April Flash #1

Prompts for today provided by SilverStar

# 16: prompts – it tasted like pickles and tunafish, from England to China, collected pet peeves like they were souvenirs

It was something about him, and I never knew exactly what it was. Not in all the long years we had known each other. Not when our friendship evolved from just friends who would talk about the weather, politics and religion to something deeper. Not the night of our first kiss – or the afternoon that found us curled into bed to watch a movie that neither of us ended up watching. It took me by surprise daily, this unexpected evolution. But for all the times I watched him in the darkness when he didn’t think I was looking, for all the times I watched the rise and fall of his bare chest on the blankets next to me while he slept, for all the time I looked out of the corner of my eye while we cooked dinner together, I was never able to quite put my finger on what it was. Maybe it was the fact that, no matter what he cooked, from steak to chicken dumplings, it tasted like pickles and tunafish, leftover remnants from his life, his work on the docks. At first that fishy smell overwhelmed everything and I never thought I could get used to it. But after awhile it became like second-nature, and I started to see it like home. Maybe it was his stories from being in the navy, from his adventures around the world, from England to China before he settled in this tiny fairy-tale world that allowed him to become a part of mine – stories that he told repeatedly but never got old, and I never once got tired of hearing. Maybe it was the way he’d get so worked up over the every day stupidity you encounter just being alive – the stories he’d explain in full, ranting detail, his hands moving a mile a minute from his lingering Italian background. I think he said more with his hands than he ever did with that careful mouth. He collected pet peeves like they were souvenirs, like most people collect loose change or buttons. And after the momentary infuriation would pass, he would laugh at them and add them to his mental checklist of things to never do to someone else. He was careful that way, not venting about something he knew he was guilty of. Maybe it was the feel of his rough stubble on my cheek, or the insides of my legs, no matter how recently he had just shaved. Maybe it was the soft skin of his belly, stretched tight over muscles that were used often but still soft enough to be squishy when I laid my head on them while watching tv on the couch. Maybe it was that even after 5 years, he still insisted on walking on the outside of the sidewalk, to shelter me from any careening cars that may approach, or the fact that he still opened every single door for me, including taking my keys from my hand those first careless nights together in my old apartment, just so he could unlock and open that door for me too. He didn’t treat me like I was fragile, but he was careful with me. Usually. I never knew what appreciation was until his touch found me, and I reviled in the details of this – the sun-kissed freckles lining his back, the deeply etched tan in his lower arms and shoulders, the musculature across his back and abdomen. Maybe it was all these things, combined. But I never knew. What I did know was that I wanted to hold onto all these things, locked up like a precious treasure, somewhere deep inside where no one could touch them, just so I could remember their texture and consistency clearly. I think, perhaps, I realized then that the moment I could put my finger on it, or push the words off my tongue like some thought lodged in the back of my head, but never quite approaching the forefront, that it would cease to be a mystery and everything would collide. I didn’t want it to happen. So I didn’t think on it much, content enough to wander through the halls of daydreams. His pipe smoke was filtering in the crack in the door from the balcony. All these things…happiness and home. Belonging.

new prompts: towing the wake, underwater thing, undertow