Hands

The day she graduated from college, he text messaged her. Standing on a wooden bench to see above the crowd of parents and students, she tore off her awkward cap and pulled at her stubborn polyester gown. She was looking for someone, anyone really to hug like all the others. But she only saw the shiny smiles of strangers. She didn’t want to look lonely high upon that bench, so she pulled out her cell phone and saw the message. It didn’t make sense.

The truth was that it wasn’t intended for her. Her name was nestled next to another name within a directory of numbers. It was an accident, a message meant for another girl whose name started with the letter E.

It was impossible for her to piece it together, to make sense of how it all began, how they always ended up in the same bed right before the birds began to stir. Staggering up stairs, clumsily collapsing under soft covers, they found themselves time after time tucked up in her room with all of their clothes on. Lying next to one another with the scratchy leg of his jeans pressed up against her cotton dress, they reached for one another’s hand. It was a simple gesture, a natural motion as if they had been reaching towards one another in the dark their entire lives. In the morning, neither of them said a word like an embarrassing one night stand that needed to be put out of their minds. They ate eggs and drank vodka tonics and felt their heads ache in the early afternoon.

Their meetings were never quite planned, never orchestrated or official. No pressure to impress, just casual drinking friends who wasted away late nights because they had nothing better to do. She liked him because he bought her drinks and never tried to kiss her. He stared at other women who swept through bar after bar, discussing the finer points of shapely asses, tits, and legs. When they weren’t together, he’d often find himself passed out in his bed with naked women whose names or hobbies he couldn’t quite recall. They’d pull the sheet over their breasts, eyes turned away from the afternoon light that tore at their blood shot eyes. They’d turn red, sheepish when they confessed they had a boyfriend.

He bought her drinks with funny, fruity names she had never tried and eventually couldn’t even taste. Each one reminded him of a particular girl, a particular night, a particular article from the past. Sometimes he’d shout above the screechy guitars and the raucous thumping of wooden sticks on drum heads. He’d start to tell a story about the pink drink he placed in front of her, about a blonde with big tits who talked too much, a hippie who loved to talk about her period. She heard select phrases, clauses, losing coordinating conjunctions between major chords and keyboards that tried to sound like a violin.

He was an expert drunk driver who took side roads. He always got her home safely. So they made their way up the narrow stairs to her bedroom littered in dresses and tights, discarded panties shoved into the corner of her room. But her sheets were always clean as if she was expecting someone, anyone. Under the lacey comforter, they lay like stiff soldiers until he reached for her hand even though he had shoved the leggy girl’s phone number in his pocket, and she had flirted with the Jewish guy with the Buddy Holly glasses. He got her home safely; he stayed by her side with his rough construction worker hands interlocked with her soft, diminutive fingers. They both knew they could have pursued other forms of empty intimacy. He could have woken up next to the slim brunette with the red stilettos he fantasized about. She could have collected the geeky boy’s number on a slip of paper or scratched it into the cardboard of her empty cigarette pack. They knew they would never have a chance with one another, but he had a key to her house, to her car, and an empty hand that promised to hold hers through the night.