“And what’s so wrong with my taste?” Sophie had asked him once, her skirt tight around her thighs when she crouched down to poke at the logs in the fire. He had smiled, a wide line that hinted at the white teeth between his pale lips, and shook his head.

            “Nothing, I suppose…if it’s all you know. It’s a little dark, maybe.” It was a sly taunt, unsubtle but companionable in the dark warmth of the room. 

            “I don’t need to be taught anything, you know.” She could remember saying to him, more than once. Then and at least a few other times, when he had said he would introduce her to some new books or music or food or opinion. “I’m whole and capable on my own, without your meddling.”

            “I’m not meddling,” Charles seemed to have limitless patience, it was sidled with amusement as she stood and wiped her sweaty palms on her skirt. “I’m educating.” 

            Inimitably handsome to her, she could see where others might draw comparisons to an owl. Or perhaps she couldn’t—he was neither rotund nor in the habit of repeating himself, his head could not spin around his shoulders, and he had a long neck. It was her, she realized, who thought he was owl-like. Perhaps it was his nose, an argument could be made that it was rather like a beak, though maybe too short for qualification. He had a long face bejeweled with eyes such a light green they seemed more like the reflection of painted glass than even the glass itself could be; broad shoulders that had severe blades covered in galaxies of freckles; blonde curls that he trimmed short in retaliation against their unrelenting rebellion against any and all products and combs.

            “I don’t require an education.”

            She had drawn herself up to her tallest height, nearly eye-level with him, and taken in the way he studied her. Embers crackled in the fire, the heat warmed her ankles and calves as his consideration had warmed her cheeks. He had kissed her just the way she liked, keeping one hand at her waist and the other at the base of her neck to hold her still as she opened to him. It was an entanglement with Charles, never a fight for domination or push for control, an even meeting of desire.

            “You’ll get what I give and you’ll like it.” Had Charles been teasing her? Egging her on for a reaction? She had thought so then, but still retained a placid face to respond.

            “As will you.”

—

            She did not mind that her friends were not nearly as impressive as his. It was an eclectic group that she valued from an arm’s length. Artists, teachers, mothers, a chef, a lawyer, a secretary who lived off the money of an older, married man. Sophie pictured them as a sea of people, coming in and out of her life in waves, and like the tide they always returned but always slightly different. She imagined that they did not think of her in the same way, she knew she dotted in and out of their lives, recurring every so often but never staying for long. Gallery openings, drinks before the cinema, housewarming parties, walks in the park, birthday gatherings—each outing was unique and fresh and contained. It was best for her, she believed, not to mix her drinks or her friends. A few at a time, each in compartmentalized groups that never met the others, that was the key to harmony.

            Charles’ friends were comprised of the same four faces that seemed to hang around like blemishes on the skin. A doctor, an accountant, and two lawyers. He liked permanence, consistency, reliability, routine. They swanned in and talked loudly with their oversized cigars and sleek suits and wallets more expensive than the entire outfits of some of Sophie’s friends. He had an office on the main floor, a cozy room with a television and fireplace and bar. They would disappear in there, sometimes for hours, and Sophie was glad not to have to see them for more than brief niceties on their way in and out. 

            Karoline, one of Sophie’s photographer friends, who had once had a penchant for self-harm, got married in a park. Sophie and Charles attended, his navy tie chosen to match her dress exactly. She had been nervous to introduce him to one of her friends, surprised by how genuine Karoline seemed in asking about his work and saying she was happy to finally meet him. Had she been? Or was that what one said when they met a friend’s lover? She wasn’t sure. 

            After the ceremony they walked from the park to a reception hall where Karoline’s photographs lined the hallways. Some of them were romantic of her husband caught in various states of intimacy, some were gruesome looks at blood on tile floors, others captured strangers, and there was one of Sophie. A black and white of her staring straight down the lens. She remembered it being taken in her studio. She had let Karoline dump paint over her head and laughed herself silly until she cried with the paint burning her eyes, and then she had sat still on her stool with empty canvases propped up behind her. Isolation, Sophie had thought when a print had come in the mail, before tucking it away somewhere.

            “I don’t get it.” Charles said, head tilted as he moved closer to peer at it.

            “I wouldn’t expect you to.” 

            His cheeks flushed at the insult before he continued on with the flow of the crowd, leaving her standing in front of her own picture.

It was a loud reception, full of overflowing drinks and music that thrummed thick and heavy in Sophie’s veins. She had made the mistake of telling him why Karoline’s dress had such long sleeves, to hide pink scars that were turning white but not quickly enough.

            “It doesn’t define her, though.” She pointed out, drunk and grateful to have his shoulder to rest her heavy head upon as they swayed on the dancefloor. Hungry for a taste of him, aroused by the atmosphere and the drink and the dropped argument and the smell of his cigarette poorly hidden by a breath mint, she licked the side of his salty neck and felt his grip on her tighten.

            “On the contrary,” He huffed, voice low but flippant in her ear, “it’s made her twice as interesting.” How awful of him, she had thought, how very awful.

            Some months later one of his lawyers got engaged to a nurse from up north, she had the accent to prove it. They held a party in a ballroom, all paid for by the lawyer’s parents, and Sophie wore a silver dress made of silk. Charles stood near her, large hand warm through the material at her waist, and leaned close to murmur introductions in her ear. It was an elegant event beneath a looming chandelier. The room tinkled with glasses clinking and polite conversation.

           Friends from long ago, university years that Charles rarely spoke of, shook her hand before returning to reminisce with their friend. Where was he these days? (In town.) What did he get himself up to? (Publishing, it was a ripe time to be in publishing.) Did his parents still have the house out west? (She didn’t know and listened to hear that they did, but only stayed in the winter.) He seemed proud to have her on his arm. Beneath the curtain of her hair, he kept his fingers precariously high at her waist, near the underside of her breast.

            He danced with her for two songs, whispering the entire time about people she did not know. Though their names and faces were a blur to her, she had been anticipative to be included, to be able to attempt to push the puzzle pieces into place.

            “You look beautiful tonight.” He eventually told her, eyes dancing between her lips and her eyes.

            “And you’re as handsome as always.”

            “Why did you have to say that to James’s mother, though? About your work?”

            They were close on the dance floor and his thumb circled over where it rested on the bare expanse of her back as she did her best to blink past three flutes of champagne to who James’s mother might have been or, at least, what she had said about her work. Then she remembered, the older woman in the plum dress who had been the only one all evening to bother asking Sophie any personal questions.

            “It’s true.” She countered, tone as even as his, “I used to paint in the nude until we got our place.”

            “No one needs to know that. It’s embarrassing, you know.” It made her feel little. She wondered if he meant her art or that she had been in the nude or that she started dressing once they moved in together.

            “She said she was a fan, Charles, don’t be ridiculous. There’s nothing embarrassing about the naked body.”

            “Not yours, anyways.” He agreed, pressing on her back to hold her a little closer. “I shouldn’t have said anything, you’re right. Nothing to be embarrassed about.” 

            She hadn’t been sure what to say after that, and stayed quiet, feeling once more that they had the deepest understanding of each other without any real concept of who the other was.

           “Disfitting.” She said on the way home, shoes kicked off and blackness swirling past the windows.

           “That’s not a real word, you’ve made it up. Do you mean misfit? Is that what you mean?”

           “It is a real word to me.” She stood her ground. “It is how you’ve made me feel tonight, like I’m disfitting to this life, to you. It’s cruel. It’s painful. I can think of no other word for it.”

           “Don’t be dramatic. You have a poetry for crafting new ways to express melancholy. Don’t blame me for your own insecurities.”

           “You left me stranded in every conversation, waiting like an idiot to be included.”

           “You could have included yourself.”

           She bit her tongue in response, staring out at a world of nothing shifting behind the glass. It was cold beneath her touch, turning her fingertips clammy.

           “Opheliac.” She decided, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye, “You make me feel Opheliac.”

           “Do you promise?” He laughed at her dramatics and, unable to help herself, she followed along. It was an easy laugh, hearty and full bursts from the diaphragm. “I’m sorry,” He said as his hand rested over hers in the space between them, “I’m sorry.”

—

            Near Christmas he stayed home from the office with stacks of manuscripts to read through. He spread out in the living room, taking up the couch with his bread crumbs and his cups and his glasses and pens and everything else. She thought the very sight of him would drive her to bed for hours, in a fit of such agitated want that she could do nothing but touch herself. Yet she did not offer herself to him, did not interrupt his work so blatantly. Instead she worked at driving him mad, fizzling with a power that went through her in great bursts of satisfaction that she would never voice for fear of sounding insane.

            He set down his glasses, she leaned over his shoulder to kiss his shoulder and slipped the glasses in her pocket. Later he would ask where they were, having already looked himself, she would return to the room and magically find them. He made himself coffee and brought it to the table, she talked with him until he returned to his manuscript, then she took the mug and set it on the kitchen counter before disappearing to her studio. It left him thinking he had forgotten the drink in the other room, meaning he had to disrupt his lounging to get it. When she returned—passing through to the restroom, retrieving a glass of water, kissing his head—she noticed the mug back on the table, he had retrieved it. She did this multiple times. It was easy to sing too loud, make him ask her to stop to spare his concentration. He made toast and set it on the little table between the couch and armchair. When he turned to flick the music off she reached for the plate, meaning to hide it from him in the kitchen as she had done with the mugs, but he snagged her wrist into stillness.

            “So I’m not going insane.” A wicked grin split his face, “It’s been you, all day. Have you managed to get anything done in that studio of yours?”

            “A little of this, a little of that.” She did not mention that every canvas was filled with the color of his eyes, little shards of sea glass slicing through her peace.

           “I think sometimes that you are not searching for a lover, but a worthy opponent.” He brought her wrist to his mouth, opening his lips to flatten his tongue in a wet stripe across her jumping pulse.

           “And that’s you?”

           “We’ll see.” He released her and took up the toast, turning back to his manuscript as if she had not spent the day wheedling at him, as if she bored him. She went to bed early.

—

            She was nude when he returned from work one evening in the new year. It was not often that she invited him into her studio and there was curiosity in the arch of his eyebrows and the careful carriage of his shoulders when he joined her.

            “Can you help me?” Having turned back to look at her work, it was his footsteps on the wood that informed her he grew closer. Faced with her naked back, he did not touch her as they stared at the unfinished painting together. “It’s missing something,” She told him, “but I’m out of red.”

            “How can I help?” 

            The stores were closed for the night.

            “I need red.” She turned her head to face him, staring into green eyes filled with curiosity and lacking caution. She was not sure whether that was wise, though she admired him for it, loved him even. “Will you give me red?”

            On the lip of the easel, in the strip of wood carved out like a ravine but splattered with droplets of paint, sat a razorblade.

            “From me?” Staring at the little shine in the wooden trench, he sounded choked. In the utter blankness of his face, the restrained way he did not clutch his eyebrows together or bite his lip, she could read his panic.

            “Or me.” It was an open offer, the only way she could let him know that there was no wrong choice. His decision, whichever way he made it, would not bother her. Him or her, the blade was there. Pink filled his cheeks, a warm flush that appeared so quickly it looked painful.

            It would have been easy for him to tell her no, or to stop playing games, or to fuck off completely. She wondered if he knew that. From the perspiration forming at his hairline, she assumed he had forgotten the power in his hands.

            “Is this a thing for you?” He clarified after clearing his throat, “A kink? A fetish?”

            “Not at all. Is it for you?”

            “No.” His eyes finally met hers, dragged away from the blade. If eyes could be disheveled, his were. “No, not at all.”

            “Good.” She inclined her head in the easel’s direction, “I only need a little red, and then I’ll be done.” He licked his lips and she placed a palm to his cheek, smiling at him as softly as she could manage. “Go on, Charles.”

            She wondered if the metal was cool between his fingers or if it had warmed in the room. It looked out of place, too small, in between his digits and she wondered if she should have chosen something else, if she should have asked him for something else. When he brought it to skin, pressing down until it broke through and plumes of crimson painted the pads of his fingers, she knew she had chosen correctly.

– Kendall Bartels