Nicole: An Atheist on a Date

Two posts in one night, I'm on a roll. Like I said in my previous post, I haven't been writing very much. I've also been pretty dry with ideas and inspirations of what to write in a really long time. I have decided that I might start trying to focus on writing more short stories, rather than attempting to write whole novels like I used to which never worked for me. Maybe my brain is too scattered to be able to focus on one thing for that amount of time.

Anyway, I wrote this after reading this poem. I hope this isn't plagiarism! I do steal a few lines, but the idea of it really intrigued me and I wanted to expand it in my own way. I hope the little "read more" thingy works too, I just didn't want another giant post after my last one.

Edit: I hope I don't offend anyone with the content! It's nothing to risqué, but I can't remember who's religious on here and who isn't, because it does involve religion and a little bit of sex. I just wanted to comment on the contradictions of modern people who are religious and embrace their faith, yet they also go against it, almost like picking and choosing. Just a little context and this was just to explore my own curiosities.

The coffee had turned cold in my palm as I watched her thin lips move. The drone of her high-pitched voice continued, but I’d stopped paying attention when my coffee was still warm. She didn’t seem to notice, though, if I nodded at the correct intervals and gave a small laugh when I heard the chime of her giggle, which made her turned up nose wrinkle. While she talked far too much, it was comforting to be in the company of someone else, to not be so stuck in the cluster of my own head. It was even nicer being in the presence of such a pretty woman and having her interest.

We sat together in a charming café with the smell of coffee grind surrounding us. The unmatched coffee mugs and asymmetric chairs and stools made it feel a little offbeat. It was a rare find in a city set on being extremely sleek, with sharp architecture and modern, overpriced restaurants.

She stopped to sip on her latte and I gave my nod of agreement to whatever useless topic she’d been going on about. As she slowly licked the foam from her lips, she deliberately moved the collar of her blouse to the side. I knew then that she was enjoying the date far more than what I was.

That’s when I noticed it. The small and no doubt sexual motion of her pushing her shirt across, to reveal and draw my eyes to the bends in her chest, caused the fluorescent lighting in the quaint coffee shop to catch the silver on a cross around her neck, and it glinted in my eyes. The small piece of jewellery surprised me, she didn’t seem religious. Whenever I thought of someone attending church, I pictured a short woman with stocky legs that smelt of mothballs and wore a dress and matching hat in some ridiculous shade of pink. But here in front of me was a young and beautiful woman with a cross around her neck, a complete contradiction of my own stereotype.

“Are you religious?” I gestured to the necklace. 

“Oh, yes.” She picked it up between her fingers, and the overhead lighting caused it to wink at me again. “It’s nice just to have a little piece of God with me, you know?” She asked, and the expectation of me being able to relate was evident by the smile on her face.

“Do you go to church often?” I asked.

“I used to go weekly, now it’s about once a month. My family’s pastor isn’t too happy about that.” She dropped the cross and let it rest near her heart.

She continued with her previous story, her one-track mind unfazed by my sudden interest in her beliefs. I placed the chilly mug to my lips and gulped the stale coffee, my eyes never leaving the cross around her neck as her rambling nonsense continued to spew from her mouth.

When the waitresses began to stack the wooden tables on top of one another, we knew it was time to leave. We stepped out onto the street and the cold wind nipped my bare skin, causing goosebumps to pimple on my arms. She turned to me and tucked a dark, frizzy curl behind her ear, before wrapping her arms around her body. When she looked up at me shyly with a small smile playing on her lips, I knew what to expect. She stood on her toes to place her lips on mine. The smell of her perfume tickled my nostrils. I half expected her lips to taste something like religion, like the mothball odour that those older women emitted, but her strawberry flavoured lip-gloss was sweet on my tongue. My body heated and I took her face in my hands, enjoying the human connection of skin on skin, lips on lips, which had been absent in my life for far too long.

She broke away, her breathing heavy. “I swear I’m not usually this forward. It’s just – it’s so cold out. Would you like to come back to my place?”

The whole drive back to her house, I couldn’t stop thinking about that cross around her neck. Was it purely for aesthetics? It couldn’t be, she had said she was religious. She wore the cross as a visual reminder of her faith in Christian values, yet she was taking me to have premarital sex, which was a sin. Did she believe in God only when it benefited her? Perhaps the cross around her neck meant more to me than it meant to her.

These questions continued to nag at me, and they only ceased when she pushed me into her dark, unlit apartment. The room reeked of that spicy perfume that had itched my nose earlier, and it clouded my thoughts. The smell was almost sickening. She grabbed my hand and led me into her bedroom.

The pale light from the street lamps outside leaked in through her window and made her skin look eerily porcelain. I caught her waist; my body was humming with desperation to touch her, to feel that connection and to be even closer to her. Her lips pursed against mine, my tongue slipping into her warm, welcoming mouth to stroke hers. My fingers brushed the cross as I unbuttoned her blouse leisurely. I threw her down on the bed, her body sprawling out on the white silk bed sheets. I stood to look at her. Her brow was creased with a desperate, pleading expression, her eyes on the bulge in my pants. I wondered what her pastor would think as the cross around her neck lay between her naked breasts.

God may have forgiven her for her sins that night; perhaps that was why she uttered his name.