“Isn’t it funny,” he asks conversationally, leaning up against the building as she walks out to greet the late-spring sunshine, “that we somehow keep finding ourselves in this situation?” He’s disheveled, more so than when she saw him five minutes ago, fancy new haircut now severely disfigured. She takes in his lean, appealing, figure, so forbidden to her for so long. Maybe things do change, after all. Maybe she has.
A year spent trying to make contact with him, to reach that person she used to know. He, of grand gesture and courageous convictions, she of sputtering digressions and false starts, trapped in her own cowardice. What a pair they make.
God, does she want them to be a pair.
“I’m not sure how much coincidence has to do with it this time,” she tells him knowingly. She has a permanent smile carved into her head, cheeks aching, face flushed. He lifts his hand to run it through his hair, a tried and true kill shot to his stylist’s hard work, and she fixates on his fingers. She longs to reach out and touch them, feel their softness, their calloused tips (the result of a youth spent playing guitar, she knows), and to intertwine them with her own.
And, for once in her life, she does.
She goes for it as he’s bringing his hand back down. She thinks he might be startled, but he curves his fingers inward in acknowledgment, in welcome. He is warm, and she exhales properly for the first time in over a year, maybe for the first time, period. Looking up from their hands to his face, she finds his eyes closed tight, fighting some hidden emotion. She squeezes his hand to bring him back to her.
“You hurt me,” he tells her, voice raw with the truth of the statement.
“I know.” A pause. The world around them keeps moving, but theirs has halted. “You hurt me, too.”
She can’t meet his eyes, so she stares at his throat, watches as he swallows hard. “I know.”
She turns her head and rests her cheek on his chest. She is here, with him, and needs him to understand this, to accept this. Only a moment’s hesitation and he responds in kind, reaching for her other hand and weaving their fingers together. They stand like this for several moments, and their breathing evens. Eventually she lifts her head, and they’re face to face once again.
“Your hands are cold,” he tells her, almost surprised by the observation.
She looks at him. Really looks. Really feels. Really wants. Really hopes. “Maybe you can help me warm them up.”
And so he does.
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© 2006-2023 More Than That | Skin created by Kali
© 2006-2023 More Than That | Skin created by Kali