His Boots Still by the Door

The ceiling fan is going. It has been going since before the argument, before midnight, before I told him what I told him and meant it. It is still going now at five in the morning, the same slow pull of blades through the same thick air, and his boots are still by the door where he left them before everything went wrong. He is on the couch. The boots are here. I am looking at them from the bed like they are evidence of something I have not yet decided how to file.

I am annoyed at myself before I have done anything.

The cotton tee I sleep in has ridden up while I was not sleeping. It sits at my hip now, the worn-soft hem against my skin, and the sheet beneath me holds the heat I have been generating for the last hour of lying still and being certain I am fine. I am not fine. I know this the way you know a weather change — not from looking out but from something in the joints, something that registers before the mind catches up.

The drawer is on my side of the bed. It has always been on my side of the bed. This is not about him.

I tell myself that.

My right hand is on my sternum, which is a thing I do when I am trying to convince myself of something. My left hand is flat on the mattress beside me, fingers open, doing nothing. The fan pulls. The air moves over my bare thighs and I feel the specific temperature of it — not cool, not warm, just the difference between still air and moving air, and that difference is enough to make me aware of every inch of skin below the hem.

I am not going to do this.

The boots are still by the door.

I exhale — longer than I meant to, the air leaving in a slow, reluctant ribbon that folds into the dark. It comes out with something in it I did not put there consciously. The recognition is aggravating. My body has been conducting its own argument this whole time and it did not consult me and it is not interested in what I decided at midnight.

My left hand moves to my thigh. Just rests there. The heel of my palm against the outside of my leg, the cotton tee's hem a centimeter from my fingers. I am not doing anything. I am just aware of the warmth trapped between my own thighs, the slight weight of my hand, the way my knees are still together and the fan is still going and his boots have not moved from the door.

The drawer is right there.

I breathe in. My stomach pulls tight before I have decided anything, a small contraction just below my navel, involuntary, already answering something I haven't asked yet.

I am so annoyed at myself.

My hand shifts one inch up the inside of my thigh and I let my knees fall — just slightly, just enough — apart.