The second time is slower, lazy even. This time they’re both full, wine splashing on his shirt because they’re drunk on each other, unstable. He doesn’t taste the pasta at all, only watches her as she eats it, as she exclaims over it, Did you make this? Yes, yes I made it, Masso says Barilla is unacceptable, Well, good, all the better for me. Her blouse is unbuttoned, he can see her bra and the redness at her breasts where his lips and probably the stubble at his jaw have rudely marred her skin. He thinks, desperately, I should shave. She catches him looking and laughs, leans forward, points to the wine on his shirt and says, You’re a mess. He thinks of the way her legs wrap around his hips. Yes, he is a mess. Put it in the wash before it stains, she says, and while he would happily sacrifice a t-shirt for evidence that any of this took place he says okay, okay fine, removes his shirt and places it in the washing machine （in-unit laundry, the most blessed of blessings） to be washed, only she’s lingering in the hallway, looking at him. He was inside her, she liked his food, she came here for him. It washes over him in a wave, dawning, and it numbs him first before setting him alight; before he illuminates with it, resurrected. She wanders over to him and leans in, inspecting his handiwork, and closes the lid of the washing machine. He steps behind her as she pretends to scrutinize the dials. He rests his hand on her hips and she shivers.
This time, it will all be for her.
He places her hands flat on the washing machine as it starts to vibrate with effort, buzzing beneath her palms. From where he stands, lips on the nape of her neck, the whole thing quakes with waiting. This time, it’s Barolo and her on his palette. This time he takes off her clothes slowly, strips her petals gently, waits until her knuckles go white on the machine and then threads his tongue between her lips, hands curled around her thighs. He will forget the pasta, he’ll forget the color of the label, but he’ll remember the wine. He will think of it every time he sees her bare legs, every time he finds himself at her back. Clean laundry, red wine, and her, from the first time he finds the little discolored freckle on the back of her knee and every time after, marking it like the north star. This time, she finishes with a gasp. It grits through her teeth and she leans back to tell him, raggedly, I knew you would feel like this. I knew I would feel you everywhere, in my whole body, I knew it. She’s rocking against him slowly and whispering I knew it, I knew it, I knew it, in his ear until she sighs again, his hands tight on her hips.
The third time is shaky, full of little aftershocks that climb up his spine and descend again, free-falling towards a collision. They’re on the roof, it’s freezing, he tries to take her back downstairs to his apartment where it’s warm but she says No, no, let’s stay up here, I feel alive like this, like I could die like this. He doesn’t tell her how often he has the same thought but thinks that maybe she can see it, because somehow her palms find his cheeks. She’s wearing his clothes, wrapped under a blanket with him when her hands wander, when they express their disinterest in being empty, when they fill themselves with him. He chokes out, I’m not a teenager anymore, she laughs, Aren’t you?, and yes, she’s right, he’s hard again, god damn it. There are rules about this, somewhere. Rules of physicality, rules of basic human exertion, rules about not fucking on the damn roof but she is adamant and he’s still licking the taste of her from his lips. He has the unlit joint between his teeth, pretending he’s capable of refusing. He isn’t. She can see as much. She lowers her head to call his bluff and the joint falls from his mouth somewhere into the cracks in the concrete below, into the fissures of his constitution. He gives up, twists around, and both of them are shaking with cold and probably adrenaline and this is what he will remember, the way the muscle in his arms and in her legs are shaking while he’s holding himself up; while she consumes him.
Consumption, that’s what this is. He is being willingly eaten alive. He says Goodnight and she smiles, says See you in the morning, she tangles her legs with his. She anchors him, then pulls away and orbits him. He moves, she moves. In sleep, she’s different. Her hair is soft and smooth, and he doesn’t touch it for fear of waking her, but he wants to. In sleep, she looks like she’s floating, like he and she are somewhere underwater, both holding their respective breaths. She wakes around four and seems disoriented—How did we get here, down here in this ocean?—and then finds him and comforts herself aloud with, “Oh, good.” The fourth time he touches her, it’s because of that: “Oh, good.” What was she thinking, saying that? Was she thinking what he hopes—”Oh, good, it’s still you, I didn’t dream it”—or is she thinking something else? “Oh, good, you didn’t leave.” “Oh, good, I still feel the same as I did last night.” “Oh, good, today is Sunday, I’ve woken up and didn’t die in my sleep,” what is it? He asks her silently while he fucks her, begs it with his lips pressed to hers. He hasn’t even begun to think about her kiss, about the way it feels to kiss her, which is normally step one but with her is somewhere beyond intimacy. Being the thing on her tongue means something more to her, he can tell it does. It has required more permission to kiss her lips, to share her breath, than to slide inside her pussy, to occupy her cunt.