COERCED AFFECTION

Alessia Boccara

At the end of the gravelled road sits a cottage, glowing with the lonely light of a kitchen lamp, beside the bay window. I can see them. Sitting around the bench in the kitchen is Mike and Jen, completed with the silence of wrongdoing. I can’t hear a word.
            Jen couldn’t seem to take the silence anymore, asking the guilty looking man whose head was cradled in his hands across from her, ‘How is it that when I think you can’t get any more stupid, you prove me wrong?’ She looks exhausted.
            Dragging his heavy head up, ‘You can’t put all the blame on me. You’re just as much in the wrong as I am.’ The fire in his cheeks melts a blank expression into his face.
            ‘Me?’ she asks.
            ‘Yes, you, Jen.’
            Mike sits up, straightening his dark jumper with the palm of his hands before hiding them in his pockets, picking at the bobbles that form along the worn jeans. It was a nervous twitch that he’d seemed to develop, not long after I had begun watching them. ‘I’m sorry, Jen, I didn’t mean to do it. And I shouldn’t be blaming you.’
            ‘You’ve put me in yet another position that I don’t want to deal with. What am I supposed to do? You know you can’t leave.’
            In a soft touch, I watch his hands fall onto her shoulders in an embrace that feels contradictory to the warmth of his blazing cheeks. ‘I love you and I’ll leave you alone for a bit if that’s what you need.’
            Seeing a disappointing nod, Mike backs away after placing a cautious kiss to her shoulder, leading himself to the short door below the stairs where the light decreases with each step, until I can’t see him anymore. She locks the door behind him, spinning the code to a number I can’t see. I’m not close enough.
            I begin to take my leave, hearing her slam her hand onto the table with force screaming, ‘Never leaving.’
            I could do more, but there is always tomorrow. ‘See you both then,’ I whisper.