English 2352 {DearestDarling & Dane Stalling}

Luke tossed his bag on the couch and touched a corner of pink sheet. He smiled. It had been a long time since he had lived in a college apartment with a couple of other guys. The informality of it all was familiar and it appealed to him. Rose and Jessica’s place was a rough female analog to the vaguely literary bachelor pad he and his friends had finally perfected his senior year. It had been a good few years, his synthesizers set up in the front room, along with Russ’s drums and Dave’s amps. None of them had been singers though, so they took advantage of the few voice majors they could lure into the apartment with the promise of beer and music. Good times. Rose seemed to see it some other way. She was trying to herd him out. He wasn’t feeling that.

“There’s no hurry. I’m sure Alex’s buddy will still be free whenever we get there.” If they got there. They’d never get there. Rose was saying crazy things. He picked up the “E” cupcake from “ME” and turned the M sideways to make a sigma. The only entertainment in Statistics 101 had been grinning about standard deviants. He peeled the paper off, bit off the cake bottom, and tossed the frosting in the trash under the sink.

He opened the fridge, pinched the corner off a lone slice of chocolate cake and ate it. There was a block of four key lime yogurt cups, a glass bottle half full of water, and a sad stalk of celery with the leaves pressed up against the side of the fridge. He closed the door and opened the freezer. The frost on the sides crowded out most of the storage space. An ice tray and a couple of orange Otter Pops filled most of the available space. He closed the freezer.

“Where’s your room? Aren’t you going to show me around? I want to see the room with the Christmas lights.”

Luke wrapped his arms around Rose. He smelled her hair, ignored her tension. “What are you afraid of? Do you think I’m going to rearrange your sock drawer? Come on. Show me your sock drawer and then we can grab something at Chupacabra. Unless Alex’s ex-con is going to be there.”

He squeezed her, then headed down the short hall.

Luke invaded. The corner of Rose's lips twitched as she watched his slow encroachment, the way he had to touch everything... the irreverent way he explored her space. She touched her fingertips to the hollow at her throat and wondered if he always been this irreverent, and then realized quickly that of course he had been. The difference was only that he usually worshipped her, and now he was intruding in her temple. She could practically see where he had touched, as though his hands were smudged with ink or blood. She didn't know if she liked to be marked. He said nothing and it made her bite the inside of her cheek, anxious.

"Where's your room?" Somehow it had never crossed her mind that he would want to see it. She paled a bit, glittering eyes shifting to the side for a moment before she parted her lips to speak, but he had used the moment to ensnare her, his breath diffused in her loose hair. She wanted him. She wanted him to go. His arms were too heavy when they weren't pinning her to something. "You're such a snoop. You've already seen it anyway..." Part of it. Curated and cropped and filtered. She could hear the giveaway in her own voice, that there was something that she was hiding. She had always been a miserable actress-- good enough for boys before that liked to talk about Fight Club and skateboarding and other stupid things that required a feigned interest, but Luke was too perceptive for that.

She slipped beside him in the crowded hallway, pressing her hands against the walls to stop him. In a room adjacent, Jessica squealed and giggled shamelessly, but if Rose heard it, she didn't let on. "I've never seen a man so interested in a girl's room before... what do you think you're going to find in there?" She attempted a light, disaffected tone and failed utterly, the tightness in her limbs extending even to her voice. "Do you really want to listen to Jess and Nick-- Nate?-- what's-his-face getting freaky while you exhume some embarrassing artifacts in my room...?"

Her tactics didn't seem to be working, though she didn't allow him any further distance down the hall. She edged so close that their toes were nearly touching, her chin tilted up defiantly, arms akimbo. "I don't let guys in there. End. Of. Story."

“Guilty,” Luke said, smiling, “I’m your biggest snoop, and sure, I saw the postcard, but the glass pyramid isn’t exactly the Louvre, is it?”

Her sudden reticence fascinated him. It was beyond just a normal discomfort with a messy room. He guessed there would be a strong underlying order in any case, maybe a few surface wrinkles in the room, not unlike Rose herself. It wasn’t shame.

“I’ll tell you what I think I’m going to find in there. Your face in the only space in the world you’ve designed for yourself. And maybe my tie, half kicked under your nightstand. You want to go in and straighten up a little? Tear down your Jonas Brothers poster maybe?”

What he wanted to see, though was what she would choose to straighten up. Things he would never notice at all would take on significance. Jessica and Nate had some kind of insincere argument going on, punctuated with giggles and groans. Jessica seemed to be winning.

Rose blocked his way and he smiled, thinking of tanks in Tiananmen Square. End of story. He took her by her shoulders and kissed her mouth, taking his time. He turned her around and took her hand. He backed down the hallway until he ran into the only door that could be hers.

“I’m not a guy, Rose. I’m Luke, and I want to see you as naked as you can bear.”

He opened the door and backed in.

If Luke was just a 'guy', maybe it would've been less intimidating for her to invite him in. If he laughed or thought less of her for it, it wouldn't matter. She felt flimsy in his hands, but he steadied her, held her firmly as he kissed her. He'd been in her home before, or one of them anyway, but of course the house on the lake hadn't really been hers ever. It was perfectly anonymous, revealing nothing. He turned her, trading places so that he was now the tour guide leading her down the corridor, and she shuddered. It wasn't so much that she thought that her room would send him packing; nothing else had, and she didn't think much could shake this... obsession that he seemed to have with her.

The door hinges squeaked as Luke opened the door, as if protesting his quiet invasion. Blackout curtains kept her room in eternal eclipse, the only light source being the Christmas lights wrapped around the headboard of her bed, soft and ethereal. There wasn't a free bit of space on the floor; every surface was cluttered with papers marked with her sprawling cursive, some places punctured by the pressure of her pen as she'd tried to mark through a mistake. A pile of clean clothes, mostly black, guarded her closet doorway. She strode over to it and kicked it halfheartedly into the darkness, as though that would make all the difference. Her bass stood sentry over the chaos, pristine and obviously well-cared for, close to Rosalie's rumpled bed. She'd never understood why anyone made beds up except to impress other people.

None of that really worried her. Luke was careless, messy, especially now that he didn't have a wife to set him straight. The sizable collage that spanned two thirds of her bedroom wall, however... it was a little disturbing in this light, and utterly naked. A woman made of Rosalie's handwriting and scraps of magazine clippings was the focal point, larger than life and frantic, swathed in forest-y midnight brushstrokes. Her eyes were painted bottle caps, reflecting the light as if she was somehow alive. It wasn't the Louvre or the Jonas Brothers. She was made of songs no one had ever heard, a goddess too obscure to have acolytes. Her brow was jeweled with upcycled bits, washers and earrings that had lost their mates, imperious and mystical. Luke's tie was clasped between her hands, swirls of iridescent color framing her like wet smoke.

Rosalie ignored her though, her heart racing, though she tried not to let on. She perched on the edge of the bed, busying herself with the laces of her right boot.

"Snoop's paradise," she said, her eyes like glittering ice in a dim light. "You always said you wanted to look at my lyrics." She slid her boots off, tossing them under her bed, and leaned towards her bedside table to light a stick of incense, spicy and thick. It felt good to keep her hands busy, it was something to do besides observe him observing her. She felt inside out in here.