and the salt in my wounds isn’t burning anymore than it used to

it’s not that i don’t feel the pain, it’s just i’m not afraid of hurting anymore.

She clipped the dressing with some scissors and anchored it against his wrist with a bandage clip.

“This one will take a few days to heal.” At times she wasn’t sure if she was telling him the truth, or if it was her subconscious trying to keep him around just a little longer.

He wrapped his hand over it to make sure it was secure and grinned at her, “Harry Potter Movie Marathon?”

She rolled her eyes, pouring more antiseptic solution on to a cotton pad and getting to work on the cuts across his forearm. “Don’t worry about them, they’re only small, they’ll heal on their own.”

“Every wound’s important, small cuts get infected just as easy as big cuts,” She murmured, concentrating on wiping the small pieces of gravel from his scratches.

The door bell rang and she looked up, “Here, just keep wiping those,” She handed him the cotton pad and climbed up from her knees using the lounge as leverage.

Sam leaned back on the couch to take a peek down the hallway at the front door – there stood a young guy in jeans and a leather jacket holding flowers in his left hand; Sam turned away when a glint of sunlight hit the wedding ring on his finger and reminded him he was being openly intrusive.

Returning to wiping his wounds, he pretended he’d been doing so all along when she walked back in to the room. “Any one important?” He feigned nonchalance.

She leaned over him, checking for more scrapes, finding too many old bruises still healing, “An old friend.” He flinched when her fingertips grazed an open cut, but felt his shoulders drop in complete surrender when he realised he was able to study her features in detail.

“An old boyfriend?” He raised an eyebrow, trying to gauge her reaction.

She sighed, “Kind of.” Pushing his hair back from his forehead she hung it behind his ear. She was so close all he could smell was her – vanilla and cinnamon sugar.

“He’s married…” It came out and fell in the space between a statement and a question, where there is an infinite gap separating what’s wrong and right.

She finished dressing the lesion and stood, looking down at him slightly defeated, “Maybe I’m just a sucker for boys that never stay.”

Sam placed his palms over his knees and with a slight rock forward for momentum managed to propel himself upright; she stifled a small breath in as he towered over her, “I’m not a boy.”

Their eyes held for a moment before she moved aside and began to clean up and pack away the First Aid kit, she was placing the gauze in to a snap lock bag when she mumbled, “Boys who think they aren’t, still are.”