Fiction: Double Lucky

By Lanie Brice 

She sits on the bed facing the wall with her back to him. The alternating traffic light ripples through the gauzy curtains. She reaches her arms overhead, forming a narrow goal post from her shoulders to the points of her black-lacquered nails. His fingers trace along her hip, playing with the lettuce hem of her top. They dip under and pinch evenly to peel the ribbed fabric off her skin. She brings her arms down, using her left hand to free her right wrist from the sleeve. The shirt sales down the bed, catches on the footboard. She rests her arms at her side, turns her palms upward in her lap. 

His hands roam over the expanse of her back, teasing along the strap of her bra, ghosting over the clasp. His other hand joins, but he pauses. Her teeth cut lightly over her bottom lip, brow creasing as the seconds stack up. His hands leave her back and the pad of his finger connects above her right elbow. Her breath skitters. His thumb presses more firmly. He squints, pulls her arm back closer to the light. A wishbone, in delicate lines of tattoo ink, above her elbow. 

“What’s this?” he asks in a voice that’s laced with an awkward exuberance, an overenunciation that clashes with the stillness. 

She yanks her arm out of his hand and cradles it. She circles her thumb hard over the wishbone and stares at the wall. “It’s nothing.” 

“What is that, like, a wishbone?” he persists, leaning in towards her arm. She twists her body in on itself, moving further from his gaze. 

“It’s nothing, can we please just—” She waves between herself, the man, and her bra clasp. 

“Why are you being so weird? It’s just a question.” He sits back on his heels, addressing the back of her head. 

“One I’m not answering,” she says. Her impatience drips into the silence.

“Now you’ve made it weird.” 

“I’ve made it weird?” she says, drawing out the I, emphasizing its jagged edge. 

“It’s just a tattoo,” he mutters.

“It’s just not your business.” 

They sit in the dark in silence. A pair of headlights project across the bedroom wall, and her eyes track to the end of the beam. 

“Are you going to…” 

He runs both hands through his hair, gripping into his curls and pulling hard. He looks over his shoulder at the orange couch against the far wall then turns, a rippling shadow across her back. There shouldn’t be feelings between strangers.

She makes a dissatisfied sound, pitches forward, and swings her legs out from under her. “Your loss,” she mumbles as she walks around the bed, pinches her shirt off the footboard, and shuts herself in the bathroom. He sits on the edge of her bed and roots his feet into the floor, shaking his head. 

She takes her phone off the vanity and settles on the tile, resting her back against the porcelain tub. The ceiling has small spots of mold. Her chest rises. Her stomach expands. Then she fully deflates. 

As the screen loads, her hand migrates across her body to cup the backside of her elbow. Her head tilts back towards the ceiling, and she closes her eyes, fingers taking turns pressing the skin until it turns bright white over the wishbone. The screen reads: this user does not exist. 

Her thumb presses into her profile picture until a menu of various accounts appears. She selects a new self and sinks further into the floor. Her nails against the glass echo like a cacophony of bats launching off a bridge. 

Paullllol_. The first result shows man with most of his face obscured by sunglasses looking up from the profile picture. She clicks. Fifty posts load. 

She chooses the square in the top left corner timestamped yesterday. There’s the man and a woman in the frame. The man has his back to the camera holding the woman, her legs wrapped around his torso. She’s grinning, wearing big heart-shaped sunglasses. 

Her fingers pinch the screen, pulling the image closer. Her whole body tilts into the phone. In the maze of greenish ink covering his left arm, there’s the thin lines of the wishbone drawn inside a horse shoe. 

“Double lucky,” she whispers through the faintest hint of a smile. She closes her eyes and rests her head back against the cool lip of the tub. 

 

Lanie Brice lives in Wyoming where she works in hospitality. She’s been a book blogger at Reading, Writing, and Me for seven years, and her random musings can be found in the newsletter Lanie Land. Her previous work has been published in Coalitionworks, Infinite Scroll, the Observer, and the Infatuation.