A Perfect Red Line

 by yt sumner

We lean into the mirror. Our hips pressed against the basin. Our lips pursed open. My lip liner is red, the colour it always is and my cupids bow is crooked.

Fuck.

She flicks a long lash with mascara.

What’s the worst thing you ever said?

I shrug and wipe my lips, leaving them raw, they way they look when they’ve been kissed hard.

I say lots of things I wish I could take back. Lots of things I never meant. In fact I wish I could cut out my tongue for all the things I ever said.

She blinks rapidly and leaves black flecks on her face.

You’re getting morose, I mean in bed.

I don’t know. The worst thing I ever heard was sorry.

She laughs with a snort.

C’mon, give.

Well, to tell the truth, I’ll say anything.

Like?

Like anything he wants me to.

And do you?

Of course I do.

I think about how much I like my lips looking like this. I place the pencil on the sink. I think of all the things I said.

While I begged, laughed, moaned, inhaled, bit, teased, opened, sliced, sucked, bled, tore. While I made the words hurt and rode every single vowel that travelled down, made him growl back, made him tell me more. Such conversation.

But now it seems foggy and all I remember is the last thing I said.

I said, I love you, once.

She looks at me with black freckles and lashes and smirking.

And were you telling the truth?

I shrug and pick up the pencil. I hold it to my lips.

I thought I meant every word. Until he asked me to say it again.

And I lean closer to the mirror and draw a perfect line.

yt sumner writes stories for people that send her postcards at http://lambeatswolf.wordpress.com/. She's not stopping until she's written 100 of them. She was cleaning the house to Beethoven's 5th the other day and would have much rather had been having sex to it.