No sparks of electricity when your hands bump accidentally because she reaches for the sugar at the same time that you do. I thought you took it black? You question her with your fingers twisting together. Half of the container gets poured into her mug and she passes it to you. It’s hard not to marvel at the way she’s putting herself across, apocalyptic baby who takes her coffee like a Beatnik; the ones you’ve never read but know she probably likes because she’s the type. Who’s always complaining about how she was born in the wrong place. Maybe twenty years earlier would have been cool when Dylan was cool, and Kerouac was a religious experience and not just a name you dropped. She tucks her hair behind her ears and it still falls back over her bare shoulders. They’re like the symbolic porcelain you’ve been dreaming of. Not marked up with the sun’s kisses or anything. Blank canvases. You have these stupid moments where you want to lean over and graze her skin with your teeth so it’s not so perfect. Marlene McKinnon would wear the bites and bruises like badges of honor—she’d let you do some pretty rude shit to her.

The only problem is that there aren’t the currents that zap through your fingers. It’s the feeling you rely on the most. She snaps to get your attention—you nearly knock your cup over. A little overflows onto the table. Jumpy? Questions are the only way you can tolerate each other. New and exciting and unknown. Questions—to get to know each other. You’ll get tired eventually and it’ll fall apart. This is one of the times you probably wouldn’t mind. Need to be alone, people keep telling you. They think that you don’t realize it. The thing that hurts is that you knew it when you got mixed up with Hannah and crawled back to Emmeline because something had fucked up; you thought that if you did this, she might stop looking for Him and start looking at You. The Invisible Man.

She rests her hands on top of yours. You look lobotomized.

I feel lobotomized.

Good. Now let’s get out of here. This coffee tastes like piss.

Friction.

Falling.

Again.

Like always.