There was
something about the fabric of the denim against his arm that kept distracting
her from the words resting on his lips and falling all over the table. The
heavy stitching back and forth back and forth like the shirt could last forever
and then behind it his arm looked thin and pale and fine hair all fell in one
direction. Thin arms, nice features, nice guys always finish first. He kept
talking, having the conversation with himself, she would nod every now and then
to let him know she was there somewhat but really, who cares. He was leaving,
going nowhere, just not here, just not her. She thought about the first time
they had sex in a motel off the five. A hotel has hallways a motel just has
rooms. He threw her down across the bed without bothering to remove the comforter,
which everyone knows, is the only thing they don’t wash. She kept thinking of
how gross the whole thing was as her bare ass rubbed against the faded floral
print. Cheap. He kept biting on her ear and she kept looking over his shoulder at
a long crack in the wall that seemed to split the whole room in half, like at
any moment the floor would open up and swallow them whole. Then it was over and
he lay panting next to her one of those thin arms draped across her waist. Her
underwear around her ankles felt like shackles and when she came back from the
bathroom after cleaning herself up, he had fallen asleep. So all of this was no
great derailment in the grand scheme of her life, but why was it that the nice
guys were always leaving. The bad guys hung around like habits for years some
of them bewitching even from across the country, restraining orders to keep
them away, but the nice ones with thin arms and kind eyes and that fuck you
nicely in hotel rooms, they leave. I should raise my standards, she thought to
herself. He had paused in his speech, was she supposed to speak. She just
looked down into her coffee, acting hurt, and acting like there were no words.
The coffee was cold and stale and had probably been left over night. The diner
was somewhere between two different nowhere off the frontage road in Hemit near
a biker bar. She worked down the street at the liqour store. She was on her
break. He was paying for the coffee and putting his hand on her shoulder before
she knew it and just like that he was gone, thin arms, and denim shirt, and a
nice walk that said maybe you’re missing something, but she knew chances are
she wasn’t. She sat there for the rest of her break, which was only thirty minuets,
which meant he had only spoken for ten. It was that easy then, less than ten
minutes to leave someone. She wished she could remember what he said.
