Bare skin meets bare skin, only delicately decorated by sultry, white sheets clinging to the sheen of sweat that adorns our chests. I take note to her digits, long and nimble that seem to perfectly intertwine with my own: they're puzzle pieces, but I should know that by now. I'm guilty of feeling them all too many times before. It was as if though all the dots connected and the planets suddenly decided to align themselves in unity.

With every heaved breath and guttural moan that escaped her swollen, red lips, it always doubled my anxieties, like some sort of fucked up timer. In the moment, it's better than any drug — like the epicenter of an earthquake. It's a shitty comparison, but the way the buildings shake and crumble is equivalent to how my body convulses in euphoria, arching up from the mattress and setting aflame with passion. Then, the worst part comes: aftershocks. The high disappears and I'm left to sulk with a cancer stick hanging gingerly from my, also swollen, lips. If I hadn't known any better, I'd say we'd be a pair. Not in emotional turmoil, but the physical battle scars.

Needless to say, I feel filthy. If I could exchange aftershocks for more earthquakes, I would. Like all things, it's inevitable — earthquakes always have aftershocks.

"You're doing that thing again," she hums into the crook of my neck. I feel her hot breath dangerously pricking my skin, as if needles were picking and prodding all over the surface. Gingerly, I shift away from her.

"What thing?" I roll out of the love-soaked covers. I hate the cold.

"You're freaking out, leaving with that cigarette in your mouth," she replies. I hear the mattress creak a little, and I know her eyes are staring up at the popcorn ceiling. We've been through this process more than once, and it always ends up the same.

"I'm not going anywhere," I insist; it's an automatic response. My back remains to her as my hands shakily grab for my clothes haphazardly scattered about on the floor.

"And where do you think you're going? Back to Xavier?"

I don't reply after that. Instead, the cigarette finds itself on the nearby ashtray (odd that she keeps it on her nightstand — to my knowledge, she doesn't smoke) and my feet scurry towards the bedroom door. I'm not the one leaving, it's my body.

"Run along back to him, then! See if I care!" she shouts, her tone of voice a contrast to the context of her sentence. "You're in denial, you have been for the past three months!"

My hand touches the doorknob, the metal is smooth underneath my calloused fingertips. If it were up to me, my own mind, I would've never left that bed. I'd revel in the warmth of her bare skin, allowing the exchange of lazy kisses and aftercare to be top priority rather than Xavier. I know he's waiting for me, though, on that bus. The rest of them are as well.

"You know how much my career—"

"Don't get me started on your fucking career!"

There's footsteps now. The floorboards creak, and not in a good way. I feel those nimble and long fingers wrap around my wrist — warmth. It's tight, fierce, but in all the wrong ways.

"You can't keep running away like this."

I can't see her, but I can imagine her face all too well. Salty tears streaming down her smooth, porcelain skin that's now flushed a velvety red while her round, doe eyes well up with said tears. Her eyelids, much like her lips, are swollen. It's not from love, however, it's from despondency.

"Let go of me, for our sake," I mutter.

"For our sake?" her voice raises an octave. I feel the storm coming. "You're the one who wants to save your fucking reputation! I don't see the issue here! It's 2004 — fags have been walking around since Bowie's time! And girls on girls isn't exactly a new concept, either!"

"I'm not a filthy lesbian!"

That gets her quiet. I don't dare to turn around.

"Then what the hell do I mean to you? We always have this conversation, and yet you keep crawling back to my bed like the roach you are. Tell me, what straight girl goes on to get fucked by a gay one? Multiple times, behind closed doors and behind her boyfriend's back?"

I yank my wrist away from her grasp. It stings, and I know that there's going to be a mark of her digits imprinted on my flesh. "Just get away from me."

And I'm gone.