So I’m sitting on the toilet, completely naked — cause apparently you have to pee immediately after sex, — miles away from where my parents think I am, head down, covering my face with my hands. My feet feel the dust on the bathroom mat, too old to look presentable, too good to dispose of – the sort of thing one puts in a place rented by the hour. I get up and flush, and stare blindly at the whirlpool as if I was flushing down the remains of my decency. I get into the shower, avoid looking at myself in the mirror, and stand for five minutes under the water, not nearly warm, but not too cold either. As I get wet enough to call
it showering, I step out and naively wrap myself in the bedsheet. I look in the mirror and brush my hair with my fingers. It’s cold.
I open the door and leave the bathroom to go to… what? Living room? Bedroom? I’m not sure, but when you’re seventeen, you don’t really care about it much as long as you have something to lay on and someone to lay with. There he is. Lying on a couch, my domestic Antinous, not covering an inch of his body. He’s lying on his side, face turned to the entrance, holding a phone in both his hands. The sounds of the video he’s watching are too quiet to understand what’s going on on the screen. All I know is it’s entertaining enough to keep him distracted from me. At that moment, I feel like a newbie slut who forgot to ask for a pay beforehand and now feels too embarrassed to.
Fuck it, I think. After all, he put in some effort. I mean, he rented a place, he showed up, he wasn’t awful. This has to mean something, right? I join him and snuggle up, burying my face in his chest. Eyes closed, I smell his perfume and dusty pillows. His arm automatically wraps around my body, his mouth still shut, eyes glued to the screen. I say
“Stop acting like I’m not here”. “I’m not”. He looks confused. He always looks confused when I ask him to act decently, like an alien from a movie where a human explains to him how things work on Earth. Only he’s no alien.
I’m silent. “Hey”, he whispers, “Hey”. He leans back and looks at my face. I don’t look back. Staring somewhere over his shoulder, I feel tears running down my face and into my ear. It’s like I’m five again. He starts wiping my tears with his thumb. “It’s okay”. For some reason I start whispering too: “I know, it’s just…” I’m out of words. I hold him closer. “I missed you”, I say. I really did. “I miss you”. I really do. But at that moment, clinging to him desperately, I feel my last hope slip through my fingers, leaving me in the arms of a boy I no longer love.
