I was walking home after a late shift at the pub. It was cold, snow on the ground and lager breath in my hair. I am too tall for icy pathways, my centre of gravity too high, my movements too tentative; the tips of my fingers were cold froze to the inside of my gloves.
I skithered past the university, shut up with all the students home for Christmas. Turned left towards the library and right at the corner and there was a man knelt weeping in the snow. I stopped. He was yes young and yes goodlooking and yes well-dressed; but his skin was cracked with snot and his tear tracks were frozen slug trails down his blotched face.
Hesitate headlines of murder and rape as I stood hovering beside him.
‘Are you [fading inflection at the futility of the question] okay?’
He looked up myxomatosis-eyed and he was so ripped in pain that I doglegged my gaze. Now I saw flowers shrouded in snow. An avalanched teddy bear. Gift cards slush sunk, with the odd wordphrase bobbing to the surface: ‘never forget’; ‘too young’; ‘rest in peace’.
Three in the car that hit the library wall in the first week of December. The driver over the limit, Malibu-marinated. Her friends not wearing seatbelts. All killed instantly. The Nottingham Post heavy with school photos and tearful quotes of bright futures and blah blah blah.
From down by my feet: 'I can't live without her.'
Compassion realised in a crashtide and I sank down beside him, the cold wet eating through my jeans.
'You knew one of them?' in hushed museum tones.
His eyes snap-focused on mine and guilt fury acid burn.
'I love her. And she's [spat out] left me. She's gone back to [hawking] him. And she's alive, she's not even, even...' One hand conducted shakily over the roadside shrine before his words drowned again.
I took him home, leading him by the hand as if he were a small boy, crunch sliding through the cold biting air. In the flat we warmed our hands on ikea glasses of cheap red wine; he had stopped crying, stopped everything, and when I declared it time to sleep he stepped out of his clothes and curled on his side. We aligned shoulders hips feet, warming each other, and slid into sideways dreams.
It was still cold dark when I felt his cock twitch against my back; his body clutched and his mouth crashed angrily for mine, so my teeth knocked into my lip and bled warm onto our faces. He gut screamed 'Bitch' as he came and the afterward was his hot tears in my hair and his heart hammering against my spine.
When I woke up, he had gone. And the snow had melted.
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