LIVING ROOM
“I feel like I am watching myself become a colder person.”
“Hm?”
“In real time,” Mavis adds. Her hands are busy making dinner, and her eyes are busy watching Otis. He’s gripping his cup of tea like someone is coming to steal it away.
Last week Mavis and Otis called it quits, in this very living room. She was in a delicate lacy dress and they were just coming home from a movie, one that was rather boring but really dirty. Most movies they held hands, but they didn’t that time, which perhaps should have been a sign. She was taking her shoes off by the door and still had one loafer in hand, and he had just told her he thought it should be done with. Those were his words too; not that it was done, but that it should be. Mavis had held her loafer and closed her eyes for a moment and then said, alright.
Today they are in the same living room, but he is in a different sweater. One pocket of his jeans is turned inside out, and her fingers keep itching to put it back into place.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Mavis shrugs and moves the spatula around the pan. Below her pan fried peppers bubble.
“I dunno. I just...I think I’m becoming colder.”
There are lots of Otis’ things in the living room, and elsewhere in the apartment. Presently he is tapping his foot against the rug they bought together in a Big Lots at the beginning of dating, over a year ago. The rug itself is ugly, but Mavis knows she will never ever get rid of it.
“I don’t think you’re cold.”
Whenever Mavis and Otis have sex Mavis often feels like she’s losing her mind. There isn’t an easier way to describe it; one minute they are fucking and the next something is set off psychologically and she feels like she can see everything about herself for a singular moment. She feels like she’s losing her mind now, when the ambiguous zone that is his lap is just across the room and she could crawl over and have him inside her in just a few short seconds. The pan fizzes, and she shuffles the vegetables around a bit more before turning the heat off.
“Well, you’re just rather warm.”
Otis chuckles. He is leading their transition back into a platonic lifestyle, even going so far as to invite himself over tonight. The peppers were her idea, and she has to remind herself that as she plates the food. It is a Wednesday, and outside the sky is darkening. Perhaps they will smoke later, and she will watch mist collect on his forehead and try not to think about when she’d kiss his sweaty brow after he went down on her.
“I don’t think I’m warm.”
“I think you’re hot,” she says, in a purposefully teasing voice so he won’t take it seriously. He shifts uncomfortably regardless, one hand pulling his collar away from his neck. The walls of her apartment are plastered with his artwork, and the open window is making them shudder. Masochistically she is still hoping he will notice the new snot stains and comment so she can fluster about and cry. This flat suddenly feels like a courtroom; her crime unabated admiration.
Once, when they were just friends, they’d all been out to dinner and Otis had pulled her aside by the bathroom. He was in her favorite pair of jeans, ones that hugged his legs.
“Mavis, uh, just so you know.”
“Hmm?”
“You’ve got spinach in your teeth.”
Her hand was quite literally on the women’s door, and she would have discovered this for herself in a matter of a few seconds. Nevermind that he’d been seated next to her the whole time. She had stilled for a moment, then forced a smile, then covered her mouth with her hands.
“Right.”
There was a beat of awkwardness, and then he had begun to laugh so hard he bent over and rested his hands on his perfect thighs. Mavis had watched him and felt good about making him laugh, even if it was at her expense.
Now she sits next to him on the couch and remembers just a fortnight ago, when she was on her knees between his thighs and he was holding her hair tightly. It was a position she was familiar with, and his body heat was warm, and when she recalls it she feels like crying. A few tears escape, unwillingly, and she has no choice but to sniffle.
“You alright?”
“Mmhm.”
“You really are a great girl, Mavis.”
He’s said things like that a lot, like when he’s within her and she’s arching up into him. Once she asked him to tell her she was beautiful when he was finishing and he had just looked at her for a minute. His hand was above her head and they were both panting and suddenly she felt small in a bad way. After a second he’d wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said he thought he might be done for the evening.
“I want to swallow you whole,” she considers telling him now. She thinks about getting down on her hands and knees and begging, really begging. Oh-God-please-I-can’t-do-this-any-other-way begging. He would scrunch his knees up onto the couch like she was vermin squirming on the floor and she would writhe about and say please please please please please please please.
Instead she shakes her head and takes another bite. The wind rustles a painting or two. Otis checks his phone.
Audrey Jiggetts, 18, Massachusetts - USA ✯ IG: @audrey.jig & TT: @audgejig
"Audrey Jiggetts is an eighteen-year old writer from Massachusetts, currently pursueing an undergrad degree in English. 'Living Room' is a small glimpse into life after love, and what it means for an invidiual when devotion is supposed to end but doesn't. Her TikTok is @audgejig, and poetry and prose alike can be found there."