Read to Me (Short Snippet)

One

Chapter One

My mouth moved but I didn't even know what I read. "He walked—I mean—waltzed down..." I trailed and continued, but that was all my mind contained. My eye patterns were such: five seconds on the Baskerville print on the tome, and just a fraction of a second peaking on Emery's body bent like a murder victim on the hospital bed, gauze covering his eyes.

"I'm not dead—but I wish I was." I remembered that portion from that Anchorage daily mail article titled: "Son of Prominent Real Estate Owner Suddenly Has Impaired Vision."

My lips halted momentarily, mid-sentence. That prolonged silence, with the only sound being the hum of the heater, of the gust of snow along the bedside window, made him look like he was actually dead on the hospital bed. But he wasn't, if he was, the heart rate monitor would beep, he'd convulse and move and perhaps scream. But not hearing anything at all, not even the nurses outside my doing night shifts on their desks. This would happen momentarily, where God would answer Emery's wishes and make him still as dead.

Until there was a shift in breathing, a twitch of a finger—and Emery said, in that habitual haughty tone of this. "Where the fuck is my story? Dad doesn't give you 10 dollars an hour just to stare at my body, you know."

***

That had been 8:00, four hours later, and midnight struck with the same occasional pang of fear, pang of concern and guilt for his blindness—and most of all...a pang of desire.

I didn't know this—the feeling overcome in my core. The fire that'd burn when my eyes set on Emery. It'd extinguish immediately when those aureate green eyes would lay on me, shame my gaze everywhere so it only falls to his face—as if that was the only chaste way to look at him: in my eyes. But now with the TV cackling, that commercial about that old guy dancing about a mattress airing—or directly onto my debauched face—a blatant chime, there was always that veneer of gauze across his eyes...that inherently permitted me to rape him with my eyes.

"What are you waiting for? Continue, I wanna see how it ends." But I didn't continue, I just stared at him.

I didn't want to, but the revelation loomed over my body. There were no more beeps from nursing assistants taking late-night phone calls—there were no overworked and underpaid neurosurgeons shuffling outside the VIP ward doors. There weren't even any cars driving—no accelerated rush of HO2 emissions that somehow burned my throat, even inside the hospital room. Nothing, but Emery, bending in those weird positions once more.

"Nel! Jesus fucking Christ! Read to me." Then my eyes moved onto Emery, again bent like a cadaver, his gown is up though, freshly shaved leg, and a slightly pink rump brushing against mint green bed sheets. I saw it with such clarity. Just a slight flash...to the point I almost thought it was on purpose.

But then he turned almost as quickly as he had shown me. A beautiful pose, after another beautiful pose—disrupted only by the occasional complaint.

And I leaned forward, Emery was lying face up. I pressed my hand on the metal frame of the headboard, both of my knees pressed near the sides of Emery's pale, exposed, flat stomach.

I could tell you all that I didn't know what I was doing—that a demon overtook my body and hexed my brain to make my fingertips brush under his shirt, cold hands making him shiver. His mouth twitching—and I panicked. Not if he'd shout and alert an overworked custodian outside—but for accusations, abrasions from his tongue that hurt more than a scissor to the eyes ever could.

It just took a second—I'd expected him to thrash and fight, to bite my hand, attempt to fend me off—even with his arms skinny from four months absent from the gym—just lying in this VIP ward.

But he did nothing, just layed still, steadied his breathing, and I paused, drips of sweat patting onto his ribs that jut from his stomach. This lecherous feeling inside of me, blooming in my brain. And I'd relented.

I said some stupid lie that I can't even remember now, and I steadied myself back to my metal chair. And I saw it, the twitch of his body. I grabbed the novel, now sprawled on the floor, with its delicate leaves scrunched between the tiles and the hard covers as it'd split in the middle

I put it on my lap with a slight thud—and then he told me this: "Not that book."

A pause, and I added, "Then what?"

A delicate smile came onto his lips. "That one book that you made."

I felt like raping him right then and now.

But Emery, of course, didn't know this. All he must've seen was me sitting, with my legs crossed, impassive, indifferent. But if he knew the thoughts that were infecting my brain—how there was rope right along his bureau—how delicate and flimsy he looked in that hospital gown, just one second out there during this snow storm would be enough to gust him along the wind. He didn't know how much I saw of him, right then, right there, when his judging eyes could see me.

It would either disappear, or consume him whole—divulge into my temptations.

My parka wasn't so far away—I snatched it with just one swing of my arm, the beanie in one of the pockets and my pair of gloves in the other. All Emery heard was the shuffling of a coat, and the door open, that was my only clue of leaving.

"Nel? Hey Nel! Nel!!"

I don't like thinking back. Those who think back get caught up in the past and can't progress into the future. I wasn't like that, I was better than that. But my mind flew with Emery on the train.

This wouldn't usually happen. When I was reviewing for an exam, or volunteering in homes, or working at GAP, my mind was on the next customer on checkout, or whether Mrs. Johnson took her medication today. But on the people mover—not one here but me and the bus driver—my mind flies to Emery all over again.

Everyone at school found it weird how Emery and I hadn't been talking ot each other. People around me are typically like validation starved pelicans. Sasha and her boy problems, him screwing her cousin; Trevor and his math issues, not knowing the simple difference between a binomial and a trinomial; Gale with her obsession with the popular Emery, bringing boxes of chocolates and teddy bears sycophantically asking me if Emery would like this.

"Oh god that's so bad of him;" "You see, you use the FOIL method;" "He'd like anything you give him, he's quite decent."

Safe, impersonal answers. That's what I'd give. And they'd be satisfied. Utilitarian people are. They may smile, they may jibe—but deep down their only there for their goal. Nothing more, nothing less.

But Emery...he...he was different.

"No."

"No, what?" I asked. He wore these fancy beige flannel Burberry boots. Perfect for the spring mud.

"Be honest, do you like it?" he said pointing at his shoes as a bunch of the other students in the road looked at his ankles.

"Y—" I hesitated. Did I like them? "Does it matter?"

"To me, yeah."

I looked at them closer, the way the leather gleamed in the solstice sun, all high, encompassing his big feat. He could've been the handsome revolutionist in the modern steampunk BBC film. But of course, with gorgeous blue eyes and blond locks like his, with his face on newspapers and thirst tweets, he'd probably get tired of my petty compliment, I was nobody anyway.

"They look nice."

Safe answers.

"Arghh. Answer it again." Emery was never satisfied.

I suppose that's why everyone was talking about it in such heightened voices. "OH EM GEE, EMERY AND THAT NEL KID ARE NO LONGER FRIENDS NU-UHHH" In stupid highpitched California derived wannabes.