Time Keeps on Slipping

*Winner* of the 2024 Stark Short Fiction Prize at CCNY

I was stuck between the bed and the floor for most of the day; anchored in a deep daydream by an edible that demanded I stay in the sunshine, I followed the rays on the hardwood floor like a lazy cat. Between spells of stupor, I thought back to fields of green corn, topped with voluminous rolling clouds against a sleeping sky; smelled the night’s fresh breeze, with burnt embers of birch lingering in wool sweaters; heard lazy music on an old speaker, accompanied by whispers of another’s soft exhales. The memories were as warm as the sun that kissed my forehead and cheeks, but in a world much farther away than the one just outside the window.

A gentle buzzing worked its way through the house and I eventually recognized the burr of my cell phone. I let it go and rolled myself up to sit with my back against the wall, the bedroom laid out before me. Wide double doors opened onto the living room and further on to the kitchen and studio where my self-portraits and paintings were stacked up against the wall, imitating my haphazard posture. The family farmhouse—restored since my childhood—was bathed in morning light that made life feel impossibly long, and in its infinite sunshine, I could live in bliss and comfortable silence.

Dust motes danced gently along the rays and moved in slow dreamy patterns.

I laughed through my morning high.

The phone rumbled again. I pushed myself up along the wall to stand, my 6-foot reach feeling incredible after a long vertical spell on the floor. Draping myself dramatically onto the pillowy down-comforter of the bed, I reached out for the phone on the nightstand. Two messages from mom:

Mijo, you forgot to call me today.

The luncheon starts in two hours. Por favor, try to be on time.

After luxuriating in the shower, I stepped out and gently wrapped a towel around my waist and let the water drip down my arms, torso, and legs, soaking into the thick mat beneath me. The open doors and windows allowed the air to circulate around the room and tickle my damp skin. My dark, drenched curls hung heavy over my eyes, so I shook my head—feeling like a sleek chocolate Labrador just out of a dip in a pond. I wiped the mirror clean and went about my marching routine of preparation. Just as I reached for body lotion, I imagined a knock at the front door. I paused to listen for reality or trickery, then continued. But, again, a knock. And then,

“Carlos?”

The clean smell of lavender in the bathroom was momentarily replaced by an intoxicating earthiness of burnt wood and the night’s breeze, but I removed myself from the short reverie and stepped out of the bathroom.

Standing in the hallway, I saw a glimmer of my past through the screen door.

At first, the man was the spitting image of the 20-something-year-old that I met in my first year of college, with the new denim jacket and cropped hair. But then the mirage faded, and I saw through the mesh of the screen how time had brought life to the lines around the man’s hazel eyes, and the once clean-shaven face was stubbled with a coarse beard of brown and smoky grey. The cropped hair was longer and carefree, wavy with texture, and as peppered as the beard. But the jean jacket was the same, if not as perfectly worn, as the man within its sleeves.

“Adam.”

Suddenly aware of my barely clad body, I sidestepped back into the bathroom. My reflection wavered to that of my 20-something-year-old self and then slid back into place with a tilt of vertigo.

“Sorry,” I stammered, searching for words in my suddenly dry mouth. “Please, come in. I’m just going to put some clothes on.”

            I grabbed onto the sink to steady myself from the swaying of time. The heady high buzzed into my brain, making me even more lightheaded.

The soft creaking of the front screen door drifted down the hall and I pulled myself together, throwing on the clothes that littered the floor. As I stepped out, pulling a shirt over my damp skin—an act that made my skin crawl—I saw Adam hadn’t made it much farther than the entry rug.

We stood in silence, assessing each other, feeling out the space of time in between, and looking for the air of familiarity that comes with the past.

“Come on in,” I finally said, breaking the silence, “You act like you don’t know the place.”

“It’s been a while.” Adam offered.

“A few years, yes.” I conceited.

“More than a few.” Adam corrected.

With a light color rising to his face, he took a look into the living room, and gingerly stepped out of his shoes, adding them to the few scattered about the entryway. I hitched my head toward the couch and we stepped in together.

“I thought I felt nostalgic this morning,” I said, searching for words. “Never would have guessed it would be you that déjà vu would bring my way.”

“Here for Sarah’s wedding, of course.”

“Of course. She told me she was sending you an invite.”

“Yes. And, well, my mom heard from your mom, and you know I can never say no to either of them,” he said, sitting down in a chair farthest from me, “and she asked me to swing by and make sure you make it to the rehearsal lunch on time.”

I rolled my eyes playfully and tucked my legs up onto the large ottoman that took up most of the space in the room, floating isolated in the middle. Something about the act of sitting there like a child—the feeling of the fabric against my skin, warmed by the day’s sun, the squeaking of the chair’s springs, and that phantom smell of smoke and summer—threw a wave of giddiness over me. Perhaps Adam simply took it as the silliness that comes from worrisome mothers, but either way, he laughed too. Maybe it was the lingering buzz that fed my laughter, growing louder and more rambunctious, yet whatever it was, it seemed to catch like mania and Adam’s chuckle grew until the two of us shook with cackles and were wiping tears from our eyes.

“Jesus, what was so funny?” I choked out.

“Ahh... just life, I suppose,” Adam said.

“Yes, funny thing that it is.”

“Seems to have left you untouched,” Adam said, pausing and then continuing with a controlled expression. “I could see that when you stepped out of the bathroom.”

His face remained passive, but his eyebrows dropped down over his hooded lids. I’d seen that same face before in the red-leather back seat of a car, under heavy winter blankets, one time in a gym locker room, and in a moonlit cornfield.

“Don’t look at me like that.” I scolded, my breath catching in my chest.

“Like what?”

“You know exactly what I mean.”

The challenge hung in the air between us, and though my hope for the moment to pass was desperate and fluttering, I could already feel myself falling. The light in the room grew stronger and the distance between us seemed to shrink and crackle.

“You should have stayed in the towel.” Adam nearly whispered.

The phrase flipped a switch, sending an electric current into our opposite magnetic poles. I imagined meeting in the middle, pulled so forcefully together that our lips could be the only thing soft enough to catch us.

“Tea?” I said, instead.

~     ~     ~

Ten years since we last shared a bed. When Carlos collected his things from my college apartment in Michigan and got on a bus to his parents in Southern Ohio, I thought he would be banging on my door within a week. But each day passed, and his absence grew—got a bit easier—until, 10 years later, I was the one knocking on his door, and now, sitting on his couch trying to hide a raging hard-on.

I lied to him before, about his mother asking me to pick him up. Maybe the only time I’ve ever lied to him; he had a knack for sensing bullshit. I couldn’t imagine seeing him again, after so long, in a room full of other people. So, I planted a seed in my mom’s head and, well, the rest took care of itself. I just wanted to see him. But as soon as he rounded the bathroom corner and stood on the other side of that screen door—sea moss green eyes, water dripping down his smooth, tan, hairless chest—I knew I wouldn’t make it a minute longer without feeling his skin on mine again.

For a moment there, I thought he was going to jump right on my lap. There was something feral just below the surface that I could see him fighting hard against; tea was not the response I was expecting. But there I sat on the sofa, steam rising from a cup with a UofM logo. Instead of drinking, I thought about the hundreds of nights we had shared before, sensing Carlos next to me, on the cusp of the paranoia he so often slipped into, or dosing off after sex, my hand cupped over his spent penis, somewhat possessive, somewhat protective. I slipped through the memories with weightlessness, wishing I could take Carlos’s hand to lock our fingers together and create a tether to the moment.

His phone buzzed.

“Shit.” He said.

“Your mother,” I responded.

“You still haven’t called,” he read, “Stop smoking that wacky tobacky and get your culo moving. I need your help with tu prima. She truly is Bridezilla.”

Then another buzz.

“And don’t be mad, but I sent Adam to round you up. I thought it would be good for you to...” His voice trailed off as he stopped reading aloud. He threw a sideways glance at me. “A little late for that.” I heard him say under his breath as he walked out of the room.

Carlos’s time management and erratic energy hadn’t changed. He walked from room to room, misplacing a pair of socks and then a belt and tie, he lost the thread of one story and weaved his way into another. I stayed sitting in the same spot on the couch, watching him bounce off the walls like a trapped hummingbird. At one point he went into his studio and started re-arranging his paintings on the floor, mostly self-portraits, all of them stunning and sad. I caught sight of one that looked similar to the salacious memories that flashed through my head before, but it was quickly shuffled to the back, and then Carlos was racing off again. Every time he came around a corner he would look at me like I was a mirage. The longer I stayed quiet, the more Carlos got flustered and the faster he talked, until, finally—him looking lost in the kitchen—I called out his name. I stood in the archway with the shoes and keys he had apparently been searching for in the cupboards.

“Maybe you should smoke again before we go.” I offered.

“God, yes.”

~     ~     ~

Outside at the curb was Adam’s car.

            “Oh my gosh,” I blurted out, “Mary Beth.”

            Mary Beth was a 1966 Buick Skylark convertible in a pearlescent white as storied as an heirloom necklace. It screamed class, but its burgundy-red leather interior belied its innocence. I ran my hand over the pristinely maintained bench-style front seat and shuddered as the ghost of my 20s passed through me.

            “How is this thing still running?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

            “You know I like to hold on to things. It’s like I always say, if you take care of something—”

            “It’ll last forever.”

            “Do you still have your Schwinn 12-speed?” Adam asked, watching me closely.

            “Please,” I scoffed, “Pieces of it maybe. I go through a bicycle a year.”

            “Some things don’t change.” Adam said.

            In the car, rumbling down the street, the top down and the mid-summer air rolling by, Adam kept darting his eyes to the rear-view mirror.

“Looks like a storm back there. I hope it doesn’t journey this way.”

“Eh, keep your eyes forward on the sun that’s still shining.” I chirped.

“Eyes on the future, huh?

“That’s always been my motto.” I said, beginning to untie my shoes.

“Here we go.” Adam chuckled.

With my shoes and socks off, I stretched my limbs, putting my feet out onto the top of the side view mirror, and leaned diagonally across the bench-style front seat. My head followed a well-worn—albeit, long abandoned—path to the nape of Adam’s neck. At the last minute, I thought I could sense Adam’s body stiffening, so I corrected my path and cranked my neck to rest on the back of the bench.

“There it is,” I relaxed into the position, bare feet twiddling in the air, “fits like a glove. You’re right, some things don’t change.”

“I think we should pull over and put the top up. We don’t have long before we get to the venue and that cloud is coming quick.”

“Stop worrying about it. Just hit the gas and outrun it. They can start without us.”

“You’re stoned.” He said with a smile.

“And you like to drive fast.”

Adam’s smile grew bigger as the temptation rose within. We locked eyes and I saw an eagerness run through him like an injection of jet fuel. He slammed the clutch down, throwing the car into a higher gear, and thrust the pedal to the floor. I threw my hands up into the air as we both hollered into the darkening sky.

~     ~     ~

We soared out of the small town and into the endless fields of wheat and corn. The roads out there were empty, and we greedily ate up the miles of open country way. Carlos sang along to the radio as he let his hands and arms dance in the wind that rolled around us.

I was feeling whiplash by how the past and present kept swinging back and forth into view. One moment Carlos was the slim college boy who made my heart race faster than the rev of an engine, and the next I remembered that 10 years had passed, and we were strangers occupying an idea that had long ago faded. It felt like maybe I could outrace the future and find us a space outside of time to pause and breathe in the moment, but the winding roads looped us back around to the storm again. Little pellets of rain tapped into my forehead and Carlos screamed in a tangle of excitement and surprise.

I whipped the Skylark onto the gravel of the roadside and parked next to an endless row of towering corn stalks. The sudden maneuver sent a few more surprised cackles from Carlos and then we sat there for a stunned second, eyes locked and grins bigger than the sky above. The rain picked up its cadence and trickled down Carlos’s face, I couldn’t help but reach out and pull him into a deep kiss.

The deluge of the storm hit us like a freight train.

~     ~     ~

We sat there silently in the humidity of the early summer rain, our clothes wet from rushing to close the convertible top. The windows had long ago fogged over, but I could still see the deep green of the stalks growing outside the window. The heavy rain was the only sound, drumming against the roof of the car; the corn danced precariously to the rhythm; we sat in awkward contemplation.

“You single?” I asked, breaking the silence.

“What?” Adam said, seeming surprised to find me still sitting there next to him.

“Is there anyone?”

“No,” he said after a beat.

“Ah. Me neither.”

“There was… someone.” He said.

“Oh?”

“It’s been over for a while, but I thought… I don’t know… maybe…”

“Yeah,” I sighed, “maybe.”

“You?”

“Oh, it’s been a few years.”

We left it at that for a few moments as Adam ran his finger up and down the leather of the steering wheel.

“What happened with the someone?” I finally asked.

He didn’t say anything for a moment, just gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles went white, and then dropped his hand down to his lap.

“He didn’t want kids.” He finally managed.

“Ah, yes. Children.” I said, the words dripping with disdain.

“We did try, though. Over and over again. But I could never get a seed to plant.”

“Ha ha, what a jokester.” I laughed, despite myself.  

“No, you know what I mean. About kids, that is.”

“I do.”

I strained to think of something else to talk about, but my mind just kept going back to the kiss. I wished it hadn’t happened as much as I wished that he would have continued. I thought I had moved past this. I thought the paint I spilled onto the dozens and dozens of canvases had been laced with all of these emotions and dried into the cakey layers of acrylics, hardening the past. But then, there were those few paintings that slipped into my work over the years. Those of us entwined like overgrown vines; the ones of just his hazel eyes; the ones of him sleeping next to a fire under the night’s sky. Most of them I had covered with the paint of commissioned pieces and gotten out of the house. Most of them.

“I’m sorry.” He said, pulling me out of my thoughts.

“…about?” I asked, honestly wondering.

“For kissing you. I shouldn’t… I’m sorry.”

He kept his gaze cast down to his lap, shame alighting in the collecting water in his eyes. His profile against the rain-slick window seemed as familiar to me as any of my hundreds of paintings. I already felt the phantom brush in my hand ready to recreate the moment on canvas. But then, I remembered how I was missing 10 years of images like this. How many moments I could have captured in acrylic, and tears, and sunlight, and kisses. I reached for Adam’s face, turning it toward mine, and leaned in. But my other hand slipped on the wet leather and I fell into him, knocking our foreheads together.

“Mother fucker!”

We both held onto our heads and laughed.

Adam finally reached for me and pulled me over onto his hips so I straddled him. Our long limbs and tight spaces made it awkward, but our bodies still remembered how to maneuver the moment. I rested my face against his neck, lips finding their home behind his ear. I could feel him growing hard beneath me and my body responded in kind. But there was something else there, too, that made him feel rigid, tightly wound up, ready to implode if not released. I knew it had to be questions; he always had questions. Always thinking about what he did, what he could do, what he should have done.

We embraced each other in the entwined state, but something was cutting into my chest. I leaned back and tried to find the source to move it out of my way. It was a gold ring that hung from a simple necklace. Adam took it out of my hand and slipped it beneath the collar of his shirt.

“Carlos—”

My phone buzzed wildly on the dashboard and clattered onto the front seat.

~     ~     ~

“Shit.” Carlos said.

         “Your mother.”

She had a knack for intruding right when we were at our most vulnerable; naked together, crying together, smoking weed in his bedroom together. I would have been irritated if it wasn’t somewhat endearing. During the moment I held him on top of me, I thought, if anything had stayed perfectly the same in our time apart, it was the way we fit together: two evenly set bricks in an endless cobblestone road. I wondered how many more times like this we could have shared if our paths hadn’t diverged, but whatever had been brewing was released and deflated as quickly as our dicks; no greater boner killer than your mom calling. I was surprised my mom hadn’t reached out. But then again, unlike Carlos’s mother, mine had a knack for knowing when to leave me alone.

“Where in the name of sweet baby Jesus are you right now?” She squealed over the speakerphone. “The luncheon started an hour ago and tu prima has gone apeshit since this rain started. As if we’re not inside of a building, dios mio.”

“Hola, mami,” Carlos said, sitting back in the passenger side. “Yeah, we, uh, got caught in the rain, too. Had to pull over because he—it— was coming down so hard.”

I snorted in response.

        “So Adam did make it you? Oh.” She said, her voice softening. “Well, that’s good, bueno.” She took a moment, but then her tone picked back up. “He was supposed to make sure you showed up on time. I really need your help here. Is he there now? Of course he is. Tell him I said hello.”

Carlos looked at me for a response, but I just shook my head and closed my lips tighter in a grimace.

         “He says hello.”

         “So, did you two… make up?” She asked, sotto voce.

         “What?”

         “You know. Did you apologize? Did you make up?”

         “Mamà. We aren’t bickering school children, we don’t need to make up, or… we aren’t—this isn’t—.”

         “And I’m sure you’ve both just been sitting there in the rain, silently, waiting for the time to pass.” Carlos looked at me with comically wide eyes. “Pues,” she continued, “I know it’s been a long time. You two need to catch up and… do whatever it is you two were always running into the corn fields to do.”

“Mamà—"

        “Just try to get here soon.” She begged.

        “Yes, mami.”

        “And Carlos,” more seriously, “Sólo díselo. Muéstrale tus pinturas. Dile que lo sientes. Dile que cambiaste—”

        “Mamà, ya, I need to go. Ok, nos vemos.”

        Carlos ended the call and tossed the phone back onto the dashboard.

~     ~     ~

“What was that about?” Adam asked.

“You know my mom, just making everything dramatic and sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong.” I said, averting my eyes.

        “What did she mean about us making up?”

        “I don’t know. She’s always off in a fairytale world.”

        “Sounds familiar.” Adam said, somewhat below his breath.

        “What’s that supposed to mean?”

        “You were always off somewhere else, too. Thinking about what was next, never paying attention to what was in front of you.”

        “That’s not fair,” was all I could manage to the odd shift to his tone. Adam raised his eyebrows and glared at me. “I was thinking about my future. There was a lot I wanted to do. There is a lot I want to do.”

        “Oh yes, all the things you want to do.”

My tongue burned with a scathing retort, but I bit my lip, something I’d learned to do over the years to stop the flood of sharpened consonants and slicing vowels. But then a familiar song started playing softly on the radio and it caught both of our attention.

“No way,” Adam said, turning the volume up a bit.

I debated feigning ignorance. I didn’t like where the conversation was heading.

        “—when we took the road trip in the summer of our last year at State.” Adam said, sounding like he was talking to himself.

        We sat there for a few bars of the song, listening to the haunting melodies of young love. I closed my eyes.

“I told you I felt nostalgic this morning.” I finally said.

“So you made all this happen? You a bruja now?”

        “Oh, so now you speak Spanish?”

        “Just enough to get the jist.”

        I swallowed nervously as I thought about my mother’s final words on the phone.

“No, I’m not a witch, I just felt it coming.”

“You felt me coming? I mean—” he blushed over the slipped euphemism, “today, you knew you’d see me?”

“Well, I figured you’d be at the wedding tomorrow. I was nervous as hell, if I’m being honest.” Adam harrumphed at that. “But today, I had no idea. Odd though, how the past slips into the present sometimes.”

“What happened to eyes on the future?” Adam asked. 

        “I don’t want to talk about this.” I said softly, after a beat.

        “What?”

        “Why do you want to talk about things that…those are old feelings, let’s create new ones. New experiences.”

        “Isn’t that what we’re doing? What, you never think about the past?”

        “Yes, obviously.” I admitted.

        “Well, like what?”

Change scattered across the floor as pants were savagely removed

Teacups dotted around a dorm room at Christmastime

Naked on a blanket under the full moon

A ring of gold in a box of satin

        “A lot fades in a decade,” I begged off.

        “You really haven’t changed.”

        “And that’s such a bad thing?” I scoffed.

        “No, actually,” he said, voice softening, “I quite liked the old Carlos.”

        When I looked over at Adam, I thought I might still be able to swing the moment. He did not yet have the lateral crease at the top of his nose when he lost his patience, his eyes had not yet shifted into the glittering dark magic of burning coals; I hadn’t lost him yet.

“You’re killing my buzz.” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

“Please,” Adam countered, “I’m sure you’ve got enough gummies, or mints, or whatever hiding in each pocket to float you through the rest of the day.”

        In fact, in the chaos of trying to get out of the house, I forgot to bring anything. The realization grounded me even more and I sank deeper into the plush leather seat.

The rain had let up in the time we were talking, and Adam took it as a cue to move on. He started up the car, the reviving of the engine drowned out the music, and the space between us on the front bench suddenly felt cavernous.

        Neither of us said another word as we drove on, and I dozed off. But I knew Adam well enough to know that his silence wasn’t one of contentment, but rather one of consternation.

~     ~     ~

While Carlos snored quietly next to me­—the soft rattle like a siren calling my name—I continued thinking about that road trip in our senior year of college and that song. It played on a small Bluetooth speaker as we lay on a blanket in a circle of crushed cornstalks; a fire in a hole we dug had burned down to a mere pile of crackling twigs and embers. Layers of wool kept us insulated from the crisp night, yet still, Carlos had himself impossibly entwined along the length of my body, grabbing onto me with an intensity I hadn’t seen from him before. It reminded me then of a story about a woman who shared her bed with a pet python, stretching out every night and pressing up against her. She cooed at the idea of him reaching out for the warmth of her body but was taken aback when her vet told her the python was sizing her up to see if he was big enough to eat her. That’s what Carlos felt like then, as if he were trying to devour me, getting every last bit before the meal was taken away. And I wanted him to. I wanted to melt into Carlos’s olive skin, I wanted to live amongst the constellations of freckles on his body, survive on his kisses, be burned by his fire. I wanted to tell Carlos all of this, and more, but my lips and tongue always failed me with words, and I could only manage to furrow my brow and flush with want. Yet somehow, Carlos always seemed to know how to decipher my silence and he would devour me down to the core, anyhow. I was ready to stop fighting for words to tell Carlos how much I loved him; I was ready to show it with action. So that’s what I did.

The next morning, I woke to find Carlos was gone; the fire was buried, the bags packed. Just me, in a cornfield, covered with a thick wool blanket and a thin layer of dew—I had never felt so alone. When I walked back to the car I saw the small satin-lined box placed on the dashboard behind the steering wheel, and Carlos sitting in the front seat, not wearing the ring, only a pair of bloodshot eyes and trails of dried, salty tears.

~     ~     ~

A slight nudge awoke Carlos. They were parked in the lot just outside the venue, the car turned off and already sleeping deeper than Carlos had been. The last few drops of rain rolled down the windshield. Carlos got the sense that Adam had been watching him for a while.

“You ready for this wedding?” Adam asked.

Tired and sober, Carlos let out a controlled sigh.

“Never.”

Something old and something blue slipped over Adam’s face; a smile with the weight of the world. Carlos wasn’t sure at what point their hands found each other’s, but Adams’s grip slipping from his was the breaking of a tether. Adam stepped out of the car, leaving Carlos to sit alone on the red leather bench, feeling Adam’s heat dissipate from the space they briefly shared.

The clouds rolled away and a beam of sunlight sliced through the windshield, alighting on Carlos’s face.