Fragments

"Fragments", she said, "It was all fragments." We were lying on her couch sipping red wine, and I could smell the alcohol on her, see the red smudges like lipstick stains in the corners of her mouth. "I thought it would mean something, I thought -". And she was crying. I wanted to stroke her chin, but my hands felt glued to the glass. "Sh!", I said, "He's an idiot." "No, no, he's not." she said. I nodded. We drank in silence for a while, until it got late and I had to go home. I kissed her cheek on the way out, leaving a trace of wine on her skin.

I didn't get to Jake's until nearly eleven. I was a little bit tipsy by then, I think, and I can't remember who started the kiss, and it seemed that I couldn't tell where my body began and his body ended, and we were on the hardwood floor, and it didn't matter. Our clothes were strewn around us, oceans of flannel and silk whose waves sometimes jutted into his mouth, my ear, his thighs.

Afterwards, neither one of us spoke for a while. He was stroking my arms. I wanted to ask him to spill the fragments he had told her like fine wine, to whisper that it didn't matter that two hours ago she had been sitting on his couch, that three months ago she had been lying here, like this maybe, her feet on top of a crumpled plaid shirt, his hands working their way down her rib-cage as the wooden floor began to hurt her sides. I wondered why I hadn't asked him that night at the bar, when he offered to buy me a glass of white wine. "Don't cry", he said, "Don't cry". In my sleep, I dreamt I was crying, and Jake was kissing my tears, and murmuring gibberish about the power of healing.

When I woke up the next morning, I was still lying on the floor, but Jake had covered with me with a blanket, and left for work. His note told me there was coffee for me, his love, in the kitchen. So I drank.

She called me at work. "I'm sorry about last night. I was kind of - I don't know, kind of -" I interrupted her. "No need to apologize. I'm your friend. I'm here for you." There was a moment of silence, and I could envision her nodding on the other line. "Thanks." she said, "Thanks. That means a lot." "I have to go now", I said, "I have a big assignment." "Sure, I understand." she said, and we agreed to meet for lunch sometime next week. After I hung up, I looked down at my desk: A laptop beside dozens of stickies, pencils that needed sharpening, pens that had run out of ink, random photographs: of me and my parents, of me and Jake, of me and my friends. I thought of her sitting there last night, saying, "Fragments, just fragments", and how her legs matched the color of Jake's thighs.

But I no longer believe in the magic of colors, and sometimes even wear pink and red to work on dress-down Fridays. Jake thinks that red is my best color. He thought that her best color was blue, because she has blue eyes - the color of water, she said he said, as the Cabernet ran dry. I am working on a report on water, while pondering his lip upon her lip, his thigh upon her thigh.