bitch you gotta take it
I am not a coward.
I am not brave, either, but then that’s something I’ve never been accused of. When I leave him, the words cowardice and bravery are weighing on me very faintly, if at all; instead I am thinking about the way he looked at me before he leaned in, and how the coal-dark of his skin was shot through with blue electricity, and the expression he wore the second I pulled away, which was simultaneously so much worse and so much better than I could have hoped for.
But, really, I am hardly thinking at all. My attention is focused on managing a casual walkaway. There is a lot of spine involved in resisting the urge to turn around, look over my shoulder, backtrack. It is indescribably difficult to down my overwhelming desire to grin and say: just kidding, to listen to my blossoming ego and not to the dark and hungry part of me that wishes, with the ferocity of a dying man, to sink my teeth into him. Or something. Anything. Anyone.
I make friends with the men here, and sometimes more than. It’s quite easy, because they have nothing else to do.
In fact, it’s too easy. It almost lacks a sense of the satisfactory. It almost doesn’t please me at all to string them along by the ties and cloaks and glasses, pretending to listen as they recount to me books I’ve already read. Almost I am irritated by the easiness with which they drift to me, wearing dark, sleepy eyes and patterns made of ink. Almost I wish I would find that boy in the library again, to punch him or kiss him or really do anything but wake in the hours before dawn, tossed from the waves of a fitful sleep, bleary from hours of reading and mediocre sex, and think: I am fucking bored.
Almost.
Full of this almost-boredom, I slip into the streets when the sky turns gray, the same dirty, slushy silver as the snow underfoot. (Why am I here? For fuck’s sake, I hate snow.) Against the hanging sky, pale lanterns cast spears of yellow light onto the ground. They sway back and forth like so many pendulums; for a brief moment, as I adjust to the strange dimness of the outside world, I am nauseated by the movement of those spears as they cross over one another, slashing wildly back and forth. I bite back the rising bile.
Delumine is too still and far, far too cold. My scales clatter against one another when I shiver. Against my cheek and neck, the snakes are fitfully asleep, brittle-black and hibernating in the cold. But I know if I go back inside the boredom will only grow too strong to stand, and I am resigned to continue my aimless trudge down the icy street, my lip curled, eyes low, body tense against the biting breeze.
And I am wound so tightly I can hardly find it in myself to flinch when I see him, a patchy ghost at the end of the street. My step hardly slows. I am too cold to run, and more importantly too intrigued: when I see him, I have to suppress a smirk, and something better and more vile than excitement thrills in my chest. I close the distance between us with easy purpose.
Rolling my eyes, I say with perfectly practiced disappointment: “This is poor timing. I just remade my bed.”
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