Two Weeks.

Even though I was determined not to make a show of it, his hand resting on my thigh was making it impossible for me to focus on anything else. Touch is the most underrated sense, so easy to forget that you need it, so difficult to decipher it's what you have been missing yet once you have it, so overpowering it forces you to stop thinking.

“That’s my favourite part of town,” I told him, pointing towards the street on our left, as we came to a halt in front of the red light, “I used to live in there.”

A young girl tapped at the car-window, holding up a bunch of novelty pens that were twice the length of normal pens. I owned so many of the baubles and trinkets they sold in those streets I had to start closing my eyes each time I was stopped at that signal to keep myself from buying more of them. I looked away from the little girl, and at him instead.

“You didn’t seriously live there, did you?” He asked, pressing his fingers into my thigh.

I did seriously live there, but I also understood his confusion, it wasn’t the type of area where people really lived. It was located right in front of the biggest railway station in the most populated city in our country, it was chaos at all hours. Most of the buildings were cheap hotels for transients, but these weren’t your standard ‘one-night only’ rooms, many years ago they used to be houses and apartment buildings. One by one, as one brothel after another opened up in those streets, the residents opted to sell their homes to commercial land developers and move away to safer pastures, but the people who bought their homes changed nothing about them before slapping the “ROOM FOR HIRE” signs on the front doors so when you stayed at one of those hotels, it felt like living inside someone else’s past. Usually, hotels feel like a completely sterile environment, even when I know the sheets likely aren’t washed, the impersonal décor always makes it seem like the rooms have no stories, they look unused, the rooms in those hotels didn’t look like that at all. They looked like they had faded into anonymity afters years of waiting for their owners to return, like sad dogs that sit at graves until their souls acquire the same pale grey colour as the dust on the gravestones. I was drawn to that place as soon as I first set foot in it and I had to live there, the way I see it, I had no choice.

“I did,” I told him before pointing to the curb behind the bus stop, “A German man mistook me for a prostitute right there.”

He laughed.

“Was that really a mistake?” He asked.

He made me laugh. I guess it wasn't so much of a mistake but I have to insist I had stopped being a whore long before the German man mistook me for one, and even when I was working as a prostitute, I didn't do it in the streets. I'm always surprised to learn that people still walk the streets, we have had digital streets for a while now.

"You're an asshole," I told him.

I wanted to say so much more, something much more meaningful than expletives and banter, but it seemed impossible for me to articulate my thoughts that morning. It was very early, both of us had been awake until twilight had broken, only drifting off for a couple of hours before both our alarms began sounding at the same time, combining in an unholy matrimony of melodies that do not belong together; mine, a litany of angry notes coming from a guitar, and his, the sound of birds chirping before an empty orchestra. For the first time in my life, I didn't jump out of bed, his arms were so warm and comfortable I didn't even mind that he had just one pillow and a single blanket that barely covered the two of us.

"I really wish we never had to get out of this bed," I whispered into his ear.  

He kissed me on my hair, my dirty unwashed hair that still smelt of airports and fatigue, and got out of bed. I followed him to the bathroom, he ran the shower for me and left the room. I stood under the warm water, washing my hair with a bar of soap because there were no other bath products in his home, not even one little sachet of shampoo, which makes sense given there wasn't a single hair on his head. As I lathered my body, I realised I felt no pain in any part of me, the familiar soreness of being twisted into knots was so conspicuous in its absense, it felt like I was washing someone else's body. I stepped out of the shower, soap still dripping down my legs, and without even searching for a towel, I went running through the rooms to look for him. I found him in the kitchen, mixing a vile powder he called coffee into a cup of water.

"You didn't fuck me," I declared to him as soon as I entered the kitchen, as if it may have slipped his notice.

He looked at me, naked and still covered in suds, but he didn't say anything about that.

"Oh, I will fuck you," he said, "You'll be back in town in two weeks, won't you?"

He then took me by the arm to led me back into the shower. It felt like a much longer walk just a few seconds before when I had gone looking for him. He had told me when he picked me up the previous night that he wouldn't fuck me, but i didn't believe that, I don't ever believe men when they say that. In my experience, most men will fuck you even after you explicitly say the word no. I stood under the shower, watching him disappear from the room. 

Two weeks, like two miles for a snail, seemed impossible to attain. As I walked into my favourite part of town to take a train, I looked back at him in worried panic I may never see him again. He reached over and touched my arm.

"Two weeks," he said, "I will be here."