She is dressed in a white mesh football jersey which reads J. Casey 31 across her back. She’s wearing his jockstrap and there are small fresh bite marks just below the thick left elastic angle and just above a cigarette-burn shaped birthmark. Her legs are lithe, bronze and cast nice ligament shadows into the caves of her knees which are bent in slightly, supporting her as she scours through his ancient refrigerator. When she turns he reads Trinity U in bold gold metallic script across her chest. And, she’s pretty.
Not Harper’s or Bazaar pretty, she has the timeless face that just doesn’t capture on film. He knows things about this face because he has one quite like it–hers getting her things he must work harder for: easy access to disco’s, better shifts on jobs, out of petty trouble–in the real world… the list goes on. The most interesting thing, though, about this face which peers at him through wild, wavey, side-angled, dark-chocolate fringe, is that he doesn’t recognize her from Adam (or Eve for that matter). What’s more, he doesn’t remember how she got here, nor recall what put him in this current state he’s found himself in: immobile… in his bed… gaping at a 5 foot 4 goblin–with a great pair, eating him out of house and home.
Walking towards him, the closer she comes, the tighter he grips the sheets up to his chin. He feels electric twitches pulse through his sciatic nerves. Just above that, by roughly 7 inches, he feels the elastic pressure gathering his undershorts to his abdominal cavity which means that they’re both semi-dressed, and he has nothing to reference what might be about to happen. In spite of his nerve–his body and its shroud appear as though still, as he watches her lift each knee upon his bedsheets, pressing each one into his bed, just beside and angling in toward his right calf.
From the head of his bed he sees her jockstrap fits as though tailor-made for her body–lacking any sort of bulge as it hugs. And, as he jerks his wading eyes up to her smoking ones: hazy framed snapshots from the night prior begin swimming for bites of his snap-crackling memory cells.
“Is Justin your boyfriend?” Zach pictures the Trinity team pulverizing him: body and skull, over this conquest. She tilts her head slightly to her left. Zach pleads with his mind to focus. She’s upright, kneeling before him, and his thoughts can only counter-point their blurred development with the crystal clear focus his mind has on the bite-mark. He by-passes all standard salutations, choosing “Did I hurt you?” To partner his first inquiry, and start this new day.
She sits up higher and silently reaches for the bottom right corner of her jersey and starts pulling it up…
I always suspected an ancient, toothless shark to be my spirit animal. Zach thinks. His eyes trace her movement up her right arm to a ring of fresh pink bruising lining her collar.
Zach’s knuckles drain senselessly white…
To be continued.
