46. Kindling #2
I lean down and kiss her, willing her not to run now that she's finally here in my arms. She smiles against my lips, just enough to make me weak. I breathe her in, trying to steady the way it feels painful to stop, then pull away again just enough to look her in the eyes. “Is it about Rithy?”
Her breath catches. She sits back, covering herself, trying to hide beauty my mind has no intention of ever forgetting, her motions suddenly shy. I grab a blanket draped over the couch and wrap it around my shoulders, then pull her into me until we’re back in the same warmth.
“I didn’t think it was,” she says. “Maybe I’m afraid that once we...
” I hold her tighter, trying to deny the doubt rising up.
“I’ll be what he said I am. Just another groupie.
I can still hear his laugh, Rafe. The relief in it, like I was nothing, just something you guys can get from a vending machine.
What if he’s right? That what you two share is all that really matters? ”
I hold her until her heartbeat steadies against mine. “Then we wait,” I tell her. “Until you trust what this is for me, that I mean it when I say I’m not going anywhere.”
She nods, eyes closing. The city breathes beyond the glass, the air still tasting of rain and wine. The urgency fades, leaving something tender between us behind, captured inside this blanket. The quiet after is its own kind of music, not the storm, but the shelter after it.
We linger beneath the blanket far longer than reason allows, half dreaming in a hush that feels close to bliss.
Every small turn she makes sends a spark through me, the brush of her skin against mine, the whisper of warmth when she drifts away, the slow return when she finds me again.
Everything has gone still except for our breathing; even the city seems to wait.
Somewhere between waking and sleep, I feel her watching. She’s twirling a strand of my hair between her fingers, eyes hazy with that soft morning glaze. I reach up, catch her wrist, then her hand, kiss the back of it, press her palm to my face before finding her mouth again.
“I have no idea what time it is,” I murmur, “but I’m sure you’re about to tell me you need to go.”
She nods, and I sigh. The moment breaks like light spilling through a curtain.
The chill that slips beneath the blanket is sudden, almost cruel.
She lifts it, gathers her things, bra, shirt, keys, calm, and when the light breaks over her face, she glows.
For a heartbeat I think that if she was the last thing I ever saw, blindness would be a mercy.
I stay as I am, shirtless, belt loose, feet bare.
None of it matters. What matters is her, outlined in gold dust and leaving.
Hands in my pockets, more to keep myself contained than out of courtesy, I follow her to the door.
Just before she steps into the corridor, I pull her back for one more kiss, a keepsake, a breath I want her to carry.
She gasps when I press her lightly against the door, my hand finding her throat in a touch that begs her mercy, don't go.
“Saturday then?” I ask.
“Only if no sticks are involved this time,” she teases.
I feign a scandalized sigh. “Thankfully he has no ears, or he’d never forgive that insult.”
Her laugh breaks the morning open.
“No sticks,” I tell her, my voice low. “Just his human counterpart, if you’ll have me. Before love makes a ghost of me too, drowning in the underworld.”
The confession slips free before I can stop it.
It isn’t I love you, but it’s the shape of it, the truth in disguise.
Reckless, maybe, but I don’t take it back.
I hold her gaze, letting her see the whole unguarded thing I’ve been trying not to name.
She nods slowly, as if caught in the same thought.
Maybe she is. I hope will alone is enough to keep her heart near mine, at least until Saturday.
The days without her roll by, but only the ones where her face frames everything seem to matter anymore. The rest is just surviving through them until I can get to her again.
Saturday we take the bike down by the waterfront.
She insists on stopping at a coffee kiosk that only takes cash, so I dig through every pocket and come up with a handful of crumpled notes.
She grins like I’ve handed her treasure.
We sit on the seawall, legs brushing, steam from the cups mingling in the air.
She asks about Greek myths, why musicians always seem obsessed with them.
“Because they were the first songs,” I tell her. “People trying to explain why they felt too much.”
She smirks. “So Hades kidnapping Persephone was just him being emotionally overwhelmed?”
I laugh. “We don’t have the right translation. We pretend we do, but it falls short. I’d like to believe it wasn’t theft, it was acknowledgment. He saw in her a counterpart, someone so perfect, so sacred, he couldn’t turn away, even if he wanted to.”
She studies me over the rim of her cup. “That still doesn’t exactly sound like consent.”
“It’s complex,” I say. “It feels more like fate. Which makes me think she had a hand in it, that somewhere in her, she knew she belonged beside him. Something close to complicit surrender, harder to translate. That’s a kind of nuanced honesty people spend their whole lives avoiding for an easier lie.
Who knows, maybe she orchestrated it all? Knew where he’d watch and waited?”
She hums, the sound I’m starting to learn she makes when she’s thinking but not ready to admit I might be right. The wind picks up, carrying salt and the faint edge of rain. She tucks her hair behind her ear, and for a second, I forget every song I’ve ever written.
When I convince her to see me again that Wednesday, it’s at her place this time.
She cooks, claiming she’s not much of a chef, but everything she does feels precise, the way she slices the garlic, tastes the sauce, moves through the kitchen like she’s composing something.
The room smells like home and summer drifting in through the open window.
We talk about paintings, chiaroscuro, the violence of light and shadow.
“Maybe that’s why I love myths,” I say. “They’re brutal, but they never apologize for it. Like music,” I murmur, almost to myself. “I don’t soften the notes to make them kind or easier to swallow.”
She laughs, and when she leans her head against my shoulder, it feels like permission disguised as something casual.
Later, when she drifts asleep on the couch, I stay where I am, tracing the curve of her shoulder with my eyes, nothing more.
It makes me realize I’ve never been so aware of skin without touching it before.
It feels like dying and being reborn with each sweep and eventually the rhythm of it claims me too, until I fall asleep beside her, pulse thudding at the magic of sight.