You don't see much fiction on Nerve's homepage these days, so we've decided to add a new feature here at Scanner: Friday Fiction. Send us your best, as long as it's a little dirty. 

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South
by Sarah M. Green

The Southern drawl seemed inauspicious, as did his hands—small, white, and flawless, resting on the dark wooden bar like the hands of a china doll. He is from Alabama, and when his number goes into her phone, it goes in as “Michael Alabama.” Michael Alabama’s eyes are small and pale, but chiseled like quartz, glinting in the waltzing light. His smile, though he looks 13 when he offers it, is broad. She agrees to give him a chance, gallantly turning a blind eye to his battered, baggy jeans, and steels herself for more hallmarks of a country boy: Gummy kisses; early declarations of love; offers to meet his parents.

As she walks home alone that night, leaning hard into the cold, she does not think of him, but mulls over the sculpted lower back of the hot, tall black man she’d been dating. He is clearly a rebound from the hot, tall black man she’d just slept with (a fling), but she does not care. When she joins him the next night at a new Brooklyn “farm-to-table” restaurant, she wants to reach over her $12 mac ‘n cheese and trace the outline of his blooming lips with her index finger. But his kissing style is that of a man in the trenches in World War II. In. Out. In. Out. She feels as though she is on the wrong end of a toilet plunger. She takes a deep breath, despairing that pushing his tongue back into his mouth using hers fails as a deterrent. Staring at the well-tailored neckline of his sweater—he is a fashionista—she reaches under his collared shirt to trace the lines of his back. She sighs, which he interprets as a sigh laced with lust, and pulls her closer. It has been three dates. He is not coming home with her. 

Michael Alabama’s voicemail, when he leaves it, shines with the nerves of a 16-year-old boy bracing for the first date. His accent warbles, and she feels slightly repulsed. They go out once, and kiss in the cold, and it is OK. They had sipped microbrews at a dingy pub, followed by expensive cocktails with a side of billiards. He had stared at her for rather too long while she told her long, elaborate stories. Still, when he kissed her on a bench by the water, he did that biting thing she so likes, taking hold of her lower lip between his teeth for a moment before letting go. She charitably agrees to brunch several days later. 

Waiting for their table is taking forever. This restaurant is much more pretentious than she remembered. An accordion is violated over and over by a man wearing a crushed velvet hat. And is a bass clarinet ever really necessary? Her hangover plagues her while the guitarist in the jazz band makes that crazy jazz expression she hates—wrinkling up his face while smiling with closed eyes. The whole of it feels like a scene from Amelie that failed to make the final cut. She considers how much she loathes jazz. But they walk out into the sun, and he offers the crook of his arm, which she takes as though they are sixty and discussing retirement plans. She loves this. They pause to kiss before cocoa, and this time, standing on the sidewalk instead of cowering before the cold, she notes the proper placement of his hands and the mild pressure he applies. The suitability of his height for other things. The fact that she’s actually gone up on her tiptoes. 

He drops her off, but comes upstairs “just for a minute, to get some water.” Water is sipped, and glasses are put down. The awkward first kiss occurs by the unsheathed window. She loosens the drape to cover it. Her clothes are stripped slowly, but effectively, like paint from a wall. The mousy hands are now everywhere. Teeth are applied in strange locations at effective intervals. Southern comfort, it seems, comes easy in close quarters. She is quickly made incoherent. “I just want to make you happy,” he drawls softly at one point over the course of the next 24 hours, his eyes now so light she’s reminded of James Spader in Secretary, “Don’t worry about me.” This suits her fine, since she is immobilized. 

They agree to not technically cross the Mason-Dixon line until the proverbial third date, and she agrees to never underestimate those south of it again. 

—Sarah M. Green

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