Pet

“I’m like a Tamagotchi,” she often says. “Feed me, pet me and leave me alone. I’ll be fine.”

Today, sitting on the couch on the far end from her, I think about those words and shake my head slightly like a whispered gesture. Through the French window, the slant rays of the February sun light up the white carpet and make it look like an extension of the soft snow outside. The blood-red couch is an island of color. She sits facing me, leaning on the armrest, and fidgeting with her toenail. In the room beyond the wall, my roommate—her boyfriend—sleeps.

“Just wake up?” she asks, tilting up her head, both her hands still clasped around her left foot. Her small round face looks weary.

I nod and gaze at her with tenderness and fear. Her long frog-green t-shirt falls to her knee and she is wearing nothing else. Longing enters into the mix of my emotions. “And you?” I say.

Her tousled hair and crusty eyelashes are obvious signs she was asleep not too long ago, just as my disheveled face must be. We throw pointless words at each other in a desperate attempt to clear the cobwebs fencing the air between us. The after-effect of a moment of drunken recklessness at the bar last night. A stolen kiss.

I stare across the room at the sandy brown clock, its numberless, perfectly bare dial scarred by the two black hands, little and big, spread wide. It’s ten minutes past seven. At eight o’clock, my roommate’s alarm will go off, and he will stagger into the living room to turn on his laptop and begin his routine day.

Before that, I want to clear this unease. I don’t know when I will be alone with her again, and time will only make the discomfort harder to resolve. But what should I say?—Not apologize.

She came into my life with the October winds, nuzzled in the arms of my roommate. Half a foot shorter than any girl that had ever aroused me and thin as a blade of grass. We smiled in the hallway and kept out of each other’s path. Like an alley cat, she came and left through the French window—twice a day during one week and not at all the next. Often, she was in when my roommate was at class. I had evening courses and she never attended hers. She rolled up so quietly in the beanbag, I knew she was around only by her fragrance—mango and salty lemon.

While I cooked, she walked around the kitchen sniffing the air and poking the pot as though the chicken and potatoes were alien species. When I offered her some of the stew, she shook her head as if I had asked her to do something inappropriate.

Letting go of the toes, she pats her hair and drops her legs on the carpet with a sigh. Her gaze, avoiding mine, skitters around the living room. As she curls and uncurls, the t-shirt stretches to cover her legs down to the ankles and then peels back to reveal all of her thighs and long legs.

Though she is tiny, any part of her body I focus on is large. Her fingers, as they thread into mine, and her back, as I massage it, fill my senses. Even her small asymmetric breasts swell under the fabric as my eyes graze them.

On the clock, the hands are creeping closer to each other. It’s half past seven and my heart begins to pound.

We would watch TV sitting on the far ends of the couch, she answering my questions with monosyllables and curt nods. Not rude or shy, just dreamy. She refused when I offered the remote but when comedies and cartoons were on, she threw back her head and laughed with her entire body, as if she was having an orgasm.

She ate my stew without lifting her eyes off the bowl. I leaned back in my chair and watched her eat, smiling to myself and wishing I could stroke her graphite hair. The couch began to shrink and though we still sat at the far ends, the space between us disappeared.

She would roll up to me and I caressed her as the evening light faded from yellow to crimson, running my fingertips over her bamboo neck and delicate shoulders, never poaching under the clothes.

Now, I have a dull ache at my throat when I see her cowering at the very edge of the couch as if she wishes to put distance between us. Having spent months closing the two feet isolating us, this separation feels like a chasm. Why did we have to kiss last night? In the two minutes my roommate left us alone at the bar.

I’ve spent the entire night burrowed under the dark covers trying not to imagine what was going on in the other room. I know why I didn’t make a move on her before and wouldn’t do it again. I can’t share and she won’t stay.

Her gaze follows mine as I look at the clock—twenty minutes to eight o’clock.

She closes her eyes and stiffens for the first time this morning. I trace the curve of her face from the round chin to her temple and linger on her brown lashes. In her green shirt on the red couch, she seems full of color while I am all gray—my clothes, my skin. Even the couch seems to fade to a dull maroon on my side.

Her eyes remain closed as I reach across the abyss and tug at her t-shirt. It wiggles off, over her head, with ease. “You are not a Tamagotchi,” I don’t tell her, “Because you will never be entirely in someone’s grasp.”

But at this moment, I don’t care. I just want to pet her, all over.