Short Fiction
skin. They stayed like this for what seemed like a long time and then she sat up and let out a loud breath. “What do you want?” she said. It seemed like the whole summer had been leading up to this moment and he answered her right away. “Everything.” He ran his hand along her hip and then moved it to the inside of her thigh. “That’s not what I was talking about.” He nodded, took his hand off her leg, and touched her cheek. Afterwards there was a feeling in the air like they had gotten away with something. Neither of them looked at each other although they held hands for a while. He didn’t look at her until he thought she was falling asleep; her hand fell away from his and her breathing turned shallow. The T.V. was still on and he stared at it for a while, trying to decide whether to wake her or not. He couldn’t imagine them both sleeping there the whole night; the girls waking up to see their mom and the next door neighbor half-naked on the living room couch. Every time he reached to touch her shoulder his hand seemed to stop on its own. Then he’d look at the blue light of the television on her face, her hair, the slope of her shoulders and he’d tell himself he’d wait a few more minutes before waking her. Eventually though, even he fell asleep. When he woke up she was standing above him. She was fully dressed and he couldn’t remember her getting up or putting her shirt on. The T.V. was off. “I guess I should go,” he said. She bent down, grabbed his shirt from the floor, and handed it over. “You don’t have to,” she said. “You could stay here.” He pulled on his shirt. “On the couch?”
Atticus Review│Get Lit: Round 1
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