After it was over they lay back and caught their breath. He tried to stroke her hair, the way he’d seen guys do it in the movies. She kicked the sheets off her feet and closed her eyes.
When she opened them, the world shifted
back into focus. Their clothes in rumpled piles. The ceiling fan. A
tree brushing against the window. Disembodied noise found form, and
the sound of the TV drifted down the corridor.
A journalist was talking about a study
someone had done in Germany. When people connected on an emotional
level, a scientist said, their bodies synced up. They mimicked each
other’s movements, or reflected each other’s facial expressions.
Extremely compatible lovers even synchronised heartbeats.
In the silence they’d slipped into,
each of them listened. Breathing in. Out. In. Leafy flutter. Traffic.
Tree branches tapping. Swallow. Breathe in. Out. The whirly-swoosh of
the fan. In. Out. Swallow.
And beneath it all, they heard the deep thudding they were listening for. Da-DONK. Da-DONK. Da-Da-DONK. Da-DONG. DONK. Da-DONK. Unequal pulses, beating.
Neither of them
could be sure what the other had heard. And neither of them knew what
to do next. So when the silence between them began to swallow them,
they talked too loudly and carefully aped each other’s gestures. A
pantomime of affection, to cover the mutual disappointment of their
asynchronicity.
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