First Position by Melanie Hamrick

Author:Melanie Hamrick [Hamrick, Melanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

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Half an hour later, we’re stretched out on his bed eating General Tso’s chicken, fried rice, dumplings, egg rolls, and watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s on a huge screen that masqueraded as a painting.

The drugs have fully worn off and I’m finally getting drowsy but feel deeply content. I don’t have the unpleasant sting of regret or fog of awkwardness I might have expected.

It’s as if what we did was just a part of adult life I had simply never known.

Or maybe not adult life, maybe just chic life. Cosmopolitan life.

I eat until I’m too full to take another bite and set my plate aside on the rolling table he has pulled up beside the bed. I curl up with the plush pillows and watch Holly Golightly host her party, take the town, and then I fall asleep.

I wake up only once during the night, when the movie has ended and some black-and-white show has replaced it.

I feel something on the bed beside me and hear noises I can’t quite understand at first. Breathing and whispering.

I try not to be noticed as I look.

Sylvie and Sebastian are having sex. Beside me. Practically on top of me.

I know that after everything that occurred that night, I should seriously not be alarmed or feel dirty about it. But there’s something about the secretness of it, something about the fact that it’s happening beside my sleeping body that makes it feel different.

I wonder then if they had both wished I hadn’t been here the whole time.

I lie there awake, trying not to listen, trying not to breathe or be caught for a long time. The movie is an old Dracula one with bizarre imagery that’s the last thing I’d want to watch right before bed and which completely displaces the bright colors of Holly’s New York.

Tonight had been fun. Weird. Different. And now I just feel dirty. I know it will be the last time I go there with Sebastian. I wonder if Sylvie will feel the same in the morning.

Finally, finally, I fall back to sleep. But this time I don’t feel quite as at peace as I did.

I feel guilty. I feel alone. And I want to yearn for home, but there is no home left to yearn for.

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