Ocean of Rina

Rina wears shirts that come up to her neck now. As she walks across the room, the blousey silk flows against her body like water, clinging gently to her curves, though not the curves I want to see. My hands tremble against my teacup as she walks right up to the table, flops gracefully into the chair across from mine, and opens her perfect cupids bow mouth.

“I’m moving out,” she says, and all I can do is stare. “Did you hear me, Gretchen?” she asks after only a few heartbeats of silence. I nod slowly, never taking my eyes off her perfectly made-up face. She adjusts the gold bangles on her wrists, uncrosses her gray stockinged legs and stands. I watch her intently, and she turns her hazel eyes back to me, puts her hands on her skirted hips.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she says. “It’s creepy.”

“What about the other night?” I ask. Her face melts into a fire of fury. I finally look away, out the window, at the cheery morning sunlight.

“You swore you’d never say anything,” she hisses and storms off.

I sink back into my chair, defeat crushing me like a big, salty ocean wave. I never meant to have feelings for her. I stand and walk across the apartment to her room, where the door is ajar. She’s tossing her clothes into a few boxes. Not like she has much more than clothes, so packing won’t take her long. I sink down the wall beside her door and curl into a ball, like I’d done the many times she’d had a boyfriend over, when my heart would ache at each sound she made, and it throbbed now, desperately, as though it were drowning in the ocean of Rina.

Although we’d first met in college, we were barely more than acquaintances. She’d Facebooked me because she was looking for a job in the area and needed a place to crash until she found a job and/or an apartment. That was one year ago.

“I can hear you out there, creep,” she calls to me, but I don’t move. How can I move when she’s just ripped my life apart?

Sure, she was drunk that night. Sure, she’d said a lot of things she probably didn’t mean. But I can’t help wondering if she meant even just one sentiment she offered.

“Why did you say it?” I mumble. She flings open the door, and I stare up at her, trying my damndest to keep the ocean of Rina from welling up into my eyes.

“Say what?” she demands, looking down at me. I’m sure I must look pathetic.

“That I was amazing and beautiful and perfect and you’d never been happier than when you were with me.”

 Her eyes soften and she bends down. My heart thuds in my chest as she lifts her hand to my face. I’m sure she’s going to tell me she’s changed her mind, that she’s just forgotten what happened. She cups my face and gives a sympathetic smile.

“I said those things,” she says softly, “because—” her face inches closer to me, I can feel her breath ticking across my cheek— “I’m a liar.”

“Wh-what?” I say, as she slaps her hand firmly across my cheek. She laughs and stands up, towering perfection above me.

“I’ve been using you, Wretchen” she says, using her cruel nickname for me. “You think you’re the first one I’ve done this to?” She eyes me, then shakes her head. A tendril of golden hair spills out of her perfect twist and brushes the side of her neck.

I can barely breathe. A part of me knew this was coming. I know that she’s too good for me, that she’s better than me at everything; getting boyfriends, doing makeup, dressing alluringly. I’ve never been so attracted to any other female in my life—not till Rina showed up at my house, wearing a low-cut top, baring her glorious collarbones for the world to see. I see her, standing in my doorway, sheepish smile sprawled across her face, an army of gorgeous men carrying in fifteen huge boxes of clothes, shoes, accessories … and nothing else.

But I didn’t care about those men, though had she been any other female in the world, I would have been drooling over them and making a nuisance of myself. I only had eyes for Rina, perfect Rina and her gorgeous, delicate collarbones.

I stand up, my hands shaking. So it was all a lie, huh? I think, emotions whirling through like a tropical storm in the Ocean of Rina. I don’t care so much about that, but how can I live on once she’s gone, having known the pleasure of her body—and her collarbones—for one glorious, drunken night? My hand shakes as I reach out to grab her shirt, to tear the silk like flesh from her body, just so I can see those porcelain protrusions just once more.

My hand sinks into her chest instead. We both give a yell of surprise, and I am pulled in farther, up to my shoulder this time. I look up at her with fear, but she just looks angry.

“What are you doing?” she demands, but I close my eyes and let go, and then I am inside of her, swimming around in my own Ocean of Rina. She sinks to the floor, legs trembling, hands clutching her breast as though I’d shot her with a poisoned arrow. I find the empty chambers of her heart and fill them, find my new place on the inside.

Her collarbones look just as lovely from here.

Based on this and this.
950 words.