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Luke
Iwoke up to nothing, which was more jarring than waking up to a sound. My brain just snapped on, like an old refrigerator sputtering to life in the middle of the night. My arms were around Cassie, her thick, black hair loose all over my chest, under my chin, her hand resting on my stomach. The hours after we left Chili’s snaked across the dark ceiling; the compressed silence of the car, losing my temper, and then on the bed, her eyes on mine as she pushed my hands above my head into the scratchy motel comforter.
The sight of her on top of me, unhooking her bra.
Looking down at her antler tattoo, lifting her by the small of her back.
My mouth in the crook of her neck, tasting her, propping her on the bathroom countertop as I found the space between her legs.
For a moment, I was at peace, remembering. Then the elephant of anxiety sat on my chest. Unrelenting, the sound of nothing but everything pulsing. Heart and skull in sync, too hard to hear or think, needles in my eyeballs, my tongue a bitter, foreign object.
What time was it?
I shot off the bed, picking up pieces of clothing off the ground, dropping them when I realized they weren’t mine. Found my Levi’s, my dead phone.
The motel clock said 6:00. I didn’t trust that. What if it was just stuck on 6:00? I had to be at the airport to deploy at 0800.
Cassie stirred.
“Where’s your phone?” I hissed, grabbing her jacket, her purse.
“Purse,” she muttered, her voice hoarse.
I dug through lighters, cylinders, journals, pens. Found it: 6:01. All right. I could get there if I left now. I googled cab austin with shaking hands. We’d had exactly three hours of sleep.
“What are you doing?” she asked, yawning.
“Getting a cab. I should have left an hour ago,” I said, hearing the click and snappy voice of the operator after two rings.
Cassie pulled open the curtains, flooding the dingy room with white morning sun, dust lifting from the furniture where we had draped ourselves last night, hungry for each other, forgetting.
I’d be cutting it close. But TSA would let me through quickly if they saw I was active duty. I went into the bathroom, washed my hands, my face, wishing I could pierce a hole in my head and empty out the thoughts stampeding through. You’re late. You’ll miss your plane. You’ll slip up and use again. This woman hates you. She’s embarrassed.
Cassie appeared behind me, fully dressed. Her eyes still had puffy sleep in them, her hair matted at the ends.
An image hit of her unbuckling my pants. Half lust, half nausea shot to my gut.
That was not part of our agreement, what we did.
Whose idea was it? Had she come on to me, or had I come on to her?
We didn’t even get along.
Maybe that’s what we were doing. We were trying to fuck ourselves into liking each other.
“Do you want me to take you to the airport?” she asked, yawning again.
“No,” I said. “Thanks,” I added.
“It’s no big deal,” she started, then caught my eyes in the mirror.
I avoided them. “I want to go alone.”
“When is the cab getting here?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“I can take you...” She pretended to look at an invisible watch. “Literally now.”
