Everything You Don't Think About	  Everything You Don't Think About

 by jacquez h. valentine

  

 Author's website: http://www.dementia.org/~jacquez/writing/

 Disclaimer: Please see the distribution license on my webpage.

 Author's Notes: 

 Story Notes: 

 

 

 Ray pressed his nose into the hair at the back of Stella's neck and
pulled back gently on her hip. She murmured in her sleep and shifted
against him, easy as that, following his lead, like always. Or not always,
not anymore, but like she had when she was thirteen, and had two left feet
but knew how to follow his lead and didn't think he was a wimp because he
knew how to dance. She never laughed at him for being short or nerdy or
the son of a meat-packer; she only laughed at him for things he did, like
falling off of fences or accidentally hitting himself in the face with
baseballs. He hit himself in the face with baseballs a lot, because he
loved hearing her laugh. 

 And besides, Stella was forever getting gum in her hair because she
didn't take it out before she went to sleep, so he laughed at her a lot,
too. 

 He looked over at the ashtray on the bedside table, and it had old ashes
in it from when he'd still smoked, and it had a drying piece of gum in it
now, one that Stella had spit into his mouth when he'd kissed her earlier.
He'd cracked up and taken it out and stuck it on her nose, and she'd put
it into the ashtray and he'd tackled her to the bed when she wasn't
looking. 

 Mostly he got her in bed when she wasn't looking these days. Since the
divorce, anyway. A couple times a month, she'd be at his door or he'd be
at hers and they would stare at each other, awkwardly, and then one of
them would turn on the radio. 

 And that was that--they were dancing, and then they were laughing and
then somehow, when they weren't looking, weren't guarded enough for just
an instant, they were fucking. He never thought of it was making love, not
anymore--it was always fucking, always with a hard edge to it and the
desperate feeling that maybe, maybe, if they fucked a little more or a
little better or if he made her come a few more times or maybe if they did
it against a wall or the door or in the shower, maybe that connection
would snap back into place. 

 And it'd be love again, like it was love when they were thirteen and
learning to dance, or sixteen and he was reading Batman while she did her
French homework, or eighteen and staying out all night because they could.


 But it never was. 

 Ray slid his hand down the outside of her thigh, feeling soft hairs catch
on his hand, and she turned in her sleep, burrowing against him, her nose
against his breastbone, her nipples against his stomach, her leg sliding
between his. 

 She smelled like ink and sex and Ivory soap. 

 He reached out to get the light and knocked the ashtray off the table. It
thumped on the floor, and as he gathered her in, pulled her closer, he
could just barely smell bubblegum underneath the ashes. 

End Everything You Don't Think About by jacquez h. valentine:
jacquez@dementia.org

Author and story notes above.