AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I listened to her gargle water. It was with a strange fascination that I heard her swish it from side to side. If we had stayed together, if Rachel hadn’t left, I would know that noise by heart. I would have her whole routine memorised. We probably would have fought a dozen times about how loudly she cleared her throat. She would get on my case for how much water I was wasting.
I stepped forward and leaned over the sink next to Rachel. She lifted her head just enough for our eyes to meet. This wasn’t the closeness of sex. The closeness of her on top of me, hips bucking against mine. And it wasn’t the closeness of fighting. Of getting into each other’s faces and yelling at the top of our lungs. It was a quieter closeness. A simpler closeness.
My eyes followed the faint freckles on her nose. I noticed the way some toothpaste remained in the hollow above her cupid’s bow even after she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. And I could feel Rachel’s eyes trailing over my face with just as much attention. She laughed when I let the foam slip from my mouth slowly.
She shoved at my shoulders and stood to wipe her hands on the towel.
“You’re gross,” she said.
“You asked for it,” I answered.
I finished myself and followed Rachel back into the bedroom. We stood on opposite sides of the bed and changed into our pyjamas. For Rachel that meant carefully removing her clothes. Folding them nicely on the mattress. Slipping into flannel pants. Buttoning up a flannel shirt. Stretching her arms overhead. Leaning from side to side. For me that meant yanking my shirt over my head, jumping out of my jeans, throwing it all across the room, and standing butt-ass naked with my hands on my hips, rocking back and forth on my heels, cracking my back.
Taking her hair down from its scrunchie, Rachel looked at me from across the bed.
“Ready?”
“For what?” I asked.
“For bed.”
I frowned slightly. I’d never had someone ask me that before. If I was by myself, I just passed out when I was good and ready. If I was with Miss Last Night, I…also just passed out when I was good and ready.
“I guess,” I said slowly, almost warily.
“Grab your side.”
Together Rachel and I tugged down the comforter. This was also not something I usually did, as making my bed in the morning was definitely not something that I ever did.
We crawled up and under the sheets at the same time like we were performing some kind of ritual. Side by side we laid flat. Hands resting on our stomachs. Eyes facing the moulded ceiling.
“What do we do now?” I asked in an almost reverential whisper.
“Now we turn out the lights.”
Her voice was also soft. Like the kind of breeze that only comes at night.
I reached out for my bedside light at the same time as she did for hers. I mirrored the movement of her arm in the pale yellow light. The crook of her elbow. The fumbling fingers. The slow twist of the little brass knob. The lamps went out at the same time. Synchronised like a clock. Darkness didn’t flash or twitch or jerk onto us but fell in one gentle swoop like a blanket lifted high and then left to fall. It fell upon my eager skin. Connected first with the raised hairs of excited goosebumps. Then sank. Moulded to the lines of my thighs. Pooled like water in the contours of my stomach. Caressed my cheek like a cupped hand.
“And now what do we do?” I asked.
I resisted the urge to turn my head toward Rachel. I kept my eyes focused on the darkened ceiling. I counted the lines the blinds cast across the wall behind me.
Rachel was silent for a moment. I could feel how close her body was next to mine beneath the sheets. I sensed that her pinkie was just a hair’s breadth from mine. If I breathed in a little too deeply, our fingers would touch. Would there be sparks like when you rub your socks at the foot of the bed as a child? Heat lightning silent and beautiful? Weaving like delicate lace between us?
“Now we close our eyes,” came Rachel’s whispered response after several silent moments.
This time I did turn my head. Rachel had already done the same. We looked across the crumpled pillows at one another. There was a stretch of light from the streetlamps outside across her face. There was a shadow across mine.
We never agreed to close them together, our eyes. Nothing at all was said between us save what Rachel had already said: Now we close our eyes.
I mean, we weren’t little kids anymore. It would be stupid to count down. To say, “Let’s close our eyes on three.” To laugh when neither of us actually closed our eyes like silly teenagers who wouldn’t hang up the phone as they whispered in the cover of dark, racking up the phone bill in secret, “No, you hang up.” We weren’t even the old us, the Vegas us, who struggled against exhaustion to keep our eyes open just a few minutes more. To keep talking a few minutes more. To keep running our hands along each other just a few minutes more. To know that the other was real and not just a dream to be gone in the morning just a second or two longer.
In those times I never even remembered closing my eyes. I just remembered waking up and not believing she was there, still there. Not even when I breathed in deep the scent of her hair. Not even when I wrapped my arms around her. Not even when I pressed into her as she murmured softly and snaked her arm back to tangle in my hair.
But as Rachel and I looked across each other, not as children, but adults, not as frantic lovers, but as scarred humans, I was conscious of her fluttering eyelashes. I watched intently as her blinks grew heavy, dreamy. I paid attention to the focus of her pupils like she was participating in a sleep study and I needed to take note of everything. Every little detail of Rachel. And how Rachel, not anyone else, but only Rachel closed her eyes.
Like the comforter rolling back, like our bodies slipping beneath the sheets, like the lights going out, I followed Rachel as she closed her eyes. Like I’d never done it before. Like I needed teaching. Like if I didn’t close my eyes when she closed hers that I would never be able to. Never ever again.
