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Belle didn't drink. It wasn’t something that she was comfortable doing after all of the time spent as Lacey. She would have iced tea, thankyouverymuch. She’d allow other people their wine at dinner. Moreover, she wouldn’t drink alone.
Imagine her surprise when she arrived at the apartment above the library, alone, clutching a paper bag with a bottle in it.
She didn’t have an urge to drown her sorrows in the bottle. She didn’t want to wake up with a hangover. She didn’t even have an urge to have a glass. She wanted it for purely selfish reasons.
Inside the brown paper bag was a bottle of whisky. Other people would have called it scotch. She had no idea what to buy, every time she had seen him drink whisky, it had been in a decanter. She selected something with a decidedly Scottish name, paid at the counter (with a raised eyebrow from the proprietor), and took it home.
Now that she was home, it was sitting in the center of the small kitchen table, relieved of it’s brown wrapping, basking in a small ray of sun. This is what she wanted. It was the color she wanted: brown, sweet, warm. The color of his eyes. The ray of sun glinting off of the liquid in an approximation of how his eyes warmed when he was passionately arguing something.
She was going to pour a glass. Not one to drink, but one to admire. She returned to the table with a small tumbler, clear. It had a solitary ice cube in it. Opening the bottle with a struggle, she poured an inch over the cube. It smoothed out the rough edges. Dancing the liquid. Melted water mixing with the alcohol making swirls in the glass. Belle set the glass aside, recapped the bottle and set it back in the center of the table.
Sitting, she pulled the glass near her at the table. She regarded the glass. It was still the color of his eyes, but it was a different mood of his. It was the color when he relaxed. She wasn’t sure he knew that his eyes changed colors depending on his mood. It was a slight difference, and one wouldn’t know unless you studied his eyes on a regular basis, but this liquid captured the essence perfectly.
She was looking down into the glass, watching the ice slowly melt, when a light, hot breeze blew through the window. It wafted the smell of the liquid to her. She slowly took a breath and then her breath caught. This whisky was his smell.
He had different odors: post shower where his wet hair and soap and shaving creme combined to make a scent that she associated with the morning or his smell while spinning, smelling of lanolin and leather. With both of these, however, there was always an underlying scent of smoke and earth and something astringent. It was always there. This was it.
Belle put her chin on the table and moved the glass to under her nose. She closed her eyes and breathed. It was an awkward position with her neck craned out and her chin on the wood, but as she settled in, she almost felt like this is what she smelled when she was asleep with him. It was comfortable. Something she missed. She had been hugging her pillow at night. This was better.
Her head moved like she was in a dream. She took a deep inhale and sat up straight once more. She had sat for so long that the ice cube had melted in the liquid.
It was such a curious liquid. It was the essence of him. She wasn’t sure if it was because it was his drink of choice, if it was because they came from the same part of the world, or if it was some other reason. It looked like him. It was the color of his eyes in all of their facets. When she poured the liquid, it was reminiscent of his hair. It smelled like him. She could breath it into her lungs and smell his pure scent. She fleetingly wondered if it would taste like him.
Belle didn’t drink, but her curiosity got the best of her. She raised the glass up and toasted to the sky. “Please. Come home. I need you.”
She moved the glass to her lips and took a sip. For the love of all the Gods, it tasted like the skin on his neck. It had the astringent taste of his aftershave, the natural smokey characteristics of his skin. The water broke it a bit creating a magical taste of somewhere she had never been but longed to go to. She savored the liquid.
Belle rose from her seat with the glass in her hand, reached out for the bottle and walked towards her kitchen sink. She upended both vessels into the sink, watching the liquid swirl down the drain. When empty, she placed the bottle and glass on the drain board.
“Enough. No good can come of this.”
Belle walked toward her bedroom.