Page 4 of Mating Theory
“Tomorrow,” I say, my voice hollow.
“I suppose you could skip it.”
“I haven’t eaten in forty-eight hours.”
“Though unless something changed, you’re the best man.”
The best man. As if that weren’t fucking ironic, that the woman I wanted picked someone else. He was clearly the best man. She’s marrying him, and I have to stand beside them and look happy.
Stale alcohol churns in my stomach. A sudden clench. And then I’m halfway across the room, stumbling over piles of mail and empty pizza boxes. The bathroom smells rank from the last time I threw up, the acidity enough to push me over the edge. It rushes out of me with a force that leaves me breathless, gasping, eyes burning. Liquid curls over the edge of the sink, splattering the mirror, the wall, me.
My fists clench the ledge, the marble I picked out. An antique repurposed frame holds a thick mirror with anti-fog features. Which means I can see my bloodshot eyes, familiar and blue and broken. The ones I saw every night before my daddy punched me in the stomach.
When I can move without heaving again, I make my way to the shower. Enough room to fit three people, but there’s only me—story of my life. The polished brass knob turns in complete rotation. It takes thirty seconds for the water to be scalding, thanks to modern technology.
I pull off my clothes and step inside, forcing myself into the spray. It hits me in the face, hard enough, hot enough to make me gasp. I close my eyes. That’s the only concession. The water burns me all the way to my bones. I need the pain, need to feel something, anything. It cleans me; it dissolves me into smoke and steam before turning me back into man again.
Time stopped ticking along when the two people I cared about most walked away. It could be twenty minutes I spend in the shower, feeling the water turn lukewarm. It could be two hours; the cold turns me to marble, a statue with rivulets running down my body, steady runnels defining muscles honed from decades of labor, creating a sheen on the column of my cock.
A brushed steel drain breaks apart the stone floor, gathering water as clear as it came out of the spray. There are days’ worth of dirt on me, decades’ worth. I was born with too much dirt to ever wash away, but as always, it can’t actually be seen; I can only feel, and God, I feel it.
Chapter Two
Ashleigh
I get to the old sugar factory by the time the sun breaks.
Sugar should be sweet, but everything smells burnt here. Bitter and dark. Apparently the way you made sugar was to cook it to death. The window creaks as I pull myself through the bent frame and broken boards, the glass long gone.
Opening my hands, I drop to the floor. Dust rises in a burnt cloud. I climb the wooden steps, carefully avoiding the weak spots, until I reach the top floor. Buildings crowd from every angle. Sometimes it feels like they’re leaning toward me. I like to be high enough to see the sky.
This whole area used to be farmland. The sugar cane and corn were grown in fields around us, worked by prison labor after the civil war. The city ate through the agriculture land the way rust eats metal, leaving the factory an empty husk.
It’s the place I call home.
Sugar’s waiting for me at the top. She winds around my ankles, meowing so I know she’s mad about how long I’ve been gone. “I haven’t been on vacation,” I tell her. “I’ve been working.”
An aggrieved meow doesn’t accept that excuse.
“Don’t fuss. I brought you dinner.” I pull a can of cat food out of my bag and turn it over on the floor in the dark spot where I usually feed her.
The irony is that she’s better equipped to survive than I am. She catches rats and birds with startling regularity. They show up on my feet while I’m sleeping, which is gross and a little bit sweet. There’s something very wrong when I envy a cat. Her food just wanders around, the slightest bit slower than her. She doesn’t have to smile at strange men and get on her knees.
Then I fall on my worn pile of blankets. There’s my small pile of treasure—books I stole from the library. Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. A little Whitman for when I’m feeling intense. There’s a small selection of clothes I’ve gotten from the thrift shop FREE bin.
I pull out my feast. Two-day-old hot dogs are the real prize of the day. I set one aside and eat the other in three bites. I’m slower working on a dented can of expired chili. It doesn’t smell much different from Sugar’s food. She licks the last bits from the floor with dainty care and then goes to work cleaning her mottled white-and-beige fur.
