More Ferarum

Chapter Seven

Often he would read a poem aloud, and I'd have to hear it a few times before I could decipher it.

The whiskey shine of the moon is mine; she's round this time and fat with her crimes. She glows, but knows her lies, everyone smiles at me. Pretending to see. Pretending it's a blessing.

Yes, I remembered this one. It wasn't about me, at least, I didn't think it was.

Jack had been sitting in a lawn chair on our fingernail of a balcony, crammed between the concrete railing and the slider, smoke still curling in voluptuous tendrils from the glass pipe resting on the table.

"Read it... one more time," I had said, the hour late and my brain smoke fogged. I'd been very high, physically more than mentally, my fingers and toes seeming to tingle right off my body. I seldom smoked weed; it wasn't really my thing, and when I did it hit me hard, making me feel unstable as I tried to work through the disorientation. Just waiting to feel normal again.

The handicap wasn't why I'd needed him to read it again though; it was always that way, whether I was sober or not.

He'd smirked at me, only the reddened rims of his eyes showing his intoxication. "One more time? Are you sure?"

"Maybe."

I was leaning against the wall near the door watching the sky melt from pink to purple to orange as the sun dropped below the hills. It was one of those oppressive Vegas nights, the atmosphere thick with the heat. Twilight's descent seemed heavy; the press of the oncoming darkness manifesting as melancholy in my chest. The day was over, and in my muddled mind... the oncoming night was foreboding. The future threatened, hostile in its unknowability.

Turned out, I'd been right.

The strip was coming alive as Jack spoke; the words, his cadence, seeming to change the rhythm of my heart. It beat in time with his voice, a parade of alliteration and rhyme that I understood to be tripped up because of the high, but it was making me uncomfortable all the same.

She's painted in blue and gold, the child she holds, whispers told of a king of kings, son. Not mine, but my God. I must kneel. Despite what I feel.

When he'd finished, he looked at me. I was rocking on the balls of my feet, needing to be in motion, movement somehow centering me.

"Read it... one more time."

He'd smiled around his cigarette, his eyebrows lifted.

I'd already said that several times. But that time, I meant it. As he started reciting again, finding his stride, I decided I knew it would be the last time.

I pulled my t-shirt up over my head and tossed it into his lap.

The way he'd looked at me, I felt like I could fly.

He finally stood, rising slowly from his chair. Flight was gone, replaced by an immobility I couldn't overcome. He closed the distance, our bodies almost touching, and we stared at each other. Not saying anything, not needing to.

He'd looked down at me through the veil of his lashes, sleepy eyed with lust; the heat glowing between our bodies, radiating back and forth in the slight gap separating us. So close, touching only with our breath.

Moving slowly, as if swimming, as if under water, he raised his hands, letting his fingers whisper around the curve of my breasts, tracing my invisible aura.

He'd made me aware of myself, of all my energy surging under the surface of my skin. I stood, just waiting for him to actually touch me. Always needing to touch.