Ollie gets sick and tired of my drunken bullshit and gets up from the blue couch. She starts towards me; I’m leaning against the post of the door that separates room from room. Which room? I’ve forgotten. Let it be, its just another home worth leaving for the next. She reaches my tiny frame, grabs the left side of my face with her right palm, says ‘you know you’re fucking crazy, yeah?’

‘Yeah. I know. Its just…well it’s the craziest shit babe…its just, you.’

‘No!’

‘Yes! Fucking Christ, how long must we fight over dead shit!’

She swings the other palm, clumsily, up to slap the right side of my sweaty face. It’s a hundred and ten degrees in the south and I’m leaving but she doesn’t seem to mind. She grips my cheeks and refuses to let go.

‘Listen here, mister’ she starts up through baby tears streaming uncontrollably, ‘I am too scared to let you go.’

‘No. Sweet cheeks, I’ve stolen all the fear, remember, you’re wild! You’re free to wander like a soldier without a single thing to fight for but love.’ 

She pushes me into the foreign doorframe and I breath out for what feels like a day, ‘hey, be gentle. Please. I’m stupid fragile right now.’

‘No soldier boy, you’re all I need you to be. You’re in my hands. And my hands are sticky with a thousand beer flights that I couldn’t give a shit about. Poured down the throats of a hundred sailors with fleeting thoughts of their hands around my thighs.’

‘Fuck those boys! Those are mine!’ I finally build the courage to scream, reaching my fingers to meet around her tiny waist, right at the small of her back, where here spirit yearns to pull itself down to her ass bone. 

‘Babyboy be still. Any boy is better than a girl like you. I cannot hold your cheeks like this any longer. But I cannot say. Nor can I bear to save face, any longer and I’ll just have to say what I mean. So I’ll just say now, you’re the wildest child I’ve ever known.’