Flash Fiction Friday #33

So I'm late. So what. So I was wallowing this weekend. I'm allow a good wallow now and then as long as I still appear on the other side with enough left to write, right? Anyway, thought I would go back to one of my previous expeditions and continue with those characters. Turned out quite brooding and melancholy, just like my previous expedition but I like it. I call it Ex-Hag Part II. To learn more about this crazy Flash Fiction game, visit my old friend JJ.

“Before you assume that I’m hitting on you,” he said while swirling his skewered olive, “I should just let you know that I’m gay.”

“Ah yes,” I said. “And I am so very happy too.” My drink clinked with ice cubes and a translucent brown that glowed as warm in the light as in my stomach. I later wondered how he justified the $8 martini I saw him drinking that night, what, with his salary, his part-time free-lance lifestyle. Later still, I wondered how, over the course of time, so much of it came, willingly, smoothly, like love, from my pocket.

“Witty, darling and wonderful.” He held the drink to his lips with both hands, wrists tilted in and eyes rimming the glass. He thought the look was very Scarlet, but every Scarlet only saw the Rhett underneath. A Rhett in a tight black t-shirt with flair about handling an olive. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when it turned out that he didn’t give a damn. Sorry, probably pulling the metaphor too far.

He smelled of Aqua Velva when he didn’t have the bitter, smoky aroma of coffee grounds and, well, barista bitterness. And he reached over and held my hand. A light touch with as light an intention, I suppose, but I wasn’t the first girl to fall in love with him. He took me out for eggs and hash browns. The kind that crusted on the top, leaving a grainy, white bird’s nest of pseudo-potatoes under the covers. With cheese. And a side of ranch.

“You do not need to worry about your hips. You’re a Rita Hayworth, curvy girlie,” he said. I flicked my hair like a feather boa.

In a yellow-lit diner off of Colfax with vinyl seats that I stuck to. Orange seats kissing white thighs with the late night shush of traffic slinking its way off down a one way street. It was always the late nights, always the hip weekly local paper’s events, listed in the back columns by day of the week. Open mic nights. Art shows with free box wine. Movie festivals. Mother and daughter Girl Scout fashion shows. And raves.

Yes, I miss the raves. The psychedelic orgy of midriffs and Vic’s vap-o-rub and talk that touched each other’s artificially-heightened skins, raising each individual hair, feeling those goose bumps cut through the solid air with every move.

I don’t know. I think maybe I am boring now. Always was. I got a glance at the back room, in-crowd, that knew all the right unknown things and could tell you what 70’s and 80’s TV shows were campy/good or campy/bad. But like the X, I guess, some things only go skin deep. The words I could remember speaking at those parties, I could never remember the words themselves. But their evaporation felt nice at the time.

But the childish pleasure of that love, which could be considered selfless of him, really, of that coolness. I don’t know if it is still there. Like him grabbing my hand, having known me three minutes. I don’t think I can still feel those slim fingers between my own. But I often compare other hands in mine with that warmth. Frankly, I try not to give a damn anymore.