The Vacation Bed

         She felt it crawl inside her, sliding down from her navel and clinging to her secret edge snug against her underwear. It dripped as he slid the card in and out of the door's lock slit.
         "Here we go," he said, hand starfished on dark wood.
         (Shit.)
         The room was a white bed piled with a white quilt and heaps of white pillows, bordered by a white shag carpet on three sides, facing a white table that propped up a coffeemaker and a TV.
         (Shit shit shit.)
         "Is it okay?"
         His voice squeaked on the last syllable, batting it into a hopeful octave she'd never heard before.
         "Oh yes," she said. A smile grew between her cheeks. The pain had not yet kicked her between the hips, and the room glowed in afternoon sunlight. "It's really nice."
         "Good." Suddenly he tipped her backward into his arms, grabbed her behind the knees and hoisted them until they hovered near her surprised nose, and stumbled into the white. The bed caught and sunk them into its piles.
         "Oof." She absorbed his stomach on hers and felt her nether regions liquefy and drain. A groan escaped from somewhere above her chin. Oh, shit.
         His exhales tickled her ear with tendrils of peanut butter M&Ms. "Mine."
         Her arms had to swim against cloth and air to wrap around the great flat plain of his back. For a minute, she kept still, embracing the pure warm weight of her love. "Mine," she said.
         "Yup." He tightened his muscles in a quick squeeze and then rolled off her. The space left her small.
         "This bed is huge."
         "I know!" Scooting right, he flailed his limbs across the sheets. "Look! Mattress angels!"
         She giggled.
         He caught her laugh and echoed it around the square, filled their square, until it settled under the comforter and went to sleep. Under the silence they lay touching thighs.
         "You know," he said eventually, "I think this is the first time we've ever had a room to ourselves."
         A list ran through her head: half a freshman dorm room (hers), shoved into a slice of wood called a bunk; a futon (his) that always smelled of cheese; a couch (Peterson Hall's), in a rec room far too popular with the dateless on Friday nights. None of which stayed uninvaded for more than ten minutes at a time.
         "I think you're right," she said.
         His fingers started wandering, brushing up her ribcage under her shirt. "I mean really to ourselves."
         She nodded and closed her eyes with a little gasp as his thumb grazed sensitive parts hiding beneath her bra. Turning her head, she tripped over his hazel stare.
         "All—by—our—seh-eh-elves..." he sang loudly, badly. "We get to be—all—by—our—SEH-elves..."
         "Silly," she said, burying her smile in his side and taking a deep whiff of his deodorant. It always reminded her of pine trees. Letting her imagination off its leash a bit, she pretended she was curled up in a forest.
         Kisses fell onto the part in her hair, pressed tingles down her brow, shivered the thin membrane of her ear, slid down her throat, pooled in her collarbone.
         "Now," he murmured (to her or himself, she couldn't tell), "we do-a this—" She let him tug the hem of her shirt over her head until the rest followed. "—and then we do-a that—" Locking her in an embrace, he unhooked the last barriers. Everything lightened and cooled on her skin. "Volia!"
         The world shrank to freckled hills of rounded shoulders, soft volcanoes of flesh erupting nipples, ski slope noses (straight for the beginner, bumpy for the more advanced), diving into belly button whirlpools and soft mats of body fur. Clothes crumpled out of sight, forgotten, and it was only when she noticed how her bright pink underwear stood out against all the white that her muscles between her legs gave a great wounded bellow. Shit.
         "Ah-ah—" It gushed through her as she went limp against the bed linens, as if it needed her permission to cause her pain.
         "What?" He looked up in alarm eyebrows raised and curls leaping from his head and front of his tightly whities pushed out into a white cotton tent. "What's the matter?"
         And now she could smell herself sharp and metallic. "My—period." She hated the word.
         "Oh." Trying to calm his touch from lust to comfort, he rearranged himself against her. She felt his excitement hard as ever against her side.
         "I'm sorry," she said quietly.
         " 'S okay," he said. " 'S not your fault."
         "We could still...I mean, technically...or I could..." She took his bundle in her grip gently and hoped her hand wasn't as tired as her insides.
         "Sleepy?" he said. She nodded. "We've got all day." He stretched out the statement to its full luxurious potential, but she could hear his reluctant mothering—this time of month, he never knew what to do, and she never knew what to tell him.
                                                                                            ***
         When she woke up, she saw him bending over her in wet black swim trunks, dripping on the comforter.
         "Mmm?" She rolled over and opened her other eye to better record his soft pale belly hanging over his waistband, his hair slicked down and calm for once (although around his chin and forehead a couple curls were already trying to make a break for it).
         "They have a pool," he said and kissed her wetly.
         " 'S Jan'wary." Struggling to sit up, she glanced at the clock. Three hours of oblivion, and she hadn't noticed he was gone. "There the whole time?"
         "It's in this big glass room with a hot tub that makes you feel like a lobster."
         "Oh." Pubic hair stuck to itself and the side of her thighs in stiff tight clumps that tore like dried glue as she shifted.
         He saw her wince. "You feeling better?"
         "Yeah," she lied, careful to keep her face still and her legs together during the decent to the floor. "Yeah, let me take a shower" (and brush the road trip food off her breath—stale fake butter and feet magnified by God knew how much diet grape soda—she had to fight a barreling urge to vomit) "and I'll be new."
         "Mmkay." Flashing a half-moon of pressed smooth backside, he stepped out of his swim trunks and into his tightly whities, flopped onto the bed, and fished for a remote. "Ooo..."
         In the bathroom, she spread her ass across the open toilet and let everything go, peeking into the bowl to see her insides smeared and dripping against white porcelain.
         Blood—all that blood. She could build another person with all that blood.
         Muscles twanged and tensed in unpredictable rhythms under layers she couldn't reach or control. The blood didn't rush to the surface in a clean-cut flow like it did out of a cut; no, this blood dribbled out of her in clumps that hung as suspended abstract sculptures in the toilet water, stained a swirl of maroon and pink and a glaring, angry red. The patterns were disgustingly interesting.
         She shuddered, yanked the toilet handle (the bowl whisked away her mess), turned on the shower, and stood cloaked in hot water until she felt clean inside and out.
                                                                                              ***
         Emerging naked, she shuffled through white carpet and stood beside the bed, wondering if her body would keep to itself for awhile. She could never tell.
         "Come on, really?" He threw a fist in the screen's direction. It flickered. "You people—oh hello."
         "Hi," she said.
         He patted beside him. "Plenty of room."
         She considered. "Okay."
         They melded together slowly enough to seem like a natural progression, from point A to C directly via B, from lips to chests to waists to—
         "But I thought—you..."
         His hot breath panting against her neck painted a thicker layer of want over the cramps between her legs. "No—I mean—it'll be fine—he'll be wearing a ha-hat! oh! anyway—I—please?"
         "If you insist," he said in the jokey I'm-merely-indulging-my-woman voice that she never believed for a second. This time it made a small tight wad of resentment bud against her usual amusement. "Back momentarily, dear bunny of mine."
         "Okay, sleepy owl." Their only pet names for each other didn't escape their bed.
         Wrapped in a condom and sticking out ninety degrees, he strutted back and fell into her open arms, surfaced briefly to adjust critical parts, and eased into her. At her sharp inhale, he started moving, pushing and pulling his hips. She marveled at the instinct of the dance, of how natural this felt to be filled with another human being, but she had to keep her eyes shut or else she would remember just exactly how undignified sex looked.
         Above her, his puppy noises stopped. "Damn. Hang on—let me—oh God!"
         "What?" She snapped to attention. "What is it?"
         "I think I cut myself!"
         "Where?"
         "On—"
         A downward glance showed latex streaked in gooey red. Relief spent her adrenaline. "That's just me."
         He looked even more alarmed. She knew they shouldn't've stayed up to watch that documentary on vagina dentatis last week.
         "My period," she said.
         "Oh." But he was already wilting, deflating the condom and spotting the mattress with her blood.
                                                                                              ***
         Later, when all sex had been washed up, thrown away, and tucked under pajamas, he touched her arm as they lay together in the dark.
         "Hey," he said. "I'm sorry."
         "It's okay," she said.
         "It was s'pose to be our time, though. A weekend alone."
         "I know," she said. "I know."
         "We didn't even have to leave here for food."
         "It was nice."
         "Yeah?"
         She gathered his cheeks in her palms and kissed him between the eyebrows. "Yeah."
         Content in believing her, he kissed her back and fluffed his mass of four pillows behind his head. "Good."
         "Yeah."
         A pause long enough to expect snores, then, "I love you."
         "Love you too," she said somewhat automatically. Sleep came layered in vague disappointment.

THE END