by Stephanie Rick
Psychologists say a girl can get turned on just by an accidental knee brush.
Fine.
But they never mention the setting: the cheap chair, the half-warm air, the way you were already tired from pretending not to want anything. They never mention how it wasn’t even a touch really, just denim against bare thigh, half a second of friction and how your body reacts like it’s been starving.
How you’ll spend the next three years remembering the exact texture of his jeans, faded at the knee, softened by wear, like the fabric stole something from you and never gave it back. How on lonely Tuesday mornings you’ll press your fingers to that same spot above your knee, not tenderly, but like you’re checking a bruise, like you’re checking if it’s still true—wondering if your nerve endings are liars or prophets.
How in the freezer aisle, someone in the same shade of denim leans past you, close enough that your body goes stupid with recognition.
You imagine his hand on the small of your back. You imagine your name changed on a mailbox. You imagine a ring with a thin band, nothing flashy, the kind you’d spin in the car at red lights until your skin went slick. You imagine dinner with your kids, him laughing in the kitchen like he belongs there, like he’s been there the whole time. You imagine telling your friends, I didn’t expect it, but it happened, as if it was fate and not a nervous system misfiring by the frozen food.
Then he says, “Sorry,” grabs a pint of ice cream, and walks away.
You stand there with the freezer door glass throwing your own face back at you, gripping a box of Eggo waffles too hard, whispering pathetic because the worst part isn’t that you wanted him. It’s that you built a whole life out of a knee.
Stephanie Rick is a writer, teacher, and grad student living in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in Ghost Parachute, Jet Fuel Review, Dishsoap Quarterly, Two Hawks Quarterly, and elsewhere. When she’s not writing, you can probably find her watching someone cook on TV.
Emerge Literary Journal 