CW: death of pet, sex scene

In the season of giving and receiving you send your nudes to a boy on your course who said all the right things to make you do it. You usually charge, to make a little money, but for him it’s free. You pull your curtains shut and prop your phone up against your water bottle, then angle your body in all the ways you know how to seduce. He replies with all the right words. This back and forth goes on for weeks. One night, afterwards, he asks you a question. You agree to meet up with him. Again, this is not something you usually do, but yesterday your cat was found deflated under a car tire, and this morning you placed the ashes on your dresser in 1 of the 3 urns they offer to everyone. You need it taken off your mind. His tiny Skoda Citigo rocks and creaks in the car park at Cave Hill as he works himself into you. It goes on. The windows fog up with all the breathing the two of you are doing. It drags. It’s black nothingness outside except for the bulbs suspended in the streetlights, fading and fading like tiny dying fires. You think of the car tires, flattening and expanding with each push. You think of Frederick. Fred. The cat. He doesn’t come. Instead tugs up his trousers and buckles his belt. He gives you a brief castaway glance, it scrapes lightly over your face, and in it you catch a mild resentment. The car ride is silent. You press your face to the window, away from him, and watch one single tear join the drops of condensation in their rush downwards. He pulls over at the end of your street and coughs. You walk up the street, rummaged, empty, sore. In the living room, you fold up your knees and stick on an episode of Buffy. Halfway through you look left and down and see a soft oval imprint still on the couch. It hits you again that it was only yesterday. You flop down and place your head inside the perimeter. Microscopic cat hairs tread across your vision. Time feels held, paused, still, inside the oval. Comfortable. You stay here for some time.