In-Between Alphabet: N is for Next

Next always follows behind, never allowed to storm into the fray first.  Another has come first and once there is a first, all are designated as Nexts, an army indistinguishable from each other.  Next enjoys closeness, settling besides like a warm puppy, one second squeezed against you, the next wriggling with impatience to move on. 

She says Next, fingers flicking lazy through the air, indolent body sprawled on the couch as if lacking any sort of skeletal structure.  He may have been bestowed with remote control privileges, plastic rectangle warmed with the heat from his hand, but he’s not deluded.  When he’s too slow to change the channel, she breathes out a heavy sigh and pokes him in the thigh, fingernail sharp even through denim.  Next, she repeats, not amused or fazed by the way he mock-glares at her in exasperation.  He could tussle with her over this, insist on his way, and he’d win.  But then the heavy weight of her head would lift from the hollow beneath his collarbone, and the pressure along his side would cool, and he finds this expectation rather distasteful.  So he presses the channel up button.  The colors of the television screen flicker to black before rearranging themselves in new patterns of movement.  He glances down, rewarded by the small quirk of her lips, the narrowing of her eyes as her quicksilver mind processes the images into coherency.  She throws out a snarky comment directed at some aspect of the program now inhabiting the screen, sly and cutting, eyes fixed on him.  He’s laughing before he’s even quite understood it.  She says Next once again, and his hands reach for the remote control, more interested in the play of her expressions anyways.