Space: A Study in Heat and Dead Ends
By Sara Sage
She’s been on the back deck lulling listlessly for ten minutes before I finally figure out that she has arrived. When I open the moss green door, she’s sitting, leaning backwards, staring blankly at her phone, donned in black denim jeans with a red snake running up the calf. I reach out to her, help her up, and toss her arm around my shoulder. Come in. Let’s get you in bed. And I do—I mutely watch her unlace and remove her Docs, lay her bag of medication at my bedside, and nestle under my lilac comforter. I turn the lights off for her so the room is empty and sable, click on the ruby red space heater with fake flames that she convinced me to smuggle from my roommates, motherly wrap her in three heavy blankets. We don’t kiss, but I manage to get close enough that I can smell a brown liquor on her breath. I thought she had stopped drinking after our first date.
I pace myself up the slick wooden stairs to the kitchen, crafting her a cup of honey lavender tea. I don’t have a tea kettle, so I use the microwave. She’s scoffed at this before. Leaning against the refurbished counter, I commemorate last night’s “date:'' spending forty dollars on two Lyfts to Artechouse only for her to flake on me afterwards to meet someone else. I’m gonna meet up with a friend. Her words. I let her go. Today, we were supposed to meet up again, but settled into a petty argument about when and where until she decided not to meet at all. Later, I received a text: You ok. If you’ll still have me. I would like to come over. I haven’t been feeling great. My cravings are so bad I’m like sweating through clothes and more clothes. I’m wondering how she even got here with the state she’s in. I gather it's either a relapse, drinking, faux withdrawal, or a severe case of disassociation via trauma. I don’t care, though, I just want her near me. I’m mirthful, to say the least, to simply care for her.
She doesn’t drink the tea. Instead, she spends an hour resting in the reticence. I converge onto the mattress with her, sprawl my arms out wide to keep her in my chest while she sniffles. The demons suddenly awake in her and she’s speaking softly and hastily, so much so I have to listen meticulously or I’ll miss the story, but what she tells me is haunting: she whispers about a hate crime committed on her body, her ex-girlfriend standing still, a crowd of people gawking and refusing to take action, a police car driving away, a lip that needed sewing, a bite that never gets fixed, a jaw that’s wired shut. Next, tears. Then, I don’t know why I told you that. I don’t even know you. I tell her she does, obviously, offer my condolences and reassure it was the right choice. Somewhere, she surmises I’m worth trusting, but I don’t push.
For the remainder of the night, she oscillates between desire and repulsion. I don’t hold her accountable in this state. I don’t punish her for fear. When she’s awake and languid, fidgety in the bed, I sneak her upstairs to the living room where there’s a television. We spend a few hours alternating between Marriage or Mortgage and Real Housewives. We hold hands, twiddling fingers together. We sneak few but passionate, moony kisses. It feels sanguine, for the moment.
We escape back into bed around five a.m. for a South Korean zombie movie we’ve both seen, and for a while she rests her head on my shoulder, pressing her body against my tense back. I’m cataloging the peace I feel when she jolts up and careens herself in front of the heater, an unarticulated ball of pain. She starts lacing up her shoes when I ask what she’s doing. I’m gonna call a car./ Why?/ I just don’t want to be here anymore. Silence so loud my tinnitus is deafening. Did I do something?/ No. I just want to leave.
And so she does, disappearing into the foggy morning, hopping down from the stairless deck and to a home whose location she hasn’t disclosed, gone as quickly as she decided she needed me. I am a hollow carcass, stiff as a rock.
Sara Sage is a twenty-something, experienced writer who has been composing literature since she could hold a crayon. She graduated from Hollins University in 2018 with a Bachelor's in English and subsequently has been published twenty times in literary journals across the country. She believes in the power of elevating our stories through sharing the most tragic parts of ourselves.