Ruquayyah ♡𝜗ৎ

Vaughn Levitt, 38

This seat is so soft it’s like my ass is getting a massage from a dog’ ass. But it’s one of those wingback chairs usually kept in a corner in grandma’s closet. You drag it out every other year for sudden stark additions to the table at holidays and somehow all you ever need is one.

It’s the one centerpiece at Laela’s. I intermittently shift like I’ve caught a fur ball right up there.

The chair’s lotus pinkness was also loud, but I found it cute for her apartment. My eyes flicked flatly over each scrapbooked corner of her narrowly wide living room. There was the tree-shaped coat rack I’d thrown my Carhartt over, and one of the branches snapped off. It was resting against the wall with my scuffed boots.

As I thought of feet, my toes began feeling the carpet again. There was a white sweater dangling from the coat rack, reminding me of the bloody leg warmers Kessie had been wearing that night in Bluff. 

As I thought of her, that untold night erupted mushroom cloud-like in my consciousness. I thought the worst of those quicksand-regret days had been used up. This had to take the cake. What a scene. The bloody party girls flashing bright red under the blazing stream of my flashlight in vacant, foggy Bluff. That no-face blonde feller who’d lingered not for a millisecond. And Kessie.

I thought about the wool tickling my toe tips through my cheap socks. Thought about Kessie kissing me. I thought of the fact that I couldn’t see the window in my peripheral. I stood up fast, like I was emerging a diving tank, and crossed to that street-facing window, near Laela’s book-nook. I carefully pushed aside the curtains so as not to knock over the porcelain birdy shelf trinket on the sill.

Laela lived on the merge curve connecting Dodson Street with the highway. So she was catching the theoretically correct place to reduce speed, which no one did. My eyes locked onto each passing car with painful determination, ripping my sockets out of view to average speeds of 60 mph. 

I winced. Then the sun’s glare unfocused my view. In that, I realized the scene beyond was actually very peaceful.

Honing my thoughts in ideal directions had almost worked, then Bozo’s text pops up: Some guys looking for U. abt his wife. 

And just like that, catapulted to the very front of my mind, my secret. My Kessie secret felt as dirty as she somehow always looked. I let the grime melt from behind my eyelids and I see that mouth business near the wreck with her last week. I feel it again and get the same heat like usual when I replay it.

I recently told Kessie I’d never help her again. At the time, I one hundred percent believed it. Now I’m one hundred percent sure I never did.

(You to BOZO): meet later

Laela stumbled from the kitchen with an ornate tray of tea. See, the tea was on a tray. And the tray had handles.

 She was wearing something floral and her hair was all down. In my amazement, I felt like her boyfriend.

I had intended to be mid-jacket-zip at this exact moment, but I was just standing stupidly near the chair tucking my phone in my pocket. I didn’t even speak. Like my own words would taint our little atmosphere buzzing with the faint song of the highway spilling cars.

“Something happened, didn’t it?” Her smile contorts into this uncertain worry that also contorts my stomach which I feel in my sack then I’m thinking about Kessie.

 I run the mechanical hiss and eyebrow massage procedure.

“Jesus Vaughn,” the tray clinks on the coffee table and I hear her make a little shuffle to the scene like the detachment had a saving window. “That’s just great. Now you’re kicking the coat stand like you’re kicking me all hours of the night.”