Sometimes, Again

         “…come on thunder, come on thunder…”
         She leans on the wall, sitting sideways on her bed with her legs hanging. He leans on her bed, sitting sideways on the floor with her socks dangling close to his eyebrow. Her socks are bright red and spell SNOWBALLS across all ten toes; his eyebrow is taped together by a white strip. He broke it—his eyebrow—the other day.
         Her eyebrow remains smooth; her eyebrow had the good sense to scream and shirk from Frisbees. His did not.
         None the less, they both sit with their eyes closed. They are listening.
         Their faces are the most beautiful they ever will be, temporarily frozen between pimples that occasionally come back like drunken ex-lovers—unwanted and painful but oh so tempting to squeeze—and fine lines that will deepen into furrows.
         They will deepen. It’s only natural. God’s plan, as his ma says and brushes her fingertips in the Good Catholic gesture to seal it. They don’t believe in God, she against her wall and he against her bed, so they listen for Him anyway.
         They are listening, currently, to guitars that sound an awful lot like rain.
         They don’t move. They soak themselves.
         “Again,” he says, when the guitar dries up.
         “Again?” She is a single person; he is an album person. She thinks this can explain the world somehow, her patching together versus his whole forms. She’s not quite sure how yet, but she has time. They have time.
         “Again,” he says for the seventh time.
         “Press the button,” she says. “You’re closer.”
         “Please, Limbsey?”
         Her foot stretches and a big toe—the one labeled B on her sock—presses the button. She doesn’t really mind, doesn’t really mind his nickname for her abnormal length, because it doesn’t really matter. The rain comes again either way.
**
         A week later they are still listening—not still but in motion, across the Green everyone calls the White from November to April, through food lines, under Frisbees.
         “Again,” they both say now. “Again, will ya?”
         They listen to other things, to different things, to similar things. Mostly they listen in her room on her better stereo. Ironic, she always thinks when she sees his better record collection. She has no idea where he keeps the soft green and red and blue plaid button-ups he hangs on his shoulders over dark jeans and a belt buckle. He must’ve made them from album covers.
         “I can’t get that song out of my head,” he says.
         “Me either,” she says.
         “I don’t care, though,” he says. “It’s good.”
         “Yeah,” she says. “It is.”
         It is more than good, but to call it anything more makes them afraid it’ll get away. I have done my job, the song will tell them, and the rain will turn tinny, back into guitar plucks. So they leave it at good and keep listening.
**
         “Some ti-imes, when I look into your eyes, I can see your soul,” she sings, sometimes under her breath when she climbs the stairs to check her mail—so fucking many stairs just to find an empty box and swing the little door shut in disgust—sometimes with as much breath as her lungs can push out when her roommate isn’t there to hear.
         “Some ti-imes, when I look into your eyes, I can see your soul,” he hums while shoving dirty clothes into the basement washing machine—so many fucking steps just to make sure his drawers stay clean—while bored in class, while thinking and scratching his stalagmite hair.
         “Some ti-imes, when I look into your eyes, I can see your soul,” they both sing to themselves as they masturbate with a few walls and a couple hours between them.
         She touches herself after she takes a shower, when her skin blushes pink inside her thighs and her hair curls around her lips fresh and soft. Her finger wanders down and marvels at her hidden depths, stroking them out of her hiding place. She doesn’t picture anyone but concentrates on the winding sensation that tightens and tightens and tightens and tightens until it blooms under her finger and races through her veins.
         He takes himself in his palm right before his shower—messes stick and clump his belly fur if he doesn’t scrub them out in enough time. His thumb runs up and down his shaft, circles his head, gives a test squeeze before the rest of his fingers join in. They yank as his eyes close, his chin turns left sharply, and everything wipes blank but for the memory of his English professor’s breasts tumbling out of her sweater as he unties the fabric. This has never actually happened, but—oh, GOD—it just did.
**
         It’s Friday night, and neither one of them has any plans besides homework—Analyze Abraham Lincoln’s Upbringing As Pertains to Its Influence on His Presidential Administration, nine pages, and Analyze F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Childhood As It Influences His Literary Stylings, ten pages—for the next few days.
         “Some ti-imes, when I look into your eyes, I can see your soul,” pours out of two dorm rooms on the same floor, almost synchronized, until the RH tells them to shut the fuck up, nobody wants to hear their shitty whiny little pop song on fucking repeat for-fucking-ever when everybody at this whole damn university has a cunt-licking paper to finish in three hours.
         They both decide to take a study break.
         “Wanna walk?” he asks down the hall.
         “Yeah, sure,” she says.
         They both disappear, then pop back into view like prairie dogs in tufted stocking hats and parkas.
**
         “So there wasn’t really any Saint Christopher,” he says as they walk across concrete onto brick, across brick onto dirt. “I mean, even his myth got mythologized.”
         “Cool,” she says. He is full of information that will never be on any final exam or job application. It’s why she likes talking to him so much. “Is that how you got your name?”
         “Nah,” he says, rubbing his hands together before tucking them back into his armpits. “Mom’s dad’s favorite uncle. He got shot down in World War II. It’s his St. Chris’s medal, anyway.”
         “Oh.” She turns her gaze to the campus, spread out below them in a long straight lane like a bowling alley. Today everything is painted in layers of grey, cold grey that might crack under her touch. “Some ti-imes, when I look into your eyes, I swear I can see your soul…”
         She doesn’t realize she has released the words in smoke-puffs until he lifts half his lips in a smile and asks, “So what’s my soul look like?”
         “Did I sing out loud again?”
         “Yeah. Kinda nice, in a flat sort of way.”
         Balling up her mittened knuckles, she pounds his nearest bicep. “I bet your soul’s black and crusty.”
         “Mmm. Just like Mom makes.” He laughs, crinkling around his edges.
         “Hey, you know what?” she says. “Let’s go listen to that song one more time. One last time. Best quality we have—your copy on my turntable.”
         “One last time?” He raises his eyebrows. There’s still a small white patch over one, but neither notices anymore. The bandage has nearly fused with the rest of his skin—a week or two longer should do it.
         “Yeah,” she says. “One last listen. To acknowledge its greatness and get the damn thing out so we can start liking other stuff again.”
         “Could work,” he says. “Yeah, let’s do it.”
**
         In her room, her roommate no longer has any shoes scattered around bed A. He notices before she does.
         “Winter purge?” he asks.
         “I guess,” she says. “Record, please?”
         He hands it to her and she fits it on the player, places the needle, watches the vinyl shimmer under the room’s fluorescent overhead light.
         They both sit sideways on her bed this time, both curve their spines against the wall around thumbtacks holding Polaroids. Her legs dangle halfway off the edge. His soles only just bump her shins.
         Ready? she asks with a face tilt. He nods, she pushes the button, and they both float away on the rain one last time.
         “There’s a storm outside…”
**
         When the last drop evaporates out of the speakers, and the needle scratches the label, they look at each other. They’re close, foreheads hovering like wary magnets, and she sees all this time he’s been bullshitting her.
         Your eyes are hazel, she thinks. He’s been claiming pure Irish green since they met freshman year, but satin brown runs under the clover leaves. Your eyes are hazel. I don’t care what you say.
         “Sometimes,” he says, and it comes out lower than they both expected, “sometimes, Limbsey, when I look into your soul, I can see your eyes. I swear.”

THE END