Tomorrow

"Through every forest, above the trees, within my stomach, scraped off my knees, I drink the honey inside your hive. You are the reason I stay alive."

I've had a busier day than expected, but I did manage to find the time to hammer out these two stories. This is the 'erotic' short, but I'm not sure you could really classify it as such. It does have an erotic element, but it's predominantly a straight story of a brief encounter. This is my favourite of the two, if only because the characters have more depth to them and I haven't tried to go anywhere clever with it. That's usually my undoing. Keep in mind that both of these stories are first drafts. I've edited for spelling and sense, but that's all.

I happened to be looking at the dark-haired girl when she got hit, and I knew it had to have hurt. She was beside me in the crowd waiting to pick up coats and bags from the cloakroom, the pair of us shuffling slowly forward, sweating in the oppressive atmosphere. Large numbers of people in enclosed spaces have never been my thing, and I was distracting myself from claustrophobia by watching the girl. She was about a head shorter than me, slim and pale and fragile in a tight-fitting black T-shirt with an Atari Teenage Riot logo on the front, skate pants hanging loosely on her hips. It was just as I was leaning forward to get a better look at her face that the can came flying out of the shadows behind us.

I don’t think anybody else saw it, though it was quickly obvious that something had happened. A male voice shouted “Fucking hurry up,” and then a crushed beer can coloured Heineken green connected with the girl’s skull. She made no sound, but immediately bent forward, her hand coming up to clutch at a place somewhere just behind her ear. I put a hand on her shoulder, to reassure or comfort or something, and turned to see the wanker who’d thrown it glaring at me. He was about my height, clad all in denim, sporting a haircut and shades that were pure Liam Gallagher circa 1997.

“Watch what you’re fucking doing,” I said. I didn’t shout. I didn’t need to. The area around the cloakroom was suddenly very quiet.

He smiled and then threw something else, a coin maybe. I heard it hit the wall behind me.

“Make me, cunt,” he said.

And I was going to, I really was. I’m not usually one for fighting, but sometimes you meet people who really do deserve to get their heads kicked in. For the good of us all, I mean.

“Don’t. It’s not worth it.” The girl standing upright, showing she was okay.

“Sorry, love. Wasn’t aiming at you. Your boyfriend’s a wanker, though,” Liam said, and actually earned a few laughs.

“You’re the one on your own, mate,” she fired back, and gave him a wonderfully slow and elaborate hand gesture to indicate what she believed he did on his own. The crowd reacted with yet more laughter, this time trailing away into the murmur of conversation.

The girl and I realised simultaneously that we were at the front of the queue, and we turned with tickets in hand to reclaim our coats.

“Thanks,” she said, and offered a shy smile that was somewhat at odds with her previous hand movement.

“Anytime. Didn’t look like you needed my help, though.”

The smile broadened. “Thanks all the same,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said, offering a grin of my own. “For thirty seconds or so, I was your boyfriend.”

On which throwaway remark we were ushered towards the stairs by bouncers that had been conveniently absent for the can-throwing festivities. I glanced back and saw that Liam was close behind. It was hard to tell if he was looking at me, but his body language was threatening and the smile was gone.

“Shit,” I murmured, but there was no-one to hear. The girl had gone on ahead.

I hit the pavement and started walking quickly, hoping to distance myself from what was surely going to be a confrontation. No such luck. I heard his footsteps running up behind me and braced myself just before he shoved me in the back. It was enough to keep me from falling, but when I turned, he shoved his chest hard against mine, lager-breath washing over my face.

“Think you’re fucking funny, do ya? Think you’re a comedian? Where’s your bird now? Left you, did she? It’s ‘cause you’re a fucking wanker, mate.”

I got my hands between us and shoved him away, dimly aware of my temper rising. My heart was beating fast and my stomach felt shrunken and empty. I was shaking.

“Leave it,” I said. “I’m not interested.”

Liam stepped forward and shoved me again. This time I stepped back off the kerb and almost fell again, half-turning and placing one hand awkwardly on the tarmac to halt my stumble. I immediately threw myself at him harder, sending him into a passing group of lads who pinballed him right back at me. We collided, and he bounced awkwardly off me and fell to the ground. I took a couple of steps backward to compensate for the impact, then…

Then something hit me so hard that I lost all sense of reality. Suddenly I was in uncontrollable motion, lights kaleidoscoping around me as my body made repeated contact with some unforgiving surface. My back, my ribs, my arms, my legs. Then a moment of pure silence before I crashed to the ground, the back of my head bouncing so violently off the road that the world turned briefly grey. Nauseating colours danced across my vision.

“Oh my God!”

“You fucking idiot!”

“Is he okay?”

Stunned, winded, numb. Strange faces looking down at me. This odd perspective making the nausea worse, making me want to throw up.

“I didn’t see him. What was he doing in the road, anyway? Fucking idiot.”

“Shut up. Can’t you see he’s hurt? Somebody call a fucking ambulance.”

“I’m alright,” I managed. Then a little louder, “I’m okay.”

“Are you sure?” A girl’s voice. The girl’s voice.

“No.”

I pushed myself up into a sitting position. Hands grabbed me beneath the armpits and by the collar of my coat, helping me to my feet. The world span crazily and then focussed on the face of a middle-aged man.

“Fucking idiot,” he said, with the air of a man who knows one when he sees one.

I punched him as hard as I could, my fist making a perfect contact with the centre of that smug face, splitting skin and crunching against bone. He dropped immediately, and in the silence that followed, I could hear him moaning.

“Top banana,” someone said, in an awe-struck stage-whisper.

More laughter.

“Come on.” The girl’s voice again.

I let my arm be taken, let myself be led back to the pavement and away up the street. I could hear sirens in the distance.

“Nice work, slugger,” she said.

“What happened? Where are we going?”

“You got into a fight. Then you got hit by a car. Then you decked a cab driver.”

“Shit.”

“You’re doing pretty well so far.”

“I couldn’t even tell you my name right now.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to hospital?”

“No. I’m okay. I just need a few minutes.”

“I live just around the corner. You can get a glass of water or whatever.”

And somehow, despite all that had just had just happened, something in me smiled.

I’ve no idea where she took me. I was too busy trying to will the numbness in my body to hold on just a little bit longer. I could feel it fading, giving way before the crowd of individual agonies my body had become. By the time she was helping me up a flight of stairs in a block of flats somewhere, I was breathless and sweating. Every sudden movement brought a stab of pain from somewhere, and every time I gasped she would pause and I could feel her looking at me. Finally, she pushed me back against a wall and I heard the jangle of keys.

“You’re a mess. I’m gonna call an ambulance,” she said. “Come on.”

She led me into her flat. Hunched over as I was, all I saw of it was a stained and rather threadbare carpet. Through another doorway, and she let me fall into the cool softness of a bed.

“I’ll be back,” she said.

“Don’t call an ambulance.”

“Look at yourself.”

“Nothing’s broken,” I said, though I wasn’t entirely sure.

“Yeah, and where would you be now if I hadn’t come along?”

“I wouldn’t have been in this situation if you hadn’t come along.”

I managed to wriggle onto my back just as she sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. Her face was nothing like I’d expected. The first thing that hit you were the eyes. They were blue and almost comically large, like a character from one of those Japanese cartoons, and they flanked a slightly too-long nose that was forgiven by a wide and full-lipped mouth. She was pretty, but not remarkably so.

“And what the fuck are you staring at?” she said, smiling.

“I was trying to get a look at your face when that prick threw the can,” I said. “It took me this long.”

“Two fights and a car accident. I didn’t think I was that nice looking.”

“You’re not,” I said, and she laughed.

“You’re no oil painting yourself. Especially not now. Where does it hurt?”

“Everywhere.”

“The most.”

“My ribs. And my fist. Where I hit that guy. He was the one who hit me?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s a relief. What happened to Liam?”

“Liam?”

“The wanker.”

“I didn’t see. I think he legged it. Show me.”

She scooted up the bed and pointed to my T-shirt, which was damp with sweat and maybe blood. Too tired and weak to take it off, I pulled it up as far as I could.

“No bruising yet. You look okay.”

“You have first aid training?”

“No. I just don’t get many guys up in my room. What’s your name, by the way?”

“Trent.”

“As in Reznor?”

“As in Stoke-On. I was conceived on a boat.”

“Oh, the romance.”

“How about you?”

“I don’t know where I was conceived, and I don’t want to know.”

“Your name, I meant.”

“Scarlet.”

“That’s…unusual.”

“Nickname. I used to dye my hair red. The name stuck. I like it.”

“I like it.”

“Then all is well. Tell you what, I’ll go and get you a couple of Nurofen and then maybe you should try and get some sleep or something. If you still can’t move in the morning, I’ll drive you to a hospital.”

“I’m okay.”

“So you keep saying.”

Scarlet left the room and came back a couple of minutes later with a glass of water and a pack of Nurofen. Aware that the level of feeling in my body still hadn’t fully returned and that further pain was a possibility, I took four.

“An overdose? You’re really going for it, Trent.”

“Yeah…”

Scarlet held my eyes for a few moments, then took the glass from my hand.

“Get some sleep,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

I managed to wriggle out of my coat and my T-shirt, but further undressing seemed too difficult a proposition. I was as comfortable as I was going to get on my back, so I stayed where I was and closed my eyes.

I don’t know how long I slept for. Maybe an hour, maybe two. I woke up in darkness, and it had already been early morning when I’d left the club. The painkillers were still working, though. I could tell that much. Apart from the stiffness, swinging my legs off the bed and sitting up was a relatively easy task. Still, I was careful. I kept my hands on the bed and let my legs take my weight a little at a time. I was still trembling, but the pain had receded.

I wasn’t creeping. It was dark and quiet and I was in a stranger’s home. It seemed only natural to walk slowly and carefully to the door, then to pull it gently open. If Scarlet was sleeping in the next room, I didn’t want to wake her.

The next room was the living room, and Scarlet wasn’t sleeping. She was lying on the couch, her naked skin painted in shades of light. The curtains were as threadbare as the carpet, and both the moon and the streetlights shone easily through the frayed material. Her breathing was steep and ragged, loud in the stillness and silence of the room. I could see the way her body was tensed, the way her arm was resting on her belly. All else was speculation, but it was clear what she was doing.

The feeling was not dissimilar to the way I felt when I was sure Liam and I were going to fight. The same empty fear, the same sudden and stark choice. Stay or leave.

Scarlet whispered a moan, light and airy and beautiful. She shifted position slightly and that queer mixture of light briefly touched the hand that moved between her thighs.

I swallowed and concentrated on silencing my own breathing. I could see her eyes were closed. I took a few steps towards her, mindful of the light and positioning myself outside of its influence. Even if she had opened her eyes, she probably wouldn’t have seen me.

What I thought before, about Scarlet being unremarkable, seemed ludicrous now. Caught in intimacy like this, breathing and sweating and taking pleasure in her own body, unclothed without shame or insecurity in this patchwork of light and shadow, she was beautiful.

My own arousal seemed to increase in concert with hers. As her hushed sighs became more frequent and desperate, as her body tensed and relaxed ever more rapidly, as the pale skin at her hairline and between her breasts began to glisten with sweat, I felt myself slip into a state I’d never reached without physical contact. In the back of my mind, I recalled a magazine article I’d once read about a man who could will himself to climax. At that moment, it didn’t seem like such a far-fetched idea.

All at once Scarlet’s body seemed to seize up. She caught her breath and held it. Her free hand clutched at the sofa beneath her while one foot pushed repeatedly forward, as though seeking purchase. Then her head went back and she sighed, all of her strength seemingly exhaled with that one breath so that she lay boneless and spent, her chest heaving as her lungs struggled to catch that lost oxygen.

Then she said, “Feeling better?”

I froze.

“Are you feeling better?” she repeated, enunciating each syllable as though she was speaking to a five year old.

“Y-yes. Better. Yes.”

“Anything you wanted?”

I swallowed. “No. I was just…I woke up. I was confused. Wondered where you were. I’m gonna…get back to bed now.”

“Want to go to hospital in the morning?”

“No. No, I don’t. Really, I’m okay.”

“Want to take me out for breakfast?”

“What? Yeah. Why not?”

“Okay then. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Absolutely.”

I turned and shuffled back towards the bedroom, my mind reeling.

“Scarlet?” I said, pausing in the doorway.

“Uh-huh?”

“It was… It was worth it.”

She laughed, soft and delicate like her sighs. “Tomorrow,” she said. “When everything’s not going at a million miles an hour.”

“Tomorrow,” I said, and closed the door.