Chris and Anne's story

I really don't know where I am going with this, but I think I know where I am going with this and no one has seen it until now. Comment, please. It's less than half done. I will edit it when I add more here.
-D

“Did you bring the schnapps?”, Chris asks Anne as she shut the door against the cold wind and knocked clumped snow from her boots.
“Yes, my sister picked it up earlier this evening and thanks you for the extra cash. Who’ll be here tonight?”
Shrugging his shoulders, Chris answers, “no one but us” meekly ushering her into the pine paneled bedroom in the basement of his parent’s house.
A cool wind rustles through the register gaps, and the furnace clicks on and off behind a thin drywall where the bed props in the corner of the room under the stolen street signs.
Reaching for Anne’s shouldered shawl, “may I take this?”
“No, not now.”
Chris pulls back his hand, sitting on the bed’s edge with the Schnapps between his knees, a jutting phallic aphrodisiac. He fingers the lid like her had caressed a hole torn in her jeans months before shortly after his junior prom. Their flirtation developed from a quasi-innocent orgy of friends to Anne pulling herself from Chris’s car after a sweet kiss in June.
“Where’s your cousin tonight?” Anne asks politely perched on a plastic lawn chair under the stairs. Her favorite jeans worn from weeks or rafting through piles in South Park before movie nights or trips to Denny’s with a small group of mostly her friends.
Brown hair falls in Chris’s eyes where he grunts a “don’t know” feeling an invisible barrier between the two of them like a broken winged fluttering dove. “I think he went to Shelley’s house tonight. He’s there most nights after they leave the mall.”
“I thought he’d be here, or maybe someone else.” Anne asked quietly pulling her knees to her chest and covering her legs with the yellow shawl. The same shawl Chris’s mother bought her last Christmas while shopping for Anne and Chris. The mall heat blew stifling on Chris who had joined his mother on that excursion never really enjoying surprises and always enjoying picking out his own gifts.
Beads of sweat formed under his wool sweater, a gift from Anne last year after he’d seen it in a catalogue. He hadn’t expected to receive the box that day and quickly called Anne at school to thank her. He prayed she’d answer the hall pay phone unlike the weekend nights when he’d never get a hold of her.
“Maybe you can put on some music,” Anne suggested. “A little Stevie? Is that ok?” She asks as she extends her legs away from the chair into the center of the room.
“Ok.” He brushes his hair back while flattening his sweater and shoving a well-played disc into the stereo.
She’s the candle in the dark, and then she is the darkness. echoes off the tiled ceiling as the furnace click on again loudly. Anne rubs her arms closely to her chest and slumps slightly in the chair but jerks when the door opens at the top of the stairs.
“Chris, are you home?” Mom calls down.
“Yeah, we’re here,” he answers hesitantly glancing at Anne who sits straight in her plastic chair.
“Anne and you? What’re you doing?” The smoke smell wafts down into the basement through the open door.
“Nothing, really,” he pauses with hopeful anticipation.
“I gotta get up early and the snows piling up outside. Get her home. Night, Anne.”
Anne answers but the door but the door has already shut quietly to not wake dad who’s been in bed for hours, a self-employed workaholic who always get his worm.
“Are you cold, should I open this?” Chris asks fingering the Schnapps again.
“Sure.” She reaches for the green bottle, leaning forward as she grasps the bottleneck tightly seemingly never letting go of the elongated smooth warm surface. Tipping her head her blond-hair pours backward as the minty liquid splashes against her tongue. She sits back hard and the chair leg cracks quietly as she grabs the chair arms to balance herself, the bottle nestled warmly between her thighs. “Shit, sorry about the chair.”
“You could sit here,” Chris shrugs indifferently and slides across the bed to make room for her.
“Ok. Maybe.” Before moving toward the bed, Anne flips on the strobe light near the stereo now playing “Go your own way.” She flops hesitantly on the comforter, her chenille shawl rubbing roughly against Chris’s sweater as she passes him the schnapps. “Here, have some.” Anne offers her fingers pressed lightly against Chris’ hand as the sound of Fleetwood Mac bounces off the teal painted and wood paneled walls.
“You’re cold,” Chris comments, his leg resting slightly against hers.
“A bit, but warmer than that chair.”
“I could come closer,” he suggests, sliding his arm down his torso, resting on her ribs.
“That might be ok,” she answers. Her upper body shifts slightly, but tighter than it had been. He reaches toward her, his eyes closed against the light trying to blink against the strobe bathing her face in darkness.
“Did you talk to him this week? Did you see him?” Chris asked, fingers dancing delicately.
“Don’t get me started. You know how it is.” She rolled sideways.

“No, I don’t. How? I’ve never done that,” he answered, his voice hurt.
“Not that. I meant school.”
“You’ve experienced that; I have a few months left. A whole semester.” He tries to explain flailingly. “You’ve been away for months. I’ve waited.”
“I know. I know.”
“And I love you. Remember when I dropped you off? You barely squeezed my hand.”
“Well…”
“I can forgive it all. Even the returned calls, late. The questioned nights and missed messages.”
“Deal with it,” Anne answers pulling away a bit while reaching for the now half-empty bottle.
Chris clamps shut his jaw trying to not respond. He lays quietly, his breathing shallow while glancing at an old photo of him and Anne. Barely touching Anne his fingers rigid with contempt rising hotly in his chest. Last summer Anne’s preoccupation with biting Chris seemed like an absurd fetish, one Chris found painful. While driving through Brentwood, she’d reach for his arm. Her braced mouth barely broke his skin, but he pulled the wheel to the left as she giggled.
Rolling sideways on the bed, Chris pulled his legs toward his chest. “What the ----? You know I hate that,” Chris admonishes her and pulls the pillow for beneath his head. “Why do you do this?”
“Don’t know. Maybe I’m mean, maybe not.” Anne reaches sideways, sliding her fingers up this thigh toward his belt. His undershirt had pulled from his waist and supple skin welcomes her hand. He tenses slightly but not unwelcomingly, as she advances upward toward his chest. “It’s been awhile, school’s so harsh. And the winds off the lake have picked up as Christmas approaches again. Cuppaccino’s coffee doesn’t keep me as warm as this though,” she purrs letting the bottle slip onto the bed between them.
“Surely it’s not too lonely there,” Chris responds but doesn’t pull away.
“I missed you. Sorry I didn’t answer. How’m I suppose to cope with school?”
Flipping over hurriedly, Chris turns toward her, his face inches from hers. He smells the hint of fresh alcohol, her shawl slides sideways across her chest. Anne, eyes unfocused, leans towards Chris, her breath electrified.
“I don’t know. I wish it were how it once was.”
“When?”
“When I came to see you. We saw Return to the Forbidden Planet. Remember?”
“Sure I do, Melissa directed…”
“Not her,” Chris interjected.
“Yeah, her. Remember?”
“That was before. You hurt me.”
“We hurt each other before.”
“But not now?” he asks maintaining his distance of mere inches.
“No maybe not. Do you have a condom?”
Chris furls his brow, frowning through his quandary. “Wha- what’d ya mean?” He stutters dropping his head to the pillow, as she moves her leg against his.
“Can’t I be yours?”
“No, you were his. Weren’t you?””It doesn’t matter, does it? He’s not here. You’re here.”
“Maybe, maybe not, eh?”
“Come on…” she hums, sliding against him, closer and closer, Chris’ back against the wall under the Stop Sign.
“I don’t know.” He presses his palm against her breast confused as to even how he means the gesture.
“Yum. I like that.”
“No no, not like that. Atleast… I don’t think.” Chris pauses. “Ok, I got a condom, but it’s upstairs.”
“Why,” she whines. “Ok get it quickly.” Anne’s pulls her slender legs toward her head, making room for Chris to slide off the bottom of the bed. Before trudging up the stairs, Chris twists the knob off on the strobe, now the green glow from the stereo slightly illuminating the room, bed, chair, and desk like Christmas lights on a dark cul-de-sac.
Sliding through the half-opened door, Chris padded down the hall and through the living room. The Christmas tree, put up earlier that day, stood proudly in a corner glowing vaguely off the golden donkey Dad got when he age 6, purchased by his father when he was away at a Veteran’s Reunion in Central PA.
Dialing his cousin’s number, Chris sat heavily on the rubber stool under the wall phone. Their relationship rocky over three months, but stronger before August. At Anne’s graduation party she wore a pair of form fitted lilac shorts, hugging her ass. She wore a patterned shirt while eating Chick-fil-A catering. A humid wind rustled the streamers around the grove when Chris fell in love with her all over again.
“Mark, is that you?” Chris asked when a groggy hello was heard on the other end.
“Sure. I’m here. What do you need?”
“I’ve got myself into a predicament. Anne is downstairs.”
“Why’s she there? I told you to forget it. I don’t trust her.”
“I know but she’s down there, probably drunk and waiting for me. What should I do?” Chris asks in hushed tones. Confiding in his cousin with whom he has spent many nights sitting in the basement, eyes forward on college life next year. One night, sharing a bed head to toe, Chris’s Dad came down stairs to get a shirt from the dryer wondering whose sandy hair fell from beneath the comforter not expecting Mark to be there. Although he spends more and more nights here close to Shelly’s parent’s house away from a distant family.
“Jeez. I can’t tell you anything, Chris.”
“Come on. Help me out. I know you don’t like her, but---“
“Chris, you’re on your own. I gotta go. See you at dinner tomorrow.”
“Wait, do I have—“
“Look, make up your own mind. Only you can do this.” Chris hangs up the phone to a crackling dial tone after Mark hung up.
Chris cradles the phone, shoving his hands into his pockets. Mark had given him sound advice in the past, but curiously never liked Anne much the same way Chris didn’t like Shelly. Walking back through the living room, Chris slipped back downstairs.
“Did you get ‘em?” She asks when he rejoins her on the bed.
“Yeah yeah, I did,” he answers hesitantly.
Anne climbs over his prone frame, tips of hair fell playfully in Chris’s face. Her elbows locked on either side Chris, wobbly with twenty minutes more of alcohol process. She presses her chest weighing down on Chris, suffocating him. Her shawl now lay half off the bed, the neck of the schnapps bottle pierced through a large yawn hole. Pulling his sweater toward his neck, Anne nuzzled his neck before pulling away to yank Chris’ sweater up over his head.