He’s lonely in a different way now that he has her. Strange how that doesn’t ever really stop, that hidden ache in your bones waiting to push forward just at the wrong moment. It’s when she isn’t there, how awful it is that he can be so torn apart when she gets up to get a drink from the kitchen. He never knows what to do with his arms, his mouth. He feels useless and maybe it’s only made worse being so aware of that feeling, of that stupid, desperate way that he needs her next to him, always.
There’s also that fear that seems like its taken up residence at the back of his neck and it peeks out over his shoulder, hovering behind him and watching every single move. It’s the fear that this isn’t for good, that while she’s completely everything he’s wanted out of life, not just out of a person, he isn’t that for her and there’s that idea that everything eventually ends.
It’s that end. The word itself, how it sounds, how it feels, how he hates even thinking it. She could walk away, she could. He knows he could say the wrong thing or do something just so fucking stupid and she’d leave and maybe not come back or maybe she would come back but it wouldn’t be the same again. He also knows that she could just disappear without a choice, driving in her car at night when suddenly glass and metal and everything collapses around her while he sits happily on the couch waiting for her when the phone rings. It’s those things he’s most afraid of, that keep him awake at night sometimes when she’s not next to him.
He wonders if they’ll fall out of love ever. And how it would feel to slowly, slowly lose any feeling he ever had for her until he wakes up one day and just doesn’t feel a thing when she kisses him. He laughs now at the thought because there’s yet to be a time when he didn’t feel a thing when she kissed him. There’s yet to be a time when he didn’t hold on for too long, his hands at the back of her head.
But, what if. Whatifwhatifwhatif.
He feels her moving next to him and the warmth of her thighs against his as she straddles his legs, hands on his face, her hair falling down around his face as she looks at him from above; it’s something she likes, those few times when she can feel taller and she can look down at his face, see it from a different angle. She says, ‘What are you thinking about?’ She looks him in the eyes, her thumbs resting in the corners of his mouth.
And that fear is back, waking up now to make the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Because he can’t tell her, doesn’t know how to express all these things he seems to feel all at once, sudden and intense. He opens his mouth to tell her he’s afraid of losing her, afraid of being alone again, afraid of needing her too much, loving her too much, afraid that these sort of things really don’t happen and it’s all in his head, the perfection of it contrived and false.
‘You,’ he says which isn’t a lie, but the way she interprets it is.
She smiles that soft, slow, blissful smile that he thinks didn’t exist before this, them, him. She kisses him, softly, her mouth lingering on his. And then she kisses him again, their mouths opening to each other slowly, tips of tongues just barely touching.
He likes being kissed quietly by her on Saturday afternoons when he’s been thinking too much. And maybe she already knows what he’s been thinking about and just wants to assure him that none of it’s contrived and the whatif’s are just that and this is what’s real.
She says, ‘I love you,’ without opening her eyes. And without letting him even respond to that with emphatic agreement, she says, ‘We’ll be just fine,’ and presses her lips to his throat as she moves her head to his shoulder.
And after everything, he’s so easily convinced by her voice and the weight of her body against him and the way her breath glides over his skin. He runs his hand down her arm and she pushes her forehead against his neck, sighing contently, and he almost forgets what it even feels like to be afraid.
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