club. Hands splayed across hip and thighs. The soft skirt against his fingers bunching beneath his palm and moving a few centimeters up with every swing. He’d loved her for ignoring the stiffness against her back. She’d stood between him and their friends as they chatted. Taking down her number.

Walking her home. The heat in his thumb against the inside of her elbow as he said goodnight. The regret and relief when the last bit of her heel disappeared through her door. He’d left without an invitation in and no backward glance.

She took the beer into the shower with her. Ran it along his back, thigh, arm, neck, chest and he was surprised to find it still icy beneath the steaming water. They’d gone, still wet, to the leather couch under the skylight. She’d gripped his hips and traced across his abdomen with her thumb, marveling in the change with every push.

She never made a sound, only gasped silently, mouth open and diaphragm heaving as her vagina throbbed around him and then swallowed down his moans as if starving beneath his mouth.

The rainy days complete with afghans, tea, lap dogs, and Ella Fitzgerald. The gray outside a fortress wall trapping out the rest of the world.

Flowers left in briefcases and the funny little messages on his answering machine at work.

The arm chair they’d bought together after the neighbors puppy tore the old one apart.

Instant messaging each other when they were only a foot away.

That last night together just outside of Prescott after a concert in Phoenix. It had been hot and as the sun died it left behind dusty golden banners amongst the angry clouds. Long slices of heaven the same shade as her hair.

He mouthed promises against her waist. She bent down to kiss his sternum as the last of the buttons came apart and the denim fell away.

He bit her lip as she played her finger along his ear and ribs and ran his tongue hard along the deep scar centered in the middle of her moist lower lip.

She’d left her shirt on and the curtains of the motel room window open. He jumped nervously each time headlights from the highway passed across the window, throwing their shadows against the picture frame behind the bed. Those images flipped through his mind like a silhouette storybook. Blurred tableaus separate and alive on their own.

Her hair had formed a curtain about his face. It glowed in the lamplight and threw bars across her face when she began to sway back and forth above and against him. One hazel eye in shadow, the other wide and bare to the light and his hungry gaze.

Finally that last night when he stumbled out of the warm hospital into the cooling desert air. Tears and sweat trickling down his face and back like cold spiders of despair. Stumbling from the lawn, across the sidewalk, onto desert sand and rock, then turning back towards the parking lot.

He rested his forehead against the fender of his car and addressed rhetorical questions about life to God and his knees. He’d sat there until his friends came to take him back to the motel and into a different room. One of them sat by his bed throughout the long dry night as he wished he’d held her hand more.

He left purple lilianthus beside the grave with the stuffed white tiger he’d won her in a Vegas arcade game years ago. Then he went home and got drunk on orange liquor and hot chocolate.