We Were Jealous of the Ships

I was peeling the burn to its bottom layers, the ones that weren't white and raw but a deep spotted red. It wasn't leaking anymore; the cold froze that small 'o' on my hand shut, stinging my bones, begging every nerve to give up. Building and building, so all I could do was wheeze. Levi was waiting behind the thin door that slammed too easily, so I stifled my sobs and ignored his light knocking. I wasn't going out, not after the crash, the biting cold. "Shawn?" Levi's thuds were more frenzied now. Maybe the few people in the gas station started turning their heads. "You okay in there, man?" "Obviously not." The fluorescent bathroom light cast a dingy yellow on the smudges of spit and fingers, concealing the deep-set lines under my puffy eyes. The car, Dottie, was still out there, being slowly buried under the Michigan snow, all our belongings still inside her trunk. "You can stop knocking now; I'm talking." "I called your mom." My eyes pull to the corner overflowing with paper towels, at the cockroach trap shifting. "Why would you do that?" I turned the faucet on again, biting my chapped lips, dancing to the pain. My torso was still shaking from the cold like I was some deranged belly dancer. "The car isn't yours. Well, not technically." I could hear something scrape against the other side. "I know this isn't what we planned." He sighed, I sighed, the bathroom fan grumbled. We had made our way through northern Michigan because ferries and ships at the port could still leave, even in the winter. It could stay running until the entire harbor freezes over. It was a half-assed plan, but it was all we had. We would go to Mackinac Island. We were young, and they needed snow shovelers, maids, assistants. Hardly anyone stays on the island during the winter, so there were plenty of places to sneak into. "Don't feed me that shit. There is no plan now." "Come on, let me in." He knocked again, softer. "I can't." I had to keep wiping my eyes. But I unlocked the door anyway. It took a few seconds for Levi to try the handle again. I see him in the mirror first, his eyes wide, his mouth gaped open like he was confused. He shuts the door quickly behind him, not assessing the damage until after. I had somehow forgotten his hat. It was ridiculous—green and neon orange against his perfect dark skin. “This place is fucking disgusting,” he says. It barely had room for the sink, and the once white walls were stained a spotted grey. “Did you make that smell?” He finally smiled when I laughed.

"Let me see it." I went to hand my phone to him, to show him the message about the funeral. "Not that, your hand." He had only seen it in bandages before. "That's not what hurts," I whisper, tremoring up to my elbows. "Yes, it fucking is." But Levi knows what I really mean, that it's not all that hurts. "I saw it bleeding on the snow." After the car stopped and I ran out, his footprints chased mine in a long winding 'z' to the gas pumps. Mud had mixed with the snow in a grey slurry. My foot cut into it like a butter knife, spraying my legs in a curt splat. Someone would probably look at all that and wonder what happened, but the fresh snow had probably already buried it. Levi grazed the skin around the jagged wound, the skin on the edge of being raw, and slowly lowered his mouth to it. Most people would think of mouths as warm, but his lips were cold because they were covered in his spit. 'O' was the shape of my dad's wedding ring. He gave it to me years after the divorce. He always gave me stuff like that. Anything I asked about that he didn't need. I set it on the stovetop, waiting for the flames to melt it. I thought maybe I would drink it from the pan, the metal cooling into the indents in my throat. Instead, I pulled it out with tongs and branded my hand, holding it there till I couldn't, and then a little longer. He died, but I told myself it didn't matter how. After knowing, my mom just got into bed tired. It's the funniest thing to me now. How normal it was. "Tings happen," she said, her accent always making it without the 'h.' "No one's going to want to drive with all that snow to get it anyway," I say. I stared down at the trash again, at the now lifeless body of the roach. Bugs can lose their heads, not have brains, but they crawl and feed and fuck anyway. “Right,” he says. “That’s my dad’s car. He said I would get it someday. He said he was looking for an upgrade anyway.” “He was.” I don’t like simple statements, except when Levi says them. “He was right to. That thing’s a piece of shit,” I say. “Sputtering and groaning and sliding before things even got bad out there.” “You weren’t the one driving,” Levi jabbed at my ribs. “You were too busy messing with that pen.” I wanted to stab it in the skin in the middle of the ‘o’, but it was too tender. Instead, I jabbed it just below it, ink and blood only seeping out if I squeezed my skin hard enough. I don’t like the pain turning into a dull ache because that’s the final stage.

I take Levi's arm, his puffer jacket rustling against itself, and wrap it around my waist. He could feel my ribs rising and rising and falling. His other is still resting on my arm, so I leave it there. My arm is freckled like my dad's, wiry hair light brown rather than grey. I used to think that any age looks final, but even blatant statements change, like ice slicing and foaming against a moving ship. "How much more time do you think we have before someone else blows their bowels out?" I ask. "Enough." Levi lowers his face to mine to be gentle. It isn't rough like our first kiss. He sets his lips on one cheek, the other, my forehead, and my mouth. He didn't stop when I began to pull away, a knee-jerk reaction for someone like me. He only stops when the handle jiggles and the door tugged. "Be right out," we chant together, ready for our walk of shame, his head held high, mine to the speckled tiles, the paper towels just like we had rehearsed.