Broken Hopes Sounds like Bass Drum - Part Four

When I get out of the bathroom, a few minutes after I enter it, I'm wearing what I think is Seth's pajamas.

The tights were so wet that I had to squeeze them over and over, while the hair, now tied in the worst tail I could do, drenched the entire top of the sweater, forcing me to take it off so as not to risk any ailment and, at that point, all I found to cover the nudities were an overly ruined Rammstein shirt and fleece pants. So I succumbed to shoplifting, along with the desire to feel his scent anchored to the skin.

With the cell phone in my hand, where I repeatedly checked if Charlie had answered me, I advance through the short corridor that connects me to the living room and, once in the center of the room, I start looking around in a motion of total confusion.

The radio is on and a piece of Rise Against passes, but I struggle to give it a title, even if I vaguely remember some verse, yet there seems to be no other trace of the landlord. His coat is badly placed on the shelf that divides, in a minimal part, the space in which I am from the kitchen and an abat-jour illuminates the room well and better, creating atmosphere. There is a quiet calm, a firmness that makes me feel out of place. It's all motionless here, but if I tried to take a few steps I could better see the rain beating on the windows, or the cars that move beyond the glass into the city. Mine is only an impression, the alienating feeling of a person who has never really stopped to observe things, yet now it makes me wonder: how right is it that I am here? For years, these walls have been the secret scenario of dozens of dreams that I have never given voice to, but rather I have jealously preserved and relived in moments of solitude, while now they have become custodians of my palpitations and those first wet kisses, passionate, unknown - but I am not the first and probably not the last, of which they will retain a memory.

I bite my lip, looking down on my bare feet.

Maybe some things I shouldn't dig up, they make me feel a poor fool, or it would be better if I kept them constantly in mind, so as not to suffer too much when my heart will be torn to pieces.

Because Seth will realize that he has made a misstep, I'm sure.

And as recalled by those dark thoughts, discordant with the good humor that I have kept all evening, he re-emerges from beyond the door of his room, armed with a new look much more homemade. I think I have already said how much Morgenstern's features and charm are a deadly union for most of the female specimens, yet I still find myself amazed. There are gestures, phrases, looks or expressions that enhance the beauty of him more, truly transforming him into some improbable novel's beauty; sometimes, however, I also find myself thinking that my eyes are the only one to see him so ethereal and unattainable. His hair, previously fixed with gel, is now a dark and short mop that frames his face, while the beautiful clothes he was wearing have been replaced by sweatpants and a night-colored shirt.

He stares at me in confusion and in return I smile.

«That's my pajamas» he reminds me, showing that I guessed correctly the use of the clothes I wear. «Why did you wear it?» he asks after a few moments, furrowing his eyebrows and smiling, almost as if he is amused by what he sees - and I doubt it could be otherwise. Not being as tall as Morgenstern, or any man in my life, let the pants curl over and over again around my ankles, just as the shirt threatens to turn into a dressing gown. Surely in his eyes I will look like a child who stole mom and dad's clothes for fun, not a big, vaccinated girl.

«I'll have to cover myself with something, won't I?» I ask him while awkwardly letting myself fall and sink on the sofa, completely ignoring the fact that I must at least ask if it annoys him or not; after all, he never told me I could use his things.

On the table in front of me stands a semi-empty packet of red Marlboros. It stares at me insistently and after a few moments of silence, fragmented by the music and the fridge door that Seth opens to get something to drink, I give in to its call, abandoning the phone for a filter.

As in the past, in the evenings spent in the company of my best friends within the walls of this apartment, I appropriate what is not mine, but that the boys, partly because of their greater economic autonomy, partly out of pity, always allowed me to take.

Morgenstern sits in the armchair next to the sofa, as if to leave me all the space needed to lay down, he still smiles, amused by something that I don't understand at the moment, then he puts the beer bottles on the table and passes me the lighter immediately after blowing the caps, now resigned to the idea that I don't have one - also because normally it's him and Charlie who steal mine!

«I preferred you without.»

I start: «What?»

He leans a little, passes me the bottle and once again his grimace becomes Mephistophelic: «I-preferred-you-without» he repeats, articulating the words almost as if he is speaking to a person unable to understand.

His eyes run over the soft folds of the shirt I wear, indicating what he doesn't like - and in doing so he stretches out a bit more. He's getting so close that I start to feel his warm breath on my skin. It arrives light, lukewarm, but I could never confuse the chills that his presence brings me, I know for sure that it is his breath, that air that I try to steal every time we kiss to breathe him, to feel him mine for real.

I would like to speak, say something to defend myself, but the embarrassment is such that the language seems to stick to the palate - and it always does in the worst situations.

I should therefore have avoided tying my hair in anticipation of such a moment, so that I could use it as a shield between his eyes and my red cheeks, too bad I didn't and now I have no idea how to escape from his comments.

Every time I hear his voice uttering such affirmations, or questions, a mix of emotions is unleashed and I struggle to manage them, finding myself most of the time silent and looking for a way out. It's all so unreal, ambiguous. It's difficult to believe that there is no other reason behind everything we are doing and... I'm afraid, if I have to be honest.

Strange to say, I know, but it is really so.

Even though I wanted his attentions, his cravings and his hands pressed on me, together with those wonderful lips whose flavor and softness I finally know, I realize that I am not prepared for any of this. For him, more than anything else. Because regardless of the experiential difference that divides us, Seth is what has always been unattainable: and I believe that no one is ever really prepared for something that he thought could not truely hold between his fingers, but that in the end he finds there, one step away.

I bite my lips and feel my stomach tighten enough to make me want stop to drink, so I put the beer back on the table, do a few shots from the yellow filter and let myself sink back into the cushions, avoiding his gaze with extreme insistence - but he is staring at me, I feel his pupils sliding down my bare skin.

«Why do you withdraw?» now his question is less mischievous, even if it remains a velvety whisper that draws me to him like felt and, when I turn, I remain face to face with Seth. What separates us is little more than a span, but his water-green, sometimes blueish eyes totally capture me, narrowing the optical cone only and exclusively on him.

And if the situation weren't so embarrassing, I'd happily get lost in that ocean.

Swallowing, I try to pretend not to understand where his question wants to go, and yet it is impossible for me. Although we are here, together and openly interested in each other, he feels that something is holding me back from totally giving myself up: first because of my anxieties, then because of Jace and Liz, now Charlie and the way I treated him because of Morgenstern. Each of them made me falter, so every time Seth tried to go a little further, involuntarily, I stopped him - the only moments when I can't help feeling out of place are when the sensations take over. They are short moments, istant that are summed up in the first kisses, then I tremble and stop, because the fear that something may go wrong is a constant, it lies in wait like a jaguar waiting for its gazelle - and I fear the moment in which it will be slung over her.

I shake my head: «I don't» then smile nervously. I don't want to face this discussion now, I don't want to ruin such a pleasant evening.

«Is it for Jace?» He asks me more and more seriously, perhaps starting to lose the good humor that has been threatened several times during these hours.

In part, I would like to tell him, because I cannot deny that my brother's approval is vital to me, but not entirely, I would add later. There is something else that is holding me back, something that at the height of happiness reminds me of how badly I have done to see my dreams being mistreated.

Yes, mistreated.

Because when at his side there was any girl who was not the undersigned, even if before this "us", it was like jumping and falling. We were there, together until a moment before, yet when the beautiful damsel on duty appeared he became absent, distant. My heart burned in those moments just like peeled knees - and I, after all that's going on between us, I'm afraid of how bad it can be now to fall and hit them. Perhaps it would no longer be limited to a peeling, but would become a pain more like that of a fracture.

«N-no ... it's not f-»

But Seth doesn't seem willing to listen to me, something in him starts before I can find a justification, any answer to his doubts.

In a momentum he is on me, his lips pressing hard on mine. They hatch and grab, take every word that I have not been able to say in these seconds of waiting. He kisses me as if he waited for this moment for hours, days or months, yet we allowed ourselves many small tendernesses during dinner. He is ravenous, unstoppable as he steals my breath and takes space next to me.

One of his hands grabs my back, squeezes me against him, while with the other he takes the cigarette out of my fingers and, without even looking, aware of where the ashtray is and armed with certainly longer arms than mine, turns it off.

I seem to be hit by a tsunami, it overwhelms me, and when his fingertips slip under the shirt I can't even realize what he is doing - I am darkened by him, by his mouth, by everything that makes him up until, like a lightning bolt in clear skies, he whispers: «Then there is nothing that can take you away from me.»

Damn, he really looks like the male character everyone would fall in love with.

And I also give in, each kiss a little more.