Tears Apart

By Amadan

"As we cover our eyes, does it tear you apart, my love? Does it tear you apart, my love? Cause it tears me apart."
--The Tea Party

The water rushed, nearly boiling into the white porcelain tub, and she stumbled, nude, out of the little bathroom to fetch a glass of water and a knife to cut through the reddened flesh of the apple that she had been chewing on. They had been drinking this hot and humid night away, and she was very drunk. The radio asked if it tore her apart as she passed it by, and it called her Love. She smiled desolately at the little box, because it had torn her apart.

The same song had been playing earlier, and she had mouthed the words slowly into her bottle of rum, her full lips moist with the alcohol.

"As we cover our eyes, does it tear you apart, my love? Does it tear you apart, my love? Cause it tears me apart," she sang with the band's lead singer, matching his deep mournful voice with her own husky one. She let her arms sway like the ocean escaped to the air, as her head dropped ghostly back, and then rolled forward over her slim shoulders as she uttered the last line, finally dropping her chin to her chest to kiss the lip of the bottle of green liquid. A lover's kiss. He, like the others, had watched her little revelation with open mouths, as it played out like a movie eternally stuck in slow motion. Her beauty and tragedy locked their eyes to her and froze her body in their minds.

She set the large glass of water down on the garden window's ledge, and the knife beside it. It was a large window, but it was filled with ice blocks that people thought lent a grace to a mere glass box. It made the window functionless to her.

She eased herself down into the sultry water, feeling its purifying burn on her tender flesh and a sigh escaped her lips. The little pain was bliss.

He had been handsome, black hair that curled and glacial blue eyes she could have drown in, with the body of a god. His broad lips had felt like ecstasy on her long white neck. He whispered the lines she had sung back to her, letting his lips graze and torture her flesh with the question and the revelation. She'd clung to him, wrapping her arms firmly around his neck, tilting her body back so that he had to carry her weight and his own. He had let his hands slip to the small of her back in a caress, and kissed her throat, gently, and then the little curve of bone that her collarbone created at her sternum.

The flats of his hands pressed slowly over her ass, to grab at the flesh and pull her body up to make her face him for a brief moment. She let her head fall to rest on his shoulders as he pulled softly at her shirt, letting his hands slip over her velvet flesh, his short nails, carefully, pulling her skin on the way back down; never losing the beat of the music.

She forced him with tender passion against the wall, and he let their lips meet, then broke away to take her hand and lead her up the stairwell to a large airy bedroom. A breeze blew tenderly through the gauzy curtains as he lay her on the champagne colored bed and eased himself down on top of her body. Heat seared through her veins, and the music could be heard to drift aimlessly through the floor like a drug. Her body writhed under his.

She picked the glass of water up two handedly and drank it down helplessly, the tips of her fingers barely holding the slick sides. She wondered what it would feel like to drown. What would it be like to have the hot, steam-riddled water fill her lungs and score her heart?

She pulled his sticky shirt off, letting her fingertips play in the depression of his spine. Her own had been lost ages ago, and he nuzzled at her silky breasts as his fingers slid down her slick stomach to the button of her jeans. And then the music stopped, or the booze wore off and she tenderly uttered the word "no." But he didn't hear her.

She sunk down into the bath, letting a little moan escape her lips. The world was a blur from this pool of pink stained water. Her arm slipped from its perch on the side of the tub, and the glass she was still holding shattered like a life, into millions of tiny pieces on the cold tile floor.

"Cause it tears me apart," the radio sang.