by Monet Patrice Thomas
No one wanted to watch table tennis, not even for the Olympic gold medal. The others had scattered after lunch on the lawn — couples breaking off like satellites pulled toward their own narrow streets. Julia had nowhere to be and didn’t want to go back to her empty apartment, and so she’d followed Simon inside and then sat staring at the back and forth on the screen. In the kitchen, Simon had put dirtied knives in the sink of soapy water, put away sun-warmed condiments, wrapped the leftovers in tinfoil. Julia knew there was no reason to offer to help.
The first beer she’d drank that afternoon while sitting in the sharp blades of grass had made her lethargic and the second had made her limbs feel as heavy as tree boughs. She sat splayed on the couch like a doll thrown to the floor. A horsefly, lazy with imminent death, buzzed near her ear, but it was too much effort to raise her hand to shoo it away. It surprised her summer was almost over, how the long days had piled on top of each other like a sloppy tower of blocks. Soon she’d be packing up her car, her whole life inside, and moving to Santa Fe, a place she’d only thought of in passing. Her boyfriend was three months into a seven-month job down there, and she’d agreed to move south with him. To follow him wherever he went next.
“You want another beer?” Simon’s voice was too loud in his quiet apartment. It was that singular time between lunch and dinner in the summertime when the only sounds in the neighborhood were the bees and the cicadas, the ticking of sprinklers and the laughter of the kids playing at the park down the road.
“Water, please.”
She heard him open the cabinet, turn on the tap.
Not until he was standing in front of her offering the glass did she finally move. The water was cool and bracing. Her beer-induced fog receded to the edges of her brain. Simon sat down beside her.
“Those BLTs were so good.”
He draped an arm along the back of the couch reaching until his fingers found the nape of her neck and the escaped strands of hair from her ponytail. Julia leaned into his hand. It was strange nothing had ever happened between them. Of course, she’d thought about it two years ago, when they’d first met. It was an old habit: imagining what sex would be like with every man she was introduced to — the quick flashes of their skin, how they might kiss her. She remembered noticing that his hands looked like they belonged over the keys of a piano.
“They were. It was a good idea.” A muted roar from the crowd on the television.
“All your ideas are good ideas.” They smiled at each other. She’d miss him the most when she was gone. Of all their friends, he was the one who demanded the least from her, who floated over the rough edges of her moods like an experienced fisherman riding out a storm. Even in this moment he was letting her linger, foregoing whatever plans he’d had to stay with her. When the sun left the canyon, he’d head to whatever house party was happening that night, but for now, he would keep her company.
“I want a nap.” His fingers on her skin made her sink deeper into the couch, her eyes drooping and she missed the winning volley. Sliding sideways she let herself fall face first into the crook of his arm, against his side. He smelled like bacon.
“Want me to blow up the air mattress? It’s right here.” She felt Simon gesturing toward the empty area behind the couch where usually there was a small wooden table. “My dad just used it last weekend.”
It went without saying that napping in his bed was a step too far, even for them. Simon’s girlfriend would absolutely flip her shit if she found out, would probably use it as an excuse to start the fight that had been brewing between the two women for months. Julia didn’t want to be any more of a bitch than she knew she was, but if forced, she could make Simon choose her over any woman. A nap was another good idea, it was an hour or so she could turn off her brain and stop thinking about Sante Fe. Her boyfriend would call later tonight at their appointed time and ask about her day. She’d tell him about going to the pool and the BLTs, but she wouldn’t, she decided then, mention sleeping at Simon’s.
“Could I just... sleep here?” She looked up at him, her face near his armpit, and felt his body tense as she moved in closer and then relax again.
Later it wouldn’t matter who kissed who first or that she really had intended to sleep there in his arms and nothing more. Intentions were useless things, confetti and tassels, something Julia’s mother used to say. All that would matter was his mouth found hers. And that the hand ever at the back of her neck fisted around the length of her hair. She believed friendships between men and women depended on the suppression of curiosity, the what-ifs. The desire to know had always pulled like a tide inside her, but she’d learned to swim away. It wasn’t her fault this time that the tide had pulled them both in. Julia had been right about one thing — his hands were artists. There on the couch, her body lit by the afternoon sun slicing through his bay window, Simon traced everywhere the light touched.
Monet Patrice Thomas is a writer living abroad in Beijing, China. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the Inland Northwest Center for Writers at Eastern Washington University in Spokane, Washington. Currently, she is the Interviews Editor at The Rumpus. More of her fiction can be found online at Joyland Magazine, Whiskeypaper, and Split Lip Press. All of her work can be found on her website, monetpatricethomas.com and the writer herself can be found on Twitter, @monetwithlove