I watched Thia stare at the ceiling, her slender fingers curled around the white sheet.  She looked so beautiful, her hair splayed against the pillow like a soft fan, her cheeks flushed a dark pink.   

I sat up and the bed creaked in protest.  "I’m sorry."  I don’t know why I apologized.   

"Do you have a cigarette?"  Thia asked.   

She reached over and grabbed my T-shirt off the floor.  My cigarettes were in the breast pocket.  I lit two, handed her one and watched as she inhaled deeply.  

"Do you want me to leave?"  

She shrugged.  

Lance, my older brother, told me girls wanted to be lavished with affection after sex.   I assumed Thia was the exception.  She looked bored.   

I took a drag and thought about Mark.  Had Thia ever been bored with him?  I pictured her in his strong arms, her hands running down his muscled chest.  Handsome devil my mom called him.   

A wave of guilt flooded me.  Mark was my best friend and I just had sex with his girl.  I hadn’t seduced her though.  It had been Thia's idea.  

I stubbed my half-finished cigarette in the ashtray and looked at Thia whose lips were set in a thin line.  What was she thinking?   

"Andy?”  She turned toward me, her face solemn.  "How about tomorrow night?"  

"If that's what you want," I said.  Being with Thia again would be like going for a test drive in a Corvette--I could touch the slick interior, feel it hug the curves, but it wasn’t mine.  

I sat at the edge of the bed and put on my jeans.  Her cold fingers touched my back. 

"You think what we're doing is okay?" she whispered.

What should I say?  I love you?  I’ve always loved you?  I couldn’t get the words out.  I was a coward.

When I didn’t answer she sighed and said, "I’ll see you tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow."  

I left without looking back.

*  *  * 

At home, Lance was cooking his favorite casserole: beans and franks.  He grinned at me, his dark hair wet from a shower.  "Where’d you run to after work?"

"Thia’s."          

"Really?”  His eyebrows raised in interest.  "How’s she?"           

"Fine, I guess."           

My brother stirred his creation of three different kinds of pork and beans and sliced hot dogs.  "It’s nice you keep in touch with your old friends."            

I wanted to say I kept in touch with Mark, too--visited his grave at least once a month--but I didn’t.  It wouldn’t feel right talking about Mark right after being with Thia.          

I grabbed a beer from the fridge and popped it open.  It felt good to be twenty-one and legal.          

"Is Thia seeing anyone?" my brother asked.          

"No.”  I remembered her cold fingers on my back.          

Lance put the casserole in the oven.  "I can understand that.  Jen and I have been together for only a year, but I can’t imagine what it’d be like losing her.  Thia and Mark were together, what, four years?"         

"Five," I corrected him.         

Lance whistled through his teeth, sounding like a busted teakettle.  People our age going steady for five years was an amazing concept.  

Mark and Thia were my friends all through high school.  It was hard to imagine one without the other.  Our senior yearbook read, ‘The couple most likely to grow old together.’          

Lance eyed the clock above the stove.  "Speaking of Jen, I promised to call her."  He picked up the phone hanging by the fridge, sat down at our rickety kitchen table and gave me his ‘I want privacy look’.  He used it a lot since we started sharing an apartment.           

I carried my beer into the living room, made myself comfortable on our second-hand sofa and turned on the television.  I flipped through the channels and tried my best to block out Lance’s conversation.  I couldn’t help but hear my brother’s soothing, pleading voice--the tone he always used with Jen.         

Jen had a way with my brother.  She turned him into someone I didn’t know.  Since Lance started seeing Jen he had given up everything he liked: fishing, camping, and hiking. Jen disliked the outdoors, and would prefer a boyfriend who disliked them equally.  

"How could you give up everything you love for her?”  I asked him once.  

He laughed.  “You’ll understand when you meet someone you really care about.”  

Thia’s face rose unbidden to my mind.  "I guess I understand already."  

Lance hung up the phone and walked into the living room.  His face was pinched, as if tasting something sour.          

"How’s Jen?”  I asked.         

"She … " He shook his head in disbelief.  “She doesn’t want to see me any more.  I’m crowding her.  She needs more space.”         

"Space?”  I was in shock.  Jen didn’t act like she needed space.  She was a sponge.  She sopped up everything.  She left nothing for anyone else.         

"Hell.”  My brother buried his face in his hands.  "Why is she doing this?"  

"I don’t know,” I said.    

“How could you?  You’ve never had a serious relationship."    

“You don’t know.  I’ve loved … ” I stopped.  He wasn’t listening.   Lance wandered into the kitchen and came back with the rest of the 12-pack of beer.  All night he guzzled beer, eyes blindly fixed on one sitcom after another.  

I woke suddenly in the middle of the night.  Lance had cried out.  I listened.  It was dark and silent.   

Must have been a dream.  I settled back under the covers and closed my eyes, imagining Thia beside me.

* * *

After work the next day I went straight to Thia’s.  Her roommate Ann, a chubby girl with a pinkish face, answered the door.  Ann wrung her hands anxiously and talked to my shoes.          

"Thia went to the store."  She stood aside.  "She should be back soon."         

I sank onto the couch.  Ann peered behind chairs and in corners, her chubby hands fluttering with nervousness.  I was about to ask what she was looking for when she retrieved a pair of white tennies from under the sofa.  She sat on the coffee table and slipped them on.         

When she left, I went to Thia’s room.  I sat on her bed and slid open the drawer to her nightstand.  It was wrong, but I couldn’t help myself.  I was looking for something--anything--to help me understand  Thia and what she wanted from me.         

In the top drawer were dozens of pictures.  I grabbed a handful and sifted through them.  Thia and Mark dressed up for the prom, in costumes for a Halloween party, sitting by a Christmas tree.      

 

There were pictures of just Mark, too.  Mark in his football uniform, down on one knee, looking seriously into the camera.  Mark under a tree in his senior picture, blond hair parted off to the side, smiling, unaware that in less than a year a car accident would leave him and his parents dead.          "Handsome devil," I whispered.

by A.R. Morrison Email: EnchntdRhiannon@aol.com

In the corner of the drawer, a picture lay alone, face down.  I picked it up, my palms sweating.  It was a picture of the three of us, me between Mark and Thia, my arms around their shoulders.  We all grinned.  I couldn’t remember why we were so happy.  I had acres of acne and looked too skinny--still was, in fact-- but my friends were beautiful.  Yet I fit in with this couple, my best friend and my best friend’s girl.  They never gave me the ‘I want privacy’ look.          

At the bottom of the picture, where most people put the date, Thia had drawn a heart with an arrow through it.  Why?  None of the other pictures had drawings on them.           

I remembered the way Thia looked a few days ago when we met at a Chinese restaurant for lunch.  Eyes blurry.  Shoulders slumped.  She’d been unusually quiet during the meal.  She asked me the question that plagued me all through high school: "Have you met anyone yet?"         

My answer was no.  It was always no.        

Then came the dreaded response.  "I don’t see why.  You’re such a nice guy."         

Then she told me she’d been on a date, the first one since Mark died.  Thia never lacked offers.  She just hadn’t been interested.         

"How’d it go?" I asked, trying to ignore the sudden unexpected stab of jealousy.         

"Horrible.  I couldn’t let him touch me."         

I had to suppress a smile.  "He was that bad, huh?"         

"No.  I liked him.  A lot.  But when he tried to kiss me, put his arms around me, I couldn’t go through with it.  I could barely keep from running away screaming like a lunatic."  She dunked her egg roll in sweet and sour sauce, started to take a bite but let it drop to her plate.  "Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?"         

"Nah," I said.  "It was your first date since Mark.  It’s understandable."         

"Even so, I don’t want to go through that again.  I need to get on with my life.  It‘s been almost two years."         

I nodded.  Of course she did.  Mark wouldn’t want her to be a prisoner to his memory, unable to be touched.        

Tears filled her eyes.  "Can you come over tonight?"        

"Sure," I said and Thia blushed.   

Why?  We’d remained friends since Mark’s death, sharing our grief like survivors after a war.  I shook the memory off as if it were a suit that didn’t fit me. 

I put the pictures away and went back into the living room to wait for Thia. 

* * *         

Ten minutes later Thia ambled in, her arms loaded with grocery bags.  I grabbed one from her and set it on the kitchen counter.  She gave me a thankful smile and kissed my cheek.          

What was the reason she was with me now, had picked me over any other guy she could be with?  She had no problem touching me or me touching her.  She was comfortable with me, as if I were an old pair of shoes.  Maybe I was her stepping stone from Mark to a real man, an older version of Mark.  Some handsome devil, not a bumbling twenty-one-year-old stuck in an awkward adolescent phase.          Afterward we lay in bed.  I wanted to know what I meant to her.  Was I just convenient or did she care?  I couldn't find the words.  We held each other in silence until I had to leave.

*  *  * 

At home, Lance was sitting on the couch.  His dark hair was matted and greasy.  He needed a shower.  He had called in sick this morning and it didn’t look like he’d moved all day.        

"I called Jen," he said.         

"What’d she have to say?"        

"Said she was tired of waiting for me to come around.  Talked about getting my priorities straight.  I should grow up.  Take on responsibility."        

"Responsibility for what?  I thought she said she needed more space?"        

"Ha!”  Lance swatted at the air.  "That’s just what she told me.  Don’t you get it?  They say one  thing but mean something else.  She wants a ring.  She wants to tie a noose around my neck."        

I sat down beside him.  "What’ll you do?"        

I wanted him to tell me that Jen was history.  Instead he merely shrugged.  "I don’t know.  She said she would wait until I was ready.  Now this.”        

What could I say?  I couldn’t find the right words.  Lance was hurting.  Words tumbled and stuck in my throat.  I patted Lance on the shoulder.        

He gave me a tired smile.  "If you find a woman who tells you what she wants, keep her."                  

*   *   *

I pounded on Thia’s door a little after midnight.  Ann answered.  She seemed to expect me.   

“I need to talk to Thia.”     

She stood back and I rushed to Thia’s room where light spilled from under the door.  I rapped once and entered.  Thia looked up, setting her book on her lap.  The picture of the three of us was propped up on her nightstand, more hearts drawn on the bottom.  I picked it up and stared.  I couldn’t swallow past the lump in my throat.    

“Thia, what do you want?”            

"I don’t know," she whispered.  "Nothing.  Everything."     

After a moment Thia reached for me and drew me down.  She buried her face against my chest.  Warm tears wet my shirt.  I held her close.   

“It’s all right," I whispered.  "I’m here.”  She cried harder and held me tight.  “I know, Thia.  I know.”         

That was what she wanted all along.

 

 

Bonnie Mercure has had numerous short stories published in e-zines and print, including Challenging Destiny, Peridot Books, Nuketown, and Writers' Journal.  Her supernatural suspense novel, The Curse of the Three-Headed Circus, is now available at Double Dragon Publishing. (http://double-dragon-ebooks.com/)  She also has a fantasy novel, The Jacob Theory, to be released by Novel Books, Inc, (http://www.novelbooksinc.com/) in May 2002. 

Visit Bonnie's website at: http://www.dowse.com/authors/BonnieMercure/