“Just you wait,” I told him one time we were on a curb. Three weeks into the relationship and we were on a trip. I remember not being drunk with alcohol, but with the fresh air only a province can still provide. My chest expanded as the cold breeze entered into my lungs and…
Ouch, Guia Galvez. Ouch.
Your worst fears and true feels are the best source for short fiction. Now let’s collab and make a Gia at TIT and GTH romance.
“Just you wait,” I told him one time we were on a curb. Three weeks into the relationship and we were on a trip. I remember not being drunk with alcohol, but with the fresh air only a province can still provide. My chest expanded as the cold breeze entered into my lungs and all of the sudden, I was light-headed and honest. I smiled at him knowingly, only for a second. Just you wait, I thought, and out loud, “I’ll say something horribly wrong, then you’ll leave me.”
Beside me, he breathed in as well and looked at the tops of trees that led into the woods. The trees aren’t random potted plants on a sidewalk; they own this place and the paved streets are unwelcome additions. “I don’t think so.”
“I will. Just you wait,” I tell him again.
Weeks turned into more weeks and by now we’ve celebrated a couple monthsaries. On one, he was feeling very generous and sweet. He took me to a fine dining restaurant and had me wearing heels and a dress. He looked at me and I learned it was truly possible for someone to knock the air right out of you with a gaze. He told me I looked beautiful and he told me I was perfect.
I shook my head. “Just you wait. One day you’ll wake up too early and see my bare face and you’ll be embarrassed how wrong you were. Then I’d do something disgusting, maybe fart if you pinch my butt and then I’ll never see you again.” I nodded my head, completely believing my words. He playfully threw his table napkin at my face.
A year into this relationship and just as I knew I was happy, he surprised me with a quick trip, an island getaway. “It will be just us two,” he whispered intimately in my ear, holding me close and the heat of his body pressed on my back warmed my heart.
As he was kissing the shell of my ear, I murmured that he should just wait. Those moments alone with me will drive him crazy and he’ll rethink all of the times he brought up a future together. He put his hand over my lips and turned me towards him. He kissed me and didn’t say anything.
Eighteen months of this love and I was feeling anxious. I had panic attacks often. I’d wake up, too late or too early, and the blackness would blanket us both. I’d search for his hand, and touch his face. Groggily, he’d mutter, perhaps knowing in his sleep, “I’m here, I’m here”.
I’d settle down, calm myself and inch closer to his body. I’d kiss his forehead and with my eyes closed, wonder aloud, “But when will you leave me?”
Five years and a wedding, a child coming soon, I sit on his favourite recliner (“You make it sound old,” he’d whine). He’d be grumbling about having to sit on the couch, but would settle down. He’d become engrossed, watching a sport with the seriousness of an athlete playing in the actual game.
It’s been sixty months and I’m still scared he’ll leave me. I know it’s not him and it’s me. That constant, niggling fear that I am not enough and that everyone I end up loving ends up hating me just as I’m about to truly give my all. So I watch him silently, hoping I’m wrong this time. And that this time, I don’t have to wait for what I’ve always known was inevitable.
Sixty-nine months later, we have a child. I’m lying on a hospital bed, tired but so, so, content. He is beside me, cradling our child and he whispers to it, “I’m going to love you more than anyone,” then, looking up at me, “I’m going to love you so much you’ll never have to be scared that you’re going to be alone. Just you wait.”
by Guia Galvez
She falls behind.
This is the first time they’ve really talked after they stopped. She sighs and looks at his back as he walked away.
“Just so you know,” she calls out, “I chose you.”
He pauses. His head lowers and he slowly turns his torso, and then his legs help him twist his body to face her.
She shakes her head, not knowing how to continue, but knowing with full conviction that she had to say it all out.
“It may not have gone down in any way we want it to. We all lost. I lost a dear friend,” her eyes were pleading for understanding. She couldn’t love him in the way he wanted, but she had given her something far more important to her. She sacrificed the love she was feeling for another. Just so, just so…but he didn’t understand.
“I chose you. I chose my friend. I couldn’t stand the thought of walking hand in hand with someone when you could be hurting all the more,” now she lowered her head, still shaking it. “I couldn’t.”
She hoped he understood before. But so many things are lost when you’re hurt. So many intentions are taken wrongly. Her body was stiff, she tried to keep in the quaking of tears wanting to erupt into sobs. She hold on for the final words.
“I thought you understood, our friendship was more important. I had hoped, like it felt for me, that it was more than enough,” she finally confessed.
She tells me she’s afraid. I tell her I’m scared too, but I have to do this.
Why this way? She asks, pleading, demanding for me to stay. The way I am. Where I am.
I don’t know how to tell her. How do you tell your mother you want to leave? How do I make her believe this isn’t rebellion? This isn’t escape. This is me finally choosing for me.
There is no other way, mom, I try to say. I tell her I love her. The woman I most adore and admire. I see it in her eyes, how this is tormenting her.
The words are wrenched from her throat, gritted out, You’re leaving me.
No. That’s not it, that’s not why. But at the end of it, yes I am leaving. Yes I am. I’m sorry.
My throat hurts and my eyes water. The emotional pain reaches the physical and you’ve never known so much pain until you’ve seen the heartbreak on your mother’s face.
I regress to a child. I’m sorry mommy. I’m sorry. Please, please don’t cry.
And she doesn’t. I do. I love you so much, she reminds me. I nod my head. A writer whose words fail her completely and utterly. There is no shame. The silence comes and it is welcomed. There is no right response albeit one:
I love you too.
I looked at him and smirked slightly, challenging him. He raised an eyebrow. I raised mine. “You like games,” he said. He reaches out and runs his fingers through my hair. He grabs a fistful of my hair and starts to inch forward.
I shook my head no, as I pull away. “On the contrary, I like to get to the point. I value honesty. Sometimes to a fault.”
He moved then, turning his body toward me and then gripping at the sides of my chair. I didn’t move, didn’t shift to make it easier for him. He pulled the chair closer, sliding it near. “Honesty?” He said it slowly, taking his time to taste the word. “I bet you can’t look me in the eye long enough. Eyes always tell the truth.”
I defiantly looked at him straight in the eye, letting on, on nothing. He says it’s so hard to read me. I tell him he can try, but he’s barely scratched the surface. I don’t hide anything, but I won’t let you in. The reason I don’t play mind games is because I always win. I just get disappointed when they lose.
“You think there is something here,” I begin, letting a smile play on my lips. I gesture with my finger to him and myself, halfway between hypnotizing him to come nearer and to signal at our distance. I am in full control. I rarely let myself take full control of my every move. When I do – oh, the feeling is glorious. Suddenly, life isn’t so boring. “There is none.”
He slides his hands from the steel arms of my chair to my hands, to my arms. “I’m playing mind games with you,” he confesses with a cheeky grin. I let him think he’s winning. He thinks this is seduction. He thinks he’ll elicit a response. He doesn’t. Frustrated, he holds on tighter. He pushes me to the wall and laughs as I collide. I just look at him. “I like hurting you – physically,” he says, his fingers digging into my skin.
I could hear the sound of a chess game near to its end. Checkmate. I don’t mind the pain. I don’t wiggle free. I lean in to him enough to make him think we want the same thing. Then I smile. “You know why? Because that’s the only way you can hurt me. You can’t hurt me emotionally.” I tell him things he knows are true. Use the truth against someone and know it is far more horrible than lies.
He let go, turning away and shaking his head. I grin and come nearer of my own accord. His breath hitches as I lean so painfully near and whisper in his ear, “Who’s playing mind games now?”
(Source: guiastar)
It’s instinctive. I know it is as I reach for my phone and dial his number. He picks up on the third ring. His voice is morose but steady.
“Hello?” Uncertainty marks his voice.
“It’s me,” I murmur and there is no need for introductions. “I’m here for you.”
And I listen to him. There is no need for pretense. No lies of “I’m fine”, or “I’m okay”. We crumble into the same desperate heap, needing so much warmth. There is something comforting about being connected to someone thousands of miles away, sharing the same sense of loneliness.
(Source: guiastar)
It was a tragic game of push and pull. Made of pent-up longing and deeply felt sighs. Of love too far to truly reach the hearts that pined. It ends with the bitter aftertaste of sweet, rejuvenating coffee in your tongue, the dregs left floating at the bottom of your cup.
It begins with a mournful goodbye, and two journeys taken separately. Continued with ardent I-Miss-You-s and I-Wish-You-Were-With-Me to video calls in the wee hours of the night just to catch that fleeting glimpse of what paradise is thought ought to be.
And then there is the inevitable silence. Followed by the guilt-ridden, albeit self-righteous excuses. I was busy, it’s difficult here, you can’t expect me to always be there for you now. The bile that rises is swallowed down over and over again until one loses count. Too tired, one simply forgets the reason why this is done.
Until everything soon becomes mechanical. The scheduled talks, the bickering, the misunderstandings, the hefty accusations and pointed blames. The apologies given and received all simply cannot cure distance. Yet the partition cannot be spoken of, the frustrating and regretful promise never to blame the aspect at fault leaves them pitted against each other.
“I still love you.” Every syllable catches at her throat. A proclamation strongly felt when alone in bed, weeping, the ache seeping to the marrow of her bones – now lose their power and meaning once they’re uttered aloud.
With a sigh, words stolen from his chest, “I still love you too”.
Then the excuses pour in. But I can’t leave. You’re not tangible anymore. This is not what I need. And the half-hearted confessions remain just that, in between numbness and vehement longing.
“Where does that leave us?”
In the same place. Still apart.
Guia Galvez
(Source: guiastar)
Girl was feeling lonely during the quaint get-together. Party thrown right beside campus for college paper writers to mingle. She was realizing that most of the faces in the room were that of strangers. Didn’t know much people now that she’s graduated and she and her friends been replaced by newbies with the same dreams.
So girl just sat between two unknowns. The two were determined to have a conversation despite girl’s physical interruption. Her big bright eyes flicked through people and spaces and corners, seeing and taking it all in. Of course she’d see boy. Hard not to with that height. You don’t get height like that often in this place. You’re tall when you’re five-eight. But boy was six feet tall and yeah she was looking up at him from her five-two.
Few moments later, they were all mingling. Girl felt awkward and uncomfortable, suddenly out of her element. She was used to small gatherings with intimate friends. Not with people who insist on talking about inside jokes that intentionally left others out.
So it was nice when boy who seemed to search for people he knew too, parked himself right beside her and stayed there. He had his elbow propped on the bar’s counter and he offered her a small smile. “You’re in the Sports section,” he recognized and that was the beginning.
Girl nodded and laughed. You have to laugh at those little things. Have to make the boy think he’s got some humour. And maybe, just maybe, he’d actually have some. They were talking about lots of things college paper writers do. Books, quirky hobbies and during late night social events, how they’re going home.
There is always something surreal about embarrassing moments, like you’re having an out of body experience. Or at the very least, you are strongly wishing you were.
She sat cramped inside a shuttle, a part of huddled masses of bodies inside a vehicle. This is trafficking, she grimly thought. We are being trafficked through traffic.
And now that the happy days are over, they each occupy very little of the sides of their large bed. There is no more talking. No more arguments, no more trying to win over the other – there was no fight left to save, to love and do it all over again.
Each wear sleep masks over eyes even when there is no light turned on. One shoulder stiff for man and woman, aching from carrying the weight of the body, both people refusing to turn to the other.
It was a tragic game of push and pull. Made of pent-up longing and deeply felt sighs. Of love too far to truly reach the hearts that pined. It ends with the bitter aftertaste of sweet, rejuvenating coffee in your tongue, the dregs left floating at the bottom of your cup.
It begins with a mournful goodbye, and two journeys taken separately. Continued with ardent I-Miss-You-s and I-Wish-You-Were-With-Me to video calls in the wee hours of the night just to catch that fleeting glimpse of what paradise is thought ought to be.
And then there is the inevitable silence. Followed by the guilt-ridden, albeit self-righteous excuses. I was busy, it’s difficult here, you can’t expect me to always be there for you now. The bile that rises is swallowed down over and over again until one loses count. Too tired, one simply forgets the reason why this is done.
Until everything soon becomes mechanical. The scheduled talks, the bickering, the misunderstandings, the hefty accusations and pointed blames. The apologies given and received all simply cannot cure distance. Yet the partition cannot be spoken of, the frustrating and regretful promise never to blame the aspect at fault leaves them pitted against each other.
“I still love you.” Every syllable catches at her throat. A proclamation strongly felt when alone in bed, weeping, the ache seeping to the marrow of her bones – now lose their power and meaning once they’re uttered aloud.
With a sigh, words stolen from his chest, “I still love you too”.
Then the excuses pour in. But I can’t leave. You’re not tangible anymore. This is not what I need. And the half-hearted confessions remain just that, in between numbness and vehement longing.
“Where does that leave us?”
In the same place. Still apart.
Guia Galvez
And always, in the morning, an ache throbs through the nerves of the brain. With it, she wills the memories of the night before to be forgotten. She is awake but is in no hurry to sit or move. Her eyes open and in the windowsill, like a photograph, she sees a man sitting with legs propped on a bench, a carelessly hand-wrapped joint gritted at the side of his mouth . He wears oversized shades, probably bought at a thrift store. Sunlight surrounds his frame and makes a halo on the white canvas edges of an oil board propped on a French easel.
It was a scene of James Stewart in The Rear Window, peeping at a neighbour in a downtown red-bricked compound, if one could altogether forget the Egyptian cotton sheets and the sound of murmuring help as they prepared the breakfast layout on the dining table. There would be no breakfast served in bed, no misshaped pancakes made from scratch or much too bitter coffee prepared by a careless but well-meaning hand. All would be fixed by the money the man on the windowsill pretends to dislike.
“If you pull away the covers, I’ll paint you like one of those French girls,” the man in the windowsill called out. She didn’t pull away the covers but she shifted from lying on her stomach to her back. He sighed. “I’ll settle for a bit of arching and a little leg.”
She ignored his request. “What oil paint are you using?” she grumbled in her morning voice. He had picked up a rectangular wooden palette and started squeezing out pea-sized paint that oozed from their tubes like creamy butter.
“Sennelier,” he answered casually. With a Bright sable brush, he mixes colours with the strokes of a drunken concerto conductor. The thick white cotton of his v-neck shirt is decorated with dried pigments in random strokes. His pants were crinkly and expertly faded thousand dollars a pair.
She tried not to roll her eyes, still considering if she wanted to be served breakfast here. “Wasting Monet’s favoured paint for morning doodles.” He chuckled and shook his head. She sat up and with her eyes began to check the spacious room for her clothes.
“What’s my name?” he asked in a tone hard to mistake for anything else than amusement.
“John, David, Mike, Anthony, Tony, Dave, Jake,” her tone was monotonous; her focus was on spying for her underwear. If she continued to list the most common of names, she was almost sure that she would be able to hit on his.
“All so very close,” she could picture his wry smirk, how he tried to maintain his composure. But his voice had the edge of hurt pride. “If you knew my name, you wouldn’t be so flippant,” he informed her.
She didn’t bother look at him. She slid off the large bed and walked the short distance towards her strewn underwear. With her back to him, she picked it up, bending only at the waist. There was a silence then. No sense of play or disdain in the room. She smoothly put it on and plucked her bra from the handle of his drawer. She put it into place then turned to him, her hands still feeling for the clasps at the back.
His dark eyes were on her. During the period of her search, he had taken off his ridiculously pretentious shades to ogle with concentration. His mouth was slightly open, wanting and in need. He scarcely breathed as he watched her little show. With the slightly tilt of her head to the side, she smiled in mock pity and clasped her bra.
“If I knew your name that would most probably cause me to be more flippant,” she pulled on a drawer and took a soft pink shirt of his and languorously put it on. “Now will breakfast be served or should I shower then leave for coffee?”
Guia Galvez
Something I’m working on.
James was sitting on the patio, trying to laugh convincingly as he watched his drunken friends made asses of themselves. He felt nervous and didn’t want to meet Helen’s gaze. With lashes curled and lids lined, her eyes seemed larger, boring into him much hotter than the heat of the sun.
“Dude you better come here and try this,” one of his carousing friends called out. He shook his head but lifted his beer bottle in salute.
“I’m fine in my corner,” he called back, grinning, not noticing her leave the corner of his eyes and out of sight. He turned to see if she darted off to drinks corner.
“Can I talk to you for a sec?” Suddenly, she was by his side, standing over him. He slowly looked up then away.
“Sure. What about?” He wanted to kick himself for asking that, especially in a mumble. His hands were suddenly shaking so he started rotating his beer bottle, making little circles to make it less obvious. He felt perspiration form in his forehead and temples.
“You can come with me and find out,” she replied, speaking quickly with a hint of annoyance in her tone. From the corner of his eyes, he could see her fists ball at her sides. She didn’t like how he had to ask instead of simply following.
He stood up and let her lead the way. He tried not to stare, but Helen’s messy locks tumbled down her back, bouncing as she walked. Her dress did nothing for her figure but it made him want to take it off more. James was watching her back so intently that he almost missed the first step up the stairs, almost falling on his face.
Strange, he thought. They were going up to the rooms. Helen stopped abruptly in front of him. She turned her head to eye him before opening a door and going inside. James had to swallow a lump before he could muster the strength to go inside. The door behind him clicked close.
When he entered the room, his eyes first darted towards the small purple lights that encircled the corners of the four-posted bed. They glowed dully in the dimly lit room, suddenly reminding him of a forest scene in one of the Lord of the Rings movies. He took a swig of beer, trying not to say anything and ruin whatever moment that was coming.
Helen asked him to sit on the bed since the only chair in the room was piled with books. He cautiously sat at the edge of her bed, his mind only registering thoughts of whether he should inch further onto the bed or to inch back. It registered in his head that he was partially wasted, and the wave of nausea was completely normal.
Portishead started playing softly in the background, light as air. He took another swig of his beer and placed it on the floor. Helen was by her radio, finished fixing the volume and now watching him thoughtfully. She walked towards him and put a hand on his shoulder. She bent so her lips were level with his ears. “I like you,” she whispered and pressed her lips to his.
It was a chaste kiss. Helen shyly, hesitantly pressed her lips to his. His lips parted of their own accord and he let out a breath. She put her hands on his shoulders and climbed the bed. He supported her by her elbows until she had both knees propped on each side of him. When she was properly straddling him, she paused to meet his eyes and let out a long exhale. Her sigh came from her very being, releasing an expression of relief proclaiming, “Finally, finally”.
She put her forearms on his shoulders, her lips pressing on his. He used his lips to open hers slowly. She let out a small sound of hesitation. He instinctively held on her hips to balance her on his lap, inching her closer to him. “Open your mouth, yes like that,” he instructed in a whisper. The girl with the strong heart conceded to his leadership without qualms. James knew girls like her grew weary of always leading in life and wanted - needed guidance now and again.
Helen slid her arms back and rubbed his shoulders, massaging them slowly with her hands. She rubbed his neck as he parted her lips with his. James let his hands slowly travel upward, resting his fingers a moment on the small of her back, massaging it lightly. She moaned into his mouth and pressed her chest to his intimately.
The softness of her chest, the intimacy of her breath becoming his air, inhaling it in. It could unravel him, he could come undone. Instead, he opened his eyes and stopped. He stopped and his body grew sore as tiny pinpricks made their slow assault from his feet, up his spine. His heart thumped loudly and his sight unfocused before clearing. He didn’t let go of her, but his grip eased and he bent his head.
She made a confused sound and tried to meet his eyes. “Why? What is it?” she was breathless, summoning clarity in her tone. She bent, trying to coax his head up with her small hands. He could feel her panic, knew she deliberated how to go about this. She was a smart one, always in control and this was her first gamble. And oh damn, he realized. This was her first gamble and he was messing it up big time. In a levelled tone she asked, “Did I do something wrong?”
He shook his head but offered nothing more. His mind was racing. All the while, she was on his lip. With an irritated sigh, she swung her leg away from his side and sat beside him. He tried to offer help holding on her arm, but she pulled away. She put some distance between them. Now he watched her fixate her gaze on a point in the wall. Her hair was a tumble of newly-woken up mess but she did not seem to mind it. “I’ve never done this before,” she told him slowly, never looking his way. He shook his head, wanting to tell her this is not about that. “So you can’t be like this. You can’t treat me like this just because I don’t know-”
“It’s not that, at all,” he cut in, wanting to console her but knowing not how to. “You, are so great. So beautiful. I can’t offer you anything that is of any redeeming value.” He didn’t know what else to say. What else do you add to that? How can she understand?
“What do you think I want from you?” she asked quietly.
He didn’t know what to answer that could make things right. “It’s not just about what you want, you deserve-”
“Why would you think you can decide what I want or what I deserve?” Now she stood up and went to her vanity desk. She took a brush and hastily ran it through her hair.
“I’m not, but Helen, I don’t deserve you,” he tried; he wanted to let her know, have a solid chance at changing her mind. He could think of nothing she would want from him, could think of nothing he could give that would be enough. “You need someone who,” he searched for the words, his mind going blank. “Can take care of you, make your life easier, those kind of things. A good match.”
Instead, she made a sound of disgust and started applying lip balm and dabbing on gloss. But she stopped, looked at him with great dislike, and then threw her gloss at him. Then her lip balm. Her ivory-backed brush went sailing. A stuffed koala and a string of pearls. He managed to dodge most of them by shielding his face.
“I don’t remember saying anything about needing something or ‘those kind of things’, or any type of BS excuse you can think about,” her words were curt, but her voice was low, almost in a hiss. “All I said was I like you. That was that.” she was filtering the curse words out of her what she was saying. James remembered her Christmas resolutions of being good then felt all the guiltier.
“So good for you,” she continued. “You must be thinking how kind of you, how considerate to think of those things for me. Instead of fighting for me, or at the very least telling me honestly if you just don’t like me back,” her words were cutting. James felt every slice go through him, making him regret his choice of words the moment he made them. “I could have told you, how much I thought we would be a good match, not because of those kind of things but because we would make it work. But never mind. I don’t want you.”
Helen was done. She walked out of the room, muttering the word, ‘Pathetic’ as she went and shouting a greeting of Merry Christmas you pathetic wastrel while going down the stairs. And he felt it was the right term to describe him.
Guia Galvez
Imagine Benedict Cumberbatch pushing you roughly against a wall but then kissing you as gently as he can.
nearly neon coral.
dean gets hungry → sam walks into a diner → sam gets kidnapped by demons → sam gets stabbed → dean sells his soul → dean goes...
Wolf, by Meghan Tonjes
if jesus died for our sins that means we get to sin more right
me waking up in the morning with my lover
