Aspen #5
Safi’s mouth split into a grin. “See? I told you. Mama makes the best sambal goreng kentang.” She was proud in a way that made the butterflies in Nai’s chest flutter even faster. Proud of the food, her culture, and their house. Proud of sharing something with Nai that belonged to her.
Safi’s mother observed all of this from the edges of the kitchen, pretending not to notice while no doubt noticing everything. She didn’t intervene or tell Safi off. She simply adjusted a pot on the stove, glanced over once, and smiled faintly to herself.
Safi leaned in again, conspiratorial. “Okay, dessert next. Mama says it’s too sweet but she’s too critical of herself. It’s perfect.”
Nai’s plate was exchanged for another. This one with small green wraps on it that reminded Nai of spring rolls. Only these were soft and sweet smelling. Like coconut.
She bit into it, teeth crunching against the sticky, dark brown coconut filling. It wasn’t the sharp sweetness she was used to from American candy, but something richer. Earthy palm sugar with a toasted, almost smoky warmth, tangled through fresh coconut.
Safi’s hand hovered near her wrist, ready to rescue her if she needed it. “You don’t have to like it,” she said quickly.
Nai took another bite instead. “This is so good,” she said, stuffing the rest of the roll into her mouth. She could eat a whole plate of those.
Safi beamed. “It’s dadar gulung. It’s my favorite.”
That, more than anything else, made Nai feel like she was doing something right.
Later, when Nai rose to help clear plates, Safi’s mother waved her away with a flick of her wrist. “Enough,” she said. “You’re family, go enjoy the evening.”
The word landed too hard. Family. Not an obligation. Not intrusion or a child they’d simply got stuck with.
No one asked Nai if she was staying long or where she would sit. Space was made for her without any fuss, as if she’d always been there. Everyone just took for granted that she belonged. And for once…she really felt like she did.
An owl hooted somewhere in the darkness, nudging her back to the cold balcony nestled between the snow-covered trees. She blinked into the dark, the glowing cigarette pinched between her fingers. One more drag and it too would be gone. Just like her memories and emotions.
She hadn’t known it at the time, but that night at Safi’s home was one of the places she would carry with her long after she left.
It didn’t matter how long ago it was. That night still lived under her skin, feeling both two decades and two heartbeats ago.
As vivid as the night around her. As real as the snow that crunched when pressed with the tip of her boot.
“Hm.” She gave a nod at nothing and no one in particular then took another small drag from her cigarette.
When she was young, she’d felt everything, and she’d felt it so intensely.
The flavors of the spicy food, the warmth of an entire family that let her belong, and the way her chest had ached with how much she loved Safi.
She chased the memory all the way to that Christmas Eve, until she could taste the past on her tongue. The years faded away, the past blooming up around her until only wonder and warmth remained.
Safi’s room was lit only by fairy lights, both of them tangled up and giggling. She’d been so nervous that she’d dropped the packet of condoms, and they’d scattered all over the floor. They’d tittered, all nerves, as they scooped them up, and Safi finally peeled one open.
She remembered Safi’s hand on her hip, the hush that settled when Nai’s shirt came off and Safi saw her—all of her—for the first time.
God, she’d been so fucking nervous, so fucking aware that her body was different.
That it wasn’t like other girls’ bodies.
She didn’t even have breasts back then, but Safi had looked at her, touched her, like she was the most beautiful thing in the world.
Safi hadn’t flinched. She didn’t shrink away, didn’t falter or lose her nerve. Instead, she smiled. Soft, wide, and a little shy, then whispered, “You’re so beautiful,” like it was the simplest truth. As if Nai’s body had never been anything but worthy of love.
Safi explored her the way someone did when they were curious and unafraid.
Her hands were everywhere, mapping Nai inch by inch, never shying away.
Touching her stomach, her thighs, the places Nai was used to guarding or tucking away.
Every discovery was met with the same quiet awe.
Safi’s body welcomed Nai, moving with her, breath catching on each new sensation, both of them whispering, gasping, holding on as if nothing else existed.
The memory drifted forwards, to afterwards, with the room gone quiet but for the winter wind outside. Safi curled up beside her, thigh thrown over Nai’s hip, head tucked under her chin like she’d done it a thousand times before.
Nai lay there, too stunned to sleep, every nerve still singing. Safi had traced lazy shapes along her stomach, humming made-up songs, while Nai tried to memorize the way her body fit against her own.
If she memorized it well enough, maybe she could tuck the night into a box where it would live forever.
Where they would live forever. She could open it whenever she needed, and feel the weight of Safi’s leg, the steady rise and fall of her breath, the way she didn’t hesitate to touch Nai anywhere and everywhere.
With Safi, Nai felt like every part of her belonged.
Nai could still feel the echo of it. How Safi had drawn her close, coaxed her in, guiding Nai’s body with her own until there was nowhere left to hide, every inch wrapped in heat and aching closeness.
Safi had gasped and clung to her, fingers digging into Nai’s back, her whole body trembling as she pulled Nai deeper, wanting every last bit.
If she closed her eyes, she could still hear the shudder of Safi’s breath that filled the dark. She’d wanted to make it last forever, even though she only managed a few desperate, perfect minutes before losing control. Before the feeling grew so sharp and sweet she thought she might never recover.
Nai remembered how her own climax had felt in the past; raw, unstoppable, and for a heartbeat the world narrowed to the loud thudding of her own pulse.
She’d been so embarrassed. That she couldn’t last longer, couldn’t make Safi come.
But Safi had just smiled, pressing her forehead to Nai’s, whispering that it was perfect, that she was perfect.
“It’s okay,” Safi had whispered, voice steady and warm even as her body trembled around Nai. Her hands slid up Nai’s back, holding her there. “It’s okay. Just don’t go anywhere.” And Nai had promised—in between kisses—that she wasn’t leaving, that she’d stay forever.
They’d believed in forever. That nothing bad could happen, not really, not to them, not on Christmas Eve with the world wrapped up in fairy lights.
The memory loosened its hold gradually, as if reluctant to let her go too abruptly.
Its edges softened first, the past blurring at the margins, until the weight of reality returned.
When the present finally settled around her, its cruelty was almost tender.
The world asserted itself once more, in small undeniable ways: the prick of cold in her fingers, the rough grain of the porch rail beneath her palm, the stillness of Aspen snow stretching beyond the balcony.
She glanced down, faintly surprised to find her hands gone stiff and red and her cigarette nothing but a small burned out stump. She flexed her fingers, slow and deliberate, as if easing herself into her body again.
The warmth of memory faded as the cold pressed in, and she drew her coat tighter.
Her cloudy breath unfurled in loose ribbons.
Tangible proof that she stood outside in present day.
Not in a room decades ago, in a bed that no longer existed except in fragments of remembered sensation.
The same room that allowed her to recall what feeling was like, though it never lasted beyond that memory.
Whatever she carried out of the memory didn’t survive the crossing intact.
It thinned in the open air, fading under the weight of the cold.
Though the knowledge remained that there’d been a time when she too could feel the tingle of fingertips brushing her arm, feel the heat of a kiss or the intoxicating pull of love.
A love she told herself she’d left behind. Or at least tried to.
She closed her eyes and let the night do what it always did best. Strip things down. Sharpen the edges. Pull her attention back into skin and muscle and breath, since her heart refused to offer anything usable. The cold bit, clean and precise. She welcomed it.
When she opened her eyes again, the night was unchanged. The mountains held their dark silhouettes. The house behind her still glowed golden and lively with muted chatter. Nai reached for her phone without thinking.
It was a reflex born of unease, of moments that stretched too long without anything to hold onto.
Her fingers were stiff from the cold as she unlocked the screen, the sudden light briefly too bright against the dark.
She didn’t open her messages. Didn’t scroll Clustr to check her engagement.
She went straight to the hidden folder where she rarely allowed herself to linger. It only had one picture.
There were more photos somewhere in her attic, and she wasn’t quite sure why she’d taken a photo of this one. Why she kept it with her.
A Polaroid, its edges faintly yellowed with age, snapped with her phone camera years ago and kept like a pressed flower between digital pages.
April had taken the polaroid, laughing as she always did.
Her smile had bloomed against her umber skin, warm and unmistakable.
The late summer sun had coaxed freckles into view, a light dusting across her round heart-shaped face.