The last time that Patience saw Owl, only two hours remained before his mind would be spilled all over his mother’s carpet.
Stuck in the thin membrane between consciousness and unconsciousness, Patience stared blearily into his sleeping face, wishing for it to disappear.
For a moment, she admired how boyish he looked as he took in teaspoons of awareness. He stared back at her through half lidded, reddened eyes, his lips parted in a yawn that blew a swell of dense breath into her face. In the next, the placidity of the picture was disrupted as he reached for her, the heat of his hands sinking into her waist as he pulled her against him. She tried to force herself to melt into him. To curve herself into the shell of his body, maybe mumble out a half-hearted good morning into the nape of his neck. Instead, she scooted away until she was all but hanging off the edge of her own bed, out of reach even for his long arms. She felt she’d done enough in sleeping next to him to begin with.
Some time ago, the curtain-less blinds covering the one window in the room had been dark. Over a third of the slates were broken and sagged in on themselves, allowing more translucent daylight to seep through and illuminate the negative spaces and cracks, growing in intensity until it appeared that they were almost glowing.
Owl’s perfume of mint and tobacco hung in the stagnant air of her bedroom as he freed himself of her sheets. She squeezed her eyes shut until she saw stars, but she could still hear him scuttling about like a roach. Absurdly loud, ruining the stillness of her morning. Her ears tracked him as he went about the room, his feet tacky against the hardwood floor. She flinched at the hollow clink his belt made when he lifted his jeans from the heap he’d left them in the night before. He’d hardly tighten it at all, appearing tidy for as long as ten seconds before the jeans began to droop and the faded band of his boxers once again became visible.
She sat up just in time to see him shove a naked foot into one of his sneakers. She tried not to think about it, but the image of his bare feet sweating within the confines of the shoe slithered into her mind. If he stayed long enough to find his way out of them again, the smell, a mixture of corn chips and soured skin would become smog in her room with only the narrow window as an escape. Her scalp tightened, prickled at the prospect. Looking back, she was amazed at how sure she was then that that would be the worst thing possible.
“Daddy gon’ be up soon, you got to hurry up if you want to go through the front door.” She lied. Her father had already left for work.
Owl shook his head but didn’t look at her. He dug into his pockets, his eyes centered on a patch of space on the wall. When he withdrew his hands, he was already unwrapping a stick of gum. “Damn, is that really how you gon’ say ‘good morning’ to me?”
She rolled her eyes and hoped that he would actually brush his teeth when he got home.
Around them, a cacophony of creaking, aches and groans punctured the morning as the house woke up right alongside them. Elsewhere, she felt that her mother was already awake; she imagined the walls whispering Owl’s presence to her, cataloging each time they touched. When he tried to kiss her, she turned her head so abruptly that the world momentarily tilted on its axis. It was easy to ignore the way his lips curved downwards until he fixed his face into something that she could stand to look at.
“Back on that bullshit already and we just got up. You ain’t even gon’ walk me to the door?” The scarcely concealed ache in his voice was sandpaper against her skin, fraying her already threadbare nerves.
“Why? You know where it is.” She said, but she was covering herself with her hands. Her feet touched the cold floor and her blanket fell away as she folded over, reaching for the puddles of clothing she’d next to the bed. Her mother would have scoffed at this, she knew; he’d already seen everything underneath. In the clean daylight, it was something that she could deny. There was something intentional in allowing him to view her without the cover of darkness to protect her bare flesh, the same thing that made her feel as if she needed to crawl out of it.
Patience was distrustful of the silence that greeted her in the hallway. Her lower lip caught between her teeth as she listened for movement. She wondered if her brother, squirreled away somewhere in the basement, could hear the moaning of the wood beneath their weight. She felt only a faint sting as her teeth latched onto the dead chips of skin layering her lip, peeling them away in one go like the rind of an orange. Her mother hated the habit, said that it darkened her lips. As Patience tucked her lip into her mouth to suck away the blood that seeped between the cracks of the fresh wound, she could feel the ghost of her mother’s fingers pressing into her cheeks, pushing until her jaws popped open like the mouth of a clam.
Her hands mechanically undid the locks of the front door, her mind already a marshy thicket. It already felt as if she was already behind on the day.
First, the chain. It had long oxidized into a crusty, mustard brown. Then the heavy brass deadbolt, the one she had to lift up and lean against to lock properly. Lastly, the doorknob with the little teat on it that Patience was almost sure was just for show.
Owl’s face was in hers. Tilting her head upwards, she tried to ignore how the stench of stale cigarettes seemed to ooze from his pores, instead opting to revel in the sweet taste of Spearmint gum on his lips. When he pulled away, she could taste the remnants of Crown Royal on her tongue. At the time, she’d felt that the kiss had lasted too long. He stepped back, and she hoped the relief on her face wasn’t visible.
The hinges groaned almost obscenely as she wrapped her fingers around the bars and tugged it back into place as quickly as she could, taking care to cushion the screen door with the flat of her palm before it banged back into place. Owl idled on the porch for only a moment before he took the concrete stairs two at a time. The door was closed long before his shoes touched the sidewalk, before Patience could see him fish a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, and before she could think too hard about how soon it was that she would have to see him again.
It was such a small, presumptuous thing to think that she would have the opportunity to do so.