Loose Thread
A short story
Heat pressed up through the stones. N balanced on one, then another, the blue dress clinging at her ribs. Then she sat on the lush green grass with her feet over the koi, water bottle in hand. The cap clicked once under her thumb. Closed.
He lowered himself beside her, leaving that careful elbow’s width that said I’m decent; you’re safe. For a heartbeat he glanced as if she weren’t looking, though she met his gaze and held it.
The heat was dense. Even if there had been a breeze, the stone walls surrounding the park would have kept it from them. We're swimming, she thought, breathing underwater. Irrelevant associations: fish and water, the oceanic salt of blood, amniotic memory, sweat. The air smelled like green things.
They’d walked the campus, traded facts about parents and housing and what came next - Rutgers for him, UCLA for her. Much more practical than other walks they'd taken together the previous two terms: Proust, Plato, physics. No mention of his girlfriend, then or now.
He had said “write letters” the way other people said “text me.” She liked him for that, liked that he respected directness and had a history of being too intimate with friends without ever naming it. Always left a hint dangling, like a single thread on a sheer blue dress worn without a bra, inviting someone to pick at it.
Which he did: reaching just behind her left shoulder blade, a quick tug. No skin contact, but she felt it just as clearly.
“Loose thread,” he said, smiling.
She clicked the cap again. The koi nosed up, orange mouths opening at their shadows. “They think it’s rain,” she said. “We’re tricking them.”
He smiled. “We’re good at that.”
He wiggled his toes, free of sandals now, over the water.
She turned to face him fully. Freshly shaved legs crossed, dress smoothed with one hand over her knees. “Before you go, how about you say the one thing we both already know.”
No coy smile, no softening, no laugh to give him a way out. The air went still enough to hear water lick stone.
He looked at her properly, green eyes on her. “You’re beautiful.”
No joke to hide in. Good. She nodded once, the answer already prepared. “My place is close.”
He didn’t repeat it back or ask for a map; he only stood when she stood. She placed the bottle in his hand like passing a lead rope and stepped on the stones back to the path, sandals in her fingers, rock trapped heat baking her soles. The concrete outside the park shimmered; somewhere upwind the city had the metallic smell it got before a storm.
He understood without her speaking. They walked without touching. No contact before they were alone, before it became just something that was happening, two bodies in motion together, not a deliberate series of steps in one direction rather than another. No signs to the world, only to each other.
She thought about the sheets, laundered last night; the fan already on its lowest setting; the window that stuck unless you lifted as you pushed. Practicalities were a way to keep herself from making a performance out of what didn’t need one.
At the door she keyed them in. The hallway was cooler by two degrees and smelled faintly of laundry soap. In her room she pushed the window up, propped it with a paperback, and turned the fan so it faced the bed. He stood there, unsure of the choreography. She appreciated that; he did not presume.
“Water?” she asked.
“Please.”
She took the bottle from him, poured into a glass because it felt less like sharing a prop and more like care. He sat down on the bed. She handed him the glass. He drank. She watched his throat move and felt her own answer in her body like a simple yes.
“Ground rules,” she said, because rules kept things within bounds. “This is once. We’re kind. No postmortems.”
He nodded, taking that seriously, as she knew he would.
She took the glass from him, set it on the nightstand. Her hands were steady now. Outside, the first hard drops hit the sill. The room cooled fast. He was trembling slightly and not from the coolness. She stepped close enough that the fan blew across both of them and put a palm to his shoulder: gentle first, the way you start with an animal so they don't spook. He looked up at her.
They didn’t talk for a while, not till after. Later, the rain thickened and the fan knocked once against its casing and settled. She lay on her back, skin cooling in patches, and felt the rare, precise quiet of peace.
“Write one letter,” she said into the dim. “Make it a good one.”
“Okay,” he said. He would try. She would let him.
She reached for her journal when he left. Not to defend, justify, minimize, but to write the date, the weather breaking, and one sentence she didn’t need to read again.