The night is sensuous, edged with a lump in the throat, a face tilted back against the sky.
It is a night for eating mangos with bare hands, juice dripping between fingers and over knuckles, being slurped, making lips and chins sweet and sticky, for honey and olive oil licked from sunburned shoulders with loose, wet tongues.
It is a night to cry and pray alone in the open darkness, feeling God seep into every pore.
It is a night for wine, deep red, passionate, remembering the sunburnt hands of the men who had
plucked the grapes, and their grandfathers, and their grandfathers, and their grandmothers who
stomped them, the juice splashing up on to golden thighs made darker by the sun.
It is a night for kissing - long, slow, deep - with rolling, tasting tongues, hands buried in hair, soft moans - just kissing for hours.
It is a night for taming wild horses, soothing them with tentative hands and maternal noises that
mimic the sound of the tide leaving the beach and being reunited with the wave that came after and before and all around it.
The air is warm and thick and full of longing.
She is not quite drunk, but she is not quite sober either, so he offers to drive her home, and they stand in the dark, half-filled parking lot next to the driver's side door of the blue sedan in which he will drop her off and then continue on to someone else's house, someone else who will greet him in bed with bare legs in cotton shorts and skin that smelled of vanilla scented lotion. She wishes desperately she were going home with him, and tries desperately to hide her wishes from him.
"This was fun," he says, finally. "I can't believe I'm actually saying that."
She nods, her mouth quirking up in a half-smile, her eyes soft, sad and nostalgic.
"Yeah," she agrees. "I can't believe Michael didn't get a dart thrown in his eye when he ran in front of those guys."
He laughs and so does she, and for a minute, for a second, it is easy. Then the laughter stops, and it is silent, and it hurts.
He hadn't touched her in weeks, maybe a high five or two, but no real touches. He thinks he can count the number of times he's truly touched her on his fingers.
He has an impulse then, and reaches for her, not knowing why, to slip his arms around her waist, but she stops him with a slight shake of the head.
"Don't," she whispers. "Don't."
Her words sting and she can see the sting in his eyes.
"Why not?"
She smiles her half-smile again and speaks in a voice that's like fingertips stroking his cheek.
"Because," she says, "it's been a good night, and you don't need some lonely girl crying on your
shoulder."
She doesn't say she is lonely for him. He knows. He pretends he doesn't, but he does. He is lonely for her too, even wrapped up in someone else.
He reaches for her again, not allowing resistance, pressing a soft, slow kiss to her hairline, then draws her head to his chest, letting the shape of her skull fill his hand while the other arm wraps around her back, bringing her body into his.
She leans into him, feels the soft cotton of his worn Oxford shirt, smells the slight tang of sweat mixed with smoke and generic brand deodorant, hears the rhythmic thump of his heartbeat beneath her ear.
"Yes," he whispers, "I do."
They lay on their backs on the roof of his car, shoulder-to-shoulder, thigh-to-thigh, calf-to-calf, their hands nearly touching but not holding, and stare up into the inky, inky blackness of a dark so quiet it's religious.
"Do you believe in God?" she asks.
He is silent for so long, she thinks he hasn't heard the question.
"Right now, I do," he says finally. "I think I did last Tuesday. I didn't really yesterday. Next week I might. Or not. Do you?"
She shakes her head slightly, not taking her eyes off the black of the sky.
"No," she answers, more quickly than he had. "I wish I did. I think it would be nice. People who believe in God always seem...content."
He looks at her. "You're not content?"
"Not really," she replies, her voice carrying away on the stillness. "Are you?"
He doesn't answer with words, but she feels the slight movement as he shakes his head to indicate that no, no he isn't quite content either.
"Why are you lonely?" he asks quietly.
She shrugs, her shoulder blades moving up and down again
against the warm blue metal.
"Because I am," was all she says, and it tells him everything and nothing. "Because I don't have you," she doesn't say, and it is true, but it isn't.
Then it is just their breathing and the sound of the black, inky air, and the surprising quiet of the neighborhood, even at three in the morning, and he doesn't turn to look at her.
"I want to kiss you again," he says, the k tapping the roof of his mouth, the s whispering between his tongue and teeth, his tone simple, matter-of-fact, quiet but not confessional.
"Oh," she breathes, slow and soft, and she doesn't turn to look at him either.
That night when she slips inside her door, locking it behind her, she wishes she were the kind of woman who has a flat stomach and goes to the beach dressed in cargo shorts and bikini tops. The kind of woman who surfs in Costa Rica, who drinks whiskey and laughs open-throated without a hand covering her mouth, who makes love to men knowing they will never call her and rides them lustily anyway, her back arched, her hair wild, her breasts outlined by moonlight. The kind of woman, she imagines, he is slipping into bed with right now.
He sits in his car alone and thinks of her hair curling over her shoulders, the warmth of the air, the threat of a kiss, and her eyes when she closed the door behind her.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Takes place after a night out with co-workers. A moment of painful honesty and dishonesty amidst the silent suffering of season three.
Chapter End Notes:
I realize the description of the "sexy" woman doesn't quite fit Karen, but this is the image I imagined sad, inebriated Pam would conjure up, a woman who she feels is the opposite of everything she will ever be. The irony, of course, is that Karen is more insecure than Pam, but poor girl doesn't realize that.
andtheivy is the author of 17 other stories.
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