Mr Sunshine

limerance & that person that everyone fancies

‘Rest Energy’ by Marina Abramović

You are drunk and you smile at me. You say I was being mean to you about your glasses. You could tell I thought you looked better without them.

We laugh together, and it rises and falls like the symphony of chirping crickets on a late summer evening.

Are you flirting with me to pass the time?

Everything blurs into a flirtatious haze on a night out. Everything unsaid slowly reveals itself, like an iceberg being tipped ever so slightly.

When you are drunk, that’s when the flirting comes. I wish you would flirt with me sober.

I don’t really remember why we kissed in that bar—lines drawn funny by drink, like being inside a fish tank. I remember your eyes looming, big and surprised, but you kiss me back all the same.

Polly brings you up a-lot in conversation. It’s a good excuse to talk about you. I do wonder if she fancies you too.

You tell me I’m evil when I kiss you for the third time. You tell me that a lot. Especially when I ask you if you like me.

Polly tells me he didn’t need to kiss me back.

She tells me about the girl that you’re seeing. I see you out. She talks, your eyes listen. Your hand rests on her thigh.

Polly sees me watching and gives me a knowing look.

You’re the kind of person that carries the sun in your teeth.

You told me you’re growing out your beard because you don’t want people to recognise you. You’re growing out your hair too, but still hide it under a hat.

I hate your smile, sun-drenched grin shaped like a crescent moon. I always look for you in rooms.

I hate your perfectly straight teeth, and the cavernous space where one was knocked out. I hate the way you make me laugh.

You flirt with me more heavily than usual one night. You flex your bicep and tell me to feel it with that grin.

Another night I wipe some dirt from your face and I can feel you looking at me, but I can’t look back at you. It’s like looking at the sun, and I won’t—or can’t—get burnt.

Maybe it’s just bone-weary delusion, but my friends say you’re flirty.

That time you left the bar, and when you came back, your eyes fell on me dancing. You stopped to ask if your friends were still here. You said, “It’s cold outside,” and touched your cold hand to my warm one.

Something so small and stupid left me reeling. That look in your eyes alone splits and guts me like a fish.

I feel you watch with pained fascination when I dance with other people. We circle around each other like nervous butterflies, both itching to press the question.

It sits like a stone. Never to be unturned.

When you walked me back to mine, and I said you might as well stay, you stayed. It was the night we kissed. I had drunkenly tried to come home with you. You use my name and tell me it’s a bad idea, that you’re trying to be good.

You tell me I’m evil for asking if you think I’m attractive.

“I know you do,” I say.

But later, you are peeling off your clothes and clambering into my bed, eyes fluttering shut, and hand resting on my thigh.

Our limbs seem to entangle a little too easily. You place your arm underneath my pillow throughout the night.

You watch me undress down to my underwear with a look in your eyes I can’t quite read.

For a moment we shared the sun in your teeth.

But maybe you just know how to give that look.

So is my wanting just another thing to you?

I kiss you on the cheek when I think you’re asleep, and you return it with a kiss to my forehead.

I slot my hand into yours and you let me, then grasp my hand back.

Nothing I do seems to annoy you.

I watch you sleep and it makes me want to cry for some reason.

My friend asked me if there was anything going on between us. I said no, but told her about you anyway.

I could feel that dreaded smile creeping across my face as I spoke. If we could have kissed with our eyes. I’m sure we would have done it a thousand times.

I tried to introduce you to a guy I knew on a night out once. You acknowledged him with a grunt before spinning away on your heels.

“Nice guy,” he said. Your usual boyish charm had shifted to bluntness, it took everything in me to not grab your hands and shake you, and ask, ‘what is this?’

Or maybe you were just too drunk.

When you looped your scarf around me that one night, your eyes were brimming with something different.

I thought we might have kissed.

But we didn’t.

The next day, you got into an Uber with another girl.

You were a lot less flirty with me that night.

But when we’re walking down the road you say, “Well, I guess I’ll see you next week.”

I steal your scarf back when you’re one foot inside the taxi.

The so-here-and-now is always here and gone tomorrow. It scatters away like mist after the sun hits it, turning into a sore head and forgotten conversations.

I hear you get up in the morning and watch you get changed.

I want to ask you to stay.

But I don’t.

You tell me it’s your sister’s birthday drinks.

I walk you out and watch you leave in the sunshine.

Because that’s what you are: Mr Sunshine.

I don’t think I was ever anything special. I just wanted to bask in your warmth, at least for a little while. But I suppose everyone does.