The Last Line

L.F. Blake

“God, Snatch.” Brian’s voice is a gasp, a Georgia-tainted breath of summer night. His buttocks grind against my hips. For one wild second, every desire in my life ties into the need to see his face. I want to fall between his parted lips and be swallowed; I want to kiss his shut eyelids; I want to scream myself breathless until our bodies become one.

But he faces away, crouched above me where I lie, and to turn him now would break us apart. All I can see is the narrow column of his back and the golden hair spilling over white shoulders. All I can see is the hand he reaches back to grip the ridge of my hip with. All I can feel are his nails digging into my skin.

“God.” His voice goes deep. “Please—”

Jesus, Jesus, he’s coming. His body clamps around me tight as all hell, but he makes no more sounds. I groan for both of us. My hips lift off the grass, and I slam into him, again and again. The bitch. I wanted to be there with him, sharing the moment, but he’s flown off without me. I pound into him, trying, trying, trying to get where he is.

I’ll never make it. The harder I try, the farther away he is. He’s the sky above us, and I’m the dirt below. I’ll never reach him.

“Kevin,” he groans

Release looms like a black curtain. I collide with the fabric; it enfolds me. My hips slam against Brian’s ass for the last time as my back twists and bows. My eyes roll back. My life rushes through my veins and pours into Brian.

I drift, lost and alone. Grass blades prick against my skin. My mind reels. Maybe it’s the dinner wine catching up with me. Maybe it’s death, snipping the flimsy strings holding my soul inside my body. I can’t tell if I’m still lying in my backyard, or if I’m floating somewhere with the clouds, trying to reach the moon. Trying to reach him.

Brian sighs and raises himself off me. The loss of him leaves me shivering, until he returns to drape his body fully over me, a sticky mess of boneless, heated skin. His breath ghosts across my chest in a cloud of wine-slicked sweetness. I fall back into my body, lured by his warmth and nearness. I want my arms around him. I want my hands in the golden softness of his hair, gripping, fisting, and never letting go. But I can’t let myself reach for him.

He lays a hand on my stomach, fingers splayed over my skin. He traces the bottom ridge of my ribs, then my hips. What’s he want to touch me for? He’s the one who’s made of satin-soft heaven. Does he have to force those delicate fingers to sweep across my skin, my bones, all the sharp angles and unyielding plains? Do I disgust him?

He rubs his cheek across my chest like a lazy, southern cat. “They’re so close,” he whispers.

My tongue feels thick, a useless slab of meat filling my mouth. “What?”

“The stars.”

“Oh.” The desire to touch him burns a fever under my skin. I want his mouth on mine, his swollen lips and eager tongue.

“My sister used to say they were angels watching over us and waiting to take us to heaven. But I don’t think that’s it at all.”

I stay silent. I could listen to the blur of his accent all night. My hand moves of its own will, sliding around his shoulders to cradle the back of his neck.

“I think,” he says, “a long time ago, heaven and earth were one. But we did something wrong, us humans, and God threw a canvas over heaven to keep us out. Now when we look up, all we see is the dark. We remember heaven though, and all we want is to get back in. We spend our whole life reaching and jumping for it. Sometimes one of us jumps high enough to make a pinprick in the canvas. That’s what the stars are. Heaven’s light shining through.”

I stare at the night sky, at the diamonds strewn across the black, and wonder if he’s right. He’s more than right. He’s one of the stars, a glimpse of heaven. But like the sun, like all stars, if I look too long, he’ll blind me.

My hand falls back to my side.

“Snatch.” He braces his hands against soil and grass and lifts himself above me. Gold hair brushes my chest and shoulders. His skin looks like the same fragile porcelain that dolls are made of. But looks don’t mean anything. Brian can’t be broken. I’ve tried.

“What?” I ask.

His gaze searches me. I hate his eyes, the confusion of gray and blue and green. Tonight they’re all three colors swirled in one. They cut through me. He can see my insides.

He leans down and kisses me. For a single instant, his lips cling to mine. I think of flower petals, wet with dew, warmed by the dawn sun.

He pulls back, eyes deep blue suddenly. “I’m going in. Are you coming?”

I shake my head. One more minute with him and I’ll crack. I’ll split in two, and he’ll see my guts spill out like red spaghetti. He’ll see everything I don’t want him to see.

He stands up. For a second, he’s silhouetted against the blue-black sky, moonlit skin against midnight velvet. The stars are his jewels, diamonds tossed around his head and shoulders. The stars are in his eyes.

He walks toward the house. I turn my head, cheek pressed to the grass, and watch him go. The trees around the backyard shelter us from view. If we were famous, there would be paparazzi in the trees, cameras snapping pictures. Would they have caught the look in his eyes when he came? Would they have caught the look in mine?

He opens the back door and steps into the house. His loss is like having a fist shove into my chest and rip part of me out. Maybe my lungs; it’s so hard to breathe without him.

Shivers ripple along my skin. Wind rustles through the grass, carrying the scent of soil and clouds heavy with rain.

Sleep tiptoes up and over me. I don’t dream.

I wake to cold rain rolling over my skin. Gray-white clouds hide the stars. The disorientation of drunkenness has passed, and I stand without becoming dizzy. Grass and trees and clouds surround me; I’m alone in my yard. Brian has gone.

I find my jeans hanging over a lawn chair and step into them. The left leg and the ass are damp, but it helps them stay up instead of sliding right off my hips.

I go into the house, wet grass clumping to my feet. The kitchen stinks of burned TV dinners and old coffee. In the living room, cigarette smoke hangs in a musty veil that can never be parted. There are worse things. Whoever rented this dump last had a dog they never bothered to housetrain. On hot days the stench is unbearable.

Brian hasn’t left after all. He’s asleep on the couch, curled in the fetal position on the sagging springs. Strands of blond hair cling to his lips, dancing with his slow breaths, and his hands are fisted loosely beneath his chin.

I perch on the edge of the couch, inches from his bare feet. I rummage under the coffee table, knocking aside books on philosophy and religion. A bag of cocaine sits on top of A Guide to Understanding Freud. I wipe the surface of the table off with the palm of my hand and pour out white powder. There’s enough for two lines, one for each nostril.

Brian shifts behind me. He moans. “Kevin?”

I snort the first line through a three inch section of what was once a McDonalds straw. Oh, fucking fuck. It’s like snorting glass slivers, and I can never quite get over it. My eyes tear up.

“Kev… Snatch.” Brian sits up, yawning and rubbing his eyes. “What time is it?”

“Night. Who cares?”

He sighs and scoots over to lean his head on my shoulder. He’s still naked, pressing against my bare side. His skin is too hot. It makes me itch. His smell—sex and grass and Ivory soap—makes me want to vomit. I’m suffocating in the heat of his closeness.

I shift away. He follows until I’m boxed into the corner of the couch. I tense like a spring. He’s such a fucking puppy, clueless and overeager. Maybe if I bare my teeth and snarl, he’ll get the message.

“You’re angry about Dave. Aren’t you.”

I turn to stone. He had to mention fucking Dave. And that’s exactly what he did. Fucked Dave. Goddamn Dave.

“You said you didn’t care.”

“I don’t.” Why should I? Dave Wolfe is a junkie piece of shit, and Brian is nothing to me but a good fuck.

“We didn’t have sex,” Brian says, curving one arm behind my back. “I just blew him.”

Fucking fantastic. So when he kissed me, he was using lips that were on Dave Wolfe’s dick a week ago.

“Snatch.”

Why does he even bother with that name? He’s calling me Kevin in his head. He calls me Kevin when I fuck him. He’ll never accept that I’m a new person.

He kisses my shoulder. His lips are soft and wet and beautiful.

I stare at the table. “I don’t care what you do, Brian. I’m not your fucking boyfriend.”

He pulls away, and I make The Mistake. I look into his eyes. They’re still blue, shockingly bright pools of silent pain. I have to look away, before I drown in them. Brian could kill me, if only he knew it. He could put a gun to my head, and I’d close my eyes and wait for him to pull the trigger. I wish he’d do it. I wish.

A single line of coke lays neatly on the coffee table. My head buzzes. “You want it?”

“It’s your last line.”

“Yeah.” I shrug and offer him the straw.

Brian’s fingers brush mine as he takes it. He stares at me until I stare back. His eyes cut like silver knives. I shouldn’t have offered him the line. It’s in the offering, all the things I want to keep hidden from him.

He smiles and hunches over the table. He knows.

The End