Kamikaze
Crowds are disorienting to me. Like tidal waves or strong winds they sweep you like dust along the floor boards: falling into cracks, along crevices, brushing against the paint chipped walls and bumping along never ending corridors. (Or bumping into…)
I placed my hand on his chest to steady myself, catching it beneath his breast bone, the warm hollow between my fingers his heart. I feigned a laugh to excuse my clumsiness and blushed as I met the eyes of its victim. Blue.
I remembered my hand and felt my cheeks burning, it had only been a few second but it was a few seconds too long. My palm pressed against him like I’d held out my fingers in the motion for “Stop.” It was decisive, purposeful. The motion had been too sudden and my fingers too secure on his chest. His heart beat too strongly against my palm, his chest too warm against my unwelcome fingers, our faces too close. Too warm, too strong, too close, too much. In thinking of this I still hadn’t moved.
“Oh.” The syllable caught on my breath, falling from my tongue. I hadn’t been breathing.
I withdrew my hand sharply, fingers folding themselves to a fist and my palm bumped against his breast pocket. A ring on my wedding finger had snared the knit fibers of his shirt. Stuck.
I fumbled with the ring, unraveling a small hole beneath his collar bone. He laughed and the noise startled me, his lips dangerously close to my ear. He gathered my clumsy fingers in one hand and disentangled my ring with the other.
“I’m so sorry.”
“I’m Cook.”
