Sunday, December 21, 2008
Friends with benefits (Chapter 5) - Laundromat talk
[Background music : Telescope eyes by Eisley]
"So. Are you guys together?"
Naqi glanced up at Tania in irritation as he tossed another towel into the washer.
"First Hana, now you. What’s wrong with the two of you? Haven't we had this conversation already? " He snapped.
"Yes, and you've yet to give me a straight answer." Tania replied evenly.
The laundromat where the two friends work on the weekends was still and silent. Rain pattered against the dirty windows, each droplet stained gold by the streetlights outside. Naqi had the strangest sensation that he and Tania were the only two people left in the city. It was a feeling that he usually enjoyed.
However, the current conversation topic, and Tania’s refusal to drop the subject were giving them second thoughts.
"Well? Naqi, are you or are you not Ira’s boyfriend?"
Naqi sighed, flipping a pair of boxers into the dangerously full machine. Something inside him snapped, and he found himself answering his friend.
"We don't call it that." He said quietly.
"Excuse me?"
"We don't call it that...we're not like that."
"So there is a 'we'. I suspected as much." Tania said wisely.
"You’re her best friend. Why don‘t you just ask her yourself?"
"Because I wanted you to say it."
There was a short silence, as each of them rooted through their respective duffel bag, lobbing dirty clothes and towels into washer machines. Then Tania glanced over.
"So." Tania broke the silence.
"So what?"
"So...details, my friend, details."
Chewing his lip, Naqi cast about his mind for a scrap of memory to share, something that wasn't too personal, something that could encompass his relationship with Ira without transforming it into something cheap and common.
To buy himself time, he asked Tania, "What sort of details?"
"Oh, I don't know... what it's like, being with her."
From the way Tania’s voice slid over the words 'being' with her, Naqi knew she wasn't talking about the way Ira's voice sounded when she was happy, when you could hear the smile in her voice. Or the way her eyes sparkled when she looked at him from the other side of a crowded room, or the way she'd unconsciously lick her lips just before kissing him.
"It's...it's amazing. She's perfect."
"Dude, that's the most pathetic description of Ira I've ever heard. Come on, be a good lad and share some details. I‘m her best friend. Tell me something I don‘t know. Tell me something that only you see."
"Fine. She's shy, you know. I don’t believe that I'm her first or some such. But when you're kissing her, when you're laying with her, it's like...it's like time stops, and all you see is her, all you know is her, and the way her lips feel on yours, the way her hands feel on your body, or the way she moves against you...Tania, it's just...impossible to describe. It just is."
Tania was quiet for a moment.
"So are you guys exclusive?"
Naqi looked down at this now empty duffel bag, then stalked over to two washer machines,
and began dumping detergent into them.
"I'll take that as a no." Tania said softly.
"Tania, she said she hates how people treat their significant others, and she said that she thinks she'd be an awful girlfriend, and she said she'd feel claustrophobic and smothered after a single week, and she'd rather be free to make her own decisions, and do what she wants."
Tania said nothing for a moment, measuring out a precise amount of detergent before closing the lid on the washer and switching it on. Naqi was struck by the rugged beauty of Tania's hands. Smudged with paint, fingernails bitten to the quick, they shouldn't have been so attractive, but they were. Naqi supposed it was his attraction to flawed things speaking, but he thought that Tania's hands were beautiful, in their own right.
"I'm sorry, Naqi."
"For what? I'm content."
"You're not. You're in love with her. And she's seeing other boys, and getting off with other boys, and it's killing you."
Naqi gaped at his friend for a moment. Then he sighed. Strangely, there was a grin on his face.
"To be honest, I already know." Grinning.
"To be honest, I know you do. That’s why I’ve been bombing you with these questions. Ira was right.” There was a disgruntled look on her face.
"About what?”
"You’re weird”
"It's what makes us unique. Our mojo,” Smiling.
"And yours is by being weird? Haha. Why are you doing this? You already know how she is."
"Obviously you don‘t know a certain part of me," smiling.
"Tell me then, about this part of you that I don't know."
"Maybe later.” He said while signing out the employee's time book.
"Where are you going? We still have a 4 hours of boring labor."
"I told Mr Chua that I'm taking a half day off today." "
Why?"
"Meeting a friend at the mall."
He smiled, and pressed his back against the door and left the laundromat.
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12:18 AM
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