LOGIC: A SHORT STORY [h.s au]

part four

*sexual content

Yale was swollen with neurotic and agitated students as the school year was slowly coming to a close. Just a month left and it could certainly be felt in the spring air, frenzied and pollen-thick.

Since New York City, Harry and Daisy slipped into each others universes, in between relentless studying and reading.

Harry was researching the twin prime conjecture—the theory in mathematics that states there are an infinite amount of twin primes. It had neither been proven or disproven and it gave him a wicked headache that only a good fucking from Daisy could help relieve. Meanwhile, she was cooped up in her bedroom, laying on her pristine white bed, books strewn about, while she wrote a 12 page paper about cannibalism as a metaphor for all-consuming love. It was a topic she specifically chose to write about because she could write an infinite number of pages about it.

For someone who didn't want love, she was oddly romantic, though approached it with a pragmatic sensibility. She liked the idea of it, even entertained it happened to her a few times, but always came to the same conclusion—she was incapable of loving anyone how they should be loved. She was simply not wired for it correctly.

She thought about what it would be like to devour Harry—if only she could love him. She could dream about it, though. She could imagine it. Sometimes it was a little cottage in upstate New York; little cotton day dresses, a vegetable garden to tend to with a plump baby on her hip, and a happy, lazy husband she could help undress when he came home from work. Other times it was an Art Deco apartment with round beveled windows in Los Angeles, endless sunny days, denim cutoffs, and a vintage yellow car with him driving and her in the passenger seat listening to The Doors.

But those were versions of her she'd never see come to fruition. Maybe they existed in alternate realities where she was capable of love and Harry didn't have a girlfriend. That soothed her.

When Harry couldn't take the incessant pounding of head head any longer, he got up from his desk and flew past Elena who was making dinner, in search of the unearthly delight of Daisy.

He knew Elena could smell the oddness he'd been exuding lately. The way he could barely fuck her anymore, and when he did he kept his lips tightened in fear of saying someone else's name that festered in the back of his throat. He didn't know why he couldn't just sever the ties with her.

He strode across the fresh grass, the air heavy with promise and the sweetness of the crabapple trees. The moon hung low across the navy blue evening sky, looking so round and ethereal, it reminded him of Daisy's eyes. He walked with intention; he was a man on a mission—to rid himself of the horrific ordeal of a headache and using it as the perfect excuse to seek out that perfect, haunting girl.

An old, grotesque lady, who he wasn't sure if she was maybe just one of the ghosts who lived in the building, opened the door for him to get in. He thanked her but she said nothing back. He tried not to think of it too much.

An urgent hand balled into a fist to knock on the knotty-wooded door to match the urgency that conglomerated in the pit of his stomach. It was the yearning he felt for Daisy.

She opened the door in a tizzy, wild haired and barefoot, cigarette hanging from her lips. A teddy-bear brown fur coat, that he assumed was real and inherited from a wealthy great-aunt, covering the skimpiest silky lingerie, soft pink and girlish, like a fallen rose petal. Her beguiling smile held him in a metaphorical chokehold and he could barely remember why he'd come in the first place.

For fucks sake.

"Is there a reason you're wearing lingerie and a fur coat?" He asked. God, he could punch himself square in the face for sounding like such a complete loser in front of her. She had that effect on him.