[type]

“Ooh, I love this song, turn it up!”
“You wanna get up here first?” he asked through his teeth. He held onto her arm as she swung in the free space between her fire escape and the roof. The early morning sun caught her frizzy blonde hair, lighting her up like some sort of etheral creature. An angel, he thought. Definitely. If he couldn’t see down the shirt she borrowed off his sleeping body to her perfect pink tits. Sure.
She swung herself back and forth, catching the edge of her ankle on the ledge and rolling to safety. His shirt protected the white eyelit dress she had on underneath from the tar on the roof. The same tar that was already on the knees of his jeans, and, he suspected, his butt.
While she dusted herself off, he shifted back and flicked the volume knob upward. He’d remembered to grab her stereo this time–a red and silver box that reminded him of vintage cars that he’d coveted. It was on a station that played Billboard hits from the nineties. He didn’t know any of them; then again, he’d been too busy at the time learning the words to every track on Alice in Chains’ Dirt.
“So, how’s your world, Warren?” she asked.
“Same as last night,” he said. He leaned over and reached into his back pocket for his pack. “Ya mind?”
She shook her head and he tapped the box against the heel of his hand. As he got his Pall Mall going, she retrieved a cherry Safe-T pop from the breast pocket of his flannel shirt and ripped the plastic off.
She leaned back on her palms and faced the sun. He could hear the sucker in her mouth clacking on her teeth as she shifted it from one side to the other and back again.
“It still smells good,” she purred.
“One ain’t gonna kill ya,” he said, and proffered the pack.
“No, I can’t. I have no will power,” she said. Her hand reached for it, and it seemed like she might take it from him anyway, but she pushed it away gently and settled back on her hands.
“Why haven’t you quit?” she asked.
He shrugged.
“Well, you should. It’s not healthy.”
“Damn. That’s what I was doin’ it for.”
She gave his arm a playful smack.
“Don’t be snarky,” she said, “And don’t swear. It’s unattractive.”
“We already fucked. What the hell do I care?” he asked, and grinned when she smacked him again.
A silence lapsed between them, long enough for him to edge the toe of his boot around the perimeter of a roofing tile, and blow three wide, wiggling smoke rings.
“You didn’t answer me last night,” she said.
“No?”
“Nope.”
“Hm.”
He traced the tile again and flicked his ash over his shoulder.
“You know, you only come over when something’s bothering you.”
He squinted and shook his head. That didn’t seem right. There had to be times that he drove to her apartment on the west side of town for the hell of it. To see her. To be with her.
“So, what is it? Work?”
“No.”
“Family?”
He exhaled the smoke through his nose and scratched his eyebrow.
“You tell me, Madame Isabella,” he said, and threw his cigarette off the roof.
She kept her head tilted back, smiling with her eyes closed to the sun.
“Do you want a lollipop? I have grape.”
“Sure,” he said.
She pulled it two-fingered from his shirt pocket and handed it over. She clicked the heels of her bare feet together while he fumbled with the wrapper, and let it go on the breeze. He let the side with the raised ‘S’ sit on his tongue and leaned forward to watch the city rush by him.
“I’m not the one you want in your shirt,” she said.
“Fits me better, Ash,” he said with a shrug.
Her smile mellowed. He started flipping the candy around, end over end.
“You know I don’t mean you.”
“No?”
“How is Jackie doing?”
The white, looped handle of the sucker stopped rotating. He pulled it from his mouth and wet his bottom lip.
“Don’t'chu say it,” he warned.
“I thought so,” she said, “When are you going to tell her, Warren?”
He returned the candy to his mouth and kneaded the flaking sunburn on his right shoulder.
“‘M not.”
“War–”
“Not gonna do it, Ash.”
She pushed off on her hands, propelling herself into a leaning position, like him. She angled herself to try to see into the shadows she created, and meet his eyes.
“Why not!” she asked.
He bumped her, shoulder to shoulder, and bowed his head to brush the tip of his nose against her temple, then his lips.
“‘Cause you’re all the woman I can handle.”
“That doesn’t work on me,” she said.
He kissed down the side of her face, and kept going along her tanned, graceful neck.
“But it might work on her. She seems like a secret romantic,” Ashley continued, unaffected.
He sighed into the crevice of her clavicle.
“Y’ain’t gonna let it go,” he said.
“Oh, Warren. You know me better than that.”
She curled an arm around him and traced the tip of her index finger over the ridges of his ear. It slid over each ring and bar piercing his cartilage.
“I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“You could grunt,” she suggested.
He let out another sigh.
“Wouldn’t work, Ash.”
“I’m sure I’d know what you meant. You have very expressive grunts–”
“Makin’ a move,” he clarified.
She hooked her finger in the handle of his lollipop and carefully took it, replacing the void from where hers had already been sucked down to a red residue.
“Why?” she asked, shifting his sucker like the last. Clack. Clackclack.
He let a sardonic smile touch the corner of his mouth.
“Ain’t ‘er type.”
“Pardon?” she said.
“She ain’t interested.”
“I am positive that’s not true.”
“Oh, yeah? She say somethin’?”
“No, but, why wouldn’t she be? You’re friends, and you’re good looking.”
“Didn’t we break up ’cause you didn’t think so?”
“Just because you’re not my type does not mean you’re not attractive.”
“Yeah, well, I ain’t Jake’s.”
“Jackie’s what?”
“Type.”
She pursed her lips.
“What is her type?”
He pulled back into his own space on the roof and laid down, resting his head on the knit of his hands. It was shaping up to be a beautiful day–the kind that made him think he should head over to his brother’s and see if they could get a game going. He missed the feeling of the glove on his hand, the smooth leather and red stitching on his calluses. He missed a lot of things, the most prominent being not having this conversation.
“She’s a chubby-chaser.”
Ashley blinked.
“No, she’s not. Did she tell you that?”
“No.”
“Well, then how do you know?”
“You seen Markowitz?”
“She isn’t allowed to date a bigger man?”
“You seen the guys before him?”
“No, I–”
“She only dates fat dudes,” he said.
“Maybe it’s a coincidence.”
“Yeah,” he said with a sniff.
“Well, okay. Say that’s true–”
“It’s true,” he stated.
“Okay, it’s true. You know what you should do then.”
He slipped his sucker from her mouth and returned it to his.
“I have some cookies inside. Buttery ones.”
He watched a cloud waft by at its own pace.
“No.”
“Would it kill you, Warren?”
He hitched up a leg and slid an inch to his right to find a spot where the tiles didn’t dig into his back.
“Besides, it’d be fun! You could eat whatever you want!”
“I do eat whatever I want,” he said, dully.
Ashley pressed into his space and crept a hand beneath his undershirt.
“It would be cute,” she said, stroking that hand up and down his happy trail.
“Fuckin’ adorable.”
“It would be.”
“‘M not a fat fuck.”
She moved her hand up to his chest, and rested over half of him so she could touch her mouth to his ear, and whisper, “Don’t swear.”
“Fuck.”
She sighed and smiled with matronly patience. And instead of being the angel on his shoulder that she might’ve been (if it hadn’t been for that tit flash) she whispered with a forked tongue, “You know, deep down in here,” touching light fingers on his sternum, “you want to.”
He exhaled and stared hard at the clouds wisping by.
“You know that all you’d need was a little bit of a belly hanging over your jeans to get her to look at you.”
His jaw clenched, cracking down on the rest of the candy.
“She means more to you than this, Warren,” she said, walking her fingers up the ridges of his abdominal muscles.
“Stop it, Ash.”
“I could help you put the weight on. I make delicious chocolate chip pancakes.”
“I ain’t gonna do it.”
“I can see it in your eyes that you want to,” she said, smiling brighter.
He closed them immediately, deciding to stare instead at the blood-orange color of the inside of his eyelids.
“Too late. I already saw it.”
“Leave me alone,” he said, tiredly.
He knew better, but he hoped the silence she lapsed into meant she’d give it up. He hoped that the kiss she laid on his lower lip meant she’d stop. That her doing it again, and again, until his mouth parted, and he leaned up to put the slightest bit more force into it, would mean the end of the discussion.
“Are you,” she said, kissing, “pretending,” and again, “that I’m,” again, “Jackie?”
He stopped and pulled back sharp enough to whack his head against the roof. He grimaced and rubbed the sore spot on his crown.
She crawled the rest of the way over him and straddled his waist. She rested her palms on his chest and leaned in.
“I could ask her.”
“Ask her what? If ‘m pretendin’ you’re her when we screw around?”
“No, silly. I could ask if she’d like you if you were big–”
His eyes shot open.
“Keep your fuckin’ trap shut, Ash,” he growled.
“Why, Warren? Wouldn’t that make you happy if she said yes?”
“Why in the hell would that make me happy?”
“Because you’d have a chance,” she said.
“If I change.”
“It’s not a big change. Just a new jeans size.”
Now he smiled as if he’d swiped her patience.
“She dudn’t want me the way I am, then she dudn’t want me.”
Her mouth, which had hung open to get in a retort when he finished, clapped shut.
He exhaled.
“She ain’t shallow, anyway,” he said.
Ashley’s smile lapsed into a flat line. She blinked her saucer-sized aqua eyes at him, and her lip quivered a smidgeon. His smile, on the other hand, grew. He cupped her cheek and stroked a thumb over the bone.
“Gettin’ sad o’er my shit?” he asked.
“The girl you love doesn’t notice you,” she said.
“I never said love.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He kept his smile and lifted his eyebrows good-humouredly.
“S’alright. You’ll keep my balls pink, won’t'cha?”
“Gross!”
He leaned up and laid his smile over hers, kissing her nice, and slow.