Page 37 of Rooster's Remorse
"You still smell the same," she says.
I couldn't answer that if you paid me.
Her hand slides. Two inches. Three.
Up toward my collarbone, and her fingers catch on the chain and stop there, hooked in it, and her breath's coming apart, and mine's gone somewhere else entirely.
There's four inches between us, and I don't know which one of us took them.
She looks up.
And it's her. Under all of it, it's her, and her mouth's right there, and her hand's in my chain, and I lean in.
She's already moving.
Up on her toes, her other hand coming up, and I've got a fistful of her jacket.
Her mouth is a half-inch off mine, and I can taste the whiskey in her breath.
She stops.
Dead stop. Half an inch. Two full seconds where neither of us moves, and I can feel her breathing on my mouth.
Then she takes her hand off my chest.
She takes it off like it burned her and pulls it against her own body with the other one, and she steps back and hits the couch with the backs of her legs and grabs the arm of it.
"No," she says.
"Mila—"
"No." She's got both arms wrapped around herself, she's shaking her head, and she won't look at me. "No, no, no."
"Okay. Okay."
"You don't get that." Her voice cracks straight down the middle of it. "You don't get—I've had one thing. In nine years. One thing was mine, and it's that nobody has had one piece of me I didn't hand over myself, and I almost gave it away in asunroombecause you smell the same."
"Mila."
"Get out."
"Mila—"
"Get out, Finn." She's looking at the floor with her arms locked around her ribs. "Please. Please get out."
I don't move.
Three feet. That's what's between us.
There's three feet of concrete slab in front of me and I've still got her jacket balled in my fist.
I let go of it.
Her hands are shaking so hard she's got them clamped under her arms, and she's got her chin down.
She won't look at me and she isn’t going to look at me.
Every part of me is screaming to put my arms around her.
