Brownies

She woke quietly in the middle of the night, as she often did she she slept over at his place. He slept soundly beside her, his head sunk in the pillow, one of his legs carelessly crossing one of her own. As always, the sight of him moved her. She felt it swelling inside her; a painful surge of giddiness that made her heart race. Her face split into a ridiculous grin. Holding her breath, she raised one hand. She longed to touch him: the fine, slippery locks of hair at his temples, the soft curl of his ear, his lips barely parted and slightly moist, the gentle prick of stubble on his jaw, the bridge of his nose slightly slick with oil. But before her fingers grazed his skin, she pulled back. She didn't want to wake him.

Carefully, she disentangled her leg from his and gingerly pushed the sheet away from her body. Every movement she made to get out of bed was balanced so as not to disturb him.  She slowly shifted her weight off the mattress as she stood, then crept to the bedroom door, where she paused, looking over her shoulder. His body was still. He slept on. 

Though she had spent countless hours in his apartment she still felt she was intruding someplace private. Her mouth became unbearably dry as she thought of him waking to see her sneaking around his living room in the dark. She had better be quick. 

Her purse had been discarded on the couch earlier that evening when they'd tumbled into the apartment together, giggling, tipsy, aflame. As she made her way toward it, she passed their castoff clothes, flung aimlessly to the floor in a pattern that vaguely outlined their journey to the bedroom, where they had removed the last of their clothing and surrendered to the brutal pleasure of savage sex. 

She sat on the couch and rummaged blindly through her purse for a few seconds before retrieving a small Ziploc bag. Clutching it in her fist, she began to creep. As she entered the short hallway that lead to the bathroom and ultimately ended with the bedroom door ( now standing just ajar), she tripped over the shoes shed abandoned here earlier. They toppled to the floor, clattering against the baseboard. The sound seemed unnatural loud in the shadow quiet. She felt it shrieking inside her. She stood still, every muscle tensed, as the ugly, cold breath of terror prickled over her skin. Was that hissing hush the sound of him stirring? Did she hear the mattress creak as he turned over, awakened? The palm tightly clenched around the Ziploc bag began to sweat. The plastic stuck unpleasantly to her skin. She let the seconds needle over her until she lost count. She didn't know how long she'd waited, but when her heartbeat began to slow and she heard no sounds from the bedroom, she carefully picked her way around her shoes and slipped through the bathroom door. 

She flipped the light switch and the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling flickered to life, gentle buzzing. Under the harsh, thin glow, her hands looked alien, as though they did not belong to her. The veins stood out, raised, dark blue. She trembled slightly as she knelt on the tattooed bath rug. First the trash can. She took items out one by one- crumpled up tissue, dull razors, an empty tube of toothpaste- until she found what she was looking for, sunk to the bottom of the bin: nail clippings. 

Tough, translucent crescents. The cut edges were pleasingly sharp against her fingertips. She opened the Ziploc bag and dropped them in, then put the garbage back in. 

Now the bathtub. It was easier to find her treasure here. She climbed over the side of the tub and crouched over the drain. The plastic curtain clung to her bare shoulders, still damp from the shower  he must've taken before they went out earlier in that night. Encircled in the drain was a ring shed golden hair, stiffened with dried scummy soap. She lifted it from the tub and added it to the bag with the nails. 

With her goals complete, she turned off the bathroom light and returned to the living room to place the bag back in her purse.  She buried it deep in one of the inner pockets , to make sure he wouldn't see, under receipts and tampons , business cards and coupons. Then she crept back to the bedroom, slipped under the sheet, pressed her body against his, and fell quickly back to sleep.

He dropped her off at her apartment late the next morning. They parted with a kiss at the door to her building, leaving her flushed and dizzy, swollen with love. 

Her roommate wasn't home, and she was pleased to have the space to herself. She required privacy. 

The midday sunshine streamed into the kitchen. She placed her purse on the counter and gathered the ingredients she needed: chocolate, cocoa, vanilla, butter, baking soda, flour, eggs. She mixed them into a batter. She pulled the Ziploc bag from her purse and emptied the contents into a bowl. She washed them gently with soap and hot water. She let the nails soak until they were soft, then fished them out of the water with a spoon and ground them with her mortar and pestle until they crumbled into dust. The hair she finely cut into smaller and smaller strands. Then she added both to the batter, stirring them in until they were untraceable. She poured the batter into a small rectangular pan and put it in the oven to bake, setting the timer so she'd know when her brownies were done. 

While she waited, she went to her room and opened the trunk where she kept the relics she'd collected from her time with him. There was the silver box that stored a lock of golden hair she'd cut from the nape of his neck. There were the delicate origami flowers he'd folded for her with foil wrappers. there was the thong shed worn the first time they'd had sex, purple lace stained with pearlescent white. In a wooden box she'd saved the scrap of paper of which he'd scribbled his home address, every meaningless note he'd written her, every napkin he'd doodled on while they drank at bars, fortunes form the cookies that came with the Chinese food they'd once ordered in. She held each precious symbol reverently in her fingers, feeling as though she must absorb him through them, into her skin. 

The timer rang, She took the brownies out of the oven, and when they were cool enough, she began to eat.