4

He heard her Jeep door shut and the engine start before she pulled away and he stared up at the ceiling. He’d never known silence could grow so loud. He heard the dog take in a deep breath and let it back out, shift it’s position on the hardwood floor and move it’s tongue in out of his mouth two or three times. Tonight, he thought, I’ll sleep on the couch. There was a subtle language he’d learned to speak without saying anything.

He went to the bathroom to take a shower and while he undressed he looked in the mirror at himself. “This body, this skin,” he thought as he looked at himself, the son of a catholic priest and nun. He remembered back to the night he met her. Sitting at the bar with his friend he had noticed her at the table behind him. He’d heard her laugh where she was sitting with her friend and he turned around a looked at her. Their eyes connected and she looked away quickly and kept talking to her friend without so much as an acknowledgement. His friend saw him look at her and stood up and went to her table. His friend asked her if he could sit down and it wasn’t long before the four of them were sitting together talking and sharing drinks. She bought everyone shots twice in a row and it looked like she could hold her own until ten minutes passed and she was having trouble keeping her head up.

The bar was closing and the two ladies were leaving and she began to insist to her friend that she was going home with him. Her friend, by this time, had learned that she would not be able to convince her otherwise and asked him if he’d minded. Who were these people, he asked himself. What sort of friend was this of hers? He assured her friend that she would be ok and gave her his phone number and took hers just in case. He helped her to his car and began to drive home. She tried to talk to him and only kept repeating herself, something about what kind of man was he? Some question about his manhood that he just ignored because he wasn’t sure what she was asking and he wasn’t sure of the answer.

He helped her up the steps to his apartment and walked her inside and sat her down on the bed, sat down next to her, and took her jacket and shoes off. She stood up and fell against the nearest wall and asked him through her closed mouth where the bathroom was. She was going to need his help and in that moment he knew what kind of man he was and he stood up.