Short Stories for Adults: The Familiar Stranger
We stood in his hallway for a very long time. His arms were bound tight around my back, gripped in one of the closest hugs of my life.
I was never going to move. If he genuinely wanted me to leave (and my leaving was why we were in the hallway in the first place) he’d have to physically eject my person from the premises, because this feeling was everything.
I could be reading too much into this embrace but for me, this was visceral-level stuff. I put it down to my current emotional state—my longing to connect. So starved was I of affection that his touch felt like a sensory banquet. Had he noticed that? I had no idea what he was thinking. Maybe he was performing a kindness out of pity. Perhaps he was proffering a brief moment of comfort in my obvious moment of need—a ‘hug a sad person’ service that he gave to the broken women he newly encountered.
Standing, as we were, in the hall, still hugging it out, without breaking contact he turned his head to the side of my face. His lips met my cheek with a firm kiss—a kiss that said I care that you’re suffering. I thought to myself, don’t move your head, don’t meet his mouth, whatever you do, keep still because you can’t return the kiss. You’d never be able to stop if you did.
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