Sixty Seconds

Matthew lay very, very still, and thought of his mother. He had anticipated being more out of it than this, less painfully aware. He had imagined some liminal space in which he would transcend the strictures which had both paralysed and lubricated his life to date. He had expected to mind less. Now he closed his eyes and tried not to focus on how he could feel every single thing. Instead, he thought of his mother, of the day she had yelled at him for treading water across the hall after he had run naked from the shower to fetch a forgotten towel. She hadn’t seemed to notice his nakedness, or his wet, goose pimpled skin, but she had noticed the watery footprints alright. Why that memory, of all the memories?

A slight groan bubbled from his throat, jerking him back to the present. He hadn’t expected it to feel this tight, to feel so constricted, pinioned to the bed beneath him, the pillow like a crinkling muffler about his ears, sweat moistening his back as he sucked air through dry lips. He wondered how much work his heart was doing now. It felt like a lot. Matthew kept his eyes closed and willed himself to hold on, as if that would be enough. He wondered if it could be enough. Sheer will alone. If he could hold on through one second, why not the next, and the next, and the next, until it was his time. Now did not feel like it was his time. Couldn’t be. He remembered his French teacher, her heavily accented chastisement when someone whispered in class. “C’es ne pas le moment, silence s’il vous plait!”

“C’es ne pas le moment.” He whispered it now, willing it so.

“What?” Lilly brought her head closer to his.

“C’es ne pas le moment!” he shouted, startling both of them. His eyes flew open, the white of the ceiling painfully bright despite the half drawn blinds. Tilting his head, he sought her face, scared at what he might see there, imagining horror or distress, fear, shock, disappointment maybe, but her eyes were kind. How long had they known each other? Four months? Four months since she had sat down next to him on the bus, and commented on the book they were both reading. She had always been kind. Kind, and open hearted, and not deserving of this. But here she was, still kind. Still kind, though they had only just begun, and this might be all he could offer her.

She touched his arm, her fingers a gentle tingle of heat on his skin, and he wondered for a moment if he was going to weep. “Matthew, it’s okay. You can let go.”

So fucking kind. He had wanted to be so much more for her. Was four months too soon to tell her he loved her? Because he knew it at one, and at two, and at three, and could imagine knowing it for as long as he had left, and he wanted her to know it too, to know this mattered, for him, even if it didn’t for her.

“I love you.”

He mumbled it. Fumbled it. Wanted it to be as clear as a midday blue sky, and not this muddied mumble, and he hated himself a little then. Timing is all, isn’t it? Now, of all times, does it not just look like a desperate grasp at something, a clutching at connection? But oh, he did not have long. Where WAS his mother? Could he hear her, in the corridor outside? Were those her footsteps? Was the door handle about to turn and in she would burst, bustling and business like, putting the world to rights?

Lilly shifted her seat, and Matthew felt her hair brush his cheek, turned his mind to that tickling silken fall and away, away from the rest of it, that gathering of it, the mustering hum of it, willing it to ebb away, just for now, to let him be, just a little longer, and perhaps, perhaps he would have been alright, perhaps he would have had a chance, had not her nipples, hard points on soft, undulous breasts, brushed along his chest as she stooped, had not her hips, sharp struts under firmly pliant flesh beneath his palms, tilted as she bent, had not her lips, moist cushions of warmth, skimmed his as they crossed to his ear.

“I know” she whispered. But Matthew had found that liminal space, and surrendered himself to it.