Finalment


As he slips up the staircase towards Beth's room he hears her muffled giggling behind the door.

Inside, a deeper laughter drowns out Beth's soft twitter.

He sits himself on the staircase. He has no right to feel proprietorial about this girl. He doesn't even like Beth that much, come to think of it.


He lingers on the staircase, feeling more and more defeated as the laughter behind the door subsides.

The girl from Palermo, Beth's roommate, strides up the staircase and passes him without a greeting. He watches her as she stops in front of the door.

As she returns down the stairs, he gestures her to sit beside him. To his surprise, she complies.

The laughter from the room swells up again. A furtive smile slips across the lips of the Italian girl and he is shot through with hatred of her. He detests her Mediterranean Schadenfreude more than Beth, more than laughing boy in there. She doesn't even look Italian. More Greek, Etruscan, whatever.

His French is still to poor to say something nasty to her so he kisses her, like a savage, pinning her down on the stairs in his arms.

As he tries to let her go her he finds himself caught in her tight embrace.

~
.
words: Jónas Knútsson, Iceland (more)
image: Steve Wing, Florida (about & more)

more about him, Beth, and her:
A Propos de Cannes / Soirée Ambiguë / Since July