She doesn’t say anything and for a moment I’m worried I’ve offended her. Then she just sighs and slides her hand into mine, swinging it between us as we arrive, too soon, at the wall.
Then, without needing to talk, we fall into a routine. She gets to work on her mural as I find my spot against the wall, where I can read my books and watch her without reserve.
Her hands work, cutting and pasting shapes onto the wall, her face running the range of expressions, from a furrowed brow in concentration, to excitement at a new idea, to contentment at a square of color placed just right.
Her hair untangles from the elastic holding it up on her head, and the fading sun catches the tips as they whip around her face from a passing breeze. I watch as she absentmindedly runs a finger along the curve of her cheek, pulling at a hair stuck to her lips. Every move she makes entrances me.
I don’t know if it’s all the years of dance training that has her body moving in shapes and angles designed to capture your attention, or if it’s just instinctive to her.
To command every ounce of my attention.
I catch myself holding my breath as I watch her.
She curses at something on the wall and it reminds me to stop staring, at least for a moment and I force my gaze down to the open textbook in my lap. I tell myself to count to ten before I let myself look up but only get to eight before I’m watching her again.
Two hours later she slides down only the ground next to me, pulling her knees in close to her chest, lines of goosebumps jumping up from her arms due to the plummeting temperature.
I take my jacket off and throw it around her. She gives me a look of thanks, pulling it tight around her and then lays her head on my shoulder. It takes everything I have to not lay a kiss on her forehead.
“Thank you,” she whispers after a few minutes as a pink hue starts to bleed all over the horizon. And I’m the only one there to hear it.
I don’t say “you’re welcome” because what I really mean to say is “my pleasure.”
“I better be going home,” she says once the moon and sun are almost equally visible in the sky, and I’m glad to hear she’s as sad about it as I am. “I didn’t realize how late it was getting.”
I nod and gather my things. “Do you need me to walk you home?” I ask, hoping for an answer I probably shouldn’t be hoping for. I’m not sure what this all means to her. Us. Not that I really care, as long as I get to keep spending time with her
“No, I should be alright, it’s not too far,” she says, fiddling with the zipper of my jacket and pulling it closed all the way up to her throat. “Or, hey, do you need me to walk you home?” she teases, nudging me with her shoulder.
“Yes! There’s a VERY vicious family of squirrels just around the corner from here. If you hear of an attack on the news tonight, you’ll know it’s because you made me walk home alone.” I pout and she laughs and it sounds like every cliched lovestruck description you’ve ever heard.
We get to our feet, brushing the dirt from our hands and clothes.
“See you here tomorrow? I have Sundays free,” she asks, sliding her arms into the backpack straps.
I nod, “Sure, sounds good.”
“What time?”
I bite back the urge to say the earlier the better. “9 a. m.?”
“‘K.” Then she leans over, and presses a kiss to my cheek before pivoting on her foot and skipping away. She’s halfway across the basketball court before I can react, and even then, it’s just to press a hand to my face.
***
My father left us almost two years ago, to the day.
He didn’t die, he didn’t pass away, he wasn’t on a sabbatical to find himself.
He left.
He packed up his things, folded his clothes, each and every one of his shirts, his two pairs of work pants. Bundled up his socks, two by identical two. Pressed them into the empty pockets of his suitcase, and walked out the door.
In his head I imagine he imagined he looked like the hero shot of a lion walking through a ring of fire, untouched. Except that it was a ring of children he’d selfishly fathered.
Among them, a pair of identical two-year-old baby boys.
“I can’t do this anymore,” is what he told us.
Like ‘doing this,’ taking care of your own family, is something you can just wake up to one day and decide that no, it’s just not to your taste.
My mother wasn’t there the exact moment he walked out. She maintains that he’d been gone long before then and the only difference after was that there was more room in the closet.
For what, I’m not sure.
If I had to draw a picture of her, of how I think of her, she’d be wearing her diner’s uniform, in varying degrees of cleanliness.
It makes me sad to think about, so I stop.
I flip over onto my back, the sky still dark outside my window.
Yesterday afternoon replays in my mind like a film reel; every frame, every second, somehow my brain retained it all. Scratch that, it retained everything that pertained to Malynda, everything else is like white noise. Just the background to her shining star.
The film starts with her appearing out of nowhere at work, every inch of her long legs clung to by that pale pink Lycra, making me breathless. My body is already awakening to those images of her, the hem of her tunic only just reaching her upper thigh, hiding the descent of her leotard disappearing between her legs.
Damn.
I’m hard.
I don’t know how I can control it when I’m there with her, but right now, my body feels like it’s almost bursting with the need for release.
Over her.
I let my hands wander downward as I continue my replay. The way she’d bend and twist, picking up her art supplies from the ground, reaching up on her tip toes, elongating from the tips of her toes all the way to the tip of her index finger as she reached as high as she could on the wall.
Then, when all the exertion became too much, her pulling the tunic from her body, using it to dab at the sweat glistening on her neck before throwing it to the ground by my friend.
The memory makes my hardness twitch, and I grab it, almost out of comfort.
“Fuck.”
My eyes squeeze shut, holding onto the image of her against my closed eyelids.
I’m going up to her, my hands on her neck, sliding down her long, slender arms, her skin so soft under my fingertips.