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Touch
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The bed is too cold, too empty underneath your hands, your body as you roll over onto your side. The soft, warm texture of the sheets is ominous, and you retract instantly. The pillow is big, but flat and dull under your head, and restlessly you pluck it out from under you and chuck it across the room. The blankets and bed sheets are still lying heavily across your body and you scowl at them, kicking and squirming until they are in a bunch at the foot of the bed. They are too scratchy, too mocking, too much like things you used to have and you don’t want them anywhere near you. Now it’s just your skin, your clothes on the bed by yourself. You outstretch your hand after a moment, press it down into the side of the bed where Don used to lay and fan your fingers out. Watch as they create separate, individual light depresses into the mattress, nothing compared to what his gorgeous, pliant body used to make. There’s a shock of pain that reverberates up your body from your toes, washing to the tips of your fingers until you can feel it in every part of your body, in everything you touch and you pull your hand back. You feel burned, feel scarred and you subconsciously rub the side of your hand tenderly. He used to touch you tenderly, used to hold you at night the way all the blankets and bed sheets and comforters in the world never can. Used to curl around you until your head was on his chest, and no pillow can compare to the firm but gentle skin of his chest. Used to leave a permanent dip in the bed that you would secretly lay on after he went in to work each morning, wrapping yourself in the sheets that smelled like him and humming contently. You think that maybe, he always knew you did that. If he did, he never said anything. But now there is no warmth under your fingers, no beautiful body under your head and no loving man wrapped up with you. You bury your face in the mattress and fold your hands up to your own chest, praying to rid the memories of his touch from your fingertips.
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Smell
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It’s something light, something not altogether comforting but not offending at the same time. You think it’s lavender, or maybe something like rainforest. You forget, because it’s been what feels like forever since you’ve done laundry with him. It’s foreign; it invades your sinuses and makes you cough instinctively, because it’s not what you’re used to, what you grew accustomed to, what you became dependent upon. It’s not cinnamon; it’s not a hint of musk; it doesn’t have a twinge of his favourite Axe; and it’s definitely not the overwhelming vanilla that you remember. There’s no traces of bars, pool tables, baseball, hockey and basketball games, leather couches and that one beer he could never deny; no cotton from his favourite wife beater, no fresh lint from his favourite pair of boxers, no sweat that is pertinent to him and him specifically; no fresh café nor coffee smell. No traces of early morning pancakes saturated with butter and syrup (you prefer apple sauce and peanut butter, yourself), nor any whiff of gunpowder of his fingertips that he couldn’t remove no matter how hard he tried – and he tried very hard; not even the aroma of a spring rain that always seemed to seep from his pores, from his very soul. The sheets smell like something from another universe, because they lack everything that is quintessential of Don Flack and it makes you sick to your stomach.
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Sight
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Flat, boring surfaces; all white and bland. A small sliver of moonlight sneaking through the curtains by the window, dancing across the floor. The bed, illuminated in a white glow, and you’re positive it’s on you too. But it’s missing hard angles, dips and grooves, smooth skin, and dangerous eyes. Eyes that threatened to consume you at one time, and you’re positive now that they did. They’re all you see anymore. Pale skin that resembles the snow: soft, pure white, porcelain in appearance, fragile to the touch and it slips through your fingertips like a rush of cold water. Pale skin that held memoirs of better days and some not so good days, too. A mark across the torso that spoke volumes and held the pale skin captive with its ferocity; and you made it a point to kiss that scar every single day. Or at least, you used to. Hips and elbows and knees and shoulder blades and a particularly edgy collarbone that held together long, baby-soft skin. Skin that held tales of long nights spend in bed on days off, just being together and enjoying what peace life was offering them. And even though you miss all of this with an ache so bad you reflexively curl in on yourself, it’s not one of those things that you miss most. It’s the sight of Don in the wee hours of the morning, right before the alarm clock goes off, when his body is completely relaxed and free because of sleep, and the moon is falling across his face and making his already pale skin illuminate in an ethereal glow; it’s those moments right after he goes to sleep and before he wakes up; it’s those moments right before the two of you would kiss, when Don’s eyes would flutter close and his lips would part just a little, just enough that you could catch a glimpse of pink tongue and pearly teeth, and his face would rid of all of the stress he carried around daily; it was all of this that you miss the most. Your heart lurches painfully in your chest and you close your eyes, burying further into the mattress.
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Sound
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You’re so far gone now that you don’t even bother to omit the memories of better days, better times. The warm, gorgeous sound of Don’s laugh; the tinkle his eyes made that always made you think of the chime that those flowers outside of your mom’s house make when the wind brushes past; and then the breathy tone his voice got late at night, and you made yourself stop there immediately. A cold washes through you and you swallow forcibly. You remember the way his voice got loud whenever you, he, Danny, and Hawkes would play NBA, or NHL or MLB on the Xbox 360; the way his voice went higher in pitch whenever he burnt the pancakes, or the cookies, or the steak or whatever he was fixing for the both of you; the way his voice would then get low and soft as he promised to make it up to you, as he pressed tender, tempting kisses on your forehead, cheeks, nose and finally mouth; the way his voice is scratchy, raspy and sexy in the morning when he awakens. The way his voice was gentle, whispery when you were in bed and he was staring you in the eyes. The way his voice was hot, like liquid fire against your ear when he was murmuring things in your ear at work, or in the hallway of the apartment building, or late at night when neither of you could sleep. The way his voice was happy and breathless whenever he would come home after catching a particularly nasty bad guy; the way it was whiny, heart-breaking and torn when they didn’t catch a particularly nasty bad guy. The way his voice was rough, scornful and spiteful when he was angry, and then subsequently tentative and shy as he held you close and apologized for getting so riled up. The way his voice had bumps, ridges, dips, pitches and seemed to caress you whenever he whispered to you as the two of you were heading to bed. The way his voice was like a melody; like a perfectly synchronous symphony; like a harmony that makes you want to tap your head and sing along. It is this same breath-taking sound that you don’t hear enough of anymore.
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Taste
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His skin is like French vanilla; like bitter, salty, sweet and sour all in one; like the first drops of rain on your tongue before a thunderstorm; like a Pepsi, or a Coca-Cola, or a Dr. Pepper; like a shock of fresh air. His lips are like a home-baked apple pie; the inside of his mouth like candy. His tongue is like melted chocolate; like the cream filling inside of a twinkie or one of those rolls at the Chinese buffet down the street. Like grape, cherry, strawberry and lemon altogether.
You let out a harsh, heaving breath, your eyes flying open and your lungs contracting tightly inside of your chest. You’re damp with sweat and flung across the bed, and you have a headache so loud you think it’ll knock down the walls separating the two of you. You were dreaming of Don, as usual, but this time the memories were so lucid, so painful that you’re having a hard time regaining control. You can feel the shakes in your bones, the fluid building up a tense pressure behind your eyes and the dry, thick taste coating your tongue and the roof of your mouth. You miss him. You know you do, you’ve always known. You’ve never even bothered to try and hide it. You hate that you fell apart, that he pulled away from you, that you never bothered to try and get him back. You hate that you gave up, that you let him go.
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Heart
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You can taste the regret, the guilt, the ache on your tongue, in your mouth and you scowl, swallowing vainly. It does nothing, only adds a sick, bile flavour to the mix. You can taste the want, the need, the desire for him in all 206 of your bones, in your veins and in your bloodstream. You flop back on the bed, let the angst take its hold on you and crush you to fine ash. You’re giving up again. You want to get over him, you want to move on, you want to be able to sleep peacefully for once in the four months you’ve been separated; but you know you can’t, know you won’t. Know you don’t want to. There’ll be no sleep tonight, just like all the other nights, and you hug your arms to your chest and try to breathe deeply, evenly. The pressure behind your eyes threatens to spill your secrets, threatens your way of life, threatens to betray you like it used to the first couple of nights after Don broke it off, and you refuse vehemently to let that happen. Because you still live in the same apartment building - your rooms right beside each other - and you know if you allow yourself to open up, he’ll hear you. And then you’ll have to leave, and you don’t want that. You protest to that the most. Because even if you can’t have him, even if you can’t hold him, touch him, be near him like you used to, at least you can live in the same apartment he does, breathe the same air, share the same food. And you’ll take that, if nothing else.
You try and fight it, try and push it down, but eventually the ache, the pain, the nausea of these revisited, forbidden memories proves to be too much and you get up, hobbling to the door and swinging it open to head for the bathroom. You’re not expecting, however, to see Don standing in the doorway, his hand raised and paused in mid-air, as if he was going to knock. His hair is disheveled from sleep, his wife beater twisted around his frame, his boxers slung low on his hips and his dog-tag hanging half in the dip of his wife beater and half out. It glints against his skin and you stare at it for a second, a sea of nostalgia swallowing you up before you flick your eyes to meet his slightly glazed but brilliant ones.
And then he’s pushing you back, the two of you stumbling into your bedroom with the door shutting soundly behind him, and in the flurry that follows all of your five senses click back into place.
You’ll always be a part of me
I’m part of you indefinitely
Boy, don’t you know you can’t escape me
Ooh darling, ‘cause you’ll always be my baby
And we’ll linger on
Time can’t erase a feeling this strong
No way, you’re never gonna shake me
Ooh darling, ‘cause you’ll always be my baby
