Vicariously Yours,

Cumbersomely After

Stillness never sucked so much.

If one paid absolute zero-distraction worth of profound concentration, the flutter of a moth's wings would be heard.

The more silent that bathroom stall felt, as ever it had been, the more awkward and helpless Marcelo began to feel. He was buzzed but he was also awake. And all he heard was the echo of her silence.

The last of his sentence rang in his ears over and over again. It took up the every space they occupied, bouncing off the soapy slick watery bathroom tiles and the flushing and gurgling down the drain with rest of the water that leaked away from their dripping bodies.

And he watched. Every move did not go unnoticed.

Isabella blinked. Twice. Then two times more almost like she was signaling him in morse code.

Then, she left.

Twisting her body in a way that her wet naked one didn't touch his on the way. The light pat-pat of her feet echoed behind him and he heard her leave the bathroom. But she didn't shut the door.

Marcelo was rooted to his spot. Naked and cold. His body insidiously shivered. Why he couldn't get himself to move, he knew very well. He was embarrassed. He was humiliated. He felt ugly.

Then the pat-pat of her feet came back and it paused inside the bathroom for a long tensed moment. And then it left again. Pat-pat. Pat-pat.

Taking a steady breath in and out, he turned and saw a white towel kept by the sink. He ran a hand down his face. The drips of water flicked away.

He just...had her and now this was worse than before. Why did he say those words out loud? And why didn't he feel guilty? Or regret?

He shook his head, trying to talk to himself in his head but all the words he kept repeating are I love you. I love you. I love you.

His hands shook as he reached for the dry towel. Soft and comfortable, it looked and felt. He wrapped the wide terry cloth around his hips, and gave a quick glance at the mirror in front.

He looked different. He blinked hard. He was still drowsy. But satiated. He felt tired. But happy. He was tensed. But excited. He felt the same but different. When he left the bathroom, he stopped short at the doorframe.

She was pacing. Back and forth. Diagonal and zig-zag. Her hands combing through her wet strands of silky hair. The pink whitish silk robe tied far too tightly around her waist for her. Her slender thighs peeking from under moved swiftly and the swish of the ropes fell alongside with her movements.

"Don't complicate it, Marcelo." It was the first thing that left her mouth.

Isabella didn't handle emotion well. She has the worst case of abandonment issue and she just found all this to be too new and too much for her. And she was going to handle pressure as the size of what-he just said-very badly.

"Are you seriously telling me you don't feel the same?" It's the second thing that fell out of his firm mouth in response.

She paused. She didn't look at him yet. Could not look at him or else something terrible might just happen. She can't jump into anything just because everyone's jumping it. That was not Isabella. She didn't do the jumping.

"I don't know what to do with you. I just don't know, Isabella." It was harsh, her name. The way it rolled off his tongue. This made her look up finally at him. Then, she gulped.

He was standing in the doorway, gripping the doorframe above his head. His biceps trimmed and flexed with laces of muscles. The solid chest expanded and deflated with longing rhythms. The v of his hips tapered down to where the tempting fluffy white towel she had set aside for him was now wrapped around those slender masculine hips, hiding the end of the v.