R. Hernández - An Innocent Fashion

“Dorian, I—” I started. I placed my hands on his knee, and I leaned toward him. His legs were folded underneath him, the sheets clinging to his thighs. I wanted to kiss him, but my heart began to beat too hard in my chest. I was seized with panic, and looked sharply away. I couldn’t do it.

His hand slowed down in my hair. I gulped down at the sheets and felt a wave of disappointment, of sadness toward myself, as I realized that if once I had been fearless and carefree, the best and the brightest, my time had passed. I was dark now — empty. I was everything I didn’t want to be. Terrified, I clutched his knees and gasped. He was looking at me, eyes shining. As I met his gaze the panic rose in me once more — the thought of failing, doing something wrong. The old Ethan would have kissed Dorian — he didn’t need to be drunk, would have swooped in stone-sober and done it, but this Ethan. My heartbeat spiked, to think that I could be so different now.

Dorian’s hand stopped. He opened his mouth to say something, and I knew the moment was passing. It would pass and I would regret it for my whole life, and become one of those people who carried their regrets like an empty shell — one of those people I said I’d never become. A shriveled compromise, an adult .

I was paralyzed at the thought of facing him, the thought of moving or doing anything at all, and yet if I didn’t, I knew I would be lost forever. The thought scared me so much, I forced myself to look at him and think, I’m still me, I’m still me! My blood began to trickle outward from the center of my quavering chest. This is what it feels like to have emotion! — to be moved! — to be alive! — This is what it feels like to be young! My heart pumped faster and faster until blood was throbbing through my veins. I was enflamed, all my youth screaming, “ Do it! Do it! ” a kid rushing through a field, wild and free, and I knew — I knew I had to kiss him, so I leaned forward and—

Dorian emitted a small gasp, like a child going underwater. I felt a light pressure against my chest, but it was already done.

The second our mouths touched, I was seventeen again, and any question of my dying youth silenced by a loud roar of adrenaline, a primordial desire to sear our flesh together.

I pushed forward, heaving and hungry.

Suddenly— crack! — I think I heard it before I felt it, just the single deft collision of two hard, unyielding things. My arms flew. I went reeling backward in one smooth arc, a complete reversal of my own forward momentum.

I was stunned, like a fried cable.

Dorian’s Botticelli mouth was open — awestruck, apologetic. He glanced between me and his open palm, which was stiffly shaking. I flinched: his palm was the first clue.

After an agonizing one. two. three. four. the second clue revealed itself; rivulets of blood pouring down my face. I couldn’t feel the source. I reached up — my nose, I realized. Suddenly I flashed back to several months ago: Dorian standing before me for the first time since graduation, shards of bitten martini glass on my tongue, blood escaping from my mouth. The whole front of me had been warm then, as it was now.

Mentally processing in that slow, stilted way of his, Dorian twitched, unsure of what to do. He cocked his neck like a bird. His mouth was still open, and for the first time I saw no light at all in his eyes, just sadness as he finally understood what he had done to me — not just now, but all along.

He rushed to jump across the widening hole between us, with “I–I’m so sorry—” He reached forward. There was a protruding vein in his neck that I had never seen before, a wire keeping him upright.

I winced. Gobs of crimson fell between us. My own embarrassment made my blood course faster. “I thought—” I began, but it was no use. When I looked down, the blood had dripped onto my arm and it was easy to imagine the paring knife flashing in my other hand as the life seeped out of my crooked, outstretched wrist.

I finally felt the first stab of pain. I cried out, and patted around for something to stop the bleeding. Dorian let out a childlike moan, and joined me. Together we seemed to be searching for a lost thing — a phone in a nightclub, or a piece of cutlery that had fallen under the table. He moved the bottle of water, and picked up a sock, as if he had forgotten our purpose and was simply tidying up. Then he seemed to remember, and in desperation he clenched my bedsheets. I was gasping, the blood was in my mouth — it might have taken him a minute, or less, or longer — but he yanked, and offered up the striped sheet toward my nose. I pressed it against my entire face, to staunch the bleeding and my own shame. The blood didn’t soak the sheet, but coursed down its folds like peppermint streaks.

Madeline appeared then at the top of the ladder. She held a towel around her waist, mouth open as her golden hair dripped water between her naked breasts.

Dorian looked at her, then back at me. To me he said, “I don’t — love you — like that — but I do love you—” his voice full of effort, yet still hollow. As if to prove his point, he lumbered forward — to put his arm around me, or make things better somehow — and I heard a sickening crunch. My glasses were pressed beneath his knee, the rims crushed into the bed. When he lifted himself slowly away, the eyes were two empty holes and the glass sparkled like diamonds on the naked mattress.

SABRINA WAS SHAKING HER HANDS IN THE AIR LIKE A GODS-CURSING aborigine. “Is this some joke I’m not aware of? You are both half an hour late, without so much as an e-mail to let me know? Ethan? Dorian?”

We glanced at one another. Dorian’s shirt had my blood on it, but if Sabrina noticed anything strange between us — the spilled blood, a gulf of quiet sadness — she responded only with a wild, wordless sputter.

Dorian and I had been silent all the way to work. I’m not sure why we didn’t just take a cab — it was the obvious thing to do, but we had both been too stunned to think of it as we fumbled around trying to make sense of things, while Madeline just got in the way.

I’d had to leave my glasses on the sheets, the clear shards dangling from the tortoiseshell rims like the bashed-in teeth of a disfigured grin.

It wasn’t unlike the time Dorian had drawn a picture of me, when he asked me to remove my glasses, and left me in a blur; this time though — unexplainably — I felt more comfortable in my half-blind state. Dorian led me down the stairs to the subway, the whole time holding my hand firmly, determined to prove something to me — that even if he didn’t care for me that way, he still cared. After two failed attempts, he put his whole hand over mine and swiped my MetroCard for me. When our hands touched there was a fizzle, like a drop of water onto an incandescent bulb.

Even though she wasn’t going with us, Madeline followed us grimly to the platform. “Are you okay?” she whispered, as the train that would take me and Dorian away whooshed in. She pressed her forehead against mine, and held my face between both hands. “I’ll see you later.” The train doors opened. Bodies swarmed around us, and Madeline stepped away.

When the doors closed and the train departed, I saw her staring at the platform floor, her hand pressed against her mouth like she had just realized a terrible thing was about to happen.

There was a single open seat on the train. Dorian tried to get me settled there, but I shook my head. I felt close to him, yet completely emasculated. He must have felt similarly, but in reverse, because as the subway filled with people he drew me closer with a protective arm around my frail back. I ached to lay my head on his chest, but refrained in a singular assertion of personal dignity — and the six inches between us quivered with visceral anxiety.