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Bittersweet
By Taleya
He's not allowed to remember.
It was a rule she set down the morning after. He was there, she was there, their
friends the genitals were on display and clothing was noticeably absent.
Conclusions had been reached - remarkably accurate conclusions - although
Bernard routinely wakes up in strange places and strange beds with bite marks
and bruises in unusual places and no memory of what the hell happened, she has a
better recollection of what goes on and where.
It had been...nice. He'd been surprisingly considerate, if a bit fast, sloppy
kisses and spilled wine. Messy, rompy, and afterwards he'd fallen asleep in the
wet patch, snoring hugely with a half-lit cigarette dangling from his bottom
lip. Taste of ashes in her mouth.
And the next morning he was stuck to the sheets with a screaming headache,
blarging incoherently at a world that dared exist. She made him muffins, and
he'd left jam smears on her pillow, cigarette burns on the toilet seat, and a
pair of underpants hanging from the light fixture.
She's allowed to remember. He is not. It's a pathetic power play on her part,
she knows. She also doesn't really care. It's something she can hold, something
she can hoard, something she can play with alone at night after the latest
miserable failure at dating falls through. It's a small, mean power, but it's
hers, the one thing she does have in a world of men where she has no power at
all.
Of course, he doesn't care. He's almost adorably sociopathic that way. He'd be
no more flapped if he'd woken up stark naked in a field of amorous sheep.
They've settled into their grooves, she brings him wine, he mocks her viciously
and they reach something approaching friendship in a certain light.
It's not perfect, but it works.
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