Yara’s Proposal.

It’s maybe the first, second week of May.

At work, I ask for assistance from Marjie, an old manager that has recently returned to this cess-pool, run-down town in Ohio from her two-year departure to Buffallo, New York, where she lived with her boyfriend, homeless, and slipped back into her coke habit.

While it takes some effort to confess, I like Marjie as a person, and really enjoy working with her. Our dynamic is ripe with sarcasm, risky jokes, and mild flirtation, and she tends to bring out the deep well of spontaneous, biting one-liners in me. Our banter is rather cathartic, I’ve found. And when we have a serious conversation, it’s untainted, likely due to the fact that we’ve purged Anything But from our system.

Plus, I think we work well together as a team. She’s fun, and when we work together, we get shit done.

So naturally, given the inspection coming up on the 10th, I requested her help when I felt another individual was required. And it was required. I had to clean the light fixtures outside of the building, which would have been easy enough a task if not for how high up they were, and how high up the ladder was that I needed to use. I wouldn’t say I’m afraid of heights, but this height and the unlevel ground, it made me feel more than a bit uneasy.

I asked if she could help me out by holding the ladder. I trusted her enough to do so. Plus I knew if I asked, she would.

And she did.

She did for a short while, anyway, but then we got busy and, given her responsibilities, she had to go up front for a bit. I decided to tell her, when she returned, that we’d just do it later, maybe after my break. Maybe another day.

So much for all of that.

I went out front, lit a cigarette, and crouched down. Eh, I’d tried.

A hit or two in, I turn my head to the right and I see Yara approaching the building. She sees me. I wave. She smiles. She waves.

Eventually, I go back inside, carrying that absurdly long ladder with me. With business still hopping, I come to the conclusion that my greatest contribution right now would be to clean the lobby, the dining room, or whatever you wish to call it, and so that’s what my dumbass does.

And as I proceed to do so, I hear my name being called. It’s unmistakable. I look up, to the source of the attention, and I meet her eyes. She’s standing at the counter. It’s Yara.

I walk up to her, our eyes still locked. She extends her hand, and I almost instinctively extend my own so as to hold her own. Touching the soft, radiating, probably-too-young ethically-speaking, but fuck-it-she’s-legal skin. Mingling, flirting with the energy she’s giving off like a radiant, rogue star passing by — a star having decided, for whatever fucked-up reason, to let herself be caught in my gravity, and revolve around me for what will certaintly turn out to be but a limited time only.

And I, a rouge planet, spinning helplessly around the dining room in the wake, cleaning tables, sweeping the floor, and an eternity later going behind the counter, where I look up only to see her staring back at me from across the boundary.

Unlike other customers, she doesn’t seem annoyed in the eternal wait. Still meeting my gaze — forever calm, confident, and deeply thirsty — she lifts up her hand to obscure the side of her mouth, asking something I’m sure I heard right, though it’s a question I’m somehow conditioned to doubt.

I have to pass by counter, walk up to her in the ill-defined line, all to ask her what she said, ask her to repeat it, to lean my ear just to take it all in, just to ensure I hear her right.

She asks it again.

“Wanna fuck?”

I’d heard her right?

Fuck.

“Yes,” I tell her, instinct overwhelming me, dominating reason. After a moment, with the boundary of the counter still between us, I find myself adding:

“I admire how direct you are.”

And I do. I so fucking do. Yet in my mind, it’s all too, too fucking good to be true. so much so that later, doubt intervenes, and as is my chronic tendency, I need to reinforce the truth.

So later, I text her.

“Did I hear you right?”

And I did. Over a decade dry, maybe twelve years in this agonizing, sexless desert of a decaying, dying body, and at last: an offering.

At last: an oasis.

And I could run, yet given my deeply-embedded trust issues, I crawl.

I crawl towards…