Maybe tomorrow


My feet picked up pace, my arms poised. Closing ’em around his lean waist, I pressed up urgently against him. A playful smile inched across his rosebud lips and his eyes locked onto mine, wide in fascinating surprise. I tangled my fingers into his chestnut hair and pulled his lips onto mine, crushing ’em with the weight of our inevitable parting. A bottle of mustard tumbled to the ground.

“My, my, feeling a little frisky are we?” this guy panted, a flush rising to his cheeks.

“I just can’t help it,” I teased, a cold tentacle of guilt slithering around my throat.

“Well, if u wish to eat, then you’re going to have to wait,” this guy said, as that guy turned back to arranging the groceries on the shelf.

He bent over to pick up the bottle lying flat on the ground, pinned to it by invisible gravity.

“Andy,” I said.

“Yep?” this chab replied, as that guy looked up at me from his half crouch, grey eyes sucking me in.

The tentacle squeezed hard.

“I love you,” I said.

“Me likewise babe,” this chab said, picking up the mustard.

Standing on his feet, he pecked my lips lightly.

“Me too,” this guy repeated, as he tangled his fingers in mine.

***

Grey as a cloudy sky, I thought as I watched the colour pale and darken in the flickering candlelight.

“What?” Andy asked, exasperated.

“Your eyes are just so beautiful,” I said, imagining the storm clouds that would appear when this guy found out. They would gather in clusters, accumulating moisture until they could bear their own weight no more.

“Seriously?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow, “It’s not like I don’t appreciate it and all but the candles, the sappy compliments?”

“You don’t have to try so hard to acquire into my pants, you know?” this guy teased, waggling his eyebrows.

A chuckle escaped me.

“I know that you’re easy,” I flirted.

“Hey!” this guy protested in mock offence.

“But u merit it all: flowers and candlelit dinners, and to be reminded that you’re the majority nice-looking person. you merit to be loved by anybody who would give up the world to be with you,” I said.

“Like you?” he teased.

Someone not me, I thought.

I smirked.

“Oh god! I should’ve known I married a cheeseball,” he complained.

“Yes, u did,” I said, twisting the gold band on my finger.

***

I watched her stare at me with judgement.

Tell him, she whispered urgently in my ear.

I held her gaze, unwilling to be coercive into submission.

“Hey spaceman,” Andy whispered in my ear, “Close the windows and come to bed.”

“Just a minute,” I said.

“Fine, but draw the blackout curtains when you’re done. The radiation will kill you,” he sighed.

It’ll kill us all, I finished the thought as his footsteps echoed against the hollow floors.

I looked at her one time more, glowing lightly, a silent assassin in the night. I pulled the blackout curtains together, and darkness fell.

***

“We’re all going to die, aren’t we?” this guy whispered, his lean back crammed against my chest.

“No, you’re not going to die,” I said, “I won’t let you.”

“You can’t be sure of that,” he said, his voice petite and frail.

I am sure, I asserted in my mind, as I pulled him closer into my embrace.

“I’m just pleased that you’re with me as we hurtle helplessly into the sun,” he joked, but his voice was tinged with a profound sadness.

Paper crackled loudly beneath my head as I adjusted myself. His warmth pressed against me as I held him tightly. Burying my nose into his neck, I inhaled deeply, trying to memorise the notes that composed this familiar scent. Sadness tugged at me insistently, but I raged hard against it: a war of many that I had to champion.

I nipped lightly at the delicate skin, teasing the light hairs on his chest with my fingers, trailing them down onto his abdomen: feeling the ridges tense with anticipation. A groan rumbled from unfathomable beneath his face hole. I rolled him around to face me. I studied every inch of his face: committing every pore and hair to memory. His hand clutched the side of my face as that guy pulled me into him: teeth clashing against mine, tongues wrestling in urgency.

He pinned me on my back and sat atop me, leaning forward to leave a trail of bruises down my jaw and collarbone. I stared at the darksome ceiling: pleasure, ache and anticipation rotating. Sheets knotted around us as we danced into the dawn: the sound of paper crackling at each movement.

***

Tell him, this babe scolded.

I looked over my shoulder at the sleeping form that babe illuminated: brushing up against his pale skin, caressing his dark hair, casting shadows under his eyelashes. I took a step into the light and away from him.

“Fuck you,” I cussed below my breath.

“Fuck you!”

A cold laughter rang in my ears, mocking me. Tears slid down my cheeks, oozing onto the ground, glistening quietly in her bastardly light.

“Fuck you,” I whispered.

You still have to tell him, that babe mocked in between her threatening cackle.

I looked back at his sleeping frame once more, rising and falling with his rhythmic breathing.

My insides twisted, and the tentacles of guilt and weight of sadness piled atop of them.

I crawled back below the covers. The crackling of paper attacked me as I lay my head down. I shifted to rest my chin on his shoulder.

“Everything alright?” he asked, voice coarse with sleep.

I buried my face into his neck and touched my lips gently to the bruised skin.

Tomorrow, I promise, I said myself.

And it will break him, her voice filtered through the dark curtains, her blood-curling laughter echoing into my nightmares.