The Air Between Us

The air was thick.

Not just hot, but wet. Clinging. Swollen. Like the sky was pressing its mouth to the windows and breathing down their necks. Like the city had exhaled and forgotten how to inhale again.

Lila stood with the fridge door open, letting the artificial chill wrap around her stomach like a cold hand. The milk had turned to sour water. The grapes had collapsed in their skins. Her skin was damp, salt-slick, already sticking to her thighs—and still, she hadn’t put a bra on today.

That would’ve made him angry.

Not for the reason it should.

“Don’t hide from me,” Marcus would say, every syllable curling like steam against her. “What’s the point of a girlfriend if I can’t see you?”

He liked her bare.

Around the house. Around him.

Even when she didn’t want to be seen.

Especially then.

She shut the fridge. The cool air vanished. Behind her, the bed creaked, and her stomach curled inward like overripe fruit.

“Lila,” came his voice—thick with sleep, but already expectant. “Come back.”

She stayed in the doorway of the kitchen, fingers curled around the molding. Like a mouse hesitating at the edge of a trap.

“It’s hot,” she said.

“You think I don’t know that?”

She heard the sheets sigh, fabric peeling from skin. Heard the quiet shuffle of his feet on the hardwood.

“Don’t make me chase you, babe.”

Her spine tensed. She moved before she could think, like a shadow pulled forward by muscle memory. She slid down the hall just as he stepped into view—shirtless, boxers clinging low on his hips, eyes glazed in a way that made her feel watched, not seen.

He looked like the heat didn’t touch him—flushed, yes, but alive in it. Fed by it. Charged like static just before a storm.

She smiled.

Like she was supposed to.

By noon, the fan had died.

Its last exhale blew her hair across her cheek, then sputtered into silence. She unplugged it, fingers steady even as the silence thickened. The air was still, and the heat had teeth.

Marcus watched her from the couch. Two beers in. He only drank like this in heat like this. Said it made him feel connected to her. That sweat meant something. That their bodies belonged to each other more honestly when stripped of everything.

She sat on the edge of the couch, her back straight. Her spine felt like it was being slowly steamed out of her skin. The cushion beneath her was soaked where he’d lain, heavy with his imprint.

The air smelled like him.

Like skin and beer and something beneath it—something ripe and rotting.

“Come here,” he said, patting the damp hollow between his thighs.

“I’m hot,” she murmured.

“So come sit. We’ll sweat together.”

She didn’t want to.

She went anyway.

That was the rhythm now.

Didn’t want to. Went anyway.

His mouth brushed her shoulder. Warm. Wet. The kind of kiss that didn’t ask permission. His hands moved up her thighs like rising water—slow, inescapable, heavy with knowing.

She flinched. Small. Automatic.

He paused, lips hovering near her neck. “You okay?”

The question wasn’t a lifeline. It was a ritual.

His hand didn’t move. Stayed pressed there, fingers curled against her like he was reminding her she belonged to him.

She nodded.

It was easier to nod.

“You’re always so tense,” he whispered. “Relax. I just want to be close.”

That word—just—landed like a stone in her stomach. Just. As if closeness didn’t mean compliance. As if this wasn’t another taking.

He touched her again.

She didn’t respond.

Touched her slower.

And when she didn’t stop him—because she’d learned that no was a match struck in a hurricane—he took it as yes.

Later, she lay in the tub without water.

The faucet had groaned like a dying animal when she tried it. Nothing came. As if the heat had sucked the pipes dry, left the whole apartment desiccated and brittle.

But the porcelain was cold.

She lay there in Marcus’s oversized shirt, one sleeve slipping from her shoulder, letting her skin dry beneath a ceiling fan that didn’t turn. Her thighs ached. Her chest was hollow. She imagined her ribs full of smoke instead of lungs.

The door creaked open.

She didn’t lift her head.

Marcus leaned against the frame. His arms were crossed. He looked down at her like she was a puzzle that used to make sense.

“You always hide here,” he said softly.

She didn’t answer.

“You used to like being touched,” he continued. “You used to beg for it.”

Her eyes traced the spider crack in the ceiling. A hairline fracture that never grew, never healed.

He stepped into the room.

She didn’t move.

“Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t make me feel like a monster.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“But you feel something. I can tell.”

She sat up slowly. The motion pulled against her hip, where bruises had bloomed in thumb-shaped silence. Her mouth tasted like metal and dust.

“I’m tired, Marcus.”

He crouched beside the tub, voice gentler now. “I love you. You know that, right?”

She nodded.

That’s what he needed. Her agreement. Her silence. Her body: pliable, warm, there.

“You’re the only one who gets me,” he whispered, brushing his hand down her cheek. “No one else would ever stay.”

That night, she woke up choking on the heat.

The air was full of something more than temperature. Something pressing. Watching. The kind of heat that turned walls into lungs. The kind that made it impossible to tell where her skin ended and the room began.

The windows were open, but no wind came.

The blinds hung limp. Outside, the city buzzed with electricity—an overworked grid, an overworked girl. The sky was red with warning.

Marcus slept beside her, hand curled around her hip like a brand.

Possession, even in dreams.

She peeled herself away. Slowly. Carefully. Her skin made a quiet sound against his.

He didn’t wake.

She walked barefoot into the kitchen, floorboards creaking like bones. Opened the fridge. Still warm. Still empty.

She stared into it, unsure what she was looking for.

Then turned to the counter.

The phone blinked red. No signal.

The world had gone silent again. No news. No exits.

Her eyes burned. But she didn’t cry. Not anymore. The tears had evaporated months ago, turned into something brittle that cracked behind her eyes but never spilled.

She sat at the kitchen table.

Listened to the city’s distant hum.

Listened to her breath.

She was twenty-seven.

She had not wanted sex in six months. Not since the first time he’d whispered please against her collarbone and she’d said not now—and he’d kissed her harder, like no was just another word for not yet.

She had said “no” in every way:

With her voice.

With her stillness.

With the way her body turned to wax beneath him.

And each time, he’d made it about him.

How unloved he felt.

How cold she was becoming.

How she was holding her body hostage from the one person who loved her most.

He made her feel cruel for protecting herself.

Selfish. Broken.

Unworthy of kindness if she couldn't give.

She looked down at her hands. Limp on the table. Soft. Silent.

And then, quietly, she whispered it.

“That was rape.”

The word was quiet—but it didn’t need to be loud.

It landed in the air like glass.

Cold. Sharp.

And for the first time in months, something cut through the heat.

The apartment stayed still.

The city didn’t implode.

The walls didn’t scream.

Nothing broke—except the silence.

She breathed.

She didn’t know what came next.

Didn’t know who she would be when she stood up.

Didn’t know where she would go.

But the word stayed.

Cool and certain.

A match in a wet world.

And she did not take it back.