73
Sasha
Above me, Lillian’s laughing. Pouring off her in response to how I’m so caught up I can barely speak. In how she can interrupt all my sentences with her mouth on my chest.
I say.
“If you listen, this is magic.”
I mean that in the sound of every syllable when she says my name and every way she touches my body, I know I’m seen. Not as a boy or a magazine cover. But as a harmony lining up perfectly.
“Should I get my wand from under the bed?”
“Not that sort.”
Though not not that either.
“Aren’t you sentimental. It’s a rally cry and you know it.”
We mean the same thing.
When I met her, I didn’t know she had so much joy in her. I’d chase her around the world trying to lure that joy from wherever it’s buried. I want to bring it to her voice and the corners of her mouth for me to gather with mine.
Then all my words and ideas are smudged across the page, lost to her eyes fixed on mine, tender and intense. Lost to every sound that escapes my mouth until Lillian covers it softly with her hand and absorbs all the waves through her skin.
I’m fragments of white lace and skin underneath her covers.
“Are you nervous?”
she asks a minute later.
“Is this too fast?”
“Is it for you?”
Lillian seems surprised when I ask. It isn’t for me and I hope it isn’t for her either, because my heart’s racing when her lips press against my neck before she responds.
“Of course it is. Most things are too fast for me, Sasha. The world usually scares me.”
Her breath breaks up her words. So does her mouth.
“But less right now. All my favorite moments are like this. They wrap me up in time. You know the memories that feel safe because they’ll always have happened, no matter what happens next? I want this to be one of those with you, if you do.”
She once told me we can’t change the past, and that’s lucky. What a mess we’d make if we could.
I kiss her back and draw her into the rush with me.