We Fucked on the Keys Once

He asks me, “What do you have inside you?”

It’s meant to be a serious question but considering this is coming from the man who has seen me lose my shit Exorcist-style, head spinning, crab-walking backwards up the stairs, eyes raged-out… I only laugh in answer.

“Are you joking?” I have to say it at the end of the laugh because he’s staring at me, perplexed, like he doesn’t know what’s going through my mind, but of course he knows. He’s seen inside. Taken a walk around. Ultimately, decided he didn’t like it enough to move in, beyond his ten-year lease.

Although this is my choice, as he constantly tells me—my fault, that’s what he means. Kindly manipulative until the bitter end.

Bitter isn’t quite right, actually. Like right now, side by side on a park bench in the rain, cool air, mid-October, everything orange and brown.

It’s sweet, in its way.

He clasps his hands together, tilts his head. The white collar of his Oxford shirt is slightly stained with what appears to be lipstick and for a flash of a heartbeat I feel indignation, even though he’s already moved Sally or Susan or Samantha in and I tell everyone I don’t care (the sad reality is I don’t).

Then I remember I did that to his collar. Intentionally. The stain matches the burgundy sweater he has on over the Tom Ford shirt and it looks like art, except he’s never had an artistic bone in his body. But he’s colorblind. Perhaps he hasn’t noticed the stain for what it is—I told him about it, when his laundry was my responsibility.

Now it isn’t.

So I say nothing.

Samantha doesn’t seem like the lose-her-shit-Exorcist-style type, and that’s a shame. Could’ve been a good show.

“You’re brilliant,” he answers me, oddly too-blue eyes looking into mine. The type of blue that gets hurt in the sun. But the clouds are out and it’s all gray like his vision (not so, actually; I learned that early on, but it reads more poetic, doesn’t it?). “Just because you have poison in your veins doesn’t mean there’s no brilliance alongside it. Or maybe the poison is the brilliance? I don’t know.” He shrugs apologetically. “Never could quite figure it out.”

I don’t even clench my teeth. I don’t even breathe deep. The manipulation, the slyness, the hurt-you-while-speaking-softly, it’s all part of why we broke our love lease. That’s what I tell all of my friends. The truth is worse, of course: the truth is the poison he speaks of.

It rots me, slowly, and if you get too close, you could catch it too. Like a topical skin disease, but it’s only my soul.

Once I saw his eyes rage over too, turn fully red, and I knew he’d caught it.

Luckily, there’s a cure.

It’s separation. From me.

Now he’s all blue irised and blissed out—no sleeplessness, no tossing and turning, no wondering if he should drive far away or run me over. We don’t discuss those things, out of respect for Sally, but I can see the sleep on the smooth lines of his face.

I made the decision, he says, but it was save him or help myself.

Am I altruistic?

That might be pushing it too far.

“Fuck you very much,” I say, but with a smile that I feel.

His eyes light up, dimples form in his cheeks. He presses his palms tight together and I glance at his bare white knuckles, strong but lean, the type of fingers meant for piano concertos. He plays. Well. Technically speaking. But the piano we owned… the keys got smashed. I won’t say how.

Was it his poison or mine?

We fucked on those keys once, too.

That’s not how they were ruined, by the way. Separate feelings. Separate winters.

“Whatever is inside, get it out, okay?” He’s serious again.

My scalp prickles, the thickness of my hair tousled by the fall breeze. I tell myself it’s nature that’s giving me these bodily sensations. I tell myself it’s autumnal wind.

Not him. Not the fact he’s speaking straight, without the manipulation. The gentle mind games.

This is sincerity. The poison never let me recognize it before. Was it there all along? Was it always me, never him? Has the distance made him a martyr in my mind?

He swallows hard, throat rolling over the Tom Ford collar. The lipstick stain.

“Please.” He doesn’t look at me now, averting his eyes as if I’m the sun. His fingers link, clasp together, like they need a lifeline.

A safety net to carry him away from me.

“Then you’ll come back?” I ask it with a hoarse voice, but we both know I don’t want him back.

His shoulders stiffen. His eyes fall closed. Dark lashes dust his cheekbones. “Get it out. Then call me.” He lifts his chin but not his eyelids. “I won’t change my number.”

That’s all I can give you.

He doesn’t say it, but I hear it—louder than the crunch of leaves as he leaves.